Spirit Walk_ Old Wounds (Book 1) - Christie Golden [52]
Stag was such a spirit for Sekaya. He was a mighty white-tailed buck, with large, liquid brown eyes and an enormous rack. On a visit to Earth, she had felt drawn to a discarded antler tine, and had added it to her medicine bundle. He had chosen her. Stag had been coming to her ever since.
Sekaya walked toward Him now, her heart welling with affection. She permitted all the emotions she was holding to come to the surface: fear, worry, grief, delight. He would take and sanctify them all. Gently she stroked His soft neck, feeling the warmth of His short fur and the strength of His muscles. He brushed her cheek with His soft, moist nose.
“Daughter of the Forest,” He said gently, using her spirit name. “Your heart is troubled. What can I do to ease your pain?”
Sekaya had heard that spirit guides often practiced a form of “tough love.” But Stag had always been so gentle and tender with her. Responding immediately to that tenderness, Sekaya felt tears welling in her eyes.
“I am torn between keeping a secret of my people and sharing it with my brother,” she whispered. The tears flowed down her cheeks now. Gently, Stag licked them away with His warm tongue.
“Is not your brother of your people?” He asked.
“Yes,” she admitted, “but he turned away from our teachings a long time ago. He only returned to them out of pain and duty.”
He looked at her lovingly. “Would it comfort you to know that We are aware of Chakotay? That We have been with him often?”
“Yes,” Sekaya replied. “It would surprise me, but it would comfort me.”
“Then, Daughter, be both surprised and comforted,” Stag said, amused. “Chakotay is more like you than you would think.”
“Then…you think I should tell him?”
“I will say to you exactly what you knew I would say,” Stag replied maddeningly. “You need to weigh the need to keep the secret with Chakotay’s need to know. Until he understands what your people went through at the hands of the Cardassians, he can never truly belong to you.”
She sank down onto the forest floor. He knelt beside her and placed His mighty head in her lap, like a unicorn out of the old tales. He was careful to avoid harming her with His sharp tines.
“I want him to belong with us,” Sekaya said. She stroked His neck, touched His long, velvety soft ears and ran their length through her fingers. “But I do not wish to relive that pain.”
“You must decide,” said Stag. “But I can tell you this: He is being groomed for a great destiny, and one who has a great destiny needs a great heart full of compassion.”
“Like yours,” Sekaya whispered fondly.
“Like yours,” came another voice. And before she realized what was happening, Sekaya realized that she no longer cradled Stag’s mighty head in her lap, but that of a boy about seven years old. A boy who was familiar to her.
Commingled pain and delight rose in her heart. When they had been reunited six months ago, Chakotay had told his sister he had spirit-walked with their father when he was attuned with the akoonah. Sekaya herself had never seen her father when she was deep in meditation in the spirit world. She suspected that it was because she and her father had had no rift in life. She grieved Kolopak’s passing as any daughter would, especially coming the way it had, but felt no need to embark on a spirit walk with him.
But this boy…
His face was tranquil as he smiled up at her, as calm and untroubled as the surface of a lake on a clear day. That was why he had been given his name: Blue Water Boy. A lake needed to be calm before it could hold the reflection of the sky, he had told her once; before it could rightly be said to be “blue water.”
She did not want to see him. Sekaya felt fear, panic, and guilt rise inside her. She scooted backward and scrambled to her feet, aware that suddenly she, too, was only six years old. She looked up from where Blue Water Boy sat, brushing pine needles out of his long,