Excerpt of Eye of the Dream by Elizabeth Sinclair

PROLOGUE

A gauzy mist swirls around her. It cloaks her in a
smothering, ethereal blanket. She gasps for air. It smells
earthy, like the thirsty desert sands after a torrential
rain. She spins away into another wall of white
nothingness. The mist thickens, robs her of all sense of
direction, pulls her ever deeper into the milky haze.
Panic paralyzes her. She opens her mouth to call out. No
sound emerges. The mist thickens. Her panic becomes
palatable, breathing more difficult.

Suddenly, as if an unseen force has taken charge, the mist
parts. Fearing it will close and trap her again, she runs
through the opening, unseeing, uncaring about what waits
on the other side. She knows only that she must escape the
suffocating, white fog.

As she adjusts her eyes to the glaring brightness, a
strange scene takes form. A withered old Navajo sits cross-
legged before a boarded-up hogan; a twisted mesquite stump
to his right resembles a snake coiled to strike. His
ancient, leathery face bears the evidence of many summers
spent beneath the hot, desert sun. Observing her closely
through large, owl-like eyes, he measures her approach.
That sharp, brown-eyed gaze, brimming with the wisdom of
his years, never wavers from her.

With a sharp wave of his gnarled hand, he motions for her
to join him on the ground. Welcome serenity replaces her
panic. She obeys.

From beside him, the old Navajo picks up a small, leather
pouch, then taking her hand, dumps the contents into her
palm. She stares down at a silver chain coiled around a
rainbow pendant. With her fingertip, she nudges the chain
aside to better see the pendant. Inlayed with bands of
turquoise, abalone, jet, and white shell, the rainbow’s
arches catch the sunlight and glitter, as though alive.

His guttural voice, crusty and angry, comes from inside
her head. “Sa?ah naghai bikeh.”

The pendant suddenly takes on an eerie luminescence, and
with it, comes heat that intensifies steadily until it
burns her palm. She cries out, but the sound is only in
her mind. Dropping the necklace, she looks to the old man
for an explanation. He’s vanished and so has the necklace.

In his place stands another man, younger, his muscular
body untouched by time. His features, concealed in shadow
behind a swath of dark hair, need not be illuminated for
her to know his identity. As familiar to her as her own
mirrored reflection, they live in her dreams nightly and
reflect from her son’s face daily.

Hair, dark as a desert night. High cheekbones carved out
by shadows. Eyes, dark and mysterious, haloed in amber,
luminous, haunting, judging, accusing. And his mouth . . .
Lord, his mouth. The mouth that loved her to the heights
of passion and took her to worlds far beyond earthly
reaches. His lips turn up slightly, as if reading her
thoughts and finding amusement in her reaction.

A phantom breeze picks up his long, black hair from his
broad shoulders and whips it away from his face. Light
bounces off the contours of his coppery skin. He towers
like a giant oak, strong, immovable, silent—always silent.

Radiating ferocity as strong as the foreboding prediction
of a storm’s onslaught, he beckons, drawing her with his
powerful magnetism. She reaches for him, the need to touch
overriding all else, compelling her as surely as her need
for her next breath.

Then he vanishes. The fog closes in again, swirling,
suffocating, threatening. The panic returns.

###

Laura Kincaid bolted upright in her bed, choking and
clutching at her throat. A soft, early, summer breeze
laden with the fragrance of the rain-soaked Arizona desert
blew through the open bedroom window. The air currents
played with the white, organdy curtains, encouraging them
to writhe in a mocking, ghostly dance, a twin to the mist
of her nightmare.

She tore her gaze away and dragged deep breaths into her
starving lungs. Finally able to breathe easily again, she
fell back against the pillows, exhausted.

Rolling to her side, she checked the glowing face of her
bedside clock. Four am. Trying to shrug off the nightmare
as the byproduct of her late-night, fast-food supper the
evening before, she snuggled deep into the warm folds of
her blankets.

But the panic she’d experienced in the dream remained with
her. Even though she didn’t understand them, the harsh,
angry words of the old Navajo settled heavily on her soul,
chilling her to the bone. As hard as she tried to dismiss
their dire tones and make the excuse that some gastro-
connected upset had caused her to dream about the old
Indian, it still sent chills down her spine.

Not surprisingly, she found the appearance of the younger
man, the man she’d walked out on eight years ago, the man
who had haunted her dreams many times before last night,
even more upsetting.