Unraveled Visions (A Shaman Mystery) by Nina Milton Read Free Book Online Page A

adventure, leaving me to work out if the snake was here to give us answers.
    “Are you Drea’s power animal?”
    “I am Anaconda.”
    “Are you not a long way away from the warmth of your natural home?”
    “Time and place can change. Home may change.”
    I didn’t want to forget a single word of what Anaconda was saying; I was sure it had meanings only Drea would understand. “Do homes change for the better?” I asked.
    “ Duty and purpose can change.”
    “What is your duty and purpose?”
    “First, do no harm. Next, protect my kin. Last, keep my secret.”
    “What is your secret?”
    Anaconda didn’t like this. He clearly felt I’d been presumptive to ask. I saw malevolence flicker in the small eyes. I heard the girl give a trembling sigh, as if even her breath shivered with cold. I tried to dodge past Anaconda, but he intercepted my move and I collided with him. His scales felt dry on my bare arms. My feet slid from under me and I fell on the ice, hard as concrete but much colder. It burned through my dress.
    His tongue flicked. His head lunged at me. The razor-sharp points of his tongue plunged into my belly. I heard my throat scream in the world of my therapy room. My hands covered my stomach. There was no blood. This was a spirit wound from a serpent without a poisonous bite. Anacondas, I remembered, crushed their prey. I tried to slide away from him, wriggling like a snake does, struggling to gain a grip, but I was shivering so much my hands and feet refused to cooperate. I could hardly feel my body now. The bite wasn’t poisonous, but it had sent me spiralling into hypothermia.
    A spray of white ice chips swirled up as Trendle shot past me. Foam flew from his mouth. “Be gone. Be gone!”
    His little body didn’t come above the coil of the snake’s tail, but his protective fury altered the balance of things. Anaconda reared and attacked. Trendle was ready. He spat and hissed and sprang, his body stretching into a wired pole, his jaws wide and full of sharpness. His fish-tearing teeth dug into the snake’s neck. Blood oozed and stained the ice. Anaconda was so massive, I thought he would fling Trendle away and attack again. But my otter’s bite provoked an explosion of change. In the blink of an eye, the ice temple dissolved.
    I found myself in a new, though no less treacherous, place. Dark water thundered past, inches away. I was standing on the edge of a river, hanging for dear life onto the trunk of a tree, the rush of river water only a slip of my foot below me.
    The roar of the river was intertwined with a woman’s voice. She sang a high song that seemed to have no words and no tune and a rhythm that changed as only a river can—one moment soft and clear and slow, then next brisk and sparkling. I had heard that song once before, and it had filled me with a yearning that had saved my life.
    Standing under a bare winter tree on the river path was a spirit presence; a woman in a shimmering grey cloak who only came to me when I needed desperate help.
    “Lady of the River …” My teeth chattered as I spoke.
    “Yes.” I saw her majestic face. There was an element of sadness and loss behind her eyes, or maybe in the furrows of her brow. “I am a water spirit, a dissolution of foam and form. I am the river that divides. The treacherous one. The violent one.”
    “I never know—”
    “You are confused, are you not?” I’d been going to say I never knew if I could trust her, but she stopped my words before they left me. Her lips were the colour of poisoned apples and they moved as if she was whispering a spell. “Past and future, clients and quandaries … they’re easily confused.”
    Sometimes people want their shaman to change their past, not their future. Drea had told me that the past was unimportant to her, and yet I was sure the past had a lot to do with her problems.
    The Lady’s voice broke into my thoughts. “Can you help your client face her past, Sabbie? Even the most skilful