by Amy Marie
AUTHOR LINKS
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Also by Julie Morgan
Misadventures series
Misadventures with a Firefighter
Misadventures with a Lawyer (coming soon!)
Chronicles of the Fallen series
Fallen
Redemption
Atonement
Culmination
Rapture, a short story
Southern Roots series
Southern Roots
City Lights
Fueled Desire
Driven Hunger
Paramour
Playing Her Body
Deadly Alchemy series
Deadly Alchemy
Fatal Intentions
Wicked Alchemy
Special Ops series
Delta Force
Sniper
Ranger (coming soon!)
Seal (coming soon!)
Stand Alone
Dragon Master
The Covenant of New Orleans series
The Concubine and Her Vampires
The Succubus and Her Vampires
Shared World
HOT SEALs: Guarded by a SEAL
Trident Security: Submitting to Paradise (coming soon!)
Part Eleven
Colors of the Wind by KiKi Malone
A Pocahontas Retelling
Prologue
In a world full of violence and hate, my family still believes in peace.
Every night my parents go down to the reservation to meet with the chiefs and leaders of our tribe.
Our family has been here for many generations. Generations as far back as before the Americas were taken over by the westerners. Our family doesn’t live under the false belief that America was discovered. Our ancestors were here long before the country we now live in was invaded and taken by force.
The vast majority of our population chooses to pretend that our ancestors weren’t murdered and there was peace and harmony when all was said and done. In reality, it was genocide.
If you want to believe all that you’ve learned by the teachings of the history you received as you grew up, do I have a story I could tell you. But that’s a story for another time, another day.
Today, I’m going to tell you my story.
How I came to realize the lies and the truths.
How I came from being the spoiled brat to the person who appreciates all that life and nature has to give.
Chapter 1
Johnnie
“Kristina,” I whined to my best friend on the phone. “They are making me go to the reservation for a year! A whole year. How is this even fair? I’m a grown woman, for goodness sake. I’m twenty-two years old and graduated from college with my master’s earlier than most people graduate. Yet, my parents are making me do this heinous thing. Instead of going out into the world and practicing law as I studied, they want me to go live on the reservation and become one with the land. Does that make any sense?”
“Johnnie, you know you don’t have to do what they tell you to do, right?” Kristina asks, more like tells me for probably the billionth time.
Sure, I’m complaining about how grown I am, but in reality, I do still depend on and respect my parents.
“They’ll hold my trust fund from me if I don’t,” I answer her with more desperation to my voice. “How am I supposed to live on a meager starting salary?”
I know I’m being quite petty, but my parents have always given me everything I’ve asked for. I’ve graduated from college with a degree in environmental law without any debt or student loans or any help from the government.
Although I wanted to try to get grants for school, my parents refused to allow me to do so. They told me repeatedly that being Native American didn’t mean I needed handouts. They told me they, themselves, would make sure I had the best education and my only repayment to them would be that I’d have to live on the reservation for a year without any benefits of the modern world.
So, I abided by their request.
I always thought there was no way they’d remember our agreement by the time I graduated. But to my dismay, they remembered, and here I am, getting ready to live a year in solitude.
Okay, solitude may be exaggerating a little bit, but come on…I have to live without any forms of technology and have to learn how to live as our ancestors did. I’m supposed to learn to live off the land, how to cultivate and hunt and make do with what I can do myself instead of having anyone do it for me.
“Johnnie, just tell them no,” Kristina replies, once again, exasperation clear in her voice. “What are they going to do? Make you pay back your tuition? Put you out on the street? They already have control of your trust fund. They can just take the money they spent from there. Hell, tell them they can take any interest that may have accrued had you taken out student loans with it. That should make them happy.”
What my best friend is trying to convey has some merit, and I ponder telling my parents just that when I suddenly hear a voice in my head.
‘Your ancestors paid their penance to give you all that you have today, granddaughter. Don’t let all we’ve had to sacrifice go to the wayside. Be true to yourself and your heritage and learn how to live like the rest of the tribe. It’s what each and every one of us has done and will continue to do.’
As the voice of my grandmother fills my head, my body reacts, and my heart warms up remembering her embrace as I sat in her lap when she shared that wisdom with me. And that’s when I truly know that I must honor her as she has honored her ancestors. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have all that I hold dear today.
“No, Kristina, I don’t have a choice. I have to do it,” I say to her with a resolution to my voice. “I could not have made it to where I am today had it not been for them. It’s my duty and my honor.”
With that final statement to my best friend, I hang up the phone and throw it to the foot of my bed.
I know she would continue to try to talk me out of it as she has been trying to do for years, but I can’t, and I won’t let her. With my name comes honor and with honor comes respect. That respect is what I need to show my family. That respect is what I need to give my great ancestors because without them, I couldn’t do the things I’ve done so far in my life.
I have come to realize it’s not a sacrifice I’m going to be making, but it’s an obligation—a duty I must fulfill as has everyone before me.
So, I get my unappreciative ass off my bed, reach underneath to grab my suitcase and start packing.
Chapter 2
Smith
I’ve had all about I could take today. These assholes I work with want to do whatever the hell they feel like doing. They don’t care about regulations or boundaries or surveys or landlines. They think as long as they appear to be getting shit done, they’ll make a paycheck.
I know that this land we are getting ready to level is beyond the area we are supposed to be working on. I keep studying the land and the map survey to roughly measure where exactly we are supposed to be, but these men I’m working with think they could make more money if they just cut down more trees—and that for sure isn’t going to happen.
How are we going to make the money they think we are if we are not working in the right area? How are we going to get paid for doing the wrong thing? The company that hired us to level this land is expecting to have the land they paid for cut down, not an area outside of the zone they purchased. They won’t be able to build their homes in an area that doesn’t belong to them.
“Hey, Smitty, get your ass to work,” Mitch, the foreman of our group, yells to me.
I’m still sitting here looking at the map of the land the surveyor gave us for this area.
“It’s not the right spot,” I quickly answer for what seems like the hundredth time since we got here. “Look, we’re supposed to be over there,” I say as I point to the area I believe we s
hould be working on. The major problem is that when the land was purchased there weren’t any lines or markers put on or in the ground to tell us where all the landlines were supposed to be.
“Let me see,” Mitch replies as he snatches the blueprints away from me. He starts looking around the area we are in as he tries to decipher where we should be working.
“We should be about two miles in that direction,” I tell him, pointing to the east.
“There are too many fucking trees that look the same,” Mitch conveys as he shrugs his shoulders. “Let’s just get this leveled for now. At the end of the day, if this is the wrong area, it’ll just give us another days’ work, which means another day’s pay. I’m sure they’ll eventually use up this space anyway.”
He’s wrong and he knows it, but he’d never admit it. I won’t let him do something he shouldn’t be doing.
“We can’t just cut trees down for the hell of it. We’re here to do a job, and if we don’t do the job we’re contracted to do, then we won’t get paid,” I state, trying to rationalize with him.
I know he’s the boss, but even he knows we won’t get paid, like he keeps trying to say, for doing the wrong thing. We’ll get our asses fired, that’s the only thing that will happen if we don’t do the job we’re supposed to be doing.
“You need to stop this, stop them,” I say as I point to the other men who are working with us on this project.
All the other workers just want to follow orders and do what they are told to do. They are currently assembling the equipment we will need to get this project done, even though I’m quite sure it isn’t the right area where we should be working.
“Do you always have to give me such a hard, fucking time?” Mitch asks, shaking his head.
Just his response tells me he knows what I’m saying is true. He’s probably just mad that I’ve made him look bad to the rest of the crew.
“When you’re not doing the right thing, absolutely,” I answer honestly. It doesn’t take a lot to do the right thing and a paycheck really doesn’t mean we are doing what we are supposed to be doing.
“Pack it up,” Mitch yells to the crew, who groan with disappointment. “Goody two-shoes here is making us move somewhere else.”
That motherfucker. He just acted like he understood we were doing the wrong thing, and now he’s putting the blame on me. Whatever, he can say what he wants. Just as long as we move from this area, which is giving me a vibe that I don’t think I could ever explain. It feels like I’d be haunted for the rest of my life if I would have allowed them to cut down this huge ass tree in this field.
As the workers begin to pack up, I look around me. Behind the trees, I see a woman whose beauty I can’t explain. She seems to have captured my soul in just a look, and I have to turn my head to shake it off and make sure it’s not just my imagination or some spirit that lives here and why this place has me feeling so weird.
When I turn back to look to see her again, she’s gone in an instant. I know I wasn’t imagining her there because what I saw is just so far beyond my imagination.
I vow here and now, I will find that woman again. But for now, I know that moving from this location was the right move and makes my resolve all the much clearer.
Chapter 3
Johnnie
When Kilo came running into the reservation and was telling us about someone on our land that shouldn’t be there, we all thought he was just being a little boy with an imagination. The tribe thought with my skills and degree, I should be the one to go out there and investigate the situation.
Not only was Kilo correct that people were on our reservation, but it also appeared they were about to desecrate our sacred land.
When I was just about to go out and stop them, I heard a man about my age speak up, and he told whoever was in charge that they were in the wrong place.
Relief flooded through me immediately.
I stayed back in the trees so no one would be aware of my presence. It was the safest and smartest thing for a twenty-two-year-old woman to do when there were at least twenty men who appeared to be my age and older out there.
As they reloaded their equipment, the man turned my way. The look on his face was that of someone who thought they saw an apparition. I didn’t want him to know it was me that was there, so I hid behind the big tree when he turned away from me.
I was very thankful he spoke up so I didn’t have to because the tree I was hiding behind happened to be the most sacred tree in our tribe. Should something happen to this tree, I don’t know how my tribe would have reacted.
My tribe believed that our ancestors’ spirits lived in the branches of this tree. They believed every time one of the elders passed on to the great beyond, a new limb was formed from their spirits. Should something happen to even one of the limbs on this tree, it would cause a whole slew of reparations to happen to our tribe.
When I look back out to the forest beyond this tree, I see that all the men have packed up and left. At least I will be able to go back to my tribe and report to them that all is well with our sacred land. And I can let Kilo’s parents know that this time it wasn’t their son’s imagination, there were people on our reservation attempting to do harm to our sacred tree.
I decide to take a walk around the land and feel the spirits of our past going through me. I know that’s weird to think about for most people, but for us, and our culture, it’s natural. We still feel the spirits living amongst us, and it gives us more feelings of peace. I wish that more people outside of our reservation and outside of our culture could feel and believe as we do. I’m sure there would be more peace and harmony around the world if people would listen to the spirits of the past and learn from their mistakes.
I’ve been here on the reservation for over a month now and I do see why this was so important to my parents and to my ancestors. To learn to live off the land and make peace with nature is so refreshing. Not having a phone in my hand twenty-four hours a day gives my brain more time to process things happening around me. It allows me to see more than I ever would have if I was stuck in front of a computer or in front of the television. Learning about my past and about the real world doesn’t come from books, or television, or the news, it comes with living your life and learning how to listen and to feel.
As I think this, I look down at my bare feet. Never in the streets where we live or where I went to school, would I ever have walked without shoes. The number of germs and diseases that live in those streets makes me shiver with a pause. I wish I could live the rest of my life not having to confine my feet and feel the earth move underneath me. It’s a feeling I don’t think I could explain.
I sit down at the base of the great tree and look up. So many spirits live in this tree. So much knowledge to be learned that I don’t think living here for a year will be enough.
I make a vow to myself that for the rest of my life, I’m going to spend at least a month a year out here with my ancestors.
Finally, after feeling I’ve taken enough time, I get up to go back to the leaders and tell them what I found out here.
One reason I decided to become an environmental attorney is because I want to make sure the little land left that my tribe still lives on stays with us and isn’t desecrated. Had those men I saw out there earlier had continued to set up their equipment, I would have definitely made my presence known and would have done everything I could to stop them.
Happily, however, it seemed like that man had a decent head on his shoulders and knew they weren’t supposed to be here. I was happy when he stopped them from hurting our land, our spirits, and our great tree.
When he had glanced at me, it was as if he was looking through my soul, and it gave me a little pause. In a normal circumstance, I would’ve said hello to him. He was handsome with his dark hair and dark eyes. He looked as if maybe he had a little Native American in himself, but so many of our people have been with others outside our tribe, so it’s possible he is mixed.
I
promised my family that I would be true to our people and only marry someone who was either within our tribe or was a Native American also. It’s important to bring back our people.
Chapter 4
Smith
It’s been a month since I’ve seen the beauty of the trees. It seems like it has been so long, and I can’t get her out of my head. She comes to me every night in my dreams. And most days, I have a sense that she’s watching me. I know it’s a ridiculous notion since we are literally in the middle of nowhere, but I swear, I can feel her presence around me all the time. Every time I feel her eyes on me, I turn in the direction I feel them coming from and the only thing I see is that huge tree in the distance that we almost cut down.
Since that day, I’ve come to learn that it was a blessing that we didn’t cut down that tree. Apparently, it’s a part of an Indian reservation and the natives to that land consider it sacred. I sure as hell am glad we didn’t bring it down. If we had we would have suffered not only the wrath of the natives but the wrath of the spirits. I’m not very spiritual, but I sure as hell do believe that we would’ve been cursed and haunted had we continued on that path.
That also leads me to believe that the woman I saw might very well be one of the spirits guarding the tree. If she is not a spirit, maybe she’s just a guardian protecting her property. Well, not just a guardian because I imagine it would be considered a great honor to be tasked with protecting something so sacred amongst your people.