ONLY THE LIGHTNING IS TRUE_PART 7 of 7_THE COLOR OF HER THOUGHTS

{The Wendigo has attacked.

Killing the remaining cannibals, it turns to Wolf Howl and the Mossad assassin, Shadow.

She ignores Wolf Howl's wisdom and attacks the Wendigo alone.

In an attempt to heal her, Wolf Howl is attacked by the Wendigo. He needs Shadow's help to defeat it.

But the Mossad assassin refuses in order to follow her orders to assassinate the man she loves ...}


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.

I stopped trying to hold the creature back with my right hand. With no resistance to stop him, he thrust his foul-smelling face into mine. I locked my teeth into his throat.

I flung both hands palm down to the grass, sinking my fingers deep into the soil.

Into the body of Gaia. Of Estanatlehi.

Of GrandMother.

I let go of the creature's fur-matted throat. I only had time for a few words.

"W-Wendigo is l-laughing. Sh-Shadow is blind. Ti-Time for the soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain. Science deceives, GrandMother. Only the lightning is true."

For three heartbeats all was silence but for the tears of Shadow, the chattering of my teeth, and the guttural laughter of the Wendigo.

Then, GrandMother spoke.

As she usually does. In actions.

The White Man struts in his imagined power. Power he badly copies from the designs of GrandMother. Compare his puny atomic bomb to the perpetual nuclear furnace of the sun.

Flames burst from the soil at my back. Legend said the Wendigo's heart was ice. GrandMother's was a living pool of sizzling magma.

Wendigo's heart, along with the rest of his body, was vaporized in an instant.

I felt cool, caressed as if by Autumn's kiss.

Wings of fire lifted me, and I heard Shadow cry out, "The phoenix."

No. Not the phoenix. The Wakin'yan. Wahka for sacred. Kiya for winged. The Thunderbird.

Its cry rumbled across the heavens whose boiling clouds we now flew through. That same cry had awakened me aboard the Greyhound bus.

Wrapped in its fiery breast, I could not see its form. Which was fortunate, for to view clear the Thunderbird was to die.

Having seen all of this, Shadow would yet be blind. She would see this as only evidence that my power had grown as my insanity had worsened. She was only half healed.

But I was under no illusions. When she fully mended, she would begin hunting me again with increased, not lessened, dedication.

In the heart of Wakin'yan, I could sense no up, no down, nor any change of direction just the buffeting from the warm feathers of wind. So I was startled when I felt hard ground thump underneath my hiking boots.

The world seemed filled with the hollow rumbling cry of the Thunderbird. Then, the fire embracing me was gone. I saw movement above me. I looked up.

Yes, I still knew it was death to see Wakin'yan. But I was Wolf Howl, always seeking, always yearning to know the unknowable.

Wakin'yan had ascended to the upper reaches of the heavens, its form almost unrecognizable, its wing span reaching from horizon to horizon.

I knew the legends. To be visited by Wakin'yan was to become Heyoka, the Contrary Man. The Trickster who taught in riddles, who did all things backwards.

The breath left me in a sigh that was almost pain. The Great Mystery knew I did love all backwards.

"As you do life. Your years have ended but not your days."

GrandMother. Her voice had come from behind me. And she had not sounded happy.

I took stock of my surroundings. I was on the shoulder of the feeder road. I turned around slowly. I was facing the broken, smoldering Greyhound.

Things had not gone well in my absence.

GrandMother had moved all the survivors outside, although survivors was too cruel a word to call them now. They were all dead, sprawled awkward on the damp grass. Hissing rattlers bunched in squirming coils on their chests.

Estanatlehi stood tall, defiant with her slender alabaster arm encircling a terrified Abby. The small blonde stood shivering, her eyes round with fear and horror. Those eyes were pleading with me silently.

The grim turquoise eyes which looked down upon her left no doubt that the girl was only a heartbeat from joining the others.

Playing for time, I said low, "My years have ended but not my days?"

Eyes which had looked upon the stark landscapes of the first ice age regarded me in a gaze a galaxy away from anything resembling warmth. "When my power surged through you, your body ceased aging."

She stabbed a look at my right knee. "That would have been healed had you not first sought aid from that whore."

"Good. The pain will help keep me centered. Besides, killing the Wendigo my way would have healed Shadow as well."

Turquoise eyes flashed, and thunder rumbled angry overhead. "She wished you dead ... as did all these."

I nodded. "I knew all you spared were part of the Mossad team."

The thunder got worse, and chill winds started to buffet me. "Then why did you not kill them?"

"Dead they would learn nothing. I wanted to give them a chance to reflect, to perhaps choose another path besides deceit and death."

Estanatlehi snorted. "The donkey always says 'thank you' with a kick. There was another Lakota who thought as you do. His name was Crazy Horse. He was betrayed to his death by his own People."

I gazed down on the mottled face of Larry Cedar Face. "That feels a familiar story."

I looked at Abby, then back at Estanatlehi. "Crazy Horse also formed The Last Child Society."

Estanatlehi said nothing, but the winds picked up strength. "These people offered no danger. Why did you kill them?"

"I grew weary of hearing them plot to kill you should you return."

Abby pulled free from the arms encircling her. "Lady, they didn't say word one."

A turquoise eyebrow arched. "Ungrateful whelp, I understand all the tongues of Man, even those spoken by gesture of hand."

Abby went sick white and turned to me. "Help me, Mr. Drew."

I held out my open arms.

She rushed into them. Her face beamed. Almost as fast as Shadow could have done it, a knife appeared in her small right hand. It stabbed straight for my heart. She grinned wide.

"I told Shadow I'd be the one to kill ...."

The knife became what it had always been. A rattlesnake. Sometime while I was gone, Estanatlehi had replaced the blade with the snake. Now, GrandMother awakened it.

The wet-scaled snake hissed then spun in Abby's hand. The girl shrieked shrill. Two needle fangs sank deep into the girl's throat. Abby gurgled in a husk.

She turned wild eyes to me. "Mr. Dre ...."

Abby reeled to the ground, laying awkward and still. For a sick heartbeat I just stood there, then I kneeled down beside her body.

The snake coiled. I glared at it. It hesitated, then slithered slowly away into the shadows.

I reached out and tenderly stroked her still warm cheek. From the cliff of our birth we keep falling, falling. Abby had hit bottom sooner than most.

It was a world of sorrows because we made it so.

I tried to see some echo of the innocence that had once been hers. I couldn't find it, only a hard hollowness to the eyes I slowly closed. Perhaps that innocence had died with her grandfather.

Perhaps it had been choked bit by bit by her Mossad trainers, her handlers. Had they fed her on lies until her heart had starved to death?

I fought another sigh. She had died from their last lie : that Estanatlehi was a projection of my will. I shook my head sadly.

I never killed the young, while they comprised the majority of GrandMother's victims. To say that she and I held different views of life was an understatement.

GrandMother sounded puzzled. "You knew that she was one of the Mossad team all along?"

I nodded. "The color of her thoughts was always death. Always."

From the heart of the dark woods, Bu, the Owl, cried in the voice of the recent dead.

{END?}
***

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.
***

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."
***