Wild Ecstasy by Cassie Edwards

Author:Cassie Edwards [Edwards, Cassie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-08-12T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Who is the happy warrior?

Who is he that every man in arms should wish to be?

—Wordsworth

Two Weeks Later

The air was crisp and cool. The autumn leaves had fluttered from the trees to the ground, making a bed of color beneath them. Kneeling beside his father’s grave, Echohawk bowed his face into his hands. “Gee-bah-bah,” he whispered mournfully. “It has now been fourteen Chippewa sunrises and still I have not been able to place No-din from my mind. How can I continue to love a woman who is my enemy? How?”

Except for the wind whispering in the soft breeze of late afternoon, there was a keen silence.

And then the silence was broken by a sound behind Echohawk. He turned with a start and found himself looking up at Chief Silver Wing.

“My son, I have come to urge you to join the other braves around the council fire in my lodge,” Chief Silver Wing said, placing a solid hand on Echohawk’s shoulder. “We have much to discuss and you have an integral role in the discussions. Place all sadnesses from your heart and mingle with your people again. You cannot forget that you are now the leader of your band of Chippewa. They await your guidance. Come. Show them that you are now ready to be their leader again.”

Echohawk moved slowly to his feet and faced Chief Silver Wing with a humility never known to him before. In the elder chief’s presence, more and more, Echohawk felt as though he were once again with his father. This chief’s heart and thoughts were so much in tune with his father’s, it seemed—even including his paternal love of Echohawk.

“It is because of my people that I come to commune with my father,” Echohawk finally said. “In life he guided me. Even though he is dead, I still await a vision that he might send to me from the Land of the Hereafter.”

He swallowed hard, then clasped a hand onto Chief Silver Wing’s shoulder. “But I now see that it was not necessary to escape here each day, when it was you I could share my thoughts and sorrows with,” he said humbly. “And my gee-bah-bah would want that.”

“Ay-uh, my son, he would want that,” Chief Silver Wing said thickly. He stepped closer to Echohawk, then quickly embraced him. “Soon you will see the good in life again, if you will just allow it to happen. The woman. You will soon forget the woman.”

Echohawk relished the embrace, closing his eyes; pretending it was his father, then stiffened at the mention of “the woman,” knowing to whom Chief Silver Wing was referring.

No-din.

She was on everyone’s mind, it seemed.

He eased from the elder chief’s embrace and peered at him through the eyeglasses, finding that each day his eyes were improving, if only slightly. “You have asked me more than once why I called her an enemy,” he said, his voice drawn. “Until now I could not tell you. The anger within my heart was too intense to allow me to discuss her.

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