Shadow of Time (a YA Paranormal Romance novel)

Chapter 12

That night, there were no dreams. At least no dreams Hannah could remember. She woke up without the usual headache – as a precaution, she'd just taken a homeopathic sedative Emily had given her – and stretched her legs and arms. The kitchen door slammed shut in the next room, so Emily had probably just left for work.

"Hannah?" she suddenly heard Amber's voice through the door. "You awake yet?"

"Yeah, only just." She got up and stepped into the kitchen, where she found Amber sitting at the table.

"Did you have a good night's sleep?" the neighbor girl asked.

"Yup. Smooth sailing. No nightmares." She grinned at Amber. "So, you girls made any plans to meet up later?"

"We're just going to hang out tonight," Amber replied, clearly trying to assume a carefully neutral tone. " I'll be staying here for the next couple days. My parents are taking Ivy to Window Rock, but I don't mind lounging around here."

"Let me get this straight. You're skipping a trip to Window Rock so you can bum around with us? You are so in love," Hannah established dryly.

Amber couldn't help giggling. "Okay, guilty as charged. There's just something about Navajo people, you know?

"So, what do your parents think of Em?"

"Oh, they love her. I can tell."

"You told them that you two are an item?"

"Don't have to. They're not blind." Amber got up from the breakfast table. "By the way, I have to go. I promised I'd spend some time with them before they're off to Window Rock at noon. See you tonight, okay?"

"Say hi to your family from me," Hannah called after her.

As soon as she'd scarfed down her breakfast, Hannah went into Ben's bedroom to drag out his laptop and USB modem again. This was going to be expensive, but fortunately, Ben would only see the bills after he got home. She just had to know more about the history of Navajo Nation, now that she was slowly starting to believe she'd dreamed about real past events.

After doing a Google search on 'Navajo History' she clicked on a few links that looked interesting. "The Long Walk," she mumbled to herself, scrolling through a page filled with details about the cruel transportation of Navajo natives to a reservation in the east of the country, at which they were forced to walk for days without pause. It had happened just after the Civil War. Before that, Mexicans had still been active in Navajo territory. Hannah pulled the laptop closer when her eyes fell on a description of Mexicans stealing people to turn them into slaves – entire villages had been ransacked, women and children abducted to serve in the mines. The website featured some scans of black-and-white photographs of soldiers wearing uniforms that looked strikingly familiar. Her heart started thumping even louder when she saw some old pictures of Navajo villages built just after the Navajo people's release from the reservation in the east. The houses looked exactly the same as in her dreams. Octagonal, low constructions with dark clay on the outside.

Oh my God. So now she knew. It wasn't just her imagination, and those skinwalkers were probably not making her dream about the past either. If this was true – if she really knew Josh from a past lifetime – shouldn't she tell him?

She cringed. Not the most brilliant of ideas right now. They'd just shared a few kisses together – hardly the right moment to claim they'd already shared an entire life together. Josh would probably think she was a sucker for predestination and get out while he still could.

Still, she couldn't let things rest. Even though Amber and Emily tried to distract her by taking her out that afternoon and keeping quiet about the skinwalker curse, she couldn't stop thinking about her – now absent – dreams about the past.