by Sheryl Seal
Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,
even a stranger, when in a lonely place.
Show respect to all people and grovel to none.
When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living.
If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.
Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.
When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled
with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep
and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.
Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.
Chief Tecumseh (Crouching Tiger) Shawnee Nation 1768-1813
Chapter 19
~Grey Wolf~
I was chanting my death song and felt no fear as I sang my prayers and blessings to The Great Spirit. Lightly and in a beautiful voice, I heard my heart and soul join me in her death chant.
I glanced over at the cage that held her and coming up from the cave floor, I watched as a puddle of water formed and then turned into the Demon Goblin. This was not the Demon Goblin of before though.
His transformation stabilized and I watched in fascination as he first touched the bars to Oria’s cage and then became the bars. They melted away and she was released.
“It is good to see you Brave Eagle.”
“It is good to see you also, my Queen.” She hugged him and he wavered and shifted again into her image and then settled on a young Indian brave.
How this young man shifted into whatever he seemed to touch was amazing to me but there was no time for pleasantries. “Over here, young warrior, can you release me?”
“Yes I believe that I can free you Grey Wolf, I am Brave Eagle.” He looked up at me and smiled and I thought I recognized his face, but could not place from where. While I was distracted with this thought he shifted again into a vine that grew and entangled itself around my restraints. The shifting process began again and he was the odd metal that held me captive. I felt the restraints give as first one released my arm and then the other. He held on to me and swung me to the cave floor gracefully.
Astonished at what this young man had accomplished, I stood there and watched as he shifted back into the young brave again. That was when I noticed a combination of Red Thunder and Aponi. I smiled at him and grabbed him up in a bear hug. “Child of my brother, it is good to finally meet you Brave Eagle .But how is it possible for a Dweller to shift in this way?”
Smiling broadly at me, he explained. “I was but a puddle on the cave floor when the Demon Goblin stepped in me. I can shift into anything that I touch. Only he has the power of the elements within him. I would never have been able to free you otherwise. I have been blessed with the shifting of many people and objects.”
“Really we must leave this place before the Demon Goblin comes back.” Hugging me to her tightly yet trying not to hurt my already wounded flesh, I realized my wife was correct, but it was too late as we heard the howling coming towards us.
“Leave now Brave Eagle!” He hesitated for a moment and I told him we were right behind him. There was no more time for words as Brave Eagle shifted into a massive bat and fled the cave.
“Follow him Grey Wolf; I will handle this Demon Goblin.”
“I will not leave you my love, this is a different evil then we thought the Ale to be. He is only after the essence that you have flowing through your veins. He will die to have it.”
“Then he will die, because I have no intention of giving up my life for this horrid creature!” She took her stance and waited for the creature to come into eyesight. I shifted into my wolf and waited beside her.
He came at us howling and slobbering in a blurry array of shapes and sizes, his rage knew no bounds as he charged at us. Stronger than I have ever known my wife to be, she put her hand up and he hit an invisible wall and bounced off landing on the cave floor in a heap.
This only slowed him down for a mere second before he howled in rage and turned himself into a cyclone of wind. Twirling higher and higher, he now moved through the cave where he would be free of the magic of my wife.
Following closely behind him, my wife had also shifted and as her own twister of wind she made her way out of the cave.
She swallowed many inferior goblins in her wake. I took out more as I followed and shaking my head and flinging one through the air, I entered the daylight.
The sight that met my eyes when exiting the cave was one of a great battle taking place with many goblins and the Dwellers of Ahwahnee.
The goblins were really no match for the Dwellers. They were big and awkward, while we were quick and could shift into our spirit animals. There were hundreds of them though and as I neared my son Fire Walker, he recognized me, raised his arm in the air and yelled “Hoka-hey.”
He shifted from a wolf into a fiery ball, which rolled and plowed right through at least a dozen Goblins. They were burning and howling and dying all over the meadow. Inwardly, I smiled proudly and giving my war cry, I also started shredding the nearest Goblins to me.
As I turned towards another Goblin, I noticed that the ones I had just destroyed were rising again and their limbs were growing back. We would never win this battle at this rate.
Looking up into the sky, there above the growing clouds, I spotted Red Thunder and Aponi as Golden Eagles. With the extra powers my wife had given them many years before; they were ensnaring many Goblins in a wire mesh. My beautiful daughter and her mighty dragon would then blow her fire into the trapped Goblins. That appeared to be working well. The goblins were incinerated.
War was all around the Dwellers but they were finding ways to defeat the hordes that still poured out of Bower’s Cave.
Approaching one side of about fifty Goblins was the biggest Grizzly Bear and as she started to fling the Goblins out of her way, another very furious and monstrous white bear came from the opposite side doing the same. White Bear and Sapata were also here in the midst of the battle.
To see all of my old friends and family again when I thought I was at deaths door was an amazing site. Just like the battles we had fought before against evil, this was just another evil that we could defeat together. But where were my wife and the Demon Goblin?
Since I had been out of the cave, I had not spotted either of them. Fearful of where my beloved was, I tore into a few more Goblins ripping their heads from their bodies and tossing them aside. They lay there for a less than a minute before they grew their heads back and disoriented only for a moment, they came at me again.
My daughter appeared in between us and threw fiery arrows from her dragon’s mouth and the Goblins were nothing but ash. Disappearing again from my view, she was gone. That was when I shifted and flew high.
Ever since I was joined with my wife on our wedding night, it always surprised me that I could also become a great beast dragon of the skies.
Not seeing my daughter anywhere, she was now missing in action with my wife and the Demon Goblin. Lightning raced across the sky in bright blinding colors and thunder boomed so powerful it shook the earth.
It sounded as if Bower’s Cave was falling in on itself. Then the rain and wind came as it always does when my heart and soul had reached her most dangerous. I knew that Oria was filled with hatred and this is the worst kind of anger. Most nothing could defeat her now.
I headed for the cave throwing fiery spears on more creatures. Flying at high speed, I was not fast enough as the rocks to the cave started falling into the mouth of it.
I pulled up short as howling and wailing echoed out and resonated through the mountains. The battle was still going on all around but not as loud
as the thunder and wind. My vision now was only on the cave and the entrance that was still falling in all around it. They were in the tunnels of the cavern.
Blurry from the rain that fell in my eyes, I had no way of knowing what was going on with my wife, daughter and the Demon Goblin. I could only put my faith in The Great Spirit for my daughter and wife and that they would survive the cave-in and turned my attention back to the fight.
The battle field was littered with charred and dying Goblin’s and as I watched, there was a few that were trying to flee over the ridge. I would not let even one survive and soared over them and blasted a ball of fire that cremated every last one. I turned back and the last of these awful creatures were being turned to ash by Fire Walker.
The Dwellers started shifting all around me and I shifted as well. Suddenly, I felt the weight of Red Thunder and White Bear as they encircled me in hugs and greetings. My body had immediately healed once I was free of the irons that held me and also my wife who had hugged me to her tightly.
The only pain I felt now was from the violence of the warriors that held me in their grips. I made a big play of it, hugging them back and with a quick exhale of breath they were both on their butts on the ground laughing. I chuckled as my power is no match for theirs. It was all short lived as the fear for my wife and daughter rose.
“I am happy to see that my brothers are still alive but the war is not yet over and Bower’s Cave is crumbling in on itself. My wife and daughter are in there with the worst of these creatures. The Demon God is after their very essence. We must go and help them.”
Before anyone could respond, the ground shook and there was a roaring that came from deep within the earth. The rest of the rocks caved in and the view was blocked to the entrance.
The thundering and lightning calmed in the sky as the rain slowed and then stopped. It was still dark and cloudy and so quiet that I could hear my blood pumping through my veins.
What could this mean for my loved ones? I was afraid I would lose my family and did not care about the consequences. “We find a way inside now!”
Two wolves-A Cherokee Parable
An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life…
“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy
“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.
“One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.
“The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
“This same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather,
“Which wolf will win?”
The old chief simply replied,
“The one you feed.”
Author Unknown
Chapter 20
~Spirit Walker~
The cave and I was all there was. In the deep still silence, I could feel the earth’s beating heart and then I heard the howling and screeching that came from deep within.
I traveled further into the darkened cavern as a whirlwind, to reach my mother’s side. I heard the cave as the first of the rocks gave way and started to crumble in on the entrance.
Without further thought on how we could escape this dark cavern where the Demon Goblins dwell. I used all of my will power and continued on through the damp pit of hell that my parents had been held in.
My father was now safe but what of my mother? I whirled through the many underground tunnels that created the home of the Goblins, following the howling.
Reaching a massive opening, the tortured howls were echoing off every cave wall around. Shifting into my human form, I could see in the gloom and hanging from a glowing metal over a fiery pit, was a Goblin that was bigger than all the others we had fought outside of the cave.
I watched in fascinated horror as a lightning whip severed his head but then a new one was quickly replaced as it howled again in pain.
I could hear my mother, who had not noticed me there in the dank darkness as she taunted this creature. “Torture my husband Demon Goblin and the price you pay is an agony that will leave you begging for death. As I tried to tell you, you should have let us go, crawled back into your hole and I would have let you live your miserable life. You did not do this and now all of your inferior Goblins are dead and dying. You wanted the essence of the Ale that my family carries within us? I shall give you essence!”
She shifted into a whirlwind of ice and fire all at once. Something I had never witnessed before. As she twirled around like a twister, she shot out fire spears that penetrated the Demon Goblin and the howls that came from him were deafening in the cave. She then froze the spears and they broke off into the creature and to top it off, she threw a handful of magic out him.
Pleading and begging for death the creature looked like a big pile of goo, yet the chains still held him in place. He begged over and over again for mercy which mother ignored.
She shifted again into her human form and that was when she noticed me standing there watching this display of cruelty. I had never witnessed my mother at the height of fury. We had lived a peaceful life in the Village of Lost Souls.
As I grew older there were very few evils that tried to come through to our world. They were always handled quickly and efficiently. This battle was really the first big battle I had been in. I knew nothing of the ways of torture and never knew my mother could be so full of vengeance. That she could bring forth such suffering on any living creature was a new side of her for me to see.
“Spirit Walker, leave us and go back to the battle. You are not needed here. I will handle this evil creature myself.”
“The battle is over; I came to help you before the cave collapses in. Is this how you handle the Demon Goblin mother, by torture? Kill this evil and be done with it.” I had never questioned my mother on such things before. She was the most powerful Golden Queen there had ever been and it was not my place to question her tactics in war. But all that I had been taught in my life was about mercy and that there were always reasons behind each evil.
Mother read my thoughts as quickly as they came to me. “You are mostly right Spirit Walker, but this ‘thing’ here, is just pure evil. He tortured your father and would have done the same to me and to you and your brother had he known of you. He wants the essence that flows through us, given by the Ale. He would not have shown mercy, so I will not give him any mercy! Now leave us!”
Her commanding Queen voice was more than just forceful. There was no way to deny her requests. I turned away and started walking when the most powerful shaking began all around us. The walls started to crumble and as the rocks started to fall, I found myself in a state of shock and must have been hit on the head.
I was disoriented and in a faraway voice, I heard and felt her distress as my mother screamed my name. “Spirit Walker…” Yet her voice sounded further away than she should have been from me. Then there was nothing but darkness.
When I came back around, I was out of the cave and lying on the ground in the pouring rain away from the entrance. Mother was nowhere in sight and my head was buzzing like a hive of bees. Over the drone of noise in my head, I could hear voices growing closer.
As I looked around I could see Dwellers coming from every direction. My father and brother were in the lead. As they reached me, there was a booming sound, shaking the earth and actually throwing a few people off their feet. The entrance to the cave crashed in and the wind, rain and lightning stopped all at once and then I was blinded by the dust that came with the cave in.
Getting to my feet, I heard a heart shattering howl that I will never forget for the rest of my life. It was the sound of my father as he fell to his knees not far away from me and yelled up at the Gods. “Hiya! Take me, not her!”
I
t was a very long and drawn out no that father was yelling towards The Great Spirit and I knew he would gladly trade his life for that of my mothers. I think we all would have. Mother is a much loved Queen and there wasn’t anyone that was ready for the loss of her in our world.
Everyone gathered at the entrance of the cave and once the dust settled down around us, we could see that there was no way in. The entrance was completely closed off and besides my father, who was now chanting mothers death song, it was completely silent.
Then I heard Aponi as she joined my father in the mournful wailing. I was not ready to accept the fact that my mother was dead and I didn’t understand why they were so quick to. She was a strong woman and very powerful, she could have survived, she had to survive. I was not ready to let go. There was still much I needed to learn.
Looking around and with anger I screamed at my father and anyone else that had suddenly started chanting. “Stop it all of you, just stop and help me get into the cave, mother is in there and needs our help.” First I tried to walk through the entrance but was stopped by some unseen force.
My powers were not helping me get through no matter what I tried. Lifting rocks aside, I started moving them out of the way and then I remembered Brave Eagle and his gift. “Brave Eagle, go below into the cave and find your Queen! You are the only one that can get into the cave and find my mother so that we may help her.”
He shifted into a puddle and seeped into the ground and just as quickly was shifting back in front of us. As the whispers were growing, my father and Aponi were still chanting and the crowd of Dwellers that joined them was bigger. I glared at them all and especially Brave Eagle. “Why are you not doing as you are told Brave Eagle?”
“My Queen, I cannot penetrate through to the cave. It has been warded against all who would enter.” He stuttered as if he were afraid to even tell me this.
“I am not your Queen, my mother is The Golden Queen and that is ridiculous, why would there be a ward up to keep us out; my mother is in that cave and needs our help.”
