After six reincarnations, a Chickasaw maiden and a Cherokee brave must battle the winds of fate to ensure their love will continue.
Native American legend tells of a Chickasaw maiden and a Cherokee brave who met and loved in the capricious winds that swirl around the Blowing Rock in North Carolina.Winds forceful enough to make snow fall upside down and powerful enough to blow a man back into the arms of his lover when he jumps from the cliff in despair.
Reunited, the two live happily for a while, until Fate, displeased with the maiden for calling on the Cherokee Wind Messengers to reverse destiny, tears them apart again.When she dies at an early age, the brave appeals to Fate for another chance, and they’re given six more lifetimes to atone for their wrongdoing.With each life they’re given the opportunity to prove their love is worthy of eternity.
The maiden comes to each lifetime without knowledge of what has happened in the past while the brave carries the story with him from one life to the next.Connected by their psychic powers, they manage to find each other every time, but so far, they’ve been unable to find the key to unlock Fate’s hold on them.
Now, on their seventh and final time together, Schuyler and Josh are determined to change the Winds of Fate and find eternal happiness.
Excerpt
Schuyler’s fingers clutched the piece of paper in her pocket as she stared at the massive statue of Sequoyah which greeted visitors to the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. She’d come here hoping to find answers to the questions and maybe soothe the voices in her head a little bit.
It hadn’t worked, the voices clamored louder than ever and she hadn’t found any answers during the tour of the museum. The voices shouldn’t bother her. After all, being psychic, she’d lived with other people’s thoughts in her head for as long as she could remember, but these were different somehow. And all of them seemed to be urging her toward some change that she didn’t think she would be comfortable with.
Maybe if she wadded the list of women’s names up and tossed it away, or burned it even, they would shut up and leave her alone. top in her pocketin her pocket, , about the list of names she carried in her pocket, a list written by her grandmother before her death, but as yet, none had appeared.
She’d memorized the list, could recite each name but still had no clue why Nana Suzie had written them down or who they were. Were the dates beside each name, birth and death dates, or did they signify something else, something that happened to those women during that specific time of their lives? Perhaps the years they’d been married or did something that brought meaning to their or other people’s lives? And since her name had been the last one on the list, Schuyler had to wonder how those six other women connected to her?
Her life lately seemed to be a walking, talking, and very frustrating, reverse game of Jeopardy! She knew all the questions but Alex Trebek had left the building without doing her the courtesy of giving her the answers. She was stumped and even with her psychic abilities, which didn’t run to channeling past lives, it looked like she’d stay that way.
She’d hoped to find a clue here at the museum, but she’d gone through the tour inside, keeping all of her mental shields open, or as open as she dared, and hadn’t found anything but a strange sense of déjà vu when she looked at some of the exhibits. The only other thing that had struck her was an odd feeling of empathy as the tour guide spoke of the Trail of Tears.
What was that about?
Questions, questions, and more questions, and she didn’t have a clue how to find the answers. Shaking her head, she told herself it was only a matter of a familial link with these people. They were, after all, her ancestors. Hell, who knew, she might even be related to the man who’d joined the group late and looked as if he had descended directly from Sequoyah himself.
The door to the museum opened and as if she’d called him with her thoughts, he stepped out into the sunshine and his eyes immediately zeroed in on her. He didn’t look at the statue, didn’t seem to notice the spring beauty of the day, or any of the other people milling around, he looked only at her. The warning bells that had followed her through the museum pealed in her mind again. She’d managed to stay away from him during the tour, pretending to be engrossed in the exhibits, but she’d been aware of him the entire time. She could feel him watching her too, his intense, dark brown eyes tracking her every move as she did her best to ignore him and concentrate on the tour.
Who was he and why did she feel as if she knew him on some level, as if she should recognize him, as if she’d been lost without him in her life?
She sighed, more questions she didn’t have the answers to. All she knew was the man made her nervous, especially since she couldn’t deny a certain amount of fascination that drew her to him. She’d vacillated between running away and approaching him to…what? Throw her arms around those broad shoulders and say, “Where have you been all my life?”
Shaking her head at the absurdity of that, she turned her back on him and looked at the statue again. Like the museum tour, Sequoyah didn’t seem to have any answers for her. Her hand went to her pocket again and she had to resist an urge to pull out the paper and show it to him—how stupid would that be?—and demand some answers. Instead she considered what her next move should be. The logical thing to do, she supposed, would be to return to her tiny cabin at the rundown but still beautiful tourist’s resort outside of Asheville and log on to the Internet. Maybe she’d find what she was looking for on one of the genetic research sites.
The man cleared his throat but she didn’t turn to look at him. Instead, she hunched her shoulders in what she hoped was a “keep away from me” stance. Maybe it would keep him from approaching her, but given the run of bad luck she’d been having recently, it would probably only give him more reason to push his way into her personal space.
She’d noticed him the minute he’d stepped through the door of the museum. Just as, she imagined, every other woman in the small lobby had. He wasn’t the type of man who could walk into a room, or even a series of rooms, without attracting the attention of every female there. That alone had been a good enough reason to ignore him at first; he certainly didn’t need her feeding his ego. And when she’d clued in to the fact that he was following her, she’d considered leaving, but something stopped her.
She told herself it was just her obstinate nature, or maybe even simple curiosity. Whatever, damned if she would let him ruin her day. It had taken her months to come here, time she’d wasted trying to convince her heart that her Cherokee heritage didn’t mean a thing to her. Nana Susie’s death had severed any link she had to her past. And why should her ancestors matter to someone like her anyway? Her father was dead, her mother seemed intent on seducing much younger men while ignoring her only daughter and pretending that daughter wouldn’t soon reach the ripe-old-age of thirty, and she had no brothers, sisters, or even cousins. She was only a quarter Cherokee, and though her grandmother had constantly chided her to remember her legacy, she hadn’t seen, and still didn’t, see any reason to do that.
Until recently, when she’d finally moved past her grief and smothered her reluctance at going through Nana Suzie’s things and found the List, as she now called it. She didn’t have a clue what it all meant, but for the first time in many years, she’d decided to take a vacation, opting out of teaching summer classes at the tiny college where she worked and taking the entire summer off. Instead of going to the beach as she normally would on a vacation, she’d come to the western side of the state, to the mountains and forests where her ancestors had once lived, hoping to find some answers.
The museum was rich in Cherokee history, but she hadn’t found anything about her own familial connections and what they meant. She could go to the Oconaluftee Indian Village and maybe there she’d discover some clue about what had driven her grandmother to make that last note beside her own name.
She sighed. The village was most likely the same as the museum, interesting and entertaining, but probably not the place where she’d find answers. Still, maybe it would help her connect to these people in some unknown way and she’d at least get a sense of what it meant to “challenge the winds of fate.”
Not that she believed in fate. She believed a person made their own way in life, guided by their decisions, good or bad, but something told her that line from her grandmother was important and if she ignored it that would be the latest in a long line of bad decisions that had plagued her for years now.
So she’d go and she guessed she’d see what she would see, as Nana Suzie might have said.
She caught sight of the man in her peripheral vision, closer than before, but still keeping a respectable distance and she did the unthinkable for her; she shoved aside her personal rules about respecting the privacy of others, staring at him as she tried to read his mind. The only thing she picked up, a whispered, soothing rustling, made her think of a white noise machine designed to calm her fears and relax her enough to let him get near.
It frightened her and at the same time called to her. Like a moth drawn to the flame.
This is a sentimental and epic story about a young man, injured in the Viewnam War, who returns to Dallas, Texas, in 1964, and begins rebuilding his life. Set against the rock and roll era of the early 1960’s, when casual sex and recreational drugs w
