I Am Called Shaman - Rebecca Reeves The Shaman Series

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apart into a V, like geese flying in formation.

      I couldn’t wait to be an adult, to be able to do what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it. First of all, I’d sell our house in Scottsdale and live up here in Sedona at the cabin. Today, I’d ride my bike up to Midgley Bridge, and resume my search for the character old timers call “Big Ole Bear.” I’d get my sketchbook and be back here an hour before sunset to watch Mama Cottontail and her most recent litter of bunnies. She’d been so easy with my presence yesterday I didn’t want to break our routine. I’d eat pizza for dinner. I’d get a dog. I’d have three dogs. And a horse.

      I floated a little longer before leaving the water to bake dry on the sand. The sun’s rays beat down on my skin, and made red geometric patterns behind my eyelids. A woodpecker drummed a hypnotic tune in a nearby tree. The music faded when my ears plugged up.

      I tilted my head to drain out any creek water. It didn’t help. I swallowed hard several times as my parents had taught me to do on long airplane trips, but the pressure kept building until my heartbeat became the only sound in the world.

      Then came the sound of a second heartbeat, slower than mine, but encased within my body.

      My eyes snapped open.

      She stood on the narrow ribbon of sand against the cliff wall. Diamonds flashed off the water that flowed between us. She wore suede moccasin boots with chunks of turquoise sewn around the top. Above her temple, thick ropes of matte black hair were offset by a silver-dollar sized shock of white strands. A chiseled black stone lay at the base of her graceful throat, and an assortment of feathers dangled from the handle of her walking stick. Her face shimmered like a mirage, first young and smooth, then old and weathered. Her serene black eyes didn’t waiver.

      There were only two ways to get to the spot on which she stood: rappel down the cliff or wade through the water.

      There was no rope hanging behind her. Her clothes were dry.

      Was it her heartbeat I heard?

      The corners of her mouth turned up.

      Too much sun, dehydration maybe, this couldn’t be happening. I squished my eyes shut and pressed them against my knees, but her heartbeat remained strong and mesmerizing.

      Another beat joined the rhythm, this one faster, but not discordant. The combination like the Hopi drumming ceremony my dad had taken me to last summer.

      I dared myself to open my eyes.

      An enormous gray wolf stood beside her. His head was as high as her waist, his celestial blue eyes intent, but not threatening. A breeze rippled his fur.

      Then it happened. The woman lifted her arms out from her sides as if she were conducting a symphony. As her arms rose higher, a cacophony of pulsating life joined ours; beetles under the loamy soil, birds in the trees, even the trees themselves had a heartbeat.

      I was hearing the surging life forces with my body more than my ears, but still it was deafening — and painful; as if my insides were rearranging themselves, struggling to make room to hold all this life.

      Just as the scream was leaving my lips, something shifted inside me, and I let go. With that last shred of resistance gone, I exploded into a ball of golden light. Then there was only blackness.

      When I came to, the woman and the wolf were gone.

      Her walking stick lay on the ground beside me. The feathers fluttered in the breeze.

      Twenty-One Years Later

      Friday, March 20

      Day One

      Chapter One

      7:55 a.m.

      I knelt in silence with my father by the weeping willow tree. A swan glided across the glassy surface of the pond then disappeared behind a thatch of cattail. The morning dew had seeped through my jeans and my knees were beginning to ache, but I held still, unwilling to break this fragile moment.

      I’d arrived in time to witness the sun rise from behind the Four Peaks of the McDowell Mountains east of Phoenix. The sun heralded this year’s spring equinox; the day when the sun passes over the equator and causes night and day to be of equal length everywhere.

      I’d have been here anyway because it was the 20th day of March. The date held more significance for me than a mere planetary alignment. This day had etched a thick black gash through my history, forever relegating my personal timeline to that which came before, and that which came after.

      When the sun’s ascent had erased all shadows from the foothills of the McDowells, I stretched out my legs, and brushed the dried blades of grass off the cold marble surface of my father’s tombstone.

      “I miss you, Daddy,” I said.

      Twenty years ago today, my father had been murdered out there under the Four Peaks, his life stolen by a man who would become one of the deadliest and most elusive serial killers of our time. That the place of my father’s death was morbidly in view of his grave, here, some thirty miles away in the heart of north Scottsdale, made me wonder about the people who’d been advising my mother in her time of grief.

      I busied my hands arranging the bouquet of white roses I’d brought. I put the vase on the marble.

      “They published my novel.” I picked up the hardcover book and opened it to the second page. “For my Father,” I read aloud. “A circle of love surrounds you.”

      The dedication matched the epitaph inscribed on his tombstone. He used to assure me that, no matter where I went, no matter the distance, I’d always be surrounded with his love.

      I wanted to hear his voice praising me for the accomplishment, for having created something with my own hands, but there was only twenty years of silence. Seeing the dedication for the first time had been exhilarating, I couldn’t wait to share it with him. Now I felt only shame for having wasted my time on something as frivolous as the writing of fiction.

      “I haven’t forgotten. I just don’t know what to do anymore.” The weight of my unfulfilled promise pushed my shoulders forward. The band of hopelessness that tightened around my chest with each passing year, cinched up, and forced tears to fall onto my clenched hands.

      Long ago I vowed to find my father’s killer, but still he walked free; free to live a life, free to take the lives of others. Then, just when I’d thought I had a chance of catching him, he’d disappeared. Ten years without a trace, not one single clue. I was coming to believe that my father’s killer was dead, and the thought that he might’ve escaped justice because I’d been too late in taking action or too inept to take the right action, filled me with bitter regret.

      “Dead or alive, I promise you, I’ll never stop searching until I find him.” I wiped my eyes and placed my hand on the ground over the spot where I thought his heart would be. “I love you, Daddy.”

      A procession of cars snaked their way through the cemetery.

      It was time to go anyway, time to do what I did every year on this horrible day: go home, watch the news, and wait for my father’s killer to strike again.

      I pulled one rose from the bouquet and placed it on my mother’s grave before walking away from the rising sun.

      10:30 a.m.

      God made the Grand Canyon, but she lives in Sedona.

      One hundred and twenty miles north of Scottsdale, I passed by Bell Rock and slipped into the welcoming embrace of Sedona. Here, it’s as if the walls of the Grand Canyon had been torn asunder and raked outward to form a bowl, eighteen miles wide. Scattered within the bowl are colossal red rock monoliths, with names like “Cathedral” and “The Sphinx.” Dr. Rorschach would have had a heyday picking images out of the eroded remnants

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