Dan Simmons - Black Hills

— You have been warned, little Black Hills, that once you are nagi, pure spirit essence, you will be visited—almost certainly attacked—by ocin xica, bad-tempered animals, as well as by wanagi and ciciye and siyoko.

— I am not afraid of ghosts, uncle, and ciciye and siyoko are boogeymen for children.

But Paha Sapa’s voice is shaking as he says this.

Robert Sweet Medicine seems not to notice. He is staring at the fire, and his black eyes are filled with dancing flames.

— A hanblečeya Vision is a terribly serious thing to put on the shoulders of any man, my son, but especially upon the shoulders of one so young. You understand that sometimes the fate of the vision-seeker’s band depends upon the Vision. Sometimes the fate of an entire people—more than a tribe, but a race—depends upon the Vision and what is done after that Vision. You understand this?

— Yes, of course, uncle.

Paha Sapa decides that Robert Sweet Medicine is insane. Winkto.

— Do you know why the Grandfathers, the gods, and Wakan Tanka himself exist, little Black Hills?

Paha Sapa wants to say— What are you going on about, old man? —but he manages a respectful—

— Yes, uncle.

Robert Sweet Medicine looks up from the fire and stares directly at Paha Sapa, but the old man’s black eyes still reflect the flames.

— No, you do not, young Paha Sapa. But you will. The gods and the Grandfathers and the All himself exist because the so-called People exist to worship them. The People exist because the buffalo exist and because the grass grows free throughout the world we think is the World. But when the buffalo are gone and when the grass is gone, the People will be gone as well. And then the gods, the spirits—of our ancestors, of the place, of life itself—will be gone as well. Do you see, Paha Sapa?

Paha Sapa can humor the old man no longer.

— No, uncle.

Robert Sweet Medicine grins his strong-toothed grin.

—Washtay! That is good. But you will be the first to see, little Black Hills. Gods die as buffalo die, as people die. Sometimes slowly and in great agony. Sometimes quickly, unprepared, and not believing in their own death, denying the arrow or the wound or the disease even as it is killing them. Do you understand this, Paha Sapa?

— No, uncle.

—Washtay! This is as it should be now. What matters is not that you see how the buffalo and the people and the way the people live and the gods and the grandfathers and the All shall die and disappear, Paha Sapa—many of us with the gift of wakan have glimpsed this before—but what you do about it in the eighty summers and more remaining to you. What you— no one else—what you do about it. Do you understand this, Paha Sapa?

The boy is angry now. Sleepy and feverish and ill and close to weeping and very angry. If he kills this old man now, no one would ever know it.

— No, uncle.

—Washtay! You will sleep late and long in the morning, young Black Hills, and I will be gone…. The rain will abate just before sunrise, and I have business in the O-ana-gazhee, the Sheltering Place, far from here and the Hills. I will leave no food for you, and you must not touch yours. Your fasting must begin at sunrise.

— Yes, uncle.

— Your testing will not be over if and when you survive your terrible hanblečeya. That is just the beginning. You will never get word of your Vision back to Limps-a-Lot and your band. Your horses will be killed—not by Crazy Horse, who seeks you elsewhere and then forgets you in his lust to kill more wasichus— and your sacred pipe will be stolen and you will be stripped naked, but this is as it should be. Understand that while there is no Plan for the universe, there are specific crucifixions and new births for each of us.

Paha Sapa does not understand that word— crucifixion —but the old man is making no sense with the words the boy does understand, so he lets it go.

— I will not let that happen, uncle. I will die—as my father died, staked down and fighting—rather than surrender our tribe’s sacred Ptehinčala Huhu Canunpa that Limps-a-Lot and ten generations of holy men before him have kept safe, never losing so much as a single red feather on it.

Robert Sweet Medicine looks at him.

— Good. Let me tell you now, Paha Sapa, that I am honored that you will name your son and only child after me.

Paha Sapa can only stare at the old man.

— It is time to lower the fire to embers, go to the cave entrance to piss and to see that your two horses are comfortable, and then to sleep, Paha Sapa. I will wake from time to time while you sleep to shake my own wagmuha to keep the ghosts at bay tonight.

Robert Sweet Medicine shows him the ceremonial rattle that looks to be as old as time.

— Paha Sapa , toksha ake čante ista wacinyanktin ktelo.

I shall see you again with the eye of my heart.

With many groans and grunts, the old man slowly uncrosses his legs and manages—after several tries—to get to his feet, where he sways as old men do when seeking their balance. Robert Sweet Medicine’s voice is very soft.

—Mitakuye oyasin!

All my relatives. It is done.

Together, slowly, the old man moving very slowly but the boy not helping him because he is afraid to touch him, Paha Sapa and Robert Sweet Medicine walk to the entrance of the cave where they check on the horses and piss—far apart, each looking into a different part of the darkness—out into the rainy night.

ALL DURING HIS AFTERNOON ATTACK ON THE CABIN OF WHITE settlers, even after he is shot and killed by the arriving cavalry, Paha Sapa is nervous about the upcoming appointment with Rain de Plachette.

He also hates being killed. He hadn’t volunteered for it, but Mr. C pointed to him and said that he’d be the one to be shot off his horse, so that was that. Almost every night, Paha Sapa has to nurse bruises or strained muscles or a sore left knee that never gets a chance to improve. There’s an extra mound of soft dirt for him to fall onto, a heap that’s supposed to be renewed each afternoon and evening, but the other warriors—in their very real excitement—often forget to clear a space for him to get to the soft dirt, and he has to throw his arms in the air and fall off the tall pinto pony onto the hard-packed arena dirt. Then he has to lie there, dead, while the tail end of his marauding band of mixed-tribe Indians pounds over and past him, then, immediately thereafter, try again not to flinch as the arriving cavalry horses come pounding and leaping by. Three times now he’s been kicked by shod hooves and, being dead, he can never even react to it.

This getting killed every afternoon and evening is killing him. (At least he is allowed to survive the attack on the Deadwood mail coach.) His fallback plan is to get a smaller, lower, slower horse. That way he can live up to his name—the name the wasichus gave him seventeen years earlier—and if he must continue dying, he can at least guarantee that the fall will be as short as possible.

But this afternoon in July, in the four hours between the afternoon show and the longer evening program, it is the appointment with Miss de Plachette after the show that has Paha Sapa almost too nervous to think, much less die properly.