Dan Simmons - Black Hills

Paha Sapa remembers nothing of his own parents, of course, since his mother died at his birth and his father months before then, but now he can remember the boy Curly Hair’s, or Curly’s, parents, his Brulé mother and holy-man father named Crazy Horse. He remembers clearly, too clearly, the time in Curly’s sixteenth summer when, after Curly performed bravely in a raid against the Arapaho (and was wounded in the leg by an arrow, but only after killing several Arapaho, but it’s Paha Sapa who now remembers the pain of that arrow), Curly’s father, Crazy Horse, gave his son his own name and forever after went by the name Worm.

Paha Sapa’s memories of his own recent childhood are now invaded by the false memories of Curly–Crazy Horse’s years with his Oglala Lakota band, but Curly–Crazy Horse’s memories are tinged red with memory-emotions of violence, near insanity, and a constant strangeness. Paha Sapa is the adopted son of Limps-a-Lot and hopes to be a holy man like his respected tunkašila , but Curly–Crazy Horse, the son of another holy man, wanted—has always wanted—to be heyoka , a dreamer and servant for the Thunder Beings.

Paha Sapa, cold, frightened, hungry, feverish, and infinitely lonely this rainy midnight, is setting off alone for his hopeful hanblečeya —alone—in the Black Hills, while in his intruding memories he sees Curly Hair’s four-day ceremony, during which that boy-man’s Vision was given to him. He sees Curly Hair being taught and helped and supported and his inipi interpreted by his pipe-bearing elders and relatives and holy men. Paha Sapa fears, deeply, that he will never receive a vision from Wakan Tanka or the Six Grandfathers beyond these invading, obscene visions of other people’s ghosts and minds and futures, but now he has to suffer memories of Curly–Crazy Horse’s successful hanblečeya and that strange man’s celebration and acceptance as a Thunder Dreamer.

No men have chanted or will chant Tunka-shila, hi-yay, hi-yay! for Paha Sapa, as he remembers in these alien memories the band’s men chanting for young Crazy Horse.

Paha Sapa has never touched a winčinčala’s , a pretty young girl’s, winyaˇn shan , yet in these new memories now echoing in the boy’s feverish brain, he clearly remembers having sex with No Water’s wife, Black Buffalo Woman, and half a dozen other women. It is… confusing.

Paha Sapa has never suffered an injury worse than the bruises and bloody noses of boyhood, but now he remembers not only Curly–Crazy Horse’s war wounds, but also the sensation of being shot in the face at point-blank range by the outraged husband No Water. He tries to avoid the other-memory, but the sensations of the pistol ball sliding along his teeth, opening his cheek, and smashing his jaw are too strong to shut out.

Most disturbingly this endless black, rainy night, Paha Sapa’s feverish mind tries to deal with the fact that he—Black Hills—has never hurt another person beyond rough childhood play, while the memories of Crazy Horse bring him the joyous-sick recollections of shooting, stabbing, lancing, killing, and scalping many—Crow, Arapaho, another Lakota, and wasichus almost too many to count.

Paha Sapa is afraid that he is dying.

His head aches so fiercely that he pauses every quarter hour or so to vomit, even though his belly has been empty for hours. The constant, solid rain makes him so dizzy that he has trouble staying on Limps-a-Lot’s roan, Worm, and the mare, Pehánska , is acting more like a white snake, rearing and pulling the line and trying to escape, than like a white crane this terrible midnight.

Paha Sapa’s head is full of pain, mucus, and memories that he does not want, cannot stand, and knows he shall never free himself from.

And to make the night more hopeless, he is sure now that he is lost. He thinks he should have reached the Black Hills after three days and nights riding, but in his stupid child-inexperience navigating in the rain with no real landmarks (or those few he knew flooded), he is sure that he has somehow missed all of the Black Hills, the Heart of the World.

It’s at this midnight hour and one of the low points of his life that Paha Sapa sees a light far off to his left.

His mind, that small amount that is still his and not hostage to an angry warrior’s memories, tells him to turn the horses’ heads to the right and get away from the light. If it’s a campfire, it belongs to wasichu who would kill him on sight or to Crazy Horse, who will torture and then kill him.

But he turns to the left, to the east, he hopes, and rides on in the night toward the tiny glow, waiting for the light to flicker out or disappear. Instead, between squalls that obliterate it from sight, it grows stronger.

After half an hour of riding through rain toward the light, his horse slipping and staggering in the deepening mud, Paha Sapa sees a large, dark shape above and around the small circle of light. It has to be Matho Paha , Bear Butte, which means that he is only a few miles north-northeast of the mass of the Black Hills.

But Matho Paha is a favorite camping place for Lakota bands heading toward the Hills, which is precisely what Crazy Horse was ready to do.

Riding up to this campfire may well mean Paha Sapa’s death.

Teetering on his horse, keeping from falling off only by lacing his fingers through Worm’s mane, Paha Sapa continues riding toward the light.

THE LIGHT IS COMING FROM A CAVE a few hundred feet up the northwest slope of the towering Bear Butte.

Knowing that he should back into the pouring darkness, Paha Sapa continues to lead his two horses up to the opening and through the waterfall of runoff pouring over the wide cave entrance. The cavern quickly turns out of sight, but there is a broad area just within the entrance where dry grass still grows. Paha Sapa ties the roan and the mare there, pulls Limps-a-Lot’s feathered war lance from beneath wet straps on Pehánska’s back, and proceeds, slowly, carefully, deeper into the firelight-brightened cave.

Immediately, Paha Sapa’s stomach cramps and his mouth fills with saliva.

Whoever is back there, they are cooking something. It smells like rabbit to Paha Sapa. He loves just-cooked rabbit.

Paha Sapa stops and listens several times as the low-ceilinged cavern twists slightly, but the only sounds are a soft humming, the crackle of the fire, and, behind him, the constant munching and occasional shaking of mane and tail of his two horses. Have the people by the fire heard his approach?

Paha Sapa comes around the last turn, lance in both hands, and there by a roaring fire, in a broad section of the cave, an old man sits cross-legged, humming softly to himself and gingerly turning two spits over the fire, each holding a skinned and quickly browning rabbit.

Paha Sapa lowers the lance a bit and walks into the circle of firelight. The old man, his long gray hair tied in careful pigtails, wears a loose blue-print shirt that might have been made by wasichus , and his long pants are of some graying blue material that Paha Sapa first thinks is the wasichu -soldiers’ sort of canvas trouser, but realizes is a different, more woven material. The old man’s moccasins have traditional (and beautiful) Cheyenne-style beadwork. (Another pair of moccasins, of a sort Paha Sapa has never seen—they almost look to be made of green wasichu canvas—lies steaming and drying near the fire.) The old man’s eyes, squinting up and across the fire at Paha Sapa now, seem absolutely black except for the reflection of the flames there. But there is no anger or fear in the old man’s neutral but somehow pleasant expression.