White Vengeance

by Susan Edwards

Renny glanced down at herself and to her shock, instead of watching herself as a child, she was the child.

  And she wasn’t alone. There before her stood the most beautiful and magical horse she’d ever seen. The animal was silver, and she seemed to glow. Renny figured anything this wondrous had to be female. She was like an angel with no wings.

  Once more, the scene shifted like a kaleidoscope shifting colors and patterns. This time, she was riding on the back of the horse. She felt small. Her legs didn’t reach down to the middle of the horse’s sides, and she couldn’t grip hard, but she needn’t have worried for the horse’s gait was incredibly smooth.

  Then, unexpectedly, the horse soared upward, taking them both high up into the starlit sky.

  The woman inside the child let loose with a shriek of joy. Her happy voice echoed around them. Renny reached out to grab at stars that looked so close. So real. She felt alive. Safe with her angel who looked like a horse.

  After what seemed like forever the horse descended. Renny slid off. Everything looked normal. She was the adult Renny once more.

  The pale horse stood before her. “Do you remember me, Weshawee?”

  Filled with wonder, forgetting that this was just a dream, Renny reached out to touch the horse who felt so incredibly soft. Long strands of silky mane brushed against her face like a caress.

  Some part of Renny, that part of her that had lived so long ago, thought she did. But since Renny couldn’t remember exactly, she shook her head no, being truthful. “No.”

  The horse looked sad and pawed the ground with one hoof that glittered as though encased in diamonds. Or stars. She started to fade. Renny could see right through her.

  “Don’t go,” she pleaded as she reached out a hand. “Tell me who you are.” It was important that she know.

  “Remember me.”

  Renny woke with those words. She lay very still, her eyes wide as she stared up at the still-dark sky. It would start to lighten soon.

  The dream had seemed so real. They were real, she thought, at least all but the ones of the horse. She frowned as she recalled the command the horse had given to her.

  “Remember me.”

  And suddenly, she did. Renny smiled. The horse had been her friend. Renny had been so scared and alone that she’d created a friend that no one could take from her.

  She’d called her friend to her each night. They would pass the time walking, flying and laughing. There were also tears and words of comfort.

  Frowning, Renny recalled that she’d often pretended to see her make-believe friend during daylight hours. The animal had given her a lot of peace, appeared at her side whenever Renny needed her, like a guardian angel…

  Renny bolted upright. “A spirit,” she breathed. The word circled her mind. Over and over, round and round. Then she laughed softly, stunned at the revelation of her dream.

  “Remember me.”

  Mazaska Wicahpi. The words popped into her mind.

  Silver Star.

  The horse had called herself Silver Star. She was a spirit—one sent to bring comfort to a frightened young girl.

  She was the pale horse that Mattie had seen. Renny ran her hands through her hair as long-forgotten memories mixed with her thoughts. Questions rushed through her mind.

  She closed her eyes, dizzy with all the images of her past that were spinning in her mind.

  While she’d believed in spirits until her parents had died, she’d never seen one.

  “Except in my dreams,” she breathed. As a young child, she’d taken those dreams in stride. They hadn’t seemed unusual. They had just been.

  Now she started remembering those odd moments over the last week when she’d felt as though she were not alone.

  “Oh,” she said, her voice low.

  “Oh.” Renny closed her eyes. She could still see her, this beautiful, fairy-tale horse who used to come to her in the middle of the night to teach her how to control her fears so that they did not control her.

  For a long time, the bad Indians had haunted her nights. Until Silver Star came and chased them away.

  A shimmering mist appeared before her. “You have remembered. Now believe.”

  Renny stared at the horse for a long moment, then she reached out.

  “I remember.”

  She drew in a deep breath.

  “I believe.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Brenna lay awake, watching the approaching dawn with dread and a sick feeling in her stomach. She was so tired, so hungry and so very afraid. Wiping silent tears from her face, she kept telling herself she had to be braver. She had to be stronger, but it was so hard.

  All she could think of was Matthew. The sight of him lying on the ground, bleeding, haunted her day and night. How many days had it been? She couldn’t remember. Five? Six?

  Oh God, he couldn’t have survived alone for so long. Why had she left him? Closing her eyes, she made herself see the blood, feel its sticky warmth between her fingers. Her dress bore the stains and was a daily reminder that once more, she’d failed to do the right thing.

  Yet if she’d refused to go with Gil, she had no doubt that he’d have shot them both. Killed them both. She’d done what she could to give Matt the best chance he had to survive. In her heart she knew this. But her mind couldn’t bear the pain of not knowing Matt’s fate.

  Across from her, Gil slept as though he didn’t have a care in the world. The rifle was in his arms and he slept lightly.

  Brenna didn’t dare try and leave. He’d wake. And he might make good on his threat to kill her if he caught her leaving him.

  Staring at her brother, she wondered how he could do this to her. She’d thought they’d been close, that he’d loved her as much as she loved and adored him. His anger and shock over everything was understandable, but for him to react with the same violence as their mother frightened her.

  He was crazy, just like their mother. Brenna stifled a sob. She felt the cut on her lip and her bruised cheekbone where Gil had hit her.

  Gil was so out of his mind with grief and anger, she wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t yet kill her. So she kept quiet and still, holding her fear, the hopelessness, deep inside her as she watched the birth of a new day.

  What would today bring? More pain? Or maybe the end of it all. She was very much afraid that she’d welcome death if offered.

  So much had happened. Her whole world had been torn into useless pieces that could never be mended and made whole again.

  Drawing her knees to her chest, she rested her head on them as she struggled not to panic.

  The days following the death of her stepfather and her mother had been filled with confusion, anguish and sorrow.

  And guilt.

  Waves of guilt and regrets.

  Gil was one of her regrets. She’d been more worried about going to live with Matt’s people and so ashamed of her own actions against a family she’d called friends, that she hadn’t paid Gil much mind.

  So wrapped up in her own world of sorrow and grief, she hadn’t noticed that Gil was just as confused and grief-stricken.

  He’d been forgotten in the aftermath of their stepfather’s death. Devastated by their mother’s attempt to kill Mattie for a second time. Katherine had died in a fire she’d set. Leaving Brenna and Gil alone, their entire family gone, just like that.

  Brenna had been forced to tell her brother the truth, that it had been their mother who’d killed their older brother.

  Gil had flown out of control. He’d blamed Brenna for Collin’s death, for their mother’s death. For all of it.

  He’d said some hateful things, some unforgivable things, then left. He’d ridden away from his home and his only living relative.

  Brenna should have gone after him. Or asked som
eone for help. He had no reason to leave. None of it had been his fault and no one had blamed him. But he’d left, angry and hurt, and not thinking clearly as he hadn’t even taken any food or supplies with him.

  And the next day she’d left with Matthew, trying to convince herself that Gil would come back to their home. She knew she herself would never return.

  Her shame and guilt were too great for her to return to Pheasant Gully. It didn’t matter that no one outside the O’Brien family and Tyler knew the truth.

  She knew. Only now did she admit that the dispensing of justice had not been hers. In her mind, her mother had suffered terribly with the knowledge that she’d killed her firstborn. At the time, Brenna had thought it punishment enough.

  Now Brenna had no life, no expectations of ever finding peace or happiness. She couldn’t even cling to the hope that Gil would survive and be all right eventually.

  Tears slid down Brenna’s face. She cried silently, not over her own situation but how the taint of her parents, and her own actions, had rubbed off on her brother. Gil had been ignorant, caught in the middle.

  He’d been innocent—until the day he’d shot Matthew. Brenna stifled a sob. Around her, the wind howled.

  “Please,” she whispered into the wind. “Take care of Matt. Keep him safe.”

  She repeated this prayer over and over as the sun stretched pink fingers over the sky as though embracing the world. She didn’t care what happened to her, only that Matthew live.

  A dark shape appeared in the sky above her. It circled. At first she was afraid it was a vulture. As the shape drew nearer, she saw that it was an eagle, soaring gracefully.

  It dipped lower, and with a gentle upward tilt to its wings landed in the scraggly bush a short distance from her.

  Brenna held her breath. One of the things she’d loved about Matt and his family was their closeness to nature. She’d spent hours listening to Star spin her tales, to all of the children pointing out bits of nature and telling her what they meant to the humans of the world.

  She’d never seen an eagle this close. Nor had one ever watched her so intently. Raised in cities all of her life, Brenna found the appearance of the eagle new and fascinating. And comforting.

  What had Matt once told her about the eagle? She frowned. Something about facing hard days ahead. Discouragement slid through her and she chastised herself for hoping that the presence of the bird might have meant hope.

  Not for herself but for Matthew. Matthew needed her. She had to get free so she could return to him. As though Matthew was there, she heard his voice in her head.

  “Let the spirits guide you and you will succeed.” Most everything in Matt’s world had a moral, or lesson, tied to it.

  What could the eagle be telling her? She wasn’t sure that she really believed, but right then, she needed all the courage she could find.

  “Let the spirits guide you,” she whispered to herself as she stared at the bird. But they wouldn’t guide her. She didn’t know how to talk to them. She was on her own, had only herself to rely upon.

  The bird flapped its wings, drawing her attention back to the large eagle. The golden feathers seemed to reach out to her and encase her in their soft warmth. He opened his beak, as though about to impart great wisdom.

  Brenna leaned forward, listening intently, but she only heard her own heart pounding in her ears.

  Her heart.

  Staring at the bird in awe, she knew she had the answer. She hadn’t listened to her heart—her spirit—after the fire. She let fear take over. Had she told her stepfather, or the sheriff or Matthew, what she’d seen, much of the tragedy could have been avoided, maybe even Gil’s feelings of betrayal.

  It would not have changed what her mother had done, or what her father would have done. But it would have prevented Katherine from making a second attempt to kill Mattie. And Matthew would not despise her now.

  In her heart, she’d known that protecting her mother had been wrong. But she’d convinced herself that no good would come from exposing the truth. She’d convinced herself that she’d been protecting herself, keeping what she most needed close: her family. And in the end, it hadn’t mattered. She’d lost everything. They’d all lost. Including Gil.

  Suddenly, she knew what she had to do. She had to go back. She hadn’t had a choice in leaving Matt. If she’d refused, they’d both be dead.

  But she had a choice now. Going with Gil, letting him believe that what he was doing was right, was unacceptable. She had to take a stand and pray that she’d be able to fix things between them.

  Doing right meant breaking the promise she’d made to Gil. He wasn’t the brother she remembered, and what he had done, and was doing, was wrong, just like what she’d done.

  She had to make it right, even if it meant saying goodbye to her brother for good or risking her own life.

  The eagle, as though agreeing, gave a shrill shriek and then flew higher.

  Gil, startled awake, jumped to his feet. The bird had taken wing. Brenna expected to feel abandoned but strangely, she felt better than she had in a long time.

  She had hope.

  * * *

  Renny rose before anyone else. Only Reed was awake. They nodded silently to one another as Renny walked past him. She smiled at the sight of Daire fast asleep. Her brothers, both warriors at heart, were still children.

  For a while, she walked around the camp, staying within sight of Reed in order to not worry him. As she paced, she kept her eyes on the darkness surrounding them. But her mind was a beehive of thought.

  She played her dream over and over, remembering those bits of her childhood where she’d been at peace with the world, and herself. Her sister, Emma, had fallen in love with Striking Thunder, Mattie and Matthew’s uncle. For many years, Renny and her new family had returned for the summers to live off the land and become one with that world.

  The primitive and untamed land was a place Renny felt very at home, at peace. The wild side of her nature found release in being free from society’s constraints. The dream had acted like a door into that past. For many years the door had been closed. Over the last year, it had been locked. Now it was open, allowing images and memories to flood her mind.

  How simple life had been. And how complex it was now. No matter how much she wanted to become that child once again, she knew it would never happen. But she had recovered a part of that child—the unwavering belief in spirits.

  Renny paused to watch her family sleep. After those dreams she knew she could never deny or shun the reality of the spiritual world.

  Life was a circle, she told herself. Man did not live alone. He lived and breathed the same air as the birds, animals, insects.

  He walked upon the grass, relied on trees for fuel and homes to live in. She bent and picked up a rock. She cupped it in both hands. Even rocks were valued. They could be gathered to form fire pits, or fence lines.

  So many uses and so much life attached, she thought as she watched a tiny insect crawling in a crevice in the rock. As a girl, if this insect had crossed her path, she’d have studied it, and tried to think what relation she had to that tiny bit of life.

  Remembering the beetle who had climbed over her boot in the barn, she realized just how much she’d turned her back on. Setting the rock down, with the darker, moist part down as she found it, Renny resumed her pacing and focused her thoughts on the revelation of her dreams.

  Silver Star. A horse who’d once been a child’s companion. Her need of Silver had faded, and as she’d matured into womanhood, those fond memories had been boxed up and hidden away in her mind like her childhood toys that were even now stored in the attic of her aunt’s home in St. Louis.

  Like her childhood, there was so much forgotten. Things and events she’d left behind, figuring she’d never need them again.

 
; But now, Renny realized that perhaps there was space to merge what had been with what was now. And somehow, it all tied to her finding Matthew. She had no doubt that remembering, the revelation of her dream, was for a purpose.

  This time she smiled as she recalled her dream. As a young girl, she’d learned to speak with the animals and birds who shared the land with humans. She’d learned to listen to her world with animal ears and see her world with animal eyes.

  The world around her was filled with teachers, friends and companions. The horse of her dream had been a companion. A spiritual companion. The golden horse she’d seen was one of her totem, or helpmate, animals. He had much to tell her, much to show her. She now trusted that he, and the other inhabitants of this world, would guide her to Matthew.

  And guide her own inner being along her life’s path. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to that belief. She didn’t know what she’d find, or how rocky the path, but she knew she would not make her journey alone.

  She just had to find the key, and trust that the key would lead her to her brother. Walking softly over to the pile of supplies, she rummaged through the rolls of clothing and belongings.

  Each person had their travel rolls. Clothes, combs, soaps, spare shoes, all rolled together in one neat bundle. She located hers. Sitting down, she untied the rope and spread out her belongings.

  Spare pants, shirt and shift were peeled away until Renny reached her goal: a soft buckskin dress. It had been a while since she’d worn the dress of her mother’s people. It had been a gift from her mother during their last visit to the Sioux.

  Renny fingered the fringe, rubbed the soft hide dress over her check, and held it close. Glancing down, she saw the knee-high leather moccasins. Inside one boot was a pouch.

  Making up her mind, she stood and strode into the concealing shadows to change her clothing, replacing her jeans and shirt for her native dress. The garment fell to her knees, and clung to her curves. Holding her hands out, she let the leather fringe dangle and flow in the wind.

  Because she loved the feel of the dress, the fringe swinging against her calves, she unbound her hair.