Dan Simmons: Black Hills

He remembers that when he was about three summers old, he touched the bare arm of Raven’s Hair, Limps-a-Lot’s younger wife (and Paha Sapa’s wet nurse after his real mother died), and received a wave of confused memory-thoughts of Raven’s Hair’s own baby dying only weeks before Paha Sapa was born, of her anger at Limps-a-Lot for bringing this other infant into her lodge, of her strange anger at Stands in Water—Paha Sapa’s dead mother—for grieving so terribly after her stupid boy-husband’s death that she kept slashing her arms and thighs with her knife in mourning far beyond an appropriate amount of time for that sort of behavior, bleeding and weakening herself too much—especially if one is very small and with small hips and pregnant and not strong to begin with after a long captivity with the Crows, as Stands in Water had been.

At the age of three summers, Paha Sapa had seen through his small-vision-touching that his mother had come close to killing herself through this knife-slash mourning before he was born. Most Lakota women prided themselves on their relative ease of bearing children, feeling that Wakan Tanka —the All—had chosen them to be excused from at least a little of the pain and danger that afflicted all women everywhere. But at the age of three summers, touching Raven’s Hair, Paha Sapa had seen his young mother, pale and weak and sweating, her legs apart and her šan —her woman’s winyaˇn shan —open and ragged and bleeding, as Raven’s Hair and Three Buffalo Woman and the other women used moss and warm clay and even strips of hide softened to the thinness of cloth to try to stem that terrible bleeding, even while other women held him, squealing his lungs out and with his umbilical cord still attached.

Paha Sapa had cried out and staggered away from Raven’s Hair the day he had that touching-vision, and his stepmother—who had always treated him kindly, treated him almost as her real son—asked him what was wrong, what had happened, but Paha Sapa, at that age barely able to speak words in the language of the Ikče Wičas´a —the Natural Free Human Beings—had only cried and pulled away and been sick and feverish all that day and that night and all the next day.

After that, Paha Sapa both feared and wished for the small-vision-backward-touchings and slowly learned how to ask a question or direct a discussion to something he truly wanted to know about and then, as if by accident, touch one or more people near him, hoping to get the rush of their memories and mind-pictures.

Sometimes the magic worked; usually it did not.

But it seemed a shameful thing to Paha Sapa—like peeking under a tent flap to see a young maiden undressing, or deliberately watching Limps-a-Lot mating with Raven’s Hair or his older wife, Three Buffalo Woman, on a warm night when the buffalo robes were thrown off—so he had not confessed his ability to his stepfather until he had reached his ninth summer, the year before the Pehin Hanska Kasata —the rubbing out of Long Hair at the Greasy Grass—that changed Paha Sapa’s life forever.

IN HIS NINTH SUMMER, when he tells Limps-a-Lot about his visions, the holy man asks Paha Sapa several sharp questions about his small-vision-backward-touching experiences, seeking out lies or inconsistencies—obviously thinking that the boy has heard these things in other ways (since there is no privacy whatsoever in a tipi and very, very little in a band with only eighteen lodges). But when Paha Sapa tells of his small-vision-touching experience with Three Buffalo Woman, in which she remembered her time as a girl when she was captive of the Blackfeet and all the men took turns raping her and then burned the insides of her thighs with white-hot stones, Limps-a-Lot falls silent and his frown is fierce. Paha Sapa knows through the same small-vision-backward-touching that Three Buffalo Woman has never told anyone except Limps-a-Lot of those days, and that only once, many years before when Limps-a-Lot suggested (while they were gathering berries near Beaver Creek) that they should marry. The two never discussed it again or mentioned it to anyone else.

Finally, Limps-a-Lot says—

— Why do you call this ability small-vision-backward-touching and not visions from the spirits, Black Hills?

Paha Sapa hesitates. He has never lied to Limps-a-Lot, but he is afraid to answer honestly.

— Because I know these—glimpses—are not my hanblečeya, Grandfather.

Paha Sapa only calls his guardian Limps-a-Lot Tunkašila —Grandfather—at the most formal or most affectionate moments.

— You know that is not what I meant, Black Hills. I am asking why you call these small visions backward visions. Do you touch people and also see forward in their minds and in time… do you see what will happen to them, to us, in the future?

Paha Sapa hangs his head as if he’s been caught touching his ce .

— Han, Tunkašila. Yes, Grandfather.

— Do you want to tell me what small-visions-forward-touching you have had with me and others in our band?

— No, Grandfather.

Limps-a-Lot says nothing for a very long time. It is late summer, the week of Paha Sapa’s birth date, and the two have walked to a hill far enough away that the village lodges look like cloth girl-toy tipis under the cottonwood trees and the grazing horses across the river are mere black specks moving through the tan grass that rises to their bellies. Paha Sapa listens to the long, slow sibilance of the grass sighing and stirring in the breeze during Limps-a-Lot’s silence. He will hear that sound again ten months later at the Greasy Grass when the shooting and screaming stop.

— Very well, then, Black Hills. You showed courage by telling me these things. I will not press you to tell me about the small-vision-forward-touching visions until you are ready—but do not hesitate to do so if you see something that is important to the survival of our people.

— No , Tunkašila. I mean, yes, I will , Tunkašila.

Limps-a-Lot grunts.

— I will not tell Angry Badger or He Sweats or Loud Voice Hawk about your visions at this time. They already think you strange. But you and I should think about what this means for your hanblečeya in the Paha Sapa next year. Use this power carefully, Black Hills. Such a thing is wakan.

Sacred. Filled with mysterious force.

— Yes, Grandfather.

— It does not mean that you must become a wičasa wakan, a holy man like me, but it does mean that you have been chosen by the Six Grandfathers to be a waayatan, a man of vision who can see the future, like my young cousin Black Elk or your father’s nephew in Good Thunder’s band, Hoka Ushte. Waayatan often give their tribes wakinyanpi that may determine the band’s fate.

— Yes , Tunkašila.

Limps-a-Lot frowns at him in silence and Paha Sapa knows, even without touching the old man and receiving a backward-vision, that the wise wičasa wakan thinks that he, Paha Sapa, is too young and too immature for this wakan gift and that this vision-touching power might be bad for everyone. Finally Limps-a-Lot growls—

— Hecetu. Mitakuye oyasin.

So be it. All my relatives—every one of us.

NUMINOUS.

Paha Sapa learns the meaning of this wasichu word in English some forty-five years after Pehin Hanska Kasata —the rubbing out of Long Hair Custer at the Greasy Grass—and fifty-six years after his birth.