Patricia Rosemoor - Stealing Thunder

“We have your book on the table by the couch so everyone who comes here can see it,” Grandmother told her.

“Your father would be proud of you,” Grandfather said. “Your returning to us shows that you are as fierce a warrior as he was.”

Ella’s pulse fluttered and her chest tightened. “Not fierce. The movie interested me…I couldn’t resist. A couple of weeks here seemed perfect.”

The grandparents exchanged looks that told Ella they didn’t accept that. Believers in fate, they would assume her presence had been guided by her animal spirit. While the film had delivered her, they would be convinced she was here for something more.

When they finished eating, Grandfather went outside to sit and to puff on his pipe, and Ella began clearing the table.

“It is so good to have you home, Ella.”

“Only for a few weeks, Grandmother. Only for the movie. This isn’t my home anymore.”

“This is where you are needed.” Grandmother hesitated only for a moment before saying, “We have no shaman. No one will practice here after what happened to Joseph.”

“I’m not a shaman.”

It is time… whispered through Ella’s head, but she instantly denied it.

Time for what? To give the people hope? Or to give hope to herself?

Ella pushed back the confusion. She reminded herself that she was just here for a summer job.

“Please, Granddaughter, the people need a spiritual leader. Do it for your grandfather and me—for your father—so that the legacy of the elders continues.”

The plea got to Ella—Grandmother had never asked anything of her before. While Ella remembered the tenets of her father’s beliefs and powers, she wasn’t sure she could actually execute them. Furthermore, even if it was something she wanted to do, she feared what might happen if she tried. She’d shut herself off from calling on the elements for fifteen years because Father had proved using abilities people didn’t understand was too dangerous, and she wasn’t about to embrace the danger again.

Still, having to deny the elderly woman made her feel bad. “I can’t help anyone, Grandmother. I am no medicine woman. And I don’t know if I remember enough of what Father taught me.”

“Talk to Nathan. He remembers.”

The tight, scarred skin on her arm twitched and Ella smoothed the cotton sleeve covering it. Part of her thanked her cousin for saving her. Part of her blamed him for letting her live burn- and memory-scarred.

Pausing a few seconds, she then asked, “So Nathan turned his back on shamanism?”

Grandmother nodded. “He has other interests that concern our people.”

“What kind of interests?”

“He’s become an activist. He’s part of First Nation.”

Ella knew about the long-standing activist group First Nation—a group that believed the Lakota should withdraw from all treaties with the United States and should reclaim the Paha Sapa for The People. Paha Sapa —the heart of everything that is—otherwise known as the Black Hills, Ella thought. Father had taught her the mountain held great power that needed to be respected. She knew that three decades ago, a federal court had agreed that in taking the land to mine gold in the 1870s, Custer had broken the treaty. The court had awarded the Lakota money that had now amassed to nearly a billion dollars. The Lakota were unwilling to trade their rights to the land for money. They didn’t believe in buying or selling the earth they walked upon.

Ella said, “I don’t think the U.S. government is ever going to give the land back to The People.” Her band was lucky to have been awarded a small reservation on one edge of the mountain, a lush piece of land compared to Pine Ridge, the next closest reservation on the Badlands.

“No. But I fear what First Nation might do to reclaim land they believe belongs to us,” Grandmother said. “We don’t need more war. Poverty and disease already take their toll on The People. What we need is someone who can heal the ills, not increase them.”

Doing the dishes gave Ella time to consider Grandmother’s words, as scary as it was for her.

Why had she come here if not to get involved with The People? an inner voice asked. Her working with the movie company and then coming back to the rez just to sleep would prove nothing.

She needed contact…knowledge…closure.

She needed to know the real reason that Father had died.

She needed to find the villain who was responsible and see that he was punished.

Early the next morning, Ella left the house for her SUV, ready to head out to the film set and meet with Jane Grant. They’d only spoken on the phone or via e-mails, so she was a little anxious to get together with the producer in person. She was about to open the vehicle door when she sensed interested eyes on the back of her neck.

Turning, she locked gazes with a man standing just behind her. His eyes were dark and he had long black hair, a braid in the front decorated with strips of beading and feathers. His features had matured, his body filled out, but she had no doubt as to his identity. She remembered what Grandmother had told her about him the night before. Her stomach tightened as she nodded to her cousin.

“Nathan.”

His expression serious, Nathan Lantero stepped closer so that she could see that he was wearing a beaded necklace with his totem, a buffalo cast in gold. Ella couldn’t help but be surprised—it looked like real gold, an unbelievable luxury amidst so much poverty. She remembered when they were kids, they would secretly search the abandoned mines in hope of finding gold. Now it looked like Nathan had, if not in the way they’d imagined.

What kind of work had he been able to get to earn it? she wondered.

“I heard you left the Wasi’chu, Ella. I couldn’t help but wonder why, after all this time.”

He almost sounded disapproving, she thought, as if he thought she should have stayed with her mother’s people. Wasi’chu was used as reference to the White Man, but she suspected as an activist, Nathan used it in its newer negative context, to describe a human condition based on exploitation. That he’d used it in reference to her made her stomach knot and her pulse rush a little faster.

Her back up, Ella said, “An odd question considering you lived with your father’s people for years.” Both her father and his mother had married outside the Lakota. “Besides, I have roots here.”

“You had a nightmare here.”

“Nightmares follow wherever you go,” she said, knowing this to be true. “No place is safe.”

Nathan nodded, and Ella knew he, too, had felt her father’s death. He’d been one of the family. Almost like a brother to her. Even so, she hadn’t really spoken to him since the day her father was murdered.

Ella wanted in the worst way to ply her cousin with questions about the past. Perhaps he could help her sort it all out. Not now, though. No time—she had that meeting. Besides, with that attitude, Nathan surely wouldn’t be receptive to anything she wanted.

Still, she needed to try to make peace between them.

“I…I never thanked you for trying to help Father…and me.”

“Joseph was my teacher and my uncle. He was like a father to me, as well.”

A grief-stricken thirteen-year-old, Ella had placed blame on him. Analytically, she now recognized Nathan had not only saved her from disfigurement or worse, but he’d done what he could for her father. Of course, emotions had no logic, and back then, hers had been out of control.

“I’m sorry I was so horrible to you after…”

“So there are no hard feelings?”