DANCERS ON A LAKE OF BLUE FIRE_PART 4 of 4_TWILIGHT'S CHILDREN

The Death prophesied by the Mayans long ago has come to claim the Earth.

It is straining to get into Wolf Howl's hospital room.

But he is the last Lakota shaman and to protect the woman he loves,

he will fight the darkness as long as he can ....}


The cheap wood of the door began to splinter, wisps of growling blackness squirming through the cracks. Shadow looked at the gun in her hand. I hoped she wouldn't shoot through the door.

It would only help the darkness get in quicker.

Her long black hair whipped about her face as she turned to me. "Do something, Drew!"

"Remember how to dance?"

"What? Are you insane?"

"You can have known me this long and ask that?"

The streams of ink mist swam in quick currents together, forming a shape that seemed both unfamiliar and familiar --- and altogether terrifying.

"Drew!"

"Remember where we first met?"

"Y-Yes."

"Me, too."

And praying to The Great Mystery that her memories and mine were the same, I plucked the gun from her hand.

After all, there is no more dangerous a creature than a terrified assassin with a loaded gun.

Wrapping my fingers gently around hers, I spun us in a fluid first step of a waltz only I could hear. The black shape lunged for us.

The creature, like the White Man before it, had been too confident, too slow.

I flipped up the first three fingers of my right hand and smiled like my namesake. “Read between the lines.”

I could only imagine the confused look on its terrible face for Shadow and I were no longer in the hospital room to see it.

In fact for a flicker of a heartbeat we were no longer on GrandMother's shores at all.

We were ... sideways.

And then, I felt Shadow stumble in my arms as the contours of the tile floor changed beneath our feet to the curved softness of grass.

I looked down on her stunned face. I remembered that Shadow understood Latin.

"Superior stabat lupus, longeque inferior agnus."

She frowned, "The wolf is upstream, and the lamb is downstream? What the bloody hell, are you --"

Then, she noticed our change in locales. "The Isle of Syke!"

"The Old Man of Storr to be exact."

Frigid winds buffeted us. Night was dying hard.

We were at the top of the weird-shaped remains of an ancient volcanic plug on the ragged hill which overlooked the Sound of Raasay.

The terrain was harsh and moon-like. The grass beneath our feet was black and seared, all the life leeched from it. A new kind of death had come to these shores.

And so had we. I had bent the cloth of GrandMother's dress to nudge us to the largest island northwest of Scotland. The Isle of Skye.

In the Norse sagas it had gone by the name of Skio. What had been that line in the legend of Hakonarsonar?

'The hunger battle-birds filled Skye with blood of foemen killed.' From what I was seeing, the poet must have been a prophet.

Shadow seemed to be of a like mind as the breath left her. We both looked down upon an eerily transformed Loch Leathan.

It stretched as far as the eye could see in the hellish half-light. I tried to swallow and couldn’t.

I could believe this was Man's last day. The loch was blue fire, and white electric mists were slowly rising from the hidden surface.

And laughing dancers who bore no semblance to man or animal floated from wave to wave in flashes of lightning and lilts of ethereal song not unlike the piping of Apache spirit flutes.

Beyond them, ghostly writhing shadows sat in small, graceful sky-blue boats decorated with golden runes and figureheads of black winged creatures.

Only three small boats that I could see, but they headed towards the receding darkness. Away from us.

I finally managed a swallow. If we had come any sooner, they would have feasted upon us. Now, they were chasing the night in search of new prey.

But with the return of night, they would be back. They would be hungry. And we would be dead.

Shadow watched them slip beyond the cusp of the awakening horizon. She shivered. Then, with a whip of her long hair, she turned to me.

"Sideways, huh?"

"It seemed the way to go."

"Now, what?"

"We chase the dawn."

"That's your plan? Live out our lives running in circles?"

I arched an eyebrow. "I believe that's the human condition."

"And when we get tired of running?"

"We stop and face the night."

"And do what?"

"Fight the darkness ... until we can't."

"That's it?"

I suddenly saw the terrified face of the twenty year old she had been settle like an after-image over her taunt face. "That's all there ever was, Shadow."

"No! I refuse to believe that. I - I have to believe there's something more. I have to!"

Her body was so rigid and taunt I half-expected her to snap like a rubber band. I sucked in a breath. I was expecting too much of her.

She was only white. She could only take so much truth. It was bad enough she was going to die, I couldn't crush her spirit as well.

I forced a smile. "Well, I've managed to survive this long by living in denial. There's always that."

I handed her back her gun. She took in a ragged breath. And with a wolf's smile, she chambered in a round.

"Damn straight!"

I figured she had the damned part right. But I wasn't about to tell that to a terrified assassin with a loaded gun. I winked at her.

"Besides, the Aztecs said we had until December. Let's go see how much trouble we can get into in two months."

She winked back. "Now, that sounds like my kind of plan."

I took her left hand and walked into the harsh glare of the last dawn. My heart heavy within me, I looked up into the inflamed frost and flame of the winter sky. Each step felt as if I were losing ground.

I caught Shadow looking at me strange. No. This was wrong. I was behaving like a white. I was the last Lakota. And my People deserved better than I was behaving.

"Excuse me, Shadow."

I gently released her left hand. Unclenching my fists, I raised open palms to The Great Mystery, thanking him for the cold breath in my lungs, for the caress of Winter on my face, and for worthy enemies at whom to bare my teeth and drag with me over the cliffs of death.

Father Sun was warm to my face. And once more I could feel GrandMother firm beneath my feet.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Shadow tuck her gun under her belt and raise open palms to the inflamed, bruised sky. I smiled.

There was hope for her after all.

Maybe there was hope for us, too.

{FINI?}
***

WE SHALL DIE ALONE_PART 6 of 7_THE COLOR OF HER THOUGHTS

{The Wendigo is closing in.

Wolf Howl and the Mossad assassin, Shadow,

have taken out all but one of the rural cannibals.

But he is pointing a revolver at the heart of the Lakota shaman ...}



He stood aiming the revolver at me with a wide grin.

"No guns, huh? You know what they say about those who live by the sword?"

He cocked his revolver. "They die by the guns of those who don't."

As he pulled the trigger, I pushed the finger of my will deep into the muzzle of his gun.

The barrel exploded. My head felt like it had gone off with it. Despite the pain, I swept a startled Shadow back into the tangle of trees we had just left.

She started to speak, but I gasped, "Hush!"

I pointed to the clearing. It was quite a scene.

The woman whose throat Shadow had impaled was thrashing about, droplets of blood flinging from her body in a black rain.

The two I had choked were still on their knees, retching and turning dark-faced.

The gunman was clutching the mauled stump of his left hand as he screamed like a little girl.

I nodded to the trees behind the screamer. Shadow stiffened. The Wendigo was here.

Movement. Something vast and shadowy. A monstrous outline. Coming towards us from the other side of the clearing. Emerging slowly from the night mist.

Wreaths of fog trailed from its wet dark nostrils. Almost buried in matted fur, two small blue eyes looked down upon the screaming cannibal. It moved. Faster than anything should be able to, it moved.

For a heartbeat, I clearly saw its eyes, cold, uncompromising, full of ultimate darkness and bleakness. Then, in a fluid hook of sharp talons, it seized the top of the screamer's head and twisted.

With a sick, wet crunch, the top of the skull came off in the creature's hand. The rest of the body reeled like a wet sack of flour to the black grass.

Holding the top of the skull upside down like some gruesome bowl, the Wendigo scooped out the soppy brain as if it were an oyster. It inhaled it with a satisfied gulp. It was only then that I noticed the fallen cannibal's body was layered in frost.

The strangling cannibals on their knees started to crab backwards while they still gagged on the stones choking them. Too little too late. The Wendigo stood rock still for a moment, regarding them with grim amusement.

Shadow hissed low, "I can't make it out clear."

"It is a black body."

"Another of your legends?"

"Another theory of your science. Objects that absorb all energy, reflect none at all."

"Ridiculous."

"Tell that to your scientists."

The Wendigo seemed to move immediately from where it towered to right next to the choking cannibal to our left without taking a step.

It howled gleeful and hungry. Then, like some child out of the White Man's Hell, it bent and picked up the mewing human, embracing him like some long lost doll.

The cannibal went stiff, slowly freezing solid. Shadow began to shiver. This death was something outside her experience but nonetheless real because of that, its silence that of winter snows and bleak gray skies.

I murmured, "However many ways there are to live, there are many more ways to die."

The Wendigo growled wet and disappointed, dropping the now useless body to the misty grass.

It approached the other strangling cannibal who mewed in fear and helplessness. So fast was the creature that the human seemed to just appear in its meaty, hairy arms. More slowly, the frost began to layer the struggling cannibal. Still it took but seconds for him to become stiff and ice-rock hard.

The Wendigo dropped him and approached towards the last cannibal, still thrashing and clutching at Shadow's knife in her throat.

Shadow glared at me and misquoted Yeats, "Though the leaves are many, the root is one."

She still believed the Wendigo to be my Id and GrandMother to be my Anima. No matter. It was time to leave.

As the grunting creature was freezing the last cannibal slower than the others, I snatched Shadow's hand. "Time to lure this thing to GrandMother."

"I thought she would not fight it?"

"She will now since you tweaked her proud nose."

"No! It ends here. On mourra seul (We shall die alone.)”

My heart became stone. I reached out to grab her. Too late.

Her body was a living lance. Through the air she hurled straight at the Wendigo, her legs wrapping about its furred neck in a scissors lock.

Her whole body twisted sharply with all her strength. Any other creature would have died of a snapped neck.

The Wendigo laughed and flung her off easily. Shadow hit the tree not three feet away with the sickening sound of breaking bones and snapping sinews. No!

I yelled my throat raw and rushed at the creature.

He reached out for me with waiting arms. I slid to the ground on my back, slipping under him. I made a knife of my will and stabbed deep into his groin.

He stopped laughing.

I tumbled through his legs, bounding to where Shadow lay.

She was whimpering from the pain. I bent and placed my palm on her chest. The Wendigo spun around. I willed all my Orenda into a healing mist upon the woman I loved more than my life.

The Wendigo tackled me. We hit hard beside Shadow. The breath was knocked out of me. A cold so utter it was a fire swept through me. I flung out my hand to Shadow.

"T-Take my hand. To-Together we can ...."

Still sprawled on the wet grass, she snatched her hand right up against her chest.

"No! No, Drew. There is no Wendigo. No Grandmother. Only you, and you are killing yourself. With you dead, the world is safer."

The Wendigo started laughing again.
***

SPEECHLESS CRIES OF THE NIGHT_PART 5 of 7_THE COLOR OF HER THOUGHTS

{Wolf Howl has been joined by the reluctant Mossad assassin, Shadow,

to face rural cannibals and the released spirit of the ever-hungry Wendigo ...}


I stood inside the bus, not spotlighting myself in the gaping doorway, and looked out into the heavy black of the night. "Time to plant tears."

I stepped lightly down favoring my right knee and protecting my back from Shadow as she eased to the gravel.

She murmured with an arched eyebrow, "Don't trust me?"

"I trust you to keep your word to the Knesset and kill me if you can."

She made a wry face. "Then, your Wendigo would kill me."

I gave her face back to her. "A good Mossad agent dies happy if dying completes the mission."

Shadow's eyes sunk into her face so pale it seemed to glow in the night. "When I kill you, I will welcome death."

I smiled sadly, "Lucky for us both then that I am such a force of Nature."

"You speak the truth in jest."

"The best jokes have the truth at their hearts."

The tall trees were stark and black, bristling from the misty green borders of the woods, lost in the encroaching darkness.

Shadow stiffened beside me as the throaty howl of the Wendigo knifed at us up from the mountain's side.

Death was closer. Shadow was waiting for me to drop my guard. The cannibals were closing in to make a meal of me. And the Wendigo wanted to roll in my carcass like a cat in catnip.

I was downright unpopular. Shadow broke into my musings.

"Your Id is hungry it seems. Come, let us fight the battle your Anima fears to."

"You're mixing your Freud with your Jung. An explosive combination if there ever was one. Ask their wives."

As we edged carefully up through the trees bristling along the mountain's side, Shadow frowned. "It does not bother you that I think you insane?"

"There are moments in the night I think the same thing."

A sudden shriek in the night told us the Wendigo was getting closer. We looked at one another.

This was not our first hunt together. We knew if the Wendigo was so close, the three cannibals were right on top of us.

Against such enemies you never rode easy in the saddle. You put yourself in their place. Watched for traps. And prayed you survived your own mistakes.

Shadow whispered, "Why has the Wendigo never hunted its creators before?"

"It has only recently come into being. It takes many cannibal feedings to release the Wendigo. But once born it craves the taste of human flesh."

I felt my face go tight. "And it does not share."

Shadow pulled up short. I followed her gaze. We had found Sheila.

And she was not alone.

In the middle of a small clearing made by the crude cutting down of three small trees lay the broken rag doll who once had been called Sheila. She must have been thrown out of the bus.

But not this far. No, either GrandMother had brought her here, or the madman kneeling by her side.

He was bent over the corpse, tearing at the soft flesh of the right cheek. Blood dribbled from his chin. I tired not to hear the wet munching his teeth made.

"A trap," whispered Shadow. "What a pathetically obvious diversion."

I turned towards her. In my mind the innocence of her face at twenty settled over her now hard features.

I looked up at the rolls of ink clouds blown by the whispering winds of the listening sky.

How had I slipped into this life I now led? How had I let it all come to this? I wasn't sure.

The wrinkled foreheads of the clouds seemed to be just as puzzled as me.

"Shadow, when we walk into the clearing, one of them will charge us from behind. The other two will charge from either side."

"Other two? I heard only three wolf howls."

"The better to fool us. You take the back-stabber. I'll take the two book-ends."

"Why do you get two?"

"To draw the muncher's fire."

She peered close at the chewing cannibal and spotted the revolver tucked to the right of his belt buckle. "You always could see better in the dark than me."

"Comes from a lifetime of being hunted."

She still possessed enough decency to look uncomfortable. "Then you go first."

I nodded. "We have an edge. Like cats, they like to play with their food. And they got so greedy with the tire poppers, we're the only victims in shape to play."

"Lucky us."

I felt my face harden. "Unlucky them."

I bent down and picked up two round stones, and she frowned, "You're not going to use your power?"

"If I do that, the Wendigo will sense it and pounce right on top of us."

Her mouth loosened in shock, then firmed, her eyes narrowing. "You're going to use that to draw him in when you want, aren't you?"

"Yes. That's why it's unlucky them."

I looked up at the black clouds billowing across the night sky like blood under the tide. "We've given the others long enough to get into place. Time to play."

I rose and walked in a firm gait out into the small clearing. "Deeper than sleep but not so deep as death."

The cannibal in front of me stiffened. "Huh?"

From behind me, Shadow wheeled about throwing the knife that seemed to sprout from her palm. It smacked wetly into the throat of the surprised needle-toothed woman a foot behind us.

I spun first left, then right, hurling the small stones with all my might into the open mouths of the two men attacking us from either side.

Clutching their throats, they gagged, sinking to their knees. I heard the rustle of fabric. I turned. The remaining cannibal had risen to his feet.

He stood aiming the gun at me with a wide grin. "More for me. No guns, huh? You know what they say about those who live by the sword?"

He cocked his revolver, aiming it at my heart. "They die by the guns of those who don't."
***

A BALANCE OF DEATH_PART 4 0f 7_THE COLORS OF HER THOUGHTS

{Wolf Howl has led his hunters to the wilderness

where cannibals have released the undying spirit of the Wendigo,

hoping they will act as diversions as he battles the creature.

But the greed of the human cannibals has robbed him of all but the Mossad's best assassin, Shadow, who refuses to help him hunt the creature ....}


I said, "Both the cannibals and the Wendigo are after your flesh, too, Shadow."

"Because you lured us here."

"The Mossad trained you from Abby's age to be their best assassin. Tonight we find out if their training was good enough."

"Damn you."

"I didn't ask you to hunt me. Your choices, not mine, have shaped your destiny."

The Wendigo howled again. I spun around, raising my left hand in a fluid gesture. The twisted seat slowly eased off Larry Cedar Face.

He scrambled painfully out from under it. It looked like his own right knee had seen better days.

I tossed him back his gun. His mouth dropped. He held the gun, then looked at me with narrowed eyes.

"You can waste those bullets on me, or you can save five for the cannibals and the Wendigo."

His hand closed about the gun, his finger slipping across the trigger. "What about the sixth?"

"Save that for yourself."

He paled, and I said, "Keep these survivors in here. Make the Wendigo and the cannibals come to you."

"Where will you be?"

"Out there, taking them on. If the Wendigo or the cannibals get into this bus, then you'll know I'm dead."

He sneered, "And why won't I think you're off limping the hell away?"

"Because he is the last Lakota."

The trilling of the words was as if a rippling stream had been given life and voice. The words had come from behind me. I slowly turned around.

Gaia. Estanatlehi. The Turquoise Woman.

I smiled.

GrandMother.

Abby scrambled to her feet, squeaking, "Shit!"

Shadow rasped, "Rasha."

Turquoise eyes flashed. "It is you who could more fittingly be called aggressively evil, assassin."

Taller than even the Wendigo, Estanatlehi stood as majestic and mysterious as the moon whose cold fire seemed to burn within her long hair.

Hers was a face of shadows. Though not seen clearly, still it was terrible and beautiful beyond any singing of it. Few had ever seen it. Fewer still had lived to speak of it.

Her long white buckskins shimmered as if spun from gathered stardust. The fringe along the skirt's hem swayed lazily to a breeze I did not feel.

As slim and slight as the branch of a birch was her ghostly form. Her shoulders were the whites of mountain peaks. And her searching eyes were the turquoise of a summer sea before a storm.

Larry Cedar Face growled, "You are not Estanatlehi. You are the figment of Wolf Howl's diseased mind."

"Indeed?"

"Yes. For if you were truly Estanatlehi, you would have shown yourself to my People long before now."

Her long fingers gestured. Larry did some howling of his own

as winter's frost began to bead and layer his face, then his entire body. Thunder rumbled angrily above us as eyes as empty of mercy as the sea is wide studied him.

"When you can breathe out the gales of winter, mold the very ocean to your heart's desire, and send fire lancing across the skies, then you may question me. But even then your tone best be gentle."

"GrandMother, please."

She gestured in a fluid wave of irritation. The frost stopped its advance, though it stayed on Larry's body. With her eyes she dismissed him as if he were bad meat.

"Do not bring my attention to you again."

Shadow whispered, "Oh, Drew, your power and illness grow worse."

"Killer, you have the comprehension of a gnat. I am not some projection of a diseased mind, nor am I some wretched creature of the shadows."

She grew taller, more majestic, the light and sheer power of her making me squint and feel a tremor deep in the marrow of my bones.

"I am the Day. I am the Night. Fool, I am the World!"

Abby rasped, "And you're humble, too."

Again thunder rumbled above us. "Have a care, whelp. Unlike my GrandSon, I have no mercy."

Shadow advanced towards her. "And if you were as powerful as you claim, you would kill this Wendigo yourself."

Thunder grew louder above us. "If you build a boat, do you swim beside it?"

Shadow shook her head. "I'll tell you why you won't kill this Wendigo. You cannot fight yourself. This Wendigo is only a physical manifistation of Drew's unreasoning Id as you are the projection of his anima."

Abby snorted. "Enema? I thought you were worried about Mr. Drew's mind not his butt."

I laughed and mussed her blond mop. "According to Jung, the anima is the unconscious feminine characteristics of a man."

Abby looked skeptical. "Uh huh. Young?"

"Young spelled J-U-N-G. He was a Swiss psychiatrist who sought to understand what made us tick through exploring mythology, world religion, and philosophy."

"Oh, he sounds like your kind of guy alright."

She turned to Shadow. "So Mr. Drew's nuts. Why should you care? It's no skin off your nose. Why do you want him dead?"

"I do not want him dead. I love him, you fool! But Israel knows he is too unstable and powerful to be allowed to be co-opted by one of our enemies. For my country to live, Drew must die."

"You're the one that's nuts, lady. The whole world over every country is pointing its missiles at every other country. And Mr. Drew is too unstable to live? Hell-lo! The whole blasted world is unstable."

"It is a balance of death. Drew upsets that balance. Every intelligence agency believes it to be so."

I shook my head. "And that makes it truth?"

Shadow's face seemed all eyes. "I will not ask Pilate's question."

I shrugged. "He didn't mean it anyway. He didn't stay for the answer."

Abby hushed in a breath as Estanatlehi seemed to float more than walk towards me.

GrandMother trilled, "The Wendigo is coming. So are the rabid two-leggeds that gave it birth."

She reached out and lightly smoothed away wrinkles on my flannel shirt that were not there. "Your years end this night."

A chill took me at her words, but I took her hand gently.

"To every Lakota there comes that last battle. You taught me it is the most important one, for it reveals who we are by our facing it with dignity and courage or quaking from it in cowardice and deceit."

I smiled sad. "You also taught me that there is no death, only a change in worlds."

Shadow's eyes seemed jade quarter moons waiting to rise. "I will go with you."

I cocked my head. "Why?"

Her voice was little more than a husk. "You needed a diversion, remember? Besides, perhaps you could use some company when you change worlds."

Abby grumbled, "Either one of you starts to quote Yeats, and I'm gonna throw up."

Another wolf howl sounded in the night. Abby shivered. I ground my teeth. Who would look after Abby if I died out there?

Estanatlehi's cold gaze fell on the girl. "I will watch her for you."

Abby muttered, "I feel better already."

"Dead or alive, Abby. I'll be back."

"No offense, Mr. Drew. But if you're dead, you can keep to yourself."

Shadow spoke low. "Remember your place, girl."
***

HE WHO EATS THE FLESH OF MAN_PART 3 OF 7_THE COLOR OF HER THOUGHTS

{The last Lakota Shaman, Wolf Howl,

has helped a young white girl survive a bus accident that was no accident.

Going back into the smoldering remains of the vehicle,

Wolf Howl discovers the Mossad agent who has been hunting him ....}

Shadow did the impossible and smiled even sadder. "Oh, Drew, don't tell me you've been quoting Yeats to her?"

I walked to her side and kneeled next to her, and her smile seemed a raw wound as she husked, "Come, give a girl a kiss."

We kissed. Her lips parted. Mine met hers.

And it was all I remembered from so long ago. It was a fire, an all consuming passion of fused spirits. It tingled with icy needles.

Only part of the tingle was from the poison on her lips.

I eased back, tweaking her nose. "Lethal lipstick you have on. Pity no venom on earth can hurt me."

Abby's mouth dropped. "What's with you, lady? He loves you for God's sake."

Shadow's face hardened. "Not for God's sake, but for the world's, Drew must die. And only those he cares for can get close enough to kill him."

Abby sputtered, "Ha-Have you seen what he can do, lady?"

"It is not his power for which he must die, but for the insanity driving that power."

Shadow cocked a brow. "Has he talked to you of his GrandMother yet?"

Abby backed up a step. "You're gonna kill him because of his relatives? Jeez, lady, you're the one who's nuts."

I ruffled Abby's blond mop. "The ancient Greeks called her Gaia. The Navaho call her Estanatlehi, The Turquoise Woman. I call her GrandMother."

And with my naming her, she laughed with a crackle of fierce lightning, and Abby glanced up, slowly nodded, and even more slowly stretched out,

"O.K."

"What?," exclaimed Shadow. "You believe him?"

"Hey, lady, with what I've seen, I'm willing to go on a little faith here."

And because she gave me the courtesy of willingness to believe, I explained, "Abby, you've heard about the electro-magnetic field around the earth, haven't you?"

"Yeah, in science class."

"Well, somehow over the eons that field gained self-awareness."

"You're shitting me!"

I smiled. "No, I am not 'shitting' you. But, though GrandMother has never told me this, I believe it took the birth of the species of Man before she could grow into more than a sense of being."

Now, I even had Shadow's attention as she murmured, "Why?"

"Language. GrandMother was aware, but it took her listening, then comprending Man's language before she, too, could put into focus her awareness."

I shrugged. "When that happened, given her unique perspective on all living on and within her body and the vast cosmos that lay beyond it, she far surpassed Man's limited, stunted view of reality."

Abby's lips turned ugly. "I know what's real, alright."

I shook my head. "Our minds only allow to filter through what is understood and believed.

Language can only put into words that which the mind has experienced or reasoned. How can we comprehend that which we have never seen or even guessed?"

I quoted from Walden again, "Only that day dawns to which we are awake."

Shadow husked, "The universe is indeed wider than our views of it. Your delusion has made you a sweet mystic. If only you possessed no power, I would let you live."

"We Lakota hear that a lot."

"You have no People!," cried Larry from behind us.

Abby made a face. "And I hear that a lot."

I stroked Shadow's face. "I'll free you if you promise to stop trying to kill me until I can show you some false teeth."

She laughed in a velvet splash of sound. "How could a girl resist an offer like that?"

Abby glowered at her. "You must be a red princess."

"Actually, I am more dangerous than that. I am Jewish."

"Me, too."

"I rest my case."

I made a lever of my Orenda and pried the twisted seat from her, and Larry called out, "Hey, you gonna free me, too?"

I turned. "No. Company's coming over for a bite. Thought you'd make a good appetizer."

"Go to Hell!"

"You first."

Shadow studied me for a long moment. "I told them that you were making this too easy. Americans. They never listen. Not even you."

"I listen to the voices in the wind."

"In your head, you mean."

I ignored her and led her and Abby past the moaning passengers yet alive. Sylvia was nowhere to be seen. Some begged me to help. I ignored them as well.

Abby whispered, "Aren't you gonna help them?"

"I am not a priest or a psychiatrist."

"That's supposed to tell me something, right?"

"The color of their thoughts is death."

She paled. "You can read thoughts?"

"I am not a Peeping Tom. I limit myself to observing the colors of thoughts, not their substance."

She looked at me. "What colors are your GrandMother's thoughts?"

"The colors of her thoughts are the Northern Lights."

"Well, whoop-de-doo for her. What about mine?"

I mussed her hair sadly. "They could use some scrubbing."

"Says you."

We passed the returning soldier. I sighed. He had survived Iraq, only to die on a "safe" bus ride. There was a life lesson there if I cared to look deep enough. I didn't.

We had reached the bus driver, impaled on the steering column. Abby made a face as she stared at the slumped body. I hated to expose her to this, but there was no choice.

She said low, "She was always nice to me."

I kneeled down next to the black woman and parted her lips. "That might have ended if she had ever invited you over ..."

I flicked off the false teeth she wore to reveal the filed sharp needles under them. " ... for a bite."

Abby scuttled back so fast she fell on her butt. "Shit!"

Shadow muttered, "But she was on the team."

"Just not yours. She was ... co-opted by those killers up the mountain when they tricked her with their phony detour some months back. Got her to like the taste of human flesh, the thrill of the hunt."

I shook my head. "Today, she wasn't tricked by the detour. She was part of it."

Shadow murmured, "I wondered why she did not call ahead when she took that detour."

I raised an eyebrow. "Your own detour was thirty miles from here. Going to take the rest of your team some time to notice we're not coming and back track."

Abby husked, "We're on our own."

She jerked as a wolf howled much too close for comfort. A two legged wolf. Another far to his right answered him, closer still.

Abby cleared her throat. "Relatives of yours?"

I tapped the filed teeth of the dead bus driver. "Her pack. And they sound hungry."

Shadow's eyes narrowed into slits. "You knew about them."

"Yes."

"You led us to this damn mountain on purpose."

"Yes."

"Why, damn it?"

"You folks want to kill so bad, thought I'd give you targets worth the killing."

"How did you know about these filthy cannibals?"

"GrandMother."

I ignored Shadow's rolling eyes. "She doesn't much care when we eat our own through war or politics. But the real thing releases the spirit of the Wendigo."

"I do not believe in the supernatural."

"And GrandMother wants you and the rest of your civilized brethren to keep on thinking that. The moment you suspect her existence, you will never stop hounding her, trying to exploit her, and ultimately destroying her."

I made a face. "It is what the White Man does best. So she asked me to stop these predators and the unclean spirit of Wendigo that they have given birth to. Stop them before the White Man takes notice of them ... and of her."

Abby frowned. "Wendigo?"

"From the Cree word Witiku, he who eats the flesh of Man."

Larry snorted, "You're nuts. There ain't no such mon ...."

A howl that grated on the marrow of my bones shrilled from far up the mountain. It scaled high, husky yet taunt with hunger.

Undying hunger.

Seconds later it sounded much closer. Three wolf howls peppered uncertainly right afterwards. The hunters were beginning to suspect that they might have become the hunted.

I blew out my cheeks. "The two-leggeds have it all wrong. It is not the cannibal who becomes the Wendigo. Their victims' rage and fear give birth to it."

Shadow sneered, "Superstition."

"No. I stumbled onto one long ago. Mists of crystalized breath snorting in front of its face, black with frostbite, the furred creature was bent over in hunger pains, vomiting ice."

Abby, eyes wide, whispered, "Ice?"

I nodded. "Yes. Ice. Its very heart is ice, which, of course, is its one weakness."

Abby rasped, "But you killed it, right?"

"Yes. But it was a near thing. And I was younger then. Which is why I needed these government killers to act as a diversion."

I remembered the bus driver's words. "But these human cannibals got too greedy and peppered the road with too many tire-busters. Now, Shadow, it's up to just you and me."

She snorted, "What do you mean we, red face?"
***

DEATH, MAGIC AND UNREQUITED LOVE_PART 2 OF 7_THE COLOR OF HER THOUGHTS

{Wolf Howl has saved a young white girl from a Greyhound bus,

its tires purposedly punctured by metal "poppers" on the feeder road of a detour,

using the strange powers of his mind to save them both ....}


I started walking toward the funeral pyre that the Greyhound bus had become, and she tugged on my flannel sleeve.

“You’re gonna walk into that?”

I tapped into my Orenda and whispered,

“The trees are in their Autumn beauty,

The woodland paths are dry,

Under the October twilight the water

Mirrors a still sky.”

“W-Water? What wa --”

She stopped as a thick mist swirled about the flaming bus. The flames sizzled in protest. Smoke still billowed in thick black rolls. But the fires had died.

“Oh. I - I guess you are a medicine man.”

I looked at the tall moon-haired woman in buckskin studying me from the shadows. “Or something.”

“W-Was that Keats again?”

“No. William Butler Yeats.”

“He was into all that despair and death stuff, too?”

“Yes. But mostly into magic and unrequited love.”

She looked at me, strangely sober for a young girl. “Death, despair, magic, and unre-- re ---”

She couldn’t quite get her tongue around the unfamiliar word, and I smiled, “Unreturned.”

She shook her head. “Death, despair, magic, and unreturned love. Must be a medicine man thing.”

“Actually I believe it is a Lakota thing.”

“Lakota?”

“Sioux.”

Her face brightened. “Oh, the guys who won the Little Big Horn.”

“That depends upon your definition of the word won.”

She looked fearfully into the smoldering wreck. Then, she turned towards the darkening woods. Both going with me or staying alone out here terrified her. She came to a grudging decision.

“Y-You mind if I go in with you, Mr. Drew?”

“No,” I smiled. “I could use the protection.”

“Me, too,” she muttered.

She reached and snared my left hand as if she could draw strength from me. “Why did you talk with me all this trip?”

“I always talk to princesses.”

“Even white ones?”

“Even white ones. Black and yellow ones, too, though I try to stay away from the red ones.”

“Why?”

“They tend to take scalps.”

She made a face. “You’re making fun of me.”

“Only a little bit.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Grandpa had something he always used to say about someone like you.”

“Yes?”

She pulled herself up tall and tried and failed for a deep voice, “Ah, a man with a sharp wit. Someone should take it away from him before he cuts himself.”

She suddenly deflated. “I - I miss him.”

“Sounds like someone I would have liked.”

“Even if he was a white man?”

“He sounded a man. That is enough for me.”

We were at the smoldering bus, the plinks and pops of super-heated metal a low chorus. “I hope the bus driver is in one piece.”

“You liked her, too?”

“Hardly. Her teeth weren’t what they seemed.”

“You know, Mr. Drew, you keep talking that way, and you’re gonna give me a nose bleed.”

I wiped my own nose. “Then, we’d match.”

I gave her hand a squeeze. “Let’s go see if the apple is baked or not.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re doing it again.”

“I know.”

I winked at her. “Then, we’ll go check on a shadow.”

“You know you could drive a girl nuts.”

I was trying to keep her mind off finding Sylvia, and it seemed my attempts were working. A chill suddenly took me. I glanced over my shoulder. Wrapped in shadows, GrandMother was still watching us from the woods. Was she smiling? It seemed so. I had seen that particular smile before. Now it was me that shivered.

The girl said, “Why do you keep glancing over your shoulder?”

“Company’s coming for a meal.”

“You’re doing it again, Mr. Drew.”

“Hopefully you’re right.”

“Huh?”

“Right in that I have it in me for one last rage against the darkness.”

“You’re beginning to scare me.”

“Sometimes scared is smart.”

The Greyhound bus lay broken before us like some toy the White Man’s Devil had snapped in two with savage delight. Low moans and cries came from the dark interior in jagged gasps. The white girl looked up at me hollow-eyed and uncertain.

I softly squeezed her hand. “Walk in behind me, Wicicala.”

“Abigail,” she husked. “My name is Abigail. Grandpa called me Abby.”

“O.K., Abby. Walk in behind me slow and careful. Touch nothing. Go to no one.”

“Even if they ask?”

“Especially if they ask.”

I walked into the bus with cat feet. I had guessed right. Larry Cedar Face lay sprawled to my right. I had lost count of the years he had hunted me for the White Man’s government. I kneeled next to him. He was pinned by the twisted frame of the seat ahead of him. Out of his dried-apricot face his eyes spat at me.

“I hate you, Wolf Howl.”

“Lot of that going around.”

Abby looked a silent question at me, and I said, “Larry thinks I should use my skills to help my People.”

“Damn straight!”

“My People? My People left me abandoned on a picnic table when I was a baby. I have no People but those I choose.”

“You have no respect. That’s why I hunt you for the White Man.”

“You hunt me because the pay is good.”

He lunged for the gun he always wore on his right ankle. He stiffened when he saw the tiny .38 in my own right hand. I shook my head.

“Being predictable’s a weakness, Larry.”

I tucked his gun under my belt. “It’ll kill you one day.”

He flicked cunning eyes to Abby. “Always saving the children, ain’t you? Who’s predictable now?”

By his side was a battered copy of Thoreau’s Walden. I smiled sad. What was it that Thoreau had written? “The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake.” He glared as I picked it up.

“Walden? And to think I believed you hadn’t two grey cells to rub together.”

“I was smart enough to lead them to you on this Greyhound.”

“Puh-lease. To get you to the foot of this mountain I almost had to leave a trail of bread crumbs. It was embarassing.”

I shook my head sadly. “Inside you’ve become white.”

Abby slapped her forehead. “Apple! Now, I know what you meant. He’s only red on the outside.”

She suddenly frowned. “Where’s the shadow?”

I swept up the book. A thin, black dart thudded into its worn cover with such force that I almost lost my hold on it. Abby gasped.

I turned slowly to the rear of the bus where lay the woman with hair of raven and jumpsuit of leather. Like Larry she was pinned by wreckage. Unlike him, she haunted my dreams -- and my nightmares.

There was fifteen years between the two of us. I sighed. No, there was much, much more between us than that.

Her sullen eyes were twin green suns in the growing darkness. Those eyes. Born of strange sins, they seem to yearn for more than loneliness, yet expect nothing less. In their jade depths the monsters swam. The monsters which haunt us or drive us. Or both.

“Hello, Shadow. The next one better be a suppository ‘cause you know where I’m going to stick it."

Abby giggled, and the Mossad assassin smiled faint. "You always knew how to sweet talk a woman."

Mossad. Hebrew for Institute. Like the C.I.A. used Agency, The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations used one bland word to mask its deceit and death. I sighed again.

For both the Agency and the Institute to join forces, the agenda must have changed. They must have decided that I was too insane and powerful to let live. Co-Opting must have been discarded. The race to rob me from the grasping fingers of their rivals was over.

The intel groups of the world now all wanted me dead it seemed. I was a bit outnumbered. I smiled bitter. It was a Lakota tradition.

GrandMother was angry thunder above me. I was wrong. They were outnumbered. One should always respect Mother Earth, for she had none for you.

Shadow's jade eyes sized up and dismissed Abby. "When are you going to stop this dangerous habit of picking up strays?"

"You didn't complain when it saved your life."

I rose with a wince. Damn right knee. Her face saddened, and it did strange things to the smile on her lips.

"Saving it cost you that knee."

"Don't mind the knee. Miss my heart."

Abby groaned. "Aw, jeez. It's that despair, death, and unre ... unreturned love thing, isn't it?"
***

WHEN SHE WAS THUNDER IN THE DISTANCE_PART 1 OF 7_THE COLOR OF HER THOUGHTS

Some of you have emailed me, asking to read all of

THE COLOR OF HER THOUGHTS.

So here it is.

Hope you enjoy this week-long serial :


THE COLOR OF HER THOUGHTS

When she was thunder in the distance, I awoke. When her laughter was lightning above me, I knew fear. When both front tires to the bus blew, I saw her face in the night.

The Turquoise Woman was angry at the White Man. Again.

Luckily, I was not a White Man. Or not so lucky.

I was on the bus.

The Greyhound suddenly seemed to have become alive. It twisted upon the feeder road in ways steel should have had better sense than to try.

Metal cried out in protest. Me, too. As did the little white girl in the seat ahead of me. She suddenly stopped her screaming to turn around, her face pinched, her eyes wild.

“Do something, Mr. August!”

GrandMother’s words were mocking whispers in my mind, “Yes, do something, Sugmanitu Hota . It will make the game more interesting.”

The drug-thin blonde next to the little girl snarled, “Are you fucking nuts? What’s an old injun gonna do?”

Old Indian. I was one step lower in contempt than old man. How white of her.

The black driver swore under her breath. No white would have heard her. Unlucky for her I was not white.

“Idiots! They had to layer the damn road with the poppers. I’m going to kill them.”

If she lived. But that was up to The Great Mystery. For myself, I was going to take matters into my own hands.

The little girl whimpered, “Help me, Mr. August.”

“Yes, help her, GrandSon. After all, the whytes were so helpful to you at her age when you cried for help.”

“I am not a white man,” I muttered.

All things change.

The soft rain becomes sharp flakes of snow under GrandMother’s icy breath. They, in turn, become her silent tears when met with the warmth of her earthy embrace. And under Sun’s gaze they become spirit vapors that rise to her waiting clouds.

All things change.

Yet sometimes you can shape that change to answer your needs.

And I needed to get the hell off this bus.

I reached out with my Orenda, the fires of my spirit, and took up the raging momentum of the bus. Blood seeped from my nostrils. I ignored the pain burning hot in the marrow of my bones. I could do this. I could.

I looked at the fear-crazed eyes of the little girl. No. I would do this. There was no could to it.

I pulled in the reins of power through the filter of my will.

I rose silently as the sipapu swung open on the hinge of the re-channeled forces of momentum. The little girl held up trembling arms towards me.

Taking her in my own, I smiled. “Time to go, Wicicala.”

“Wi --? Wheeee!”

The last was torn from her as life became a revolving door. I focused on the ancient oak deep within the woods bordering the feeder road. The next heartbeat I stood there with the white girl in my arms.

My head spun slightly, but other than that there was no trace of the great speed of the bus to our bodies.

It was as if I had simply walked out of a house to step upon the front porch. No momentum remained to stagger or even push a trembling breath against us.

Sipapu’s took enormous energy to open. Not that my weaving of the wind had taken it all. I still had some left.

I left that bottled up within my Orenda. My head felt like it would pop. Let it. I was a hunted man. And some of my hunters had been on that bus. Others were waiting for me out here.

“Whee!,” gasped the little girl. “That was fun. Could we do that --”

The bellowing rumble of the bus as it tumbled over and over cut off her words. She looked with horror at the sight. She cringed at the cries of the passengers trapped within the flaming Greyhound.

“No! Sheila!”

“Your mother?”

Her face closed like a tiny fist. “She gave birth to me. Grandpa loved me, raised me. He --- died.”

“Everyone dies.”

“Even you?”

“Why not me?”

“Y-You’re a medicine man or something, aren’t you?”

“Or something.”

The screams continued. I felt her start to shiver. She looked up.

“Can’t you do something?”

“I could save one. I chose you.”

“Why me?”

“You asked.”

“That’s it?”

I nodded, eyeing coldly the dying of those who had thought life would meander predictably for long seasons. She took in a ragged breath. I felt her eyes study me.

“You hate whites, don’t you?”

I shook my head. “Hate is like taking poison and hoping the folks who hurt you die of it.”

“But you don’t like us.”

“As a whole, most whites are greedy and short-sighted. It leads them to do evil things -- to themselves and to others.”

“Grandpa was good.”

“He loved you, raised you, and taught you manners. He was probably one of the good ones.”

The screaming had fallen silent. The fires were engulfing the bus. I tested the air. Burnt flesh marred the crisp scent of Autumn. I looked down on the carpet of fallen leaves, mottled in the bright colors of strangled life.

“Where are the songs of spring? Where are they?

Think not of them, Autumn, thou hast thy music too.”

The little girl frowned. “Is that from one of your Indian wise men?”

“One of yours. John Keats, a man dogged by death and despair, yet never fully giving in to either.”

“You’re a strange Indian, Mr. August.”

“You’re not the first white princess to say that.”

“I’m no princess.”

“Reality is all perception. If I see you as a princess, then you’re a princess.”

“Says you.”

“Exactly.”

She sighed. I heard that sigh a lot. Usually from GrandMother.

I settled her on the grass. “Let’s go see if Sheila survived.”

She eyed me narrowly. “Do you care?”

“No. But some enemies of mine were on that bus. It would be nice to see just how many survived.”

She pulled up short. “What kind of enemies?”

“The traditional ones for a Lakota -- white soldiers.”

“I only saw that one soldier.”

“Not him. He was coming home from Iraq. These soldiers wore the clothes of sheep to hunt a wolf.”

“Wolf?”

“My name. Sugmanitou Hota.”

She frowned, and I smiled. “Wolf Howl.”

“I thought your name was Drew August.”

I shook my head.

“Fifty summers ago one hot August evening, a little baby was found abandoned on a picnic table in Drew Park. The orphanage where he was placed named him Drew August.”

She cocked her head as if my story re-awakened her own pain. “T-The name sounds pretty, Mr. Wolf Howl.”

I smiled sadly. “Just Wolf Howl. But you can call me Drew.”

“Ah, Grandpa said I should always call my elders mister.”

Her face brightened. “How about I call you Mr. Drew?”

Her blue eyes clouded. “Who named you Wolf Howl?”

“GrandMother. Said I wailed like a little wolf that night.”

She frowned. “I thought you said you was raised in an orphanage.”

“I was. GrandMother visited me when no white men were about.”

“How did she do that?”

“Very easily.”

She was walking a path that led to dangerous places so I spoke. “Have you known your --- Sylvia long?”

“No. She came the day of the funeral. Claimed me like lost luggage the sherriff said.”

She looked as if the memory tasted bad. “She told me the government would give her money for me.”

The bus had finally come to a fiery stop, the fingers of smoke rising from it to the skies like accusations from the dead. “It’s nice to have a plan.”

Her eyes glowed haunted in the growing dark. “Sometimes plans don’t work out.”

“I’ve noticed that,” I said.
***
I envision The Turquoise Woman, in her physical Avatar, floating serene in her oceans when I listen to this tune :