Dan Simmons - Black Hills

He can see the Sun Dance River to the north of the Hills, what the wasichus call the Belle Fourche, and the Cheyenne River to the south. Farther to the north he can easily see the meandering line the wasichus call the Missouri River. All of these rivers are in flood stage, but the Sun Dance River the most so.

In the distance Paha Sapa can see Wapiye Olaye I’ha , the Plain of the Rocks that Heal, and the Hinyankagapa Black Buttes and the He Ska White Buttes and the Re Sla Bald Place and back again to the Washu Niya Breathing Cave in the southern part of the Hills and half a hundred landmarks in the Hills and out that would take him days or weeks of walking or riding to reach.

He can see the Hogback Ridge of reddish sandstone that borders the sunken Race Track around the Hills, like a band of muscle around a pumping heart, and can easily see the broad Pte Tali Yapa “Buffalo Gap” that allows easy access both for the four-legged animals and for the Natural Free Human Beings when they go to the mountains for sanctuary. Directly beneath him is the Six Grandfathers, nearby the higher rocky summit of Evil Spirit Hill and half a hundred other gray-granite ridges and red-rock needles and spires thrusting up out of the soft black carpet of pines that covers the Hills.

It is silent up here as the sun rises quickly again and again, far too quickly to be in the harness of regular time or motion, and the shadows grow shorter so quickly as to be amusing. Again and again the sun hurtles into the sky, arcs across the perfect blue, and sets to the prayers of the Natural Free Human Beings. But suddenly that motion slows and there comes the wind-whisper, branch-murmuring, distant-thunder careful enunciation of the soft Grandfather voice in Paha Sapa’s mind. The eleven-year-old boy suddenly feels as if he is in his and his people’s future.

— Watch, Paha Sapa.

Paha Sapa watches and at first sees nothing. But then he realizes that there is a stirring and shifting among and within the rocks of the sacred Six Grandfathers mountain a mile or two directly beneath him, a trembling and vibration along the rocky ridge summit where he can still make out his muddy Vision Pit and his five direction posts with their wilting red banners. Paha Sapa’s enhanced eagle-vision allows him to focus on things at will, almost as if he has one of the Wasicun cavalry officer’s telescopes he’s heard Limps-a-Lot describe, and now, as one of the Grandfathers points again, he looks more closely at the mountain from whence he came.

Small rocks and midsized boulders are shaking loose and sliding down the steep southern face of the Six Grandfathers Mountain. Paha Sapa sees the trees on the northern slope shake and shiver in unison. There rises a soft rumble as more rocks, large and small, tumble into the deeper valley on the south side of the sacred peak, and then Paha Sapa sees the earthquake in action as the very rock seems to become liquid, shimmering, and mile after mile of forest and meadow fold and rearrange themselves like a buffalo robe or furry blanket being shaken.

No, something is coming out of the stone.

For a moment, Paha Sapa thinks it is something erupting from the rock itself, burrowing up out of the stone, but then he swoops his vision closer and sees that it is the granite of the mountain itself that is reshaping, re-forming, emerging.

Four giant faces emerge from the south-facing cliff just beneath where Paha Sapa has been praying and lying for days and nights. They are wasichu faces, all male—although the first face to come out of the rock might be that of an old woman except for the bold thrust of chin. The second face to emerge from the granite cliff like a baby bird’s beak and head from a thick-shelled gray egg is of a Wasicun with long hair, an even longer chin than the old-lady Wasicun on the far left, and a far gaze. He is looking up at Paha Sapa and the real Six Grandfathers. The third Head has a sort of goat beard that some Wasicun affect, but strong features and infinitely sad eyes. The fourth and final head, set between the far-looker and the goat-bearded sad man, has a short mustache above smiling lips, and around the eyes are two circles of what might be metal and glass. Limps-a-Lot has talked, rather wistfully Paha Sapa thought, of these third and fourth eyes that some wasichus put on when their own eyes begin to wear out; he has even given the Wasicun word for them: spectacles .

— What…

Paha Sapa has to ask the significance of these frightening heads, no matter how puny his nagi voice sounds to his own ears.

Paha Sapa silences himself when he feels the phantom touch of an invisible Grandfather hand on his spirit-shoulder as the mountain below continues to change.

The four heads are free. Then, in a way strangely familiar to Paha Sapa from earlier dreams, come the shoulders and upper bodies, clad in granite hints of wasichu clothing. Now the four forms writhe and twist—Paha Sapa can almost hear the grunting from exertion and can hear the rumble of boulders falling into the valleys and the flap and cry as thousands of birds throughout the Black Hills take wing.

The heads must be fifty or sixty feet tall. The stone bodies, when they rise from their fetal crouches, balance, and stand, must be more than three hundred feet tall—taller than the spirit Six Grandfathers in their columns of white light.

For a moment Paha Sapa is terrified. Will these gray stone wasichu monsters continue growing until they can reach the Grandfathers and him? Will they reach up and pluck him out of the sky and devour him?

The stone Wasicun do not continue growing and do not look up at Paha Sapa or the Grandfathers again. Their attention is on the earth and on the Black Hills all around them. The giants stand there on their massive gray stone legs, two of them are actually astride the peak of the Six Grandfathers, and Paha Sapa can see them looking around with what he interprets as the same sense of wonder held by any newborn, four-legged or human.

But there is more than wonder in those four gazes. There is hunger.

Again comes the wind-pine-rustle, distant-summer-thunder whisper of one—or perhaps all—of Paha Sapa’s beloved Six Grandfathers.

— Watch.

The four Wasichu Stone Giants are striding through the Black Hills, knocking trees down in their wake. Their footprints in the soft soil are as large as some of the Hills’ scattered small and sacred lakes. Occasionally one or more of the giants will stop, bend, and rip the top of a mountain off, throwing thousands of tons of dirt to one side or the other.

Paha Sapa has the sudden and almost overwhelming urge to giggle, to laugh, perhaps to weep. Are these Wasichu Stone Giants then mere pispía —giant prairie dogs?

Then he continues to watch and has no more urge to giggle.

The four Wasichu Stone Giants are plucking animals out of the forests and meadows of the Paha Sapa: deer from the high grasses, beaver from their headwater ponds, elk from the hillsides, bighorn sheep from the boulders, porcupines from the trees, bears from their dens, coyotes and foxes and their cubs and kits from their dens, squirrels from branches, eagles and hawks from the very air….

And everything the four Wasichu Stone Giants pluck from the forest and fields, they devour. The huge gray stone teeth chew and chew and chew. The gray stone faces on the gray stone heads show no emotion, but the boy can feel their unsatiated hunger as they bend and pluck and lift and pop living things with their own souls into their gray mouths and chew and chew and chew.