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  “Do your walls come down any other way than you taking them down?” he asked good questions.

  I sighed. It bothered me to have so much of my life an open book with these strangers, but I saw the reason for it. “Since this path started for me, there have been two instances where the walls just shattered. Both times were when I was trying to rid myself of the bad energy I took on that was really invasive. From what I understand of myself, is that the pain that came with the releasing of that energy is what caused it. The pain was just too severe for me to hold on to the stability those walls provide. Also, both times afterwards, I was so depleted of energy that I couldn’t rebuild them, I just had to feel so to speak. It was excruciating.”

  “Are you willing to drop them now?” his voice gentle. “I mean you no harm.”

  I nodded. “Just to warn you though, I can tell when people try to feel me out or get in my head.”

  “So noted. I do not intend to manipulate you, I just want to see the way it flows through you and around you. If it makes patterns when you use it.”

  I dropped my walls and felt his curiosity instantly. “Right now, without doing anything, I can feel how curious you are.”

  “Very good,” he said. Looking away from me, he studied around us. “In the Cherokee tribes, the numbers four and seven are very important. Four, for the directions on the compass, the seasons, the elements. Seven for the number of clans in our tribe, also with the three extra directions, up, down and center. Meaning, the world above us, the world below us, and the world we are in right now. Seven is also the highest attainable level you can achieve in purity and sacredness. This tree behind me is a seven,” he ran his hands along the bark. “It is also a sacred tree.”

  “Is that cedar?”

  “Very good,” he smiled, “it is. Now if you will look around us, this spot is rich in those numbers. It spoke to me as we crested that hill, telling me this was a sacred place, one that was pure and safe. Look around and tell me if you notice anything, feel with your energy,” he told me, leaning his head back against the tree and closing his eyes.

  I looked around and reached out with my energy to actively seek through the area. I immediately noticed that right here we had seven large cedar trees around us, the only ones I could see in this area. The number of the large boulders like what we were sitting on was four. “There are seven cedar trees and four boulders,” I said quietly. He didn’t respond and I momentarily wondered if he had fallen asleep.

  My emotions tingled with the feeling of curiosity from in the woods. “I feel animals out there curious about us,” I continued. The energy from the creek hummed with the energy spots I used back home to release emotions. “The creek has an energy vortex in it,” I noted aloud, “as well as it drops in level four times.”

  Degataga opened his eyes then and watched me. “There’s something I can feel, almost void like, out beyond that small cluster of pines off to my right,” I pushed more, trying to zero in on it. “I can’t tell what it is, it’s appearing to me like a black spot, not good, but not bad. Just there.” His eyes narrowed on me in scrutiny.

  “I can feel residual energy from the rock we are on, and if I focus hard enough it’s almost like I can see it how it used to be before erosion brought it to this point.” My mind was buzzing. “The woods here, don’t mind our presence, but there is warning there as well.”

  Mother nature decided to use this point in time to scare the hell out of me with the clear blue sky above me lighting up in a flash of light, immediately followed by the roar of thunder as it tore through the atmosphere. We both jumped in alarm, me because I hadn’t felt the shift in the atmosphere until it happened. Degataga looked at me in wonder.

  “You can’t see spirits?” he asked.

  “No, just the one, and I don’t think she is here with us,” I replied, wondering where he was going.

  “Can you feel them?” he continued.

  “Sometimes I think I can, though because I can’t see or hear them, I’m never entirely sure if it’s a spirits emotion I am picking up, residual energy, or animals, depending on where I am,” I responded, paying closer attention to emotions now.

  The curiosity was still strong and coming from multiple directions, the black spot was still there, and I felt a tiny trickle of fear, but the direction wasn’t clear to me. Degataga looked as though he was concentrating, and his fingers were moving slightly. “We aren’t alone,” he said, but he didn’t sound concerned.

  Suddenly in front of me the creek started rushing faster and I stood, thinking it was a flash flood even though it wasn’t raining where we were. The boulder we were on was high enough that it wasn’t a danger, but the water wasn’t rising, it was just now rushing instead of gently flowing.

  I felt around the water for its energy signature and felt a strand of energy going back to Degataga. My eyes widened when I realized it was him, and then my curiosity took over. I gently tapped into his strand of energy and fed my own into it in a rush, and the creek roared to life like a raging river. Fascinated I fed more into and watched it rise. Realizing it would pose a risk to any life around us I backed off fast and let it go.

  I had a giant grin on my face now, that was the first time I had ever really influenced my natural environment intentionally and it felt a little crazy. I looked back at Degataga to find him open mouthed staring at me. Oops, I wondered if I had crossed a line. I sat back down, arranging the jacket underneath me and waited for him to say something.

  Instead of talking to me I felt something close to me and looked around until I saw a deer, watching us with caution. I glanced at Degataga to see if he was manipulating it at all, but I couldn’t really tell. I felt out around him and felt his strand of energy that was leading out from him to the deer. There wasn’t any emotion to it at all, so I pushed some of my calm into it and saw the deer relax, like we weren’t even there.

  The energy flow suddenly cut off around me. “Incredible,” he said, studying me. “You could be extremely dangerous under the influence of the wrong energy. Yet, I don’t feel anything malevolent in you at all. Pure intentions. Very rare in an adult.”

  “Dangerous? The water you mean? I wouldn’t have let it flood. There’s too much life around here that could have been adversely affected by that,” I answered apologetically. “I’m sorry if that crossed a line.”

  “Oh no, you didn’t. That was a test to see if you could feel what I was doing, apparently you did.”

  “I did, but it took the visual of the water moving faster for me to narrow my focus down to that. Once I saw it was you, I just decided to experiment.”

  “The lightning, was that you?” he asked me.

  “No, I can’t influence the weather,” I denied. “No one can that I know of. I can usually feel an atmospheric shift that signifies a change, but I didn’t feel anything that time until the moment it happened. That’s the second time lightning has struck like that with a clear blue sky above.”

  “Even curiouser. Can you show me what you can do with emotions?” he pointedly asked.

  “I did to an extent. I calmed the deer down so it wouldn’t be afraid of us.”

  “To me, though. Can you do something to me?” he pushed.

  I read him, picking through his emotions looking for something that would stand out and pulled out a very thin thread of fear. I didn’t want anger or something to make him react in a bad way, and he was mostly calm and curious, but there was a sliver of fear. So I pulled on it, adding to it, amplifying it slowly. I watched his face pale, and his eyes shift as he started to frantically look around, his body tensing.

  “Is that you?” his voice shook a little. I nodded at him. “Okay, can you fix it please? This is unnerving me.”

  I giggled, “That was kind of the point.” I released the fear and fed the energy back into his normal calm.

  “Incredible,” he repeated, the color returning to his face. “I had no idea what I was afraid of, or that I even was.”

&nb
sp; “I can only feed what already exists, I can’t give you a false emotion,” I stated.

  “You are finely in tune with what’s around you when you are paying attention. What do you do when you are distracted?”

  “I can usually sense strong emotions even when I’m not trying to and depending on what it is will determine how I respond. In dangerous situations like yesterday there are always several clues that have nothing to do with the empath abilities. Especially when in a nature surrounding. In the park, people were actively avoiding the area where the man was, animal life was not there or making noise, there was an unnatural feel to the area, things like that. In normal everyday life, even though I am not using my abilities, I pay attention to my surroundings and go off cues like that.”

  “Yet you still don’t see spirits, very interesting. There are several around us that appeared when you dropped your walls, they are drawn to you, but you aren’t picking up on them. I will admit though, you are extremely powerful. The rush of energy I got when you fed the creek was the craziest high I have ever experienced, and it was pure joy. Can I make an observation?” he tilted his head looking at me.

  I nodded, “Of course.”

  “I feel you may not be receptive to this, but there may be something to what the others say,” he started.

  “Are you talking about the angel thing?” I interrupted, my tone a little harder than I intended.

  “Yes, but hear me out. I don’t know if it’s true or not, because I have never encountered an angel, at least not in the flesh that I am aware of. Being Cherokee, we see things like that differently than others. Spirits are not paranormal, they just are. They are a part of normal life like this rock and tree. By all accounts you should see them as they are pure energy. In some circles, it is rumored that angels can’t see that which is between worlds, here in what we call center. Maybe when you add all these things together, there is something to it.”

  “I don’t know,” I started to argue and stopped when he held up his hand.

  “Just keep your mind open,” he stood. “Being a healer, and a damn good one at that,” he literally patted himself on the back, and I laughed, “I can feel something in you that is damaged, and it may be that part of you that is keeping you from the full potential I can feel in you, and it’s enormous. I am going to make something for you back at the house.” He jumped easily down off the rock.

  I sat down and tried to maneuver myself to slide down it without falling on my ass. As I turned, I felt him grab my hips and help me down. “Thank you,” I said gratefully. We headed back the way we came.

  “What I will make is something you will add to water and drink. It will make you dream, and you will see things clearer. You will see what we see, but you will also see what you see. What you see will be the damaged parts that are keeping you from where you could be. It won’t be pleasant, it will feel like a nightmare, but that is only because those damaged parts are what scare you. To reach our full potential we need to heal mind, body and spirit.”

  “Honestly that doesn’t sound very fun,” I said bluntly.

  “It’s not, but it’s necessary.” He reached into his pocket and handed me a carving of a raven. “I made this last night out of cedar, it will help guide you.”

  It was exquisite and I went to put it in my pouch. He shook his head no, “You’ll need to keep it in a white cloth when not holding it and using it. Cedar is sacred.” He reached in his other pocket and pulled out a white handkerchief. “Wrap it in this.” I wrapped it and placed it carefully in with the other items.

  We walked back to the house in a comfortable silence, and as we returned, he stopped me before going on. “Remember Airiella, ravens fly. You need to heal your wings.” He chucked me under the chin and walked in.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The twins met me outside and told me to follow them. I wasn’t sure which was which, but by now my mind was a mess of thoughts so tangled up I didn’t even try to work them out. I just followed them silently, in yet a completely different direction than I had gone with the others.

  I was hungry again, so I pulled out another granola bar and munched on it while we were walking. We were in the woods, but it wasn’t dense like where I had just come from, and I could hear water this time, perhaps the same stream I was just at, just farther downstream. Without looking at a map I had no way of knowing.

  We soon came upon the stream I heard and entered a little bit of a sheltered area. Still not dense woods, but it was closed in enough that it felt like it. The twins sat on a fallen tree and faced the stream. I wasn’t sure what to do so I sat next to one of them.

  The one closest to me spoke. “Raven,” she called me. “I am Tama, we come from what people call one of the Chinook tribes. I understand we travel the same areas.” If she meant the whole state in a broad term, then I guess she was right. “My name means thunder, and I am what some would call a powerful shaman. It’s not something we really talk about with outsiders.”

  I nodded silently, understanding more after my time spent with Degataga. Tama fell silent for a few moments and I studied her. She was identical in appearance to her sister. Long black hair fell to mid back. She didn’t have it restrained it all, it flowed freely with her movements. Her face was long, narrow, and while her nose wasn’t large, the nostrils flared out a bit. Her lips were full and ripe looking, and her skin had a tan tone, but she wasn’t dark. Her eyes were a deep chocolate color that had a spark of mischief in them. Her eyebrows dark and thin. It was hard to tell her age as she looked somewhat timeless. She was taller than me, and athletic. She moved with an easy grace and effortlessly quiet. Neither wore any makeup, but they both wore beaded necklaces.

  “Do I meet with your approval?” she asked with a good nature.

  Taken aback, I stuttered out an apology, “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.”

  Tama laughed, “It’s all good. I’m sure you have a lot of questions and I don’t want to take up any more time than we need to. Taklishim will need to spend the most time with you is my guess. He is my mate,” she said fondly. “We broke with traditions and didn’t marry within our tribes. I’m a bit of a rule breaker.”

  Her sister spoke up, “She’s not kidding. My name is Onida, it means the one searched for. I too am a powerful shaman, and while I help many within the tribes, I help just as many outside of them. I received a medical degree from the university and became a doctor. Neither of us really follow the laws of the tribe. Though I am unmarried.”

  “Our Father was a clan leader, but the government doesn’t recognize the Chinook as a nation. While his clan followed him, we moved north of where many of my people were, to a smaller area, near other tribes. He didn’t agree with some of the Chinook ways and he met a lot of resistance from other leaders when he broke traditions. So maybe rule breaking is in our blood,” Tama explained.

  “We both have what people call paranormal gifts, but to us, it’s just a way of life and part of who a shaman is. We both have visions, can see spirits and the veil between our worlds. We both have animal guides. I am what some would call a spiritual warrior. Onida is much like her name definition, people seek her out, to carry messages to the spirit world, to heal them, to gift them sight.”

  Onida piped in, “We have the ability to take the shape of our animals to help us in tasks we need to accomplish. They also speak to us, though only we can hear them.” She leaned forward and looked at me, a mirror image of her sister. “If we were to shift, and hide in the woods, would you be able to sense us?”

  “I believe so. I can often pick up other animals, though their emotions are much less chaotic than peoples are.”

  “You carry the divine light with you,” Tama said thoughtfully. “Do you know what a Raven is?”

  “A bird,” was my automatic response, which made both sisters laugh cheerily.

  “I like you Raven. You are a protector of secrets, a messenger between the heavens and this world. When you appear in people’s live
s it means you are there to help them change, be reborn, in a way. Your courage and magic are very strong, you are highly sexual and gifted at healing, a Raven is rare.”

  Blushing at the sexual comment, “If I am a Raven why does everyone keep saying I’m an angel?”

  “Different symbolism for different beliefs. The root of what you are is the same, just called by a different name,” Onida explained simply.

  “So, a Raven is an Angel?” I asked, confused.

  “Both have the divine light guiding you. You have the power of the heavens on your side, whatever you decide to call yourself. Your purpose is the same, to heal and bring about the changes that need to be made to set the world back to what it needs to be,” Tama said bluntly.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just not clear to me how that is possible. Angels are supposed to be pure and holy and all that crap,” I argued.

  “Airiella,” Onida said, “why do you think you are not this?”

  “Because my life is a train wreck most of the time!” I exploded. “The things I’ve been through left an ugly stain on me, marking me forever.” Tears welled in my eyes and I stood, walking to the edge of the creek, fighting the damn things back.

  “Raven,” Tama placed an arm around my shoulder and hugged me to her. “Your experiences do not define your soul like you think. The bad spirits of the world attack you, because of who you are. They don’t want you to survive, because if you do, they don’t. You will always have struggles, it is the way the world has become unbalanced. Your very presence here on earth is a warning that transformation is coming. The very fact that you survived all that has befallen you is a beacon of the strength you have within. The glow around you is so bright and engulfing that is strikes terror in those that have bad intentions.”

  “I went through cancer because a bad spirit wanted to end me?” I said choking on my tears.

  “Essentially, yes,” Onida spoke softly from the other side of me now. Sandwiching me between them. “In our beliefs, a sickness is the result of a bad spirit. Other beliefs have different answers. In a generally broad answer from my animal guide, he is a hawk. They have the ability to see a larger picture,” she told me. “You are a gift to the world, one granted by the highest power.”