Kashena Windwalker-Marshal sat in her car, a 1996 Chevy Impala. She did her best to breathe, even though the vision was still running through her head. It occurred to her that they were becoming almost painful now in their clarity. It made sense to her now, all the whispering there’d been in the tribe about her grandmother’s “head pain.”
Her mother, Ashani, a full-blood Ojibwa Indian, had always believed her daughter had received the gift of “sight” from her grandmother. Kashena had been getting “visions” since she was ten. At first they’d seemed like dreams, but she was awake when they happened. She’d see a car accident happen in her mind, then she’d see the accident hours later as she walked home from school. A boy had been missing in the town they were in; Kashena had told her father, a lance corporal with the Marines, that the boy was in a big tube. The boy had been found dead in a drainage pipe. Lance Corporal Timothy Marshal had quickly gotten himself and his family transferred out of that town.
Timothy did not understand or want to know about his daughter’s “sight.” Ashani was told never to talk to anyone about it. She was told to encourage Kashena to keep quiet about it as well. Timothy knew what could happen if Kashena was pegged as some kind of freak for her “gift.” Kashena grew up in town after town as the family moved. She became withdrawn, fearing people’s disdain for her Indian heritage. More often than not, Kashena would avoid contact with people before they’d ever had a chance to even get to know her.
As she grew up, Kashena, who had once been an overly tall, tow-headed child, turned into quite a beauty. She had the dark blond hair of her father’s Norwegian side, and the deep blue eyes for which she’d been given her name by her grandmother. Kashena meant “She with the stars in her eyes.” She also had the strong jawline and high cheekbones of her Indian heritage. By the time Kashena was fifteen, she was already five foot seven tall, two inches taller than her mother. She was also strong and lean from many hours spent running up and down whatever beach they were stationed near.
They’d been relocated to a San Diego naval base. Kashena had gone off on her own, walking along the beach, her cutoff jean shorts light against her darkly tanned legs. The black tank top she wore skimmed her lean torso, exposing a slight amount of tanned flat stomach. Around her neck was a silver chain with a silver pendant suspended from it, a symbol of the Three Fires, a union of the three tribes of the Great Lakes. It was a pendant her grandmother had given her; she always wore it. Her feet were bare, her long blond hair in a braid down her back.
She’d met another girl that day, sitting alone on the beach. The girl, an older Mexican named Marta, greeted Kashena warmly. Kashena had walked over, smiling shyly at the girl. Marta had invited Kashena to sit and watch the sunset with her. After that they’d become fast friends. And although Kashena’s family only stayed in San Diego for six months, she learned something very important about herself in that time. She did not like boys—she preferred girls. Marta had been her first sexual experience, and it set her on a path she never wavered from. She hid the fact from her mother and father for years. Until she herself joined the Navy and became a Marine two years later, then a second lieutenant and platoon leader two years after that.
Only when she felt confident that she could fight her father, if it came to that, did she tell them that she was a lesbian. Her mother was speechless. Timothy was furious. He hit his daughter for the first time in her life. And she hit him back, then left the house. She didn’t return to see her family for another four years, when her grandmother died. Things were strained then, but Timothy was fully aware he had no say in what his daughter did or what sex she preferred.
There was a moment of hope when she came home for the funeral, since she brought with her a man. Captain Sebastian Bach, an Airborne Ranger for the Army. He was an extremely handsome man with blond hair and eyes the color of a stormy green ocean. But Kashena had assured her