Title: Unexpected Journey
Author: Christina St. Clair
Email: christina@christinastclair.com
Genre: Historical Fiction
Excerpt Heat Level: 1
Book Heat Level: 1
Unexpected Journey is a historical novel set in England
and colonial America in the 1730s.
A wide gulf existed between people from different social
strata. Lenape natives in Pennsylvania felt no love for white people who'd
forced them from their land. Rich English girls had no interest in
brown-skinned natives in the colonies and certainly did not expect to meet any.
Street girls eked out an existence any way they could, with no hope of
fraternizing with the wealthy. Yet Gishuk, Rachel, and Anna are just such
people--thrown together in a tale of adventure, friendship, and danger.
EXCERPT
Book One: Shaman
One
In a dream, Gishuk saw the image of a shewanakw
girl with skin as white as the blackberry flowers in spring. Her hair, glowing
like the color of autumn leaves, tumbled down her back. Though still asleep, he
heard the dogs howling outside, their cries rising balefully into the night. He
stared at the floating image in his mind. Upon awakening, the girl's strange
face remained etched into his psyche.
For a while he lay on his straw mat, looking at
the bark ceiling. Had this girl somehow
disturbed the dogs? But this made no sense. She was merely a phantom in a
dream. Still, something was not quite right. The starless night contained not
even a sliver of moon to make the dogs howl. A steady rainfall, smelling of
leaves and earth, fell from the pitch black sky, pattering onto the thatch roof
of his parents' house. It lulled him back to sleep where the shewanakw girl
still hovered in his dreams. She seemed so innocent, but even in his sleep,
anger and confusion arose in him. What right did any shewanakw have to appear
to him when they had caused so much trouble to his people?
At daybreak, he soon forgot the dream, listening
for the song of Tàskëmus who always got up first to take his bath alone in the
pond in the center of the village. Gishuk loved Tàskëmus who was his
great-uncle as well as the village medicine man. He sang like his namesake, the
mockingbird, able to imitate many sounds. Often he tapped like a woodpecker
seven times because this was a number from the heavens. Usually women were the
ones called by the Great Spirit to become healers, but Tàskëmus laughed at such
an idea and made Gishuk his apprentice. Yet this did not stop other boys in the
village from making fun of Gishuk, especially that weasel Sàngwe. This eldest
son of the village sachem acted as if he ought to be the chief. Gishuk also
suspected Sàngwe of jealousy because he, Gishuk, was Grandmother's favorite.
She'd even given him his secret spirit name.
Gishuk rolled quietly from his mat and crawled
past his brother Tëme, who snorted but did not attempt to get up. As Gishuk
crept by his parents, Kèkw smiled dreamily, snuggling closer to her husband,
Tihtës, and pulling the turkey-feather blanket over their shoulders to keep out
the damp. Outside, Gishuk watched his great-uncle swim steadily through the
water, his muscular arms rising and falling with hardly a splash. At last he
scrambled onto the shore near the Big House, allowing the water to drip from
his body. He stretched his hands out palms-up to greet the day and began to
chant.
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