Lindsay McKenna - Heart of the Storm

Dana could swear she heard her grandmother’s cackling chuckle, felt her hand rest gently on her shoulder. The sensation was comforting. Strengthening. For too long, Dana had been off the reservation, disconnected from Mother Earth and all her relations. She’d run to the empty world of the white man instead.

Not happy about her choices, but knowing she couldn’t change the past, Dana slowly got to her feet. The warmth of the sun embraced her as she walked to the curtained window. Seeing the robin singing in the Jonathan apple tree made Dana smile.

Her grandmother was near. She could feel her standing at her side, her arm wrapped lovingly across her shoulders. A sharp longing to be back on Native American land plunged through Dana.

There was such a difference in energy, living on a reservation versus in the mechanized world of whites. Indians still had an invisible connection, like an umbilical cord, between themselves and the land. Mother Earth pumped energy and love into the “children” who were still attached to her. As a result, Native Americans cared for and honored the earth. They gave daily prayers of gratitude for being alive, for being nourished and fed. They were reverent toward their true mother, for without her, no one would be alive.

“Yes…” Dana whispered, her throat suddenly closing with tears. “I’ll leave today, Grandma. I’ll call the school and get someone to fulfill my contract.” As a teacher, she would miss her children. Dana felt badly about that. Right now, she needed healing and help. “I’m coming home, back to where I belong.” Even though she was born and raised in South Dakota, the southwest was her favorite place to live. Many times in the past, she’d spent wonderful moments with Agnes in Arizona and had come to call it her real home over time.

As she turned from the window, she noticed something on the carpet. Frowning, Dana padded to the end of the bed and picked it up. It was a blue-gray feather—a feather from a great blue heron.

How she had missed the daily magic and synchronicity in her life. Gazing at the feather as she straightened, Dana understood that the dream had been more than just a pleasant experience. The great blue heron was her grandmother’s spirit guide. And Agnes had sent her here to call Dana home.

Caressing the feather with her fingers, Dana understood the gravity of the invitation. Finally, after a two-year-long dark night of the soul, she was going home….

“I’VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU, Chase Iron Hand. Enter.” Agnes waved into her hogan. Although not related to him, he had visited and lived with her as a young boy. Chase saw Agnes as his adopted grandmother and she loved being that for him. He had just come off the bluff after a four-day vision quest, and taken the sweat lodge that must precede his speaking about his vision with her. Sunlight lanced in the doorway where he stood, awaiting her invitation.

He was dressed now in a white cotton shirt, the long sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows. The jeans he wore hugged his strong, powerful body. Agnes was pleased to see that Chase wore the black buffalo horn choker around his thick neck, an abalone disk attached to it. She had given it to him as a departing gift when he was a young man about to go to West Point Military Academy.

Chase’s military short black hair, still damp from the sweat, gleamed with blue highlights. He had obvious Indian features, a square face and high cheekbones, and a restless gaze constantly moving around to check out his territory. Golden cougar eyes. Agnes was pleased with Chase’s alertness. It was what had kept him alive during his years in Delta Force.

Turning to prop the door open to welcome in the morning air, Chase smelled the wonderful fragrance of sage. He knew that each morning, as the sun rose, Grandmother lit the sage in a rainbow-colored abalone shell, stood in her doorway and sang the sun up. The white smoke was healing and uplifting in a spiritual sense. It got one clean and in harmony for the coming day.

“Come sit.” Agnes gestured for her tall, well-built young man to sit on a red-black-and-white wool rug she had woven fifty years earlier. She watched as Chase moved with the boneless grace of a cougar to settle opposite her, legs crossed. She accepted the dried, wrapped bundle of sage that he handed her. That was a sacred calling card, regardless of nation—a gift of sacred sage from one party to another. It was a sign of respect.

Searching Chase’s eyes, Agnes saw that the four days of the vision quest had exhausted him. But that was the point of a quest: to wear down the physical body and mind enough so that the Great Spirit could talk to the supplicant’s heart in dream language.

When Agnes handed him a cup of steaming sage tea in a chipped blue pottery mug, he took it with a slight nod of his head. Chase had not eaten nor drunk anything in four days. Agnes watched as pleasure wreathed his coppery face, his eyes closing slightly as he sipped the fragrant, life-infusing tea. Sage cleansed a person physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It was one of the most powerful members of the plant kingdom.

“This hits the spot, Grandmother,” Chase growled. “Thank you.” He savored the medicinal taste as the tea trickled down his gullet into his shrunken stomach and brought him back to life.

Pleased, Agnes lifted a beat-up copper teakettle and placed it nearby so that Chase could drink all he wanted. A person coming off a vision quest was dehydrated, no question. And sage tea was the perfect way to replace lost fluids. “I’m glad.”

Without hesitation, Chase drank two more cups of the tepid tea. After pouring a fourth cup, he looked over at the aged woman, whose shoulders were drawn back with unconscious pride. “I’ve missed sage tea,” he admitted, his voice raspy. “I’ve missed a lot, I think.”

Even in her nineties, Agnes Spider Woman was beautiful. Elegant. Chase wondered if he’d ever find a woman who had these inner qualities that shone through like sunlight, as they did in Agnes. At thirty years of age, he had given up hope of finding such a woman, convinced he had only bad luck with the opposite sex.

“You needed to leave the reservation to find yourself, Chase. There is nothing wrong with that.” Agnes spoke gently, seeing pain cloud his golden eyes momentarily. “We each have a journey we must take. And there are many tributaries to the Red Road, paths that we are called to take from time to time. Joining the army to feel your way through the white man’s world was one you had to take. I understand this.” Agnes watched Chase nod, his mouth twisting in a grimace. His face was deeply weathered by time he’d spent in harsh outdoor elements. Agnes knew that Delta Force was a very specialized unit whose members trained hard physically. That showed in Chase’s forearms, where the muscles jumped each time he lifted the cup of sage tea in his large, callused hands.

“Tell me of your vision,” Agnes entreated, folding her hands on the dark-blue velvet skirt she wore, her legs crossed beneath the fabric.

Chase wrapped his hands around the warm mug as it sat on his left knee. Closing his eyes, he allowed the vision to congeal before him once more. “I saw a great blue heron come flying out of this thunderstorm that was stalking me, Grandmother. And at her side flew a nighthawk. Lightning danced around the three of us, and I was sure I was going to be struck by it. The heron landed in front of me, a lightning bolt in her beak. The nighthawk landed next to the heron. Before my eyes, the nighthawk turned into a beautiful young woman.” Chase opened his eyes and grinned boyishly at his composed teacher. “She was a looker, Grandmother. Black hair and the most startling cinnamon-colored eyes I’d ever seen. They were the color of fresh, reddish-brown earth plowed up after a hard winter.”