Dan Simmons - Black Hills

There were gray granite summits and needles and ridgelines poking up and out of the so-dark-green-they-were-black pine forests in all directions, but the Six Grandfathers was the only rising gray mass to challenge Harney Peak itself. The long summit ridge was almost literally at their feet. The last time Paha Sapa had seen the Black Hills—and especially the Six Grandfathers mountain—like this, he had been floating high in the air with the spirits of those six grandfathers.

— Oh, Paha Sapa, it’s so beautiful.

And then, after they sat for a while on the blanket Paha Sapa had spread on the stone summit ridge—

— All you’ve ever said, my darling, is that you attempted your hanblecˇeya there when you were a boy of eleven summers.

She took his hand in both of hers.

— Tell me about it, Paha Sapa. Tell me everything.

And, to his great surprise, he did.

When he was finished telling her the entire tale, the entire experience, everything he had seen and heard from the Six Grandfathers, he fell silent, astounded and somewhat appalled that he had said all he had.

Rain was looking at him strangely.

— Who else did you describe this Vision to? Your beloved tunkašila?

— No. By the time I found Limps-a-Lot in Grandmother’s Country, he was old and ill and alone. I did not want to burden him with so terrible a Vision.

Rain nodded and looked thoughtful. After a long moment in which the only sound was the light breeze moving through the rocks and low plants there at the summit, she said—

— Let’s eat lunch.

They ate in silence, with Paha Sapa feeling more foreboding with each minute the silence stretched on. Why had he told his beloved—but mostly wasichu —wife this tale, when he had told no one else? Not Limps-a-Lot when he had the chance. Not Sitting Bull. Nor any of the other Ikcˇe Wicˇaśa when he had had the chance over the past dozen years.

Both were watching something that Paha Sapa had never seen before, not even when he had flown with the Six Grandfathers. The high grass of the endless plains, at its absolute greenest this May morning, moved to the caress of strong breezes that were strangely absent there on the summit ridge of Harney Peak. Paha Sapa thought of invisible fingers stroking the fur of a cat. Whatever it reminded him of, he and Rain watched as the strong but distant breezes moved mile upon mile of grass, flowing ribbons of air made visible, the underside of the grass so light it looked almost silver as ripple moved on to ripple. Waves , he realized. Having never seen an ocean in real life, he realized he was looking at one now. Most of the plains and prairie there had, he knew, been parceled up into rich men’s ranches and poor men’s homesteaded parcels—the former destined to grow larger, all the latter doomed to fail—but from this summit on this day, those buildings and barbed-wire fences were as invisible as the absent buffalo and the root-chewing destructive cattle that had taken the buffalo’s place.

Now, from this height, there was only the wind playing on wavetops across that perfect illusion of a returned inland sea. Then came the stately cloud shadows moving across that sea of dark grass interspersed with brilliant ovals of sunlight. “When the sun shone through the clouds, making silvery pools in the dark sea… ” Pools in the sea. Where had he read that startling phrase? Oh, yes, last year in Dickens’s Bleak House , which Rain had so enjoyed and had recommended he read, although his hours for reading, between returning from the ranch long after dark and leaving for the ranch while it was still dark, were few enough. But he loved reading books on her recommendation so that they could talk about them on Sundays and sometimes she returned the favor by reading some of his old favorites. The Iliad had been one such. Rain admitted that she’d had a tutor who had attempted to get her to read the Iliad in Greek but that the spears and blood and boasting and violent death had caused her to turn away. (But this spring, reading the same Chapman translation that had so moved young Paha Sapa in Father Pierre Marie’s school amid the almost carnal scent of sunbaked tent canvas, she told her husband that she had learned, from him, how to love Homer’s tale of courage and destiny.)

The picnic food was good. Rain had actually baked a pie using a campfire oven. She had also brought lemons and although there was no ice, the lemonade in carefully wrapped glasses was sweet and light to the tongue. Paha Sapa tasted none of it.

Finally, when they were packing away the plates, he said—

— Look, Rain… I know the so-called Vision was all a hallucination… brought on by many days of fasting and the heat and fumes in the sweat lodge and by my own expectations that…

— Don’t! Paha Sapa… don’t!

Paha Sapa had never heard her use that tone of voice with him before. He was never to hear her use it again. It silenced him at once.

When she spoke again, her voice was so soft that he had to lean toward her there on the rocky summit ridge of Harney Peak.

— My dearest… my husband and darling boy… that Vision you were granted is terrible. It makes my heart ill. But there is no doubt that God—whatever power rules the universe—chose you to receive that Vision. Sooner or later in your life, you will have to do something about it. You have been chosen to do something about it.

Paha Sapa shook his head, not understanding.

— Rain, you’re a Christian. You lead the choir. You teach Sunday school. Your father… well… You can’t possibly believe in my gods, my Six Grandfathers, my Vision. How could…

Again she silenced him, this time with the palm of her hand on the back of his hand.

— Paha Sapa, is not another name for Wakan Tanka, besides “the All,” also “Mystery”?

— Yes.

— That is at the heart of all our faith, my darling. Of everyone’s faith, for those who can find and hold faith in their hearts. Unlike my father, I know so very little for certain. I understand little. My faith is fragile. But I do know—and, yes, I have faith—that at the heart of the heart of the universe there is Mystery with a capital M. It has to be the same Mystery that allowed us to find our love and to find each other. The same love that has allowed the miracle of this child growing in me. Whatever you decide to do because of this Vision, Paha Sapa, my darling, you must never deny the reality of the Vision itself. You have been chosen, my dearest. Someday, you will have to decide. What you will have to decide, I have no idea and I doubt if you do either. I only pray… pray to the mystery within that Mystery itself… that by the time you do have to decide, your life will have given you the answer as to which way to proceed. It will, I fear, be the hardest of choices.

Paha Sapa was stunned. He kissed her hand, touched her cheek, then rubbed his own cheek roughly.

— Wovoke, the crazy old Paiute prophet I told you about, must have thought that he was chosen as well. But in the end, he was just crazy. The Ghost Dance shirts did not stop bullets. I saw that Limps-a-Lot had been wearing one, under his ratty old wool jacket.

Rain winced, but her voice was just as strong as before.

— That old man thought he had been chosen, my darling. You have been chosen. You know that and now I do as well.

The wind suddenly arrived from the plains below and arose around them, whistling through crevices in the rocks.

Paha Sapa looked into his wife’s eyes.