“Yes?” Inca leaned forward raptly. She liked his low, modulated tone. She knew he spoke quietly so that the captain could not overhear their conversation, for what they spoke of was sacred.
“One member of each succeeding generation on my mother’s side of the family inherited this gift of lightning medicine. When our people were put on a reservation, the white men forced us to adopt a first and last name. So we chose Storm Walker in honor of my great-great-grandfather.”
“And what of Roan? What is a roan? It is a name I have never heard before.”
He quelled his immediate reaction to her sudden warm and animated look. Her face was alive with curiosity, her eyes wide and beautiful. Roan had one helluva time keeping his hands to himself. He wanted to see Inca like this all the time. This was the real her, he understood instinctively. Not the tough, don’t-you-dare-touch-me warrior woman, although that was part and parcel of her, too. When there wasn’t danger around, she was wide-open, vulnerable and childlike. It was innocence, he realized humbly. And the Great Spirit knew, he wanted to treat that part of her with the greatest of care.
“Roan is the color of a horse,” he explained. “Out on the plains, my people rode horses. Horses come in many colors, and a roan has red and white hairs all mixed together in its coat.” He smiled a little and held her burning gaze. “My mother was Lakota. A red-skinned woman. My father was a white man, a teacher who has white skin. When I was born, my mother had this vision of a roan horse, whose skin is half red and half white, running down a lane beneath a thunderstorm, with lightning bolts dancing all around it. She decided to call me Roan because I was part Indian and part white. Red and white.”
Inca stared at him. She saw the vulnerable man in him. He was not afraid of her, nor was he afraid to be who he was in front of her. That impressed her. It made her heart feel warm and good, too, which was something she’d never experienced before. “That is why you are not darker than you are,” she said, pointing to his skin.
“I got my mother’s nose, high cheekbones, black hair and most of her skin coloring. I got my father’s blue eyes.”
“Your heart, your spirit, though, belongs to your mother’s red-skinned people.”
“Yes,” Roan agreed softly.
“Are you glad of this?”
“Yes.”
“And did you inherit the gift of healing?”
Roan laughed a little and held up his hands. “No, I’m afraid it didn’t rub off on me, much to my mother’s unhappiness.”
Shrugging, Inca said, “Do not be so sure, Roan Storm Walker. Do not be so sure….”
Chapter 4
Roan had excused himself and went to the opposite side of the tug from where she stood. Once he felt sure they were safely motoring down the Amazon, the shooters nowhere in sight. His adrenaline had finally ebbed after the firefight. He’d noticed her hands were shaking for a little while afterward, too. It was nice to know she was human. It was also nice to know she was one cool-headed customer in a crisis. Not too many people that he knew, men or women, would have been so efficient and clear thinking in that rain of hot lead.
Absently, he touched the medicine piece at his throat and found the blue stone was so hot it felt like it was burning his skin. It wasn’t, but the energy emanating from it made it feel that way. The stone always throbbed, hot and burning, anytime he was in danger. Roan knew without a doubt, from a lot of past experience, that the mysterious blue stone was a powerful talisman. There had been so many times in the past when it had heated up and warned him of forthcoming danger. One of his biggest mistakes had been not listening to his intuition the day his wife, Sarah, had gone climbing and died. On that morning, before she left, Roan had had a powerful urge to take off his amulet and place it around her slender neck. He knew she would have accepted the gift, but he’d never, ever entertained the thought of giving the stone to anyone. It had been ingrained by his mother and the tradition of his mother’s tribe that the medicine piece should remain with one person until near the time he or she was to die, and then be passed on to the next deserving recipient. Still, the urge to give Sarah the stone had been overpowering, but he’d fought it because of his ancestral tradition. He told himself that it was wrong to take the stone off and give it away prematurely. Sadly, he now knew why his cougar guardian had urged him through his intuition to give Sarah the necklace to wear that day. It might have saved her life. He would never know. Rubbing his chest, Roan frowned, the guilt eating at him even to this day.
When he’d grabbed a cab at the airport to head to the dock, the blue stone had begun to throb with heat and energy. Roan had thought the stone was warning him about Inca, but he’d been wrong. She wasn’t the one to fear; it was the gang that followed him to the dock that had brought danger.
He wanted to ask Inca a hundred questions now that things were calming down, but he knew Indian protocol, so he had to forego his personal, selfish desire to get nosy. Still, being in her company was like being surrounded by an incredible light of joy and freedom.
Moving to the other side of the tug, he dug deeply into his canvas carry-on bag. Because he was Indian, and because it was only proper to introduce himself to the spirits of this new land, Roan pulled out a large, rainbow-colored abalone shell, a stick of sacred white sage and a red-tailed hawk feather fan. Native Americans did not presume that the spirits of the water, land or air would automatically welcome them into their midst. A simple ceremony of lighting sage and asking for acceptance was traditional.
Once the flame was doused, Roan placed the smoldering smudge stick in the shell. Picking it up, he faced the north direction, the place where Tatanka, the great white buffalo spirit, resided. Leaning down until the shell was near his feet, Roan used the fan to gently waft the thick, purling smoke upward around his body. The smoke was purifying and signaled his sincerity in honoring the spirits of this land. Fanning the smoke about his head, he then placed the shell back on the deck. Sitting down, his back against the cockpit, Roan closed his eyes and prayed. He mentally asked permission to be allowed to walk this land, to be welcomed to it.
As he said his prayers, his arms resting comfortably on his drawn-up knees, Roan felt a burst of joy wash over him. He smiled a little in thanks. That was the spirits of the river, the land and air welcoming him to their territory. He knew the sign well and was relieved. Roan didn’t want to go anywhere he wasn’t welcomed by the local spirits. It would have been a bad choice, and bad things would have befallen him as a result.
Opening his eyes, he dug into his tobacco bag, which he always carried on a loop on his belt. The beaded bag, made out of tanned elk hide and decorated with a pink flower against a blue background, was very old. It had been his mother’s tobacco bag. Digging into it, he held the proffered gift of thanks upward to the sky, and then to the four directions, to Mother Earth, before bringing it to his heart and giving thanks. Then, opening his hand, he threw the fragrant tobacco outward. He watched the dark brown flakes fly through the air and hit the muddy water, then quickly disappeared.
To his surprise, four river dolphins, sleek and dark, leaped within ten feet of the tug, splashing the peeling wood of the deck. Stunned, Roan watched the playful foursome race alongside the tug.
“The river spirit has taken your prayers and gifts to heart,” Inca said in a low, serious voice as she approached him from the left.
Surprised, Roan tried to hide his pleasure that she was coming to speak to him. He would never gain her trust if he kept going to her and plying her with endless questions; she’d slam the door to herself tighter than Fort Knox.
The dolphins leaped again, their high-pitched cries mingling with the sound of the foaming, bubbling water. They arced high and splashed back into the