“No, not exactly an outcast… Oh, to be sure, some members have been cast permanently out of the clan.” She gave him a pained, one-cornered smile, and then quickly looked away. “My sentence is an ongoing one. Grandfather Adaire says I am walking on the dark side with some choices I have made. And until I can walk in the light all the time, I am not allowed to return to the village as a full member of it.”
Roan frowned. “Light and dark? Familiar words and themes to me.” He opened his hands. “Where I come from, in our belief system, light does not exist without darkness, and vice versa. You can’t have one without the other. And no human being is ever all one or the other.” He glanced over at her. “Are they expecting you not to be human? Not to make mistakes?”
She laughed abruptly. “The Jaguar Clan is an honorable part of the Sisterhood of Light. There are rules that cannot be broken…and I broke one of them. It was a very serious thing. Life-and-death serious.” Inca frowned and tugged at the frayed thread on her knee until it broke off in her fingers.
“Mike Houston said you saved his life,” Roan said. He ached to reach out to her now. There were tears swimming in her eyes, although Inca’s head was bowed and slightly turned away from his in an effort to hide them from him. In her softened tone he could hear the wrenching heartache she carried. She moved her hands restlessly.
“That is why I was asked to leave my own kind, my home…. Michael was dying. I knew it. And yes, I broke the rule and went into the light where the souls of all humans who are dying go. I pulled him back from the Threshold. I gave my life, my energy, my heart and love, and drew him back. If not for Grandmother Alaria, who revived me because I was practically dead after saving Michael, I would not be here today.”
“So, you saved a life? And Grandfather Adaire kicked you out of the clan for that?” Roan had a hard time understanding why.
“Do not be judgmental of Grandfather Adaire. He was only following the code of the clan. You see, we are trained in the art of life and death. Because we have the power, that means we must walk with it in strict accordance to the laws of the universe. I broke one of those laws. Michael had made his choice to die of his wound. I had been caring for him for a week, and for the first time in my life, I felt as if I had met my real brother. Oh, he was not, but that was the bond we had from the moment we met. It was wonderful….” She sighed unhappily. “I saw him slipping away daily. My heart cried. I cried alone, where no one could see me. I knew he would die. I did not want it to happen. I knew I had the power to stop it. And I knew it was wrong to intervene.” Inca smiled sadly as she looked at the shore, which was a half a mile away on either side of the chugging tug.
“I wanted a brother just like Michael. I’d been searching so long for a family—I was so starved to have one—that I did it. I broke the law. And I did it knowingly.” Gravely, Inca turned her head and met his dark blue eyes. “And that is why I was asked to leave. What I did was a ‘dark side’ decision. It was selfish and self-serving.”
Roan choked as she finished the story. He felt anger over it. “Didn’t Grandfather Adaire realize that, because you were abandoned, family would mean so much more to you than it would to others?”
She hitched one shoulder upward and looked out at the muddy river. “That is an excuse. It is not acceptable to the clan. I broke a law. It does not matter why I broke it.”
“Seems a little one-sided and unfair to me,” he groused.
“Well,” Inca said with a laugh, “my saving Michael’s life, in the long term, had its positive side. He asked to become my blood brother. And when he fell in love with Dr. Ann, and she had his baby, Catherine, I became a godmother to their child.” The tears in her eyes burned. Inca looked away. She wanted to wipe them away, but she didn’t want Roan to know of her tears. No one ever saw her cry. No one. Choking on the tears, she rasped, “I have a family now. Michael and Ann love me. They accept me despite who I am, despite what I do for a living.” She sniffed and reached for a pouch on her right side. “Look…here…let me show you baby Catherine….”
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