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“Do not be afraid,” Wolf Hawk said, knowing that all of this must be so strange to her. But this visit was completely necessary. If his grandfather did not use his magical cures on Mia, she might not live for many more tomorrows, and he wanted her with him forever, not only for a few more feverish days.
“I suddenly feel no fear,” Mia murmured, then licked her dry, parched lips. “I…I…want to be well, Wolf Hawk.”
“And you will be,” Wolf Hawk replied.
He emerged on the other side of the wolf willows and now headed directly toward his grandfather’s large tepee, which cast a huge shadow all around it as it sat in the bright moonlight.
“Mia, I promise that you will be well,” Wolf Hawk again reassured her. “Soon.”
“I…trust…you,” Mia murmured. She again licked her parched lips. “I…even trust…your grandfather because he is your kin.”
“Mia, you need trust and faith now more than ever before. You must feel both for my grandfather’s magic to work on you,” Wolf Hawk said, stopping right outside his grandfather’s closed entrance flap.
“Magic?” Mia said, her eyes widening. “He is going to use magic to make me well?”
“Do not let that word bring fear back into your heart,” Wolf Hawk said thickly. “Just think good things and good things will happen to you.”
“I will,” Mia said, watching now as Wolf Hawk spoke his grandfather’s name.
Scarcely breathing, she waited and watched for the entrance flap to be drawn aside. When it was, she found herself gazing at the oldest person she had ever seen. The Shaman stood there in what looked like a bearskin robe, his gray hair worn in one long braid down his back.
He was a tiny man, much shorter than his grandson Wolf Hawk. He seemed to have shrunk from old age, and his face was furrowed with many wrinkles.
But in the moon’s glow she saw eyes that did not show any signs of age. Instead they were dark and brilliant.
And as she gazed into them, she saw kindness, even wisdom. She felt that she was right not to fear him.
“Grandfather, this woman is in need of your curative powers,” Wolf Hawk said, realizing immediately that his grandfather was hesitant to ask him and Mia into his lodge.
He understood.
No whites had ever been on this island, nor even in their village, which had purposely been established far from any white man’s home.
And now? His grandson had actually brought one of the white eyes to his private island?
Ho, Yes, Wolf Hawk understood his grandfather’s hesitance. But for the first time in his life, Wolf Hawk would prove his grandfather wrong about something.
He must, for the life of this woman Wolf Hawk cared so deeply for lay in the balance.
“Grandfather, this is a friend and she is in need of your help,” Wolf Hawk said thickly.
“She is white,” Talking Bird said flatly. “Her skin is the color of our enemy’s.”
“Although her skin is white, she is special to me,” Wolf Hawk admitted. “And she is not our enemy. She is a friend, a friend who seeks help from someone who has the power to heal her.”
Talking Bird continued to stand in his doorway, blocking Wolf Hawk’s entrance into his medicine lodge.
Slowly Wolf Hawk lowered Mia to the ground, laying her on a thick bed of moss that stretched out, like soft silk, around his grandfather’s lodge. It had been purposely removed from the forest floor and planted there by Wolf Hawk for his grandfather’s comfort.
Wolf Hawk gazed up at his grandfather. “I will show you,” he said thickly.
Then Wolf Hawk gazed into Mia’s eyes, which were once again filled with fear at the way she had been received by Wolf Hawk’s Shaman grandfather.
She was white. She had a reason to be afraid.
It was up to Wolf Hawk to make both his grandfather and his woman feel more comfortable with each other so that Mia could be healed.
Wolf Hawk slowly lifted the hem of her dress to reveal Mia’s swollen, seeping legs to his grandfather. “She found herself in the midst of poison vine and she is now ill from her reaction to it,” he said, again gazing up at his grandfather.
