Free Blood of the Rainbow by Shelia Chapman Page B

the local boys laughed at me because of my braces. They called me metal mouth.” She held up a different picture still. “This one was at my sixteenth birthday party - my first real party. You’ve even drawn the locket Jeff gave me. My ex-boyfriend and I broke up about a month after that. I found out Jeff was two timing me with the head cheerleader. I was heartbroken. I slung the locket in the river,” she sighed. “It’s probably still down there somewhere.”
    Jared chuckled. “Yeah, I know. I started to go back for the locket but… like I said, I’ve been dreaming about you for a very long time. I was a little jealous when I had that dream. It was hard to watch Jeff touching you and seeing you look at him the way you did.”
    Sara laughed at the irony of it all. “It seems you have been dreaming about me. It’s just unbelievable . Did someone assign you as my guardian angel in a previous life?”
    Jared fought a wave of tears. He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Something like that. There’s still a couple more in my Navajo room. Do you want to see them too?”
    “Yes. I do.”
    “They’re still on my easel. They’re very recent. Are you sure you want to see them?” he asked again, reading the expression in her eyes.
    “Yes, please,” she assured him. For a minute, Sara thought she was going to have to beg him.
    Jared rose to his feet, took Sara’s hands, lifting her too. He laced his fingers with hers and led her downstairs, to a room at the end of a long dark hall, flipping a couple of switches on the wall before they went inside.
    “This is my Navajo room. It’s where I do most of my sketching. Here, and out back.”
    Sara let go of his hand, and walked around the room, looking at all the glass display cases. Jared’s displays could easily have been mistaken for a museum exhibit. The walls were pale terracotta, like earthenware pottery. All over the walls hung all sorts of Indian trinkets and artifacts. Some looked as if they might have been excavated, but Jared said they had been passed down to him by his grandmother and great-grandmother. There were some more hand-woven blankets, and dream catchers there.
    Everything had been organized in professional looking glass display cases. Jared certainly had an eye for detail. Soft multicolored spotlights, shone on the cases, and softly playing in the background were chants and pipes that helped to set the mood. It was like stepping back in time. Sara could almost imagine the Indians sitting around their campfires, handing down stories and legends to their children and grandchildren.
    Jared had hung portraits of some of the earlier Navajo leaders, and leaders of other tribes, proving that, he wasn’t prejudiced against any of them. He had even framed some of his drawings, as well as several pieces of jewelry. One was a turquoise squash blossom Jared said belong to his great-great-grandmother. Sara recognized the design from a movie she’d seen.
    She wandered around, until she found the display cabinet, containing the hand-woven blanket he’d told her about earlier that evening. The one with the wolf baying at the moon. Tears glazed her eyes. She couldn’t believe how closely she and Jared’s lives had been connected through the years.
    “Jared, that - it’s the same design as the one on my tenth birthday cake. Even the golden eyes and the white fur of the wolf. How did she…?”
    “I showed her my sketch and asked her if she could do one exactly like it for me. She was extremely talented. She used special wool. Here,” Jared said, opening the case. “Feel it.” He took her hand and rubbed it over the surface of the wolf.
    Sara smiled. “It’s so soft, almost like touching….”
    “…the fur of a real wolf,” he finished. “I know. I used to sleep under it, and imagine you were there with me. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked, smiling into her eyes.
    “Yes it is.”
    “You can have it.”
    “Oh no! I could never take that