Dan Simmons - Black Hills

— Three days and nights, uncle. No… wait… four nights now, and three full days. Everything is flooded.

The old man nods.

— On the day before the rain began, I met a Wasicun on the trail to the top of the butte. It was a sunny day. Some clouds later, but mostly sunny.

Paha Sapa speaks through a full mouth.

— Did you kill him, uncle?

— Kill who?

— The Wasicun!

The old man chuckles.

— No, I talked to him.

— Was he a bluecoat? A soldier?

— No, no. I think he had been a warrior once—I am sure of it—but no longer. He told me… no, that is not right; he did not quite tell me… but he let me know that he had once walked on the moon.

Paha Sapa blinks at this.

— So he was witko— crazy.

Robert Sweet Medicine shows that long-toothed smile again.

— He did not seem witko. He seemed… lonely. But, little Black Hills, have you never known a wičasa wakan, or some other sort of human with powers—a waayatan prophet, for instance, or a wakinyan dreamer who sees visions sent by the Thunder Beings, or a wapiya conjurer, or a wanaazin who shoots at disease, or a dangerous wokabiyeya who works with witch medicine, or a wihmunge who sucks disease straight out of a dying person with his own breath—who has spoken of leaving his body and traveling to far places?

Paha Sapa laughs and takes a long drink of the cold springwater in the jug.

— Yes, uncle, of course I have. But I have never heard any holy man given powers who speaks of…

He pauses, remembering his own lying-in-the-grass experience (dream?) of rising so high in the sky that the sky grew dark in the daytime and the stars came out.

— … of… traveling so far. But are you saying, uncle, that wasichus can have Visions, just like real People?

Robert Sweet Medicine shrugs and tosses more twigs onto the fire. Paha Sapa is growing warm and sleepy beneath his blankets. The second rabbit is now bones.

The old man’s voice, strongly resonant in the little cave, seems strangely familiar to Paha Sapa.

— Have you ever noticed, little Black Hills, how all of our tribes—all the ones I’ve ever heard of, even those east of the Big River and west of the Shining Mountains and beyond the Never No Summer range, even those so far south that the plains are desert and no grass grows there—that all of us give our tribes names meaning the same as Tsêhéstáno, the People, as we Cheyenne say; or the Natural Free Human Beings, as you Lakota call yourselves; or the True Human Beings, as the Crow say—and so on and so on and so on.

Paha Sapa has forgotten the question, if there was a question, and is completely missing the point (if there was a point). He replies only by nodding sleepily and, remembering his manners, by belching softly.

— I am just asking, little Black Hills, why each of our tribes calls itself “the Human Beings” and refers to no other tribe or group, even the wasichus, in that way.

Paha Sapa rubs his eyes.

— I suppose, uncle, because our tribe is—I mean, that we are— the real human beings, while others aren’t?

The answer seems a little inadequate even to the quickly warming and belly-filled boy, but he can think of no other at the moment. But he will revisit the question more than a few times over the next decades.

Robert Sweet Medicine is nodding as if satisfied by a particularly clever answer from one of his wičasa wakan students.

— Perhaps, little Black Hills, when you learn the particular language of the Wasicun ghost now babbling in your brain, you will begin to understand this strange question of naming ourselves a little better.

Paha Sapa nods sleepily and then snaps awake— he has not told this old man about the ghost of Long Hair in him.

Has he?

But Robert Sweet Medicine is speaking again.

— You’re going to the real Paha Sapa to perform your lonely hanblečeya, so you should fast after tonight’s feast. The place you seek is only a day’s ride from here if you take the proper paths in the Hills. I trust that your tunkašila, Limps-a-Lot, has instructed you well as to the preparations and sent along with you everything you need to do yuwipi properly?

— Oh, yes, uncle! I have learned what I must have, and for things that I cannot find in the forest, they are all packed away on my white mare you hear cropping at the cave entrance!

Robert Sweet Medicine nods but does not smile.

—Washtay! Limps-a-Lot sent with you the properly sacred pipe and the strong caNliyukpanpi fine-smoking tobacco?

— Oh, yes, uncle!

Did he? In four nights of rain now, Paha Sapa has not fully unpacked the bundles his grandfather sent with him, usually merely hunkering against the mare in the dark downpour and groping around for the dried meat or biscuits that Three Buffalo Woman packed away for him. Is the sacred, irreplaceable Ptehinčala Huhu Canunpa —the Buffalo Calf Bone Pipe that Sitting Bull had appointed Limps-a-Lot guardian of— really in his bundle of goods, or has Limps-a-Lot sent along the lesser but still sacred tribal pipestone pipe? Come to think of it, Paha Sapa has not seen in his various soaked bundles the red eagle feathers that adorn the priceless Ptehinčala Huhu Canunpa.

The old man is still talking.

—Washtay, Paha Sapa. Stay away from the wasichus’ roads—for the soldiers and miners will kill you on sight. Go to the top of the Grandfathers’ Hill . Yuhaxcan cannonpa! Carry your pipe. Your pipe is wakan. Taku woecon kin ihyuha el woilagyape lo. Ehantan najin oyate maka stimnyyan cannonpa kin he uywakanpelo. It is used for doing all things. Ever since the standing people have been over all the earth, the pipe has been wakan.

Paha Sapa shakes his head in an attempt to rid himself of the buzzing and confusion there. His fever fills him. His eyes are watering, either from the smoke or from strong emotions he does not understand. Still sitting cross-legged on the blanket while wrapped in two more blankets, he seems to be naked and floating inches above the cavern floor. Robert Sweet Medicine’s voice booms in his head like wasichu cannon fire.

— Little Black Hills, you know how properly to construct your oinikaga tipi?

— Yes, Grandfather… I mean uncle. I have helped Limps-a-Lot and the men construct many sweat lodges.

—Ohan. Wašte! And you know how to select the proper sintkala waksu from those other stones that might blind or kill you?

— Oh, yes, uncle.

But does he? When the time comes in the Black Hills, will he be able to differentiate the special stones in the creek beds, those with the “beadwork” designs that show them safe for use in the sweat lodge?

Paha Sapa begins sweating and shaking under his blankets.

— Has your grandfather’s wife cut the forty squares of flesh from her arm for your wagmugha to go with the yuwipi stones?

— Oh, yes, uncle!

Have Raven’s Hair or Three Buffalo Woman cut the necessary bits of flesh for the sacred rattle or gathered the little fossil stones to be found only in certain anthills? How could they have? They have not had time!

The old man nods again and throws several scented sticks onto the already raging fire. The cave fills with the sour-sweet smell of incense.