Dan Simmons - Black Hills

Except first for the hunger, which has departed, and then the weakness of his long fast, this oymni —his wandering time—has been mostly pleasant. When Paha Sapa awakened in Robert Sweet Medicine’s cave at Bear Butte, there was no sign of the old man—not his drinking or eating bowls, not even a trace of the rabbits they’d eaten—and Paha Sapa could almost have believed that the old Cheyenne wičasa wakan had been a dream. But Worm and White Crane were rested and well fed when he found them still hobbled in the entrance to the cave that morning, and though the sun had not come out, the days of downpour outside had changed to an increasingly heavy drizzle.

It was then, for a scrotum-tightening panicked moment, that Paha Sapa untied the bundle on Three Buffalo Woman’s white mare, seeking wildly for the Ptehinčala Huhu Canunpa , the sacred and irreplaceable Buffalo Calf Bone Pipe that he, Paha Sapa, had foolishly told the old Cheyenne he was carrying to his inipi first real sweat lodge ceremony.

It was there, separated into its different segments, each segment wrapped in a red cloth, the red feathers intact.

Paha Sapa’s knees went weak then, as he realized how easy it would have been for the old Cheyenne—if he had been more than a dream—to steal Paha Sapa’s tribe’s most sacred object. And then his knees stayed weak as the full weight of Limps-a-Lot’s trust sank in. Paha Sapa was heading to the Black Hills, reportedly rotten with wasichus , soldiers and miners both, who would kill him and rob him on a whim, even while enemy tribes swarmed—as they always did—around those Hills, always on the lookout for a lone Lakota boy to kill and rob or enslave.

Paha Sapa wished to the depths of his heart that morning that Limps-a-Lot had sent with him only an ordinary stone pipe for his inipi and hanblečeya ceremonies, even if the chances for a true Vision were lessened by not having the more wakan and powerful Ptehinčala Huhu Canunpa with its special tobacco.

But the day’s ride through occasional heavy rain into the Paha Sapa themselves was uneventful, Paha Sapa riding the gelding and leading the mare in a wide arc to the west to avoid the roads and heavily traveled paths the wasichus used to get to their mining town of Deadwood.

In later years, especially when taking his son on their own small oymni wandering time to the Black Hills and what was left of the open Great Plains, Paha Sapa will find it very difficult to explain what the world was like during these days of his people’s proud years, when the Lakota gods still listened to their worshippers and when the earth was alive for them.

These days, entering the Black Hills and riding down streambeds and across long meadows between the trees, always being careful to avoid ambush, Paha Sapa and everything he perceives seem to exist and interact simultaneously around him and within him, and interact on at least two levels: the joyous physical level on which he feels the horse between his legs and the rain on his face and smells the wet aspen leaves and hears the breathing of the gelding and mare as well as the chatter of squirrels and cry of crows, and the overlapping, more stirring and soul-touching nagi level of himself and everything else existing and touching each other as pure spirit-essence.

He feels the waniya waken —the very air as alive. Spirit breath. Renewal. Tunkan. Inyan. The rocks and boulders are alive. And holy. The storms that move above the prairie behind him and mass against the hills rising before him are Wakinyan , the noise of the Thunder Spirit and language of the Thunder Beings. The late-summer flowers blooming in the high, wet grass of the meadows show the touch and color preferences of Tatuskansa , the moving spirit, the quickening power of the All. In the rivers Paha Sapa fords dwell the Unktehi , monsters and spirits both. Sleeping under his canvas shelter and warming robes, Paha Sapa hears the howl of coyotes and thinks of Coyote, who will trick him during his hanblečeya if he can. The glistening spiderweb on a tree bears unreadable messages from Iktomé , the spider man, who is a worse trickster even than Coyote. In the evening, when all of the other spirits are quiet and the sky is emptying of light, Paha Sapa is able to hear the breathing of Grandfather Mystery and—sometimes—of Wakan Tanka himself. And at night, during the rare times the clouds part, Paha Sapa watches the stars spread from dark horizon to dark horizon, his viewing undimmed by any light (he has no campfire), and in these minutes young Paha Sapa can trace the path of his life, past and future, knowing that when he dies his own spirit will travel south along the Milky Way with the spirits of all those Natural Free Human Beings who have gone before him.

This is truly the maka sitomni , the world over, the universe, and the world is never empty. More than forty-five years later, when poet and historian Doane Robinson teaches him the English word numinous , Paha Sapa will think back to these days and smile sadly.

PAHA SAPA HAS NO TROUBLE finding the mountain called the Six Grandfathers; its nearby peak, Evil Spirit Hill (which Paha Sapa will live to see renamed Harney Peak after a famous Indian-killer Wasicun ) is the tallest in the Hills at a little more than seven thousand feet.

The south side of the Six Grandfathers is all crags and open, weathered, rocky face—good for nothing, not even climbing—but the north side has more gradual approaches up through the trees. There is a stream at the bottom there, where Paha Sapa makes his lower camp and builds his sweat lodge. The place he chooses is a sheltered bowl with the stream running through and where there is ample good grass for the horses. He retrieves the priceless Ptehinčala Huhu Canunpa from the large bundle on White Crane’s back, the pipe’s segments still wrapped in red cloth, as well as the wasmuha rattle that holds the forty small squares of Three Buffalo Woman’s skin along with yuwipi stones.

It takes Paha Sapa a full day to find the sintkala waksu sacred stones for the sweat lodge, all that time spent wading through the ice-cold streams for miles around, seeking out the special rocks with the beadwork design. It makes Paha Sapa shiver to know that these very stones were once touched by Tuncan , the ancient and hard stone spirit who was present at the creation of all things. Then he has to find exactly the right sort of willows. It takes him another full day from dawn to late-summer sunset to build his sintkala waksu sweat lodge for his inipi .

After cutting down the required twelve white willow trees (and rejecting many more), Paha Sapa sticks the poles in a circle about six feet across. He weaves the pliable branches into a dome and covers that dome with skins and robes he’s brought with him. Then he adds leaves to close all gaps. Inside, Paha Sapa digs a hole in the center of the little lodge and saves the dirt to make a tidy little path that the spirits can follow into his sweat lodge. At the end of the little path, he builds up a low mound called an unci , the same word his people use for “grandmother” because that is the way that Limps-a-Lot and Sitting Bull and the other holy men have taught him to think of the whole earth: Grandmother.

The opening to Paha Sapa’s onikare —another word he uses for sweat lodge—faces west, since only heyoka may enter such a lodge from the east. In the center of his lodge he sets forked sticks firmly into the earth as a framework to support the sacred pipe, Ptehinčala Huhu Canunpa. Not having a buffalo skull for the entrance, Paha Sapa spends a day hunting in the pine forest, kills a large deer, leaves the carcass for the birds and other scavengers—he is deep enough into his fast that his belly is rumbling all the time now and he often has to sit and lower his head until his vision clears—and he flenses and cleans the skull, resisting the urge to nibble on the eyes, and mounts it near the entrance with six pouches holding offerings of the finest tobacco sent by Limps-a-Lot. This is for good luck.