Hunting the Ghost Dancer

by A. A. Attanasio

  All the horses looked the same to Timov. Dun-brown with creamy-white bellies, stubby tails, and bristly manes, they grazed placidly. The one Hamr indicated seemed to lift its head more often than the others to sniff for predators.

  "Hamr, you'll never get near enough to take one," Aradia said.

  "Spretnak and I have been watching them for a long time. We think—"

  "Spretnak got lamed when he tried to take a horse."

  "He did. He chose the wrong horse."

  "And how is yours different, Hamr?"

  “Look at him, Aradia.” He smiled, sadly. "He never prances like the others, and he constantly tastes the air. He can't see. I've named him 'Blind Side of Life.'"

  Timov noticed that, indeed, the animal's eye-sockets bored inward darker than those of the others. Hamr had found a sightless horse. No wonder he acted so cocky, so confident of accomplishing what none of the other Blue Shell men had done. Blind Side of Life—what kind of name is that for an animal?

  "Sightless or not," Aradia said, "you're risking your life with a beast that big. And for what if it can't see?"

  "He can smell. Once I tame him, he'll help with the hunt. I'll track the biggest game. I'll bring you ivory and bear claws."

  "I want only you, Hamr."

  "I want these things for you."

  Aradia lost her fingers in the long hair falling over his shoulders. "I'm afraid for you, afraid I won't see you again. The hunt killed my father."

  Hamr met her imploring gaze with his fixed expression. "You're beautiful and wise, Aradia. There are others, perhaps better than myself, for you."

  Timov nodded with agreement, hoped his sister would not contradict him. She stirred to speak, and Hamr lifted her off the bough and silenced her with a nuzzle. His hands unfastened the shell sash and opened the mantle she had wrapped about herself. It fell to the ground, and they began nibbling at each other.

  Timov choked back a groan, then searched about for pebbles. By the time he had gathered a small handful, the lovers lay naked in a nest of grass between two tree roots. Mischievously, he waited until Hamr mounted before pelting him with the sharp rocks.

  Hamr slapped his stung buttocks, and jerked about with a ferocious scowl and a shout.

  Timov laughed like a jackal, danced briefly before them, wagging an imaginary penis, and darted away. He did not dare to glance back until he had attained the poplar grove atop the hill.

  Hamr and Aradia had disappeared deeper into the hollow, and he sat down to catch his breath. For a while, he stared out over shimmering waves of grass at the horses. They seemed small and fragile among the clouds' running shadows.

  Soon Hamr's come-cry would spark out of the hollow, the wind would shift, and the hunt would begin.

  He rose and ran off to tell the others.

  )|(

  Spretnak worked his way slowly through the hollow, down one side of the migratory ditch and laboriously up the other slope. He sat now in the shade of a gnarled tree.

  His gimpy leg throbbed from the effort, and he ignored the pain. For him, this particular suffering offered a small sacrifice, well worth the coming joy of seeing his son ride a horse into the settlement.

  With Hamr for his son, Spretnak knew pride. In the season before Hamr’s birth, Spretnak had been thrown from the horse he had wanted to master and had broken his leg. And though the leg had mended badly, his dream of becoming a great man had not mended at all. He could no longer hunt, fish from the dugouts, or climb the sea rocks for mussels. Instead, he mended nets, studied the mysteries of the Tortoise, and gave his son to a good friend so that the boy might be reared by a whole man. He never told Hamr the truth, and the few other people who knew had died years before. Now his broken dream had found new life and become whole.

  From the time Hamr began to talk, Spretnak had instilled in his son the conviction of the boy’s own greatness. He did so quietly, secretly, only to the boy and in such a way that the youth believed this fate had risen from within.

  Never telling him the words outright, he let Hamr discover for himself that he had been born great, able to listen deeper, run harder, eat more food and endure more pain. And, to Spretnak's satisfied amazement, the boy grew tall, strong, and certain of his fate, some would say arrogant—and even Spretnak had come to believe he had merely sponsored the boy's mighty destiny.

  Spretnak lifted his gaze into the wide morning sky. He noticed in the clouds that the day's heat had turned the wind.

  Men are like the clouds, he thought, moved by invisible forces that rise out of the earth and descend from the heights. The clashing of these forces shape men as wind shapes clouds. Great men learn to read the wind and to partake in their own shaping. No one, not even the greatest of men, can choose their way. Acceptance, and with it participation, are the only choices beyond ignorance.

  He thought this good. Life existed simply as one found it, beautiful and terrible in its simplicity.

  Clattering noises among the briars behind him interrupted his thoughts. He twisted about in a fright, half-expecting to confront the brawny hatchet-faced men who called themselves the Eyes of the Bear.

  Instead, he spotted the glossy black wings and red legs of a chough exulting in the briar over its capture of a large mud beetle. Spretnak blew a relieved laugh at this demonstration of what he had been thinking: Life gives no choices to the chough or the beetle, to the Eyes of the Bear or to me.

  He nervously scanned the dark treeline that undulated with the hills, observed no movement at all. A deer or drifting wolves would have reassured him that the woods stood empty of his enemy. Now he could not be certain.

  Surely, the Eyes of the Bear knew the herd had arrived, since the horses had to trespass their territory to reach this valley. He hoped that the hunters had already taken all the horsemeat they wanted.

  Hamr's call warbled from across the hollow. Spretnak pulled himself to his feet, the fright of a moment ago shifting to exhilaration. The time had come to justify a lifetime of resignation. For seventeen years, he had trained his son for this morning. He had taught him everything he had learned from the misery of his own blunder. This day, he would see a Blue Shell man master a horse!

  He limped a short way toward the herd. When they noticed him, he stopped. He did not want to frighten them into bunching, the mares and foals inside, the stallions ringing them. He simply wanted to move them on their way. They would have gone in another day or so anyway, once the grass had thinned. Better to cut out the animal they wanted now while it was still hungry so later it could be gentled with food.

  From the hill's brow, he waved his arms, and the horses watched him. Like a slow dream, they began to move out, drifting single file into the ditch that thousands of springs and autumns of migration had cut into the land. They moved unhurriedly, nose to tail, occasionally glancing up at him or maybe past him to the deep rows of cedar from where predators might descend.

  Spretnak followed the herd, near enough to make sure they did not clamber out of the deeply worn trail and favor themselves with the early and tender shoots of the hollow. The horse he and Hamr had selected, Blind Side of Life, marched in the middle of the herd, with the mares.

  The appearance of a sightless horse two summers earlier had been accepted by Spretnak as an answer by the invisible powers to his petition. Every moon since the first sighting, he and Hamr had made sacrifice to the Beastmaker, throwing into the ritual fires bundled grassheads, each with a seahorse at its center.

  Hours ago, they had shaped a tiny horse from mud. Hamr had tied a strand of his hair about the mud-steed's neck and had buried the icon on the migratory trail with only the strand sticking out, so that he would have the right to lead the horse away from the ancient path.

  Now if only Hamr would remember everything he had been taught. Ahead ranged dunes, where the horses would have to wend. Hamr waited there, remembering but, at last, able only to trust himself.

  Spretnak sighed deeply and slowed into the hurt of his walk. No
thing remained for him to do. At best, if all went well, he would be the secret half of a proud story. And he would spend the rest of his life accepting that—or whatever happened.

  )|(

  Hamr knelt at the crest of a dune alongside the trench where the horses would pass. He could see, above the beach grass, the silver haze of their dust. The haze blurred his view of the bosky hollow with Aradia at its center. Though, of course, she had left when they had parted, gone back the way she had come, he imagined her still there. Their moment together provided a perfection he did not want to let go until after this trial. Her love for him informed the faith he needed to accomplish what before had just been a boast.

  He knew the others in the tribe thought him insolent and boastful. No one would say it to his face. He read it well enough in their measuring glances, studying him for his flaws. If he failed now, they would laugh, remembering they had gauged him a fool. And if he survived his failure, he would spend the rest of his life wintering in pain, like Spretnak.

  That one man believed in him, only because Spretnak was halt and useless as a man and could no longer believe in himself. The haze rising from the herd carried all the dust of the summers Hamr had sat on the ground with the lame man, watching him draw pictures in the dirt to illustrate his ideas of the hunt, the capture of the horse, and war.

  Though flat, the drawings appeared sharp and rich: horses moved, hunters ran, spears flew, and ideas took shape, so that time no longer moved invisible but as a line that turned back on itself and spun round through the seasons. A wheel, Spretnak had called it.

  He had made one once from the shell of a tortoise, put a hole in its middle and a stick through the hole and spun it round, like time, always returning to where it had begun, night to day, winter to spring.

  But what good did a wheel provide? What use did drawings in the dirt offer?

  The makings of a useless man playing games.

  If Hamr succeeded, Spretnak could sincerely believe all those games had been more than games. The horse would make it so.

  Hamr's reverie snapped as a hooting laugh whooped overhead. He looked up, toward the sea cliffs that loomed to his left on the far side of the defile, where the horses would pass—and he eyed Timov, small as his toenail, staring down at him and pointing. At the boy's side, other figures stepped forward.

  Hamr recognized them all but fixed on one, Gobniu, chief of the Blue Shell. The fact that he attended, summoned by a boy, bestowed importance to this event. Gobniu should have been with the dugouts, finding food. Yet he, stout and commanding even at this distance, stood there with the other men, leaning on their fishing spears, watching.

  What do they expect to see?

  His death or maiming, of course. None of them believed he could take a horse. Why should they believe Hamr the braggart? Gobniu and the others did not like him, for he did not care to spear or net fish with the others. And though he obligingly did both every day that Gobniu called the men to the sea, he did so dreamily. Now they had gathered to witness his dreams shattered.

  As the first of the horses came around the bend, the men on the sea cliffs frightened them, and they moved faster than he had expected. Quickly, he reviewed what he had to do. The rocks he had piled atop the dune days earlier remained in place. The fishnet clotted with horse dung lay furled at his knees. His heart beat strong and calm, trusting in the clarity of his plan.

  The first mares passed. He continued to lie flat on the dune, downwind and unseen by the horses, and his hand strayed toward the twined hemp tied to the wooden stake holding the rockpile on the crest.

  When he spotted Blind Side of Life following the mare ahead of him—the horse's head high to catch the scent of her, eyes sunken, the shape of the skull showing at the sockets—Hamr yanked the rope. The stake flew out, and the rockpile crashed into the trench, nipping the back hooves of the mare that Blind Side followed.

  Blind Side reared and stumbled into the rocks. The mares behind bolted up the sides of the ditch and scattered when Hamr slid down the dune-face and cast the fishnet over the horse's head.

  The stallion reared again, and Hamr held fast to the net. As Blind Side came down, Hamr rushed forward, pulled himself up by the net onto the animal's back, and clung to its neck with all his strength.

  Blind Side of Life bucked, banging his front legs among the fallen rocks. Hamr feared the creature would break its hooves or legs, but the next moment the horse clambered up the side of the ditch and twisted to shake him loose.

  A sighted horse would have rushed at full gallop down the beach. Blind Side reared, capered, and bounded. He could hear the cries of the other horses fleeing down the strand, and he sprang toward them.

  On the cliff, men howled and shouted encouragement and derision. Timov, agape at Hamr atop the beast, knew he would fall at any instant.

  The other horses had galloped out of sight, and their scent thinned away in the sea wind. Blind Side, frightened and confused, continued to thrash until he tired. Each time Hamr tried comforting noises the horse started bucking again.

  Drawn by the din of screaming men, the women had hurried back from their foraging and now gazed down from the cliff. Aradia stood among them, and she watched with arms outstretched, as if she could project her strength into him.

  She had not expected this. She had made herself believe she would care for him if lamed or remember him if killed. This was unbearable, watching him clasping a frenzied animal fighting him across the beach.

  Spretnak hobbled up the side of the ditch, and stood gaping at his son astride the stallion. Emotion welled up in him, at once proud and frightened. He had taken this wild ride before.

  Only panic kept Blind Side of Life moving finally. He heard the pounding sea very close now. A wave splashed his fetlocks, and he reared halfheartedly. No pain, just the weird weight of this creature holding him tight, its stink muted by the safe, good smell of the herd's droppings.

  The animal paused, breathing hard, now more afraid of the water sloshing around his legs than the weight on his back. He edged back onto the shore, sniffed for the herd and—frightened anew not to find any sign of the others at all—bucked again and again.

  Fatigue pulsed in him, and he ambled up the beach.

  Hamr, shoulders contracted with pain, hands fused into fists on the fishnet, dared not relax. He tried gentling noises again. The horse did not object.

  Blind Side moved away from the pounding surf. As soon as he shuffled among the dunes, Hamr slipped off his back. The horse reared again, and Hamr held to the net still firmly wrapped about the steed's head.

  Gently, slowly, he guided the horse among the dunes to the cliff-wall. There, in a recess bounded on three sides by the cliff-face, he let the horse go.

  Blind Side wandered about the enclosure. Hamr and Spretnak stood in the depressions between the dunes on the open side and made comforting noises to keep him inside. Spretnak pulled tufts of grass from the bale they had harvested the day before and scattered them in the enclosure while Hamr blocked the open side with bramble and rocks.

  For a long while, the horse wandered around, first one way then the other, trying to find the scent of the others. They had always milled nearby. Where had they gone?

  Gobniu and the fisherfolk arrived first, hurrying down cliff-trails. The women flew after, trilling and clicking their amazement.

  Gobniu clapped his big hand on Hamr's shoulder and looked up into his gleaming face. "Don't think because of this big catch your net-fishing days are over," he joked, and all the men laughed and pressed forward to touch him and rub some of his luck into their own hands and hair.

  The clan enfolded Spretnak, too, despite his protests, and the men hoisted them both into the air as the women poured off the cliff-trail, shouting and laughing.

  Aradia's face glowed the brightest among them. Hamr swam down from the embrace of the men and took her in his weary arms. To the excited throng, he announced, "This woman has asked me into her family. Now that I have som
ething more than my bare hands to give her, my heart accepts."

  The women trilled loudly, and the men cheered. Even Timov, whose displeasure with Hamr had softened during the jubilant rush down the cliff-trail, shrugged his acceptance and whistled with the crowd.

  The noise startled Blind Side of Life as he paced the enclosure, crying out for the herd and the freedom they had taken with them.

  )|(

  Purple spears of crocus pierced the meadow where the Mothers had erected the wedding bower: an arbor of alder limbs jeweled with buds like clusters of jade. They had hung this canopy with yellow plaits of lemon grass and seaweed in scarlet ribbons.

  Conch shells gaped pink as mouths at the sides of the bower. A panther-skin wrapped the bride, who otherwise stood naked but for sparks of tiny red blossoms in her untressed black hair.

  She lifted her face to gaze upward. From the central ridgepole dangled a round talisman of carved silkwood set with feathers, hawk talons, colorful crystals and, and a snailshell fixed to the middle.

  The emblem gathered her mindfulness: Five feathers for the flight of our senses — three talons for grasping heaven, earth, and the abyss — a gem for each of the six directions — and at the center: the spiral journey home, to the source.

  The bride had waited alone in this sacred place for the last hour of night, watched over from the bluffs by the Mothers. Mother Mysteries decreed that the women stand apart until the moon fell through her last station and the sun rose into his first.

  This year, however, the field mice had proliferated. Swarms of them drifted like cloud-shadows in the moonlight, nibbling at whatever blossoms they could reach. So the Mothers thrashed at them with bundled switches until the last possible moment.

  Alone, Aradia thought about her childhood, the playfriends she would leave behind and that lonely night long ago when she bled for the first time and stayed locked inside the cramped reed hut of First Blood.