Somewhere to Dream (Berkley Sensation) Read Online Free PDF

warm golden hue, but my fingers were like ice.
    It was late in the afternoon, and I was alone in the house. My eyes flicked from wall to wall, searching for something—escape. Then, as if I had called to it, my newfound confidence, so tenderly nurtured by Wah-Li, shoved through the fear. I felt its strength and clung to the possibility that I could deal with this. I would be all right. I would find a way.
    Oh, Maggie. If only you were here.
I tried to picture her face through my scattered thoughts, in search of her simple brown braids, her intelligent blue eyes, but couldn’t find her.
    Because Maggie was gone. Over the space of a few months, everything in the world had changed for us. The story is hers to tell, but what I will share here is that in the end it was not Soquili who filled her heart and took her away. At the time, I could have gone with her, started a life with her new family, but I chose instead to stay with Wah-Li, to continue my training. I wasn’t ready for the white man’s world. I didn’t tell her I doubted I ever would be, but I suspect she knew anyway.
    I roused myself from my sleeping pad and folded my legs neatly before the fire, sitting tall and dipping a branch of sage into the flames. It sizzled when it caught, and I waved the fragrant smoke around my head, filling the air with the scent of calm. The tip burned orange when I set it back down, and its thin line of smoke rose straight up, then curled and dissolved as the breeze caught it. I closed my eyes, and with each deep breath, I became more acutely aware of individual parts of my body. My mind eased my pains, softened my fears, focused my thoughts. This bringing of peace was what I had been taught over and over again, by the same woman who had just sentenced me to a marriage I couldn’t even begin to contemplate.
    I had never before tried to summon dreams without Wah-Li’s help, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sink low enough in my mind to reach the images I knew waited for me. If I could, I wasn’t sure what I’d do with them once I’d found them. But in my desperate state of mind, diving into my dreams seemed the only distraction strong enough to help me through this.
    At first I saw nothing in the silence. Then the nothing evolved, becoming the side of a house, cracked and weathered as our family’s had been. At my feet, poking between my pale toes, quivered tickling blades of grass.
    The silence rose, giving shape to raised voices: men in the heat of battle.
    I followed the line of the wall until I reached the corner, then peered around the edge. Men ran, screamed, fought in faraway fury on the other side of a field. I could see no faces, but the colour of their skin and hair, the manner of their dress, was obvious. There were perhaps ten Cherokee, ten white men, all screaming like wild animals. Arms were raised, and I knew without seeing that the angry hands clutched tomahawks and knives.
    A rifle went off, cracking a puff of white smoke into the air, shooting death into a man. I felt the impact in my own body, a solid punch I knew could only bring death. A warrior fell backward, clutching at his chest. The fallen was tall and young, but too far for me to distinguish much else. Except . . . something about the line of his body was so familiar. As he fell, I felt a sudden loss that left me aching and hollow. So he was someone I loved. I stared, waiting for an answer, aware of the tenuous pounding of his dying heartbeat. Then I knew. It had to be Soquili, his body torn and bleeding onto the rich green grass. Everything in me ached to go to him, to heal him, but I was trapped in my mind.
    I had to get out. Had to stop this tragedy from happening. I forced myself from the trance, shooting upward until tiny stars spun in my vision. The ground rocked beneath my feet when I stood, and I stumbled toward the open doorway, needing to get to the Grandmother. She would know what to do. Maybe there was still time. Maybe I could save