Daughter of Destiny (8 page)

Snorting, Kai growled, “His explanation felt right to me, but this is another world I know nothing of. Rich millionaires paying thieves to steal Native American power objects to gloat over?” She glanced toward Jake through slitted
eyes. “Smythe was hard to take. I hope not all Aussie males are like him. I could barely tolerate his overinflated ego.”

Chuckling, Jake said, “Mike Houston did warn us ahead of time, remember? He said some Aussie men were throwbacks to the 1950s when men were like Neanderthals. They haven't yet learned to evolve like American guys and become humble. I'm sure it will happen over time.”

Kai joined his laughter. Her heart twinged as she looked through her lashes at Jake's strong profile. Oh, he was terribly handsome, there was no doubt. Those high cheekbones and his aquiline nose proved his Cherokee heritage, and he had his mother's eyes. Kai remembered Jake's mom. She'd had the largest, most beautiful golden eyes Kai had ever seen—so full of life, sparkling with intelligence and wisdom. Jake had inherited her gentle wisdom, too.

For that, Kai breathed an inner sigh of relief. He could have been like Lionel Smythe, who thought he was God's gift to women.

When Smythe had given her an obviously ogling look, Kai had glared back at him, with such fierceness the man practically went ashen. He got the not-so-subtle message that she wasn't the least bit interested in him. Right now, men weren't on her list of favorite subjects. Well…most weren't. Jake was okay, but he was an old friend from her past—although it was a past she wanted to forget. Having him on this mission stirred up painful memories of her childhood. Kai sighed, desperately wanting to sleep. “Are we there yet?”

“Yep, we are. Take a look, here's the hotel. Nice design. We're home….” He turned the car onto the asphalt driveway. Ahead was a red stucco building with walls shaped
in curves, reminding him of a woman's wide hips. Or of the smooth, feminine curves of Uluru, perhaps. There was a huge fountain of water on one side of wide stairs leading up to double glass doors. The water trickled down in a three-foot wide channel over smooth red rocks.

Everywhere he looked, Jake saw dark-skinned Aboriginal people, from teenagers to the elderly. They were dressed casually in everyday Anglo clothing, with no hotel uniform in sight. A youth of about eighteen, with curly black hair tamed into a ponytail at the back of his head, came forward with a wide smile on his face.

“Welcome! Welcome! We are glad you had arrived….” He opened the door for Kai.

She couldn't help but return the young man's infectious, toothy smile. His dark brown eyes were filled with genuine warmth, and as she unwound from the car, she felt her tiredness receding. After all, his people were
her
people, and she never forgot that. Indigenous people around the world were all connected on a much deeper level.

She saw him look at her with admiration and he pointed to her skin. “Your color is familiar. Are you Native American?”

“Yes, I am. Eastern Cherokee.”

Thrusting his hand out, he said, “I'm called Sam. We are one.”

Gripping his large hand, Kai shook it warmly. “Yes, we are one,” she said, suddenly choked up by the young man's sincere demeanor.

“Come, come, I will take your bags. We have cool lime water with honey waiting for you inside.”

Jake smiled at Sam as the two of them shook hands. “Sounds good to me.”

Kai nodded. “I'm so thirsty I could drink a gallon of it right now….”

 

The dream began again. The same dark, roiling storm clouds filled the sky, the same growling thunder beat against her ears. Kai was deeply asleep and yet she tossed and turned as fear filled her once more. This time, as the darkness raced to enclose her and then swirl slowly around her like a gyrating tornado, she saw Ooranye's wrinkled old face appear out of the mushrooming clouds.

“Come to me, child…come to me. There isn't much time. You must come right away. The
gwai gubbera
awaits you….”

Moaning, Kai rolled to her side. She saw the woman's form begin to appear as well. The elder wore a loose, dark green gown, with bright yellow embroidery around the scoop neck that fell to her ankles. Her curly hair, a gunmetal gray, framed her face like a hundred coiled snakes. Kai was entranced with that visage. It was stern, yet filled with incredible kindness. Through her fear, Kai felt the old woman reach out and touch her heart. Instantly, her fear dissolved. In its place, Kai felt hot tears building beneath her closed eyelids.

“Come to me, child. Time is precious…. You must get to the
gwai gubbera,
the magic stone, before they do. Come to me….”

The old Aboriginal woman lifted her arm to point, and Kai looked in that direction. In the distance, she saw the dramatic shape of Uluru rising out of the desert. And then
Ooranye pointed to the north where two camels suddenly appeared, heading in a northerly direction. They kept walking, and Kai saw two sunrises and sunsets pass in her mind's eyes. At the end of what would be the second day, she saw a small community appear on the horizon. As the camels approached, she saw Ooranye standing there, waiting for her. The old woman was gesturing for Kai to hurry toward her. As before, Ooranye kept chanting
“Kalduke.”

Slowly, the dream began to dissolve, and Kai woke up with a start, feeling a sense of urgency and of danger.

 

The next morning over breakfast, Kai related the dream to Jake. They sat at a small square table in one of the many alcoves in the pleasant hotel restaurant. It was 7:00 a.m. and the day was still cool. Probably in the eighties, she surmised, as she wolfed down her eggs, bacon and toast. There were many other hotel guests present, but conversations were muted due to the many thriving plants strategically placed to give everyone a sense of privacy in the large, airy room.

“What do you make of it?” Kai asked, sipping her coffee. She had written down the words phonetically as she'd heard them in the dream. Jake sat opposite her, dressed in a pair of khaki chinos, leather boots and a long-sleeved white cotton shirt with a khaki shooting vest over it. They had special police permits to carry revolvers, but at the moment they had left their guns in their rooms, concealed from view. Members of the public weren't allowed to carry a weapon in Australia, so when Kai and Jake wore theirs they'd have to hide them beneath their clothing.

Jake cut into his French toast, which was smothered with green kiwi sauce. “It sounds like she knows you're here. And that Kalduke is the village where she's waiting, as you predicted. I'll put a call into Smythe and try to track what the other Aboriginal words mean after breakfast.”

“Okay. And camels…I know
nothing
about camels, except that they're light brown and they spit.”

“Yeah,” Jake said, eating his French toast with relish. “There are actually two colors. The common variety are tan. The others are white, a special breed of racing camels, that comes from Saudi Arabia.”

“Why would I be seeing camels in my dream, do you think?”

“Because Australia has camels, lots of them. They were brought here in the 1800s and put to use by the British Army. Right now, there are a quarter of a million feral camels running loose right here in the Red Center.” He saw the look of surprise on her face. “I think we ought to check at the hotel desk and see if there's a camel station around here that rents them to cross the Outback. If they do, then that means your dream is real.”

“A double check.”

“Exactly.”

Kai sat back in the white wicker chair and sipped her coffee, deep in thought. “Grams always said that some Cherokee people possessed a special skill in dreaming.”

“Right. Lucid dreaming abilities.”

“Can you do it?”

“No. My mother had that skill, though. But you seem to have the ability up and running. Ooranye has always
connected with you in your dream state, so you must have the skill yourself.”

“Humph. I wonder if Aboriginal Dreamtime is the same as what we call our dream state?”

“Maybe,” Jake said. “I've done enough research to know that Indian nations have different words for the same thing. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Aboriginal Dreamtime was similar to Cherokee lucid dreaming.” He wiped his mouth on the white linen napkin and reached for the delicate white coffee cup painted with red-and-black flowers known as Sturt Peas. “My mom told me that our dreaming facility is a gift from our heritage. And lucid dreaming, the ability to change things while in the dream state, is considered a great talent. Did your Gram ever train you how to lucid dream?”

Shaking her head, Kai said with derision, “You've got to be kidding me. I wanted
nothing
to do with these things. Both my parents could lucid dream, so I guess I got the genetics for it.”

“I guess you didn't want to learn the medicine way because of how your mother, however gifted she was as a medicine woman, suffered under your father's hand.” Jake spoke the words softly and with great understanding, yet he saw Kai's face go stony and her eyes flash with anger. Every time he mentioned her past, she bristled like a threatened porcupine raising its considerable array of quills to defend itself.

“Let's just talk about the present, shall we?” Her words were clipped and brittle sounding.

“Sure, no problem. Looks like we're done with break
fast. How about I go call Smythe from my room and you check with the concierge about camels in this area? I'll meet you back here in, say, fifteen minutes?”

“Fine,” Kai grumped, shoving her chair away from the table and standing. She drew out an olive-green baseball cap and settled it on her head. Smythe had given them each a specially made nylon cap that allowed the head to breathe through the fabric while protecting against the brutal sun. In the worst of the heat, flaps could be lowered to shade their neck and shoulders from the glare.

Kai adjusted the cap on her head and, with a wary nod at Jake, left the table.

 

Jake saw Kai sitting in the lounge of the hotel when he returned from his room. She had a bunch of brochures in her lap and was looking at one of them, in keeping with their cover as tourists. Jake saw she was wearing her Rail Riders, boots, and a long-sleeved white shirt she'd bought at the store with a green nylon vest hanging open over it. Nothing could hide her sensuality or femininity in his eyes.

She looked up as he approached. Jake took the overstuffed chair next to hers near the glass coffee table. “Well, we've hit pay dirt,” he told her quietly. “Kalduke is a small Aborigine village two days north of Uluru, just as your dream told you. Congratulations. Looks like you've got an open pipeline to Ooranye in the dream state.”

Raising her brows, Kai sat up and placed all the brochures on the coffee table in front of her. “That's wild, because I don't normally dream at all. When I was flying F-14 Tomcats, I hardly ever dreamed. Probably because I spent
most of the time flying and trying to keep my ass in one piece when the Iraqis fired SAMs at us.”

Smiling briefly, Jake opened his thighs, folding his hands between them as he leaned forward. “You have the gift, there's no question. Smythe is faxing us a map of how to get to this village. He said that in the Red Center many of the Aboriginal people want nothing to do with white men, and have basically discouraged the building of roads or airports near their enclaves. So…” he smiled more widely “…the only way to get to this village is by…”

“Let me guess. Camel.”

“Yep.” He was grinning now. “And I gave him the other words that Ooranye said to you. He had a little trouble with them at first because you'd spelled them phonetically.” Jake crouched down in front of her, holding out a piece of paper. “Ooranye means rainbow in the local Aboriginal language.”

Kai blinked. “Rainbow?”

“Yeah. Their names are probably like ours, and all mean something. It appears that some, if not all, are derived from nature.”

“Rainbow. That's a beautiful name….” Kai looked down at his scrawl across the paper. “What else did you find out from our Neanderthal?”

Grinning, Jake tapped his finger over the next set of words. “You heard her say
‘gwai gubbera'?
”

“That's right. So you got the translation for that, too?” Her heart lifted. It was beyond Kai to think that what she was dreaming was in fact real. She'd never had this happen before in her life, and it seemed to have opened up dur
ing the four days of her vision quest, on the mountain above Grams's cabin.

“We're on a roll, Kai. Yeah, it means magic stone.”

Gasping, Kai sat back. “The quartz crystal mask?”

“I think so. I asked Smythe if there was an Aboriginal word for crystal and he said no, that they'd refer to it as a ‘stone.' This is only a lead,” Jake cautioned her. “Smythe isn't an expert on the Aboriginal people. He's not sure if they work with quartz crystal or not.”

“I'll be damned,” Kai whispered, picking up the paper and looking at it. “Then I'm not just dreaming. This is really happening…it's real! I'm not just making it all up….”