But in the blackness, you couldn’t tell if you were cramped in a small space, or whether you were somehow suspended in eternity. Stephen felt as if everything was being pushed up right against him, yet paradoxically, he had no sense of breadth or width or height here. He felt dizzy. He could hear the others beside him … he could smell them. It was already getting too hot. It was difficult to breathe. He stared at the glowing rocks, and heard the water swishing in the bucket as John stirred it with the dipper … and he felt Whiteshirt’s glowering presence, even though he couldn’t see him in the dark. He felt that same pressure against his eyes and knew that Whiteshirt was watching him.
It was then that Stephen realized how frightened he was.
John prayed, but Whiteshirt was praying louder, trying to drown him out.
John poured a dipperful of water onto the rocks.
It was as if a gun had been fired. Suddenly, Stephen couldn’t breathe. He was screaming, bending forward to get away from the searing steam. Everyone was shouting, “Hi-ye, Pilamaya, thank you, thank you,” and Stephen found himself shouting, too, but he didn’t know what he was saying.
He had to get out of here. He was going to die. He pressed the sage to his mouth, but it was still like breathing fire. He didn’t know where he was; it was as if part of his mind knew, but another part was soaring, taking him miles into darkness, from where he might not return.
Another retort, as more water was poured on the rocks. This time, though, it didn’t seem so bad. Stephen heard the brothers singing. The melody was strange and harsh and ancient; through what seemed to be a hole in Stephen’s consciousness, he could hear John’s prayers for them all.
“If anybody has to eliminate, that’s okay,” John said. “This is a place to get purified, to get out all the evil, to get all the garbage picked up from the world outside out of your system.”
Stephen started coughing. He couldn’t get his breath, but he heard Whiteshirt say, “The evil’s right here, inside the sweat-lodge.”
“Well, if it is, then we’ll just have to burn it right out,” John said in an even, cutting voice.
Whiteshirt laughed at that. “Don’t worry, John … if you get burned, I’ll take over the ceremony for you.”
After a pause, John said, “We came here to pray, remember? And to sweat.” Then he poured water on the rocks.
Stephen felt the pain as a searing wave. He pressed his blanket to his face, trying to breathe, trying to find respite from the rising heat. After a few seconds, he could breathe again. He removed the blanket from his face and stared into the darkness. He could swear that he could see something flickering in the blackness. John would have called them spirits.
Sam handed Stephen a bucket to cool him off, and automatically Stephen ran his hands through his hair. It was hot to the touch, as if on fire. He splashed water on his face. I’m not going to last, he thought. John had told them all that if anyone had to get out to say, “All my relatives,” and the door would be opened for them.
Stephen would try a little longer.
More rocks were brought in, glowing red, and Stephen burned in the darkness. But he thought he was beginning to understand something about this ceremony, that if he was going to pray—and he really wasn’t sure if there was anyone or anything to pray to—he had to do it like this. Prayers had to be somehow earned. You had to go through the pain and sit with your ass in the mud like an animal.
He felt the mud beneath him. He was part of the earth. He was connected.
As the steam exploded again, Stephen thought of Helen and his children, and he started crying for them, for the pain he had caused them … and he hallucinated that he was not drenched in sweat, but in blood.
John told everyone not to wrap their towels and blankets around themselves, but to let the steam sink into their bodies. “The pain is good,” he said as he ladled more water on the rocks. Stephen heard the hiss of steam and felt the hot blast burn over him.
“The pain is only good if it comes from the spirits,” Whiteshirt said loudly, belligerently. “Only the spirits can burn away bad medicine … only they can drive a witch out of the sweat-lodge … .”
John began to pray, as if nothing had been said, as if nothing had gone sour. “Oh, Grandfather, Wakan-Tanka, we’re sending you a voice. Please hear us … pity us for we are weak. Give us the strength and wisdom so that our hearts may soften.”
Whiteshirt began praying, too. But he was praying as if he was fighting. He was mocking. He was accusing. He was trying to drown out John.
But John didn’t raise his voice.
The tension was electrifying the steaming, boiling darkness.
Then John decreed that the first round was over and called for the door to be opened. Janet, who looked distraught, pulled the blankets and tarpaulins away from the sweat-lodge … letting in the blessed light and air and a cool, chilling breeze.
John explained that this was going to be a “hot” round. He also told everyone that this was going to be a “spirit round,” and that anyone could ask the spirits for help, or ask them to answer questions, but they’d better be sure they really wanted an answer.
Then Whiteshirt said, “Just as long as it’s really the spirits that’s doing the talking.”
John ignored the remark, as he had the others, and called for the “door” to be closed. Once again the women draped the blankets and tarpulins over the lodge and it was pitch-dark inside.
Maybe John hadn’t ignored Whiteshirt’s remark, after all, for he ladled enough water onto the rocks to melt iron. Stephen buried himself in his blanket to escape the burning steam, and everyone shouted thanks.
Stephen gagged and coughed. For an instant, everything went blank. Then Stephen found himself praying and crying for his family, for every family, for everyone. He was praying and crying because of the heat and the pain. He believed in the spirits flickering all around him, and yet at the same time he disbelieved. Part of his mind seemed to shrink back, and he was left with the part that believed what was happening to him, He was in the center, he was praying for his own, for himself—for his family … and for the trees and the rocks and birds and animals and every other goddamned thing in the world. Words were things. They could do things. They could help or harm. Magic was real.
And praying was something that was as practical as cooking food.
Then he caught himself … he was thinking crazy.
His lungs were raw, but he wasn’t coughing. He saw things in the darkness; maybe they were words or spirits or just something like the patterns you see behind your eyes when you press them hard with your palms.
One part of him saw the trails of spirits. Another part dismissed them. He was fighting with himself, believing and disbelieving, and just trying to breathe … to stay alive so he could get out and know that he had done it.
The spirits flickered in the dark and left trails like particles in a cloud chamber.
John poured more water onto the rocks, and everyone screamed with pain. Time seemed to slow down for Stephen, contracting hours and events into instants. In these flashing beads of time were buried hours of mistakes and cruelty, all the memories of his life. He screamed out against himself, for everything wrong he had done, for his failures as a man, as a father and a son and a husband, and he saw blood … he was breathing it … he was tasting it … it was the very steam itself … it was the rocks, which were of the same stuff, coagulated.
Then the questions began.
Everyone had a question for the spirits, and John seemed to be talking, but it wasn’t quite his voice. It was somehow shrill, and it certainly wasn’t John’s personality. He was laughing at almost everything; he was cutting, witty, nasty. But always laughing … and Stephen began to believe that it really wasn’t John who was speaking. He heard different voices, yet he didn’t hear what the spirits were telling the individual people in the sweat-lodge. The words seemed mostly garbled, except for a phrase or sentence here or there. John had told them tha
t usually happened … that you only heard what you were meant to hear … what was important for you. This was a private place, even with the others sitting and groaning and sweating beside you.
But when it came to Stephen’s turn, he didn’t ask the spirits any questions. Once the spirits gave you an answer, you had to follow what they told you to do, and Stephen wasn’t taking any chances. John, however, asked for him. He seemed to appear in the middle of those spirit voices, and he asked that Stephen be helped to find himself with his family. The spirits thought that was funnier than hell, and it gave Stephen a chill to hear those laughing voices and see those flickerings in the dark. He wondered what had happened to John. He felt naked and alone. Vulnerable.
Did John just disappear? Or was he just talking funny … of course, that was it.
It was … and it wasn’t. Something else seemed strange in Stephen’s mind. Even if the flickerings and the voices were phony, he found that he somehow didn’t care. It was real even if it wasn’t. That felt true, but it didn’t make a bit of sense. Still …
Then it was Whiteshirt’s turn. Stephen had blanked everyone else out, just as John had told him to do. But he was going to listen now. He supposed everyone felt the same way because the tension returned to the darkness like a storm.
It was then that Stephen saw the coal move in the pit. Whiteshirt picked up the glowing coal, hot as it was, and put it in his mouth. It illuminated his face in red, as if that face was hanging in the darkness, disconnected. It was as if Whiteshirt had become a spirit himself … or maybe the spirits were inside him. Whiteshirt turned toward John and grinned; the coal was clenched between his teeth, its glow illuminated the hatred and frustration and sickness on his face. Whiteshirt was making a funny keening noise as if the spirits were speaking through him.
It’s a trick! Stephen thought. It’s got to be … .
Then the coal moved toward John, as if Whiteshirt were embracing him. John screamed, an animal scream of pure agony, and the smell of burning flesh pervaded the sweat-lodge.
“Open the door, for Christ’s sake,” Sam shouted. “All my relatives. Goddammit, open the door!”
The women pulled down the blankets and tarpaulins from the willow framework of the sweat-lodge. The light was blinding. Everyone was silent, stunned. John had fallen forward. Blood oozed from large ugly gashes in his back. It wasn’t the glowing coal that had burned and cracked John’s flesh; the coal was just a symbol of Whiteshirt’s power. It was the heat that had torn him open … the heat contained in Whiteshirt’s burning heart.
John groaned and sat up, shaking his head as if warding off something invisible. Whiteshirt stared at him in hard satisfaction. He didn’t say a word, but his wife, Janet, applied sage moistened with her spittle to the gashes in John’s back. John flinched every time she touched him.
“You were wrong to do this thing,” she said to her husband.
“I didn’t do it,” Whiteshirt said flatly. “It was the spirits.”
“You were wrong,” Janet said again, and Stephen could see in her face how much she hated this man … or perhaps the intensity of her hatred was fueled by love and guilt.
“This can’t go on,” Sam said. “I’ll vision-quest another time. I need to pray about all this … let’s forget it all for now.”
“No,” said John, a quaver in his voice, “we’re going to do the last round … and you’re going to keep your promise to the spirits and make your vision-quest. Today. But first there’s something between Joe Whiteshirt and me that has to be finished. Everybody, get out of the sweat-lodge. We’re going to let the spirits decide about this bad thing that has come between us.”
“The spirits already decided,” Whiteshirt said. “They made their mark on your back. Do you want them to burn you again?
“That was you, Joe,” John said. “So you are using medicine to get what you want. But you won’t get it. Nobody will follow you … you’re a witch, not a medicine man.” John spoke in low, even tones, as if he were simply reciting facts. But he was trembling, exposing his rage and humiliation … and perhaps his fear.
“This time you’ll die,” Whiteshirt said. “That will be proof enough.”
“We’ll see … .”
“You’re not going to do this thing,” Janet said to Whirtshirt, but it was already as good as done because the men were leaving the sweat-lodge.
“What’s going on?” Stephen asked John, but John wouldn’t answer him. He just nodded his head, indicating that Stephen should get out with the others.
When everyone was out, John said “Close it up.” The blankets and tarps were thrown back on the lodge, and one of the men handed in a shovelful of glowing rocks. Janet had refused to act as keeper of the door.
John asked for another shovelful … enough for two rounds.
“More rocks aren’t going to help you,” Whiteshirt said.
John didn’t answer. He was praying in Sioux.
Stephen tried to approach Sam and Janet and ask them to try and stop John and Whiteshirt from sweating. Sam just shook his head, and Janet gently told him not to interfere in matters he didn’t understand. So Stephen went back to the sweat-lodge and stood with the others. An older woman in a cotton print housedress stood beside him. Every once in a while, she would nervously look up at the sky, as if watching for eagles … waiting. Even the children were quiet. Everyone was listening, waiting to hear what was going to happen inside the sweat-lodge. There was a communal sense that what was about to happen was out of human control. The next few minutes would, indeed, be decided by the spirits.
“Close the door,” John said, and the keeper of the door closed the last opening of the sweat-lodge with a tarp.
Stephen could hear John stirring the water with the aluminum ladle. Then there was a hissing of steam as John poured some water on the rocks. Both men prayed in Sioux. Once again Whiteshirt prayed louder than John, drowning him out. But then he switched to English. He called John a witch … a spy for the white world. He blamed John for what had happened between Sam and Janet. He blamed John for sending Sam with a disease … bad medicine, a disease that had afflicted everyone at Whiteshirt’s camp. But now the spirits were going to put things to right. He called them down from the heavens to destroy his enemy.
Whiteshirt worked himself into a frenzy.
When Whiteshirt paused to catch his breath, John said, “Okay, we will let the spirits decide. We’ll make this a short round.” Then there was an ear-splitting cracking sound like an explosion inside the sweat-lodge. Everyone outside jumped back. John must have thrown most of the bucket onto those rocks. And right after that there was another explosion.
“You bastard,” Whiteshirt screamed. “You’re going to die for this.”
But now John was praying … it was his turn to scream for the spirits. “Oh, Grandfather, Wakan-Tanka, Tunkashila, send down the eagle to guard the sacred pipe and the life of the People. Send Wakinyan-Tanka, the great thunderbird to scourge out the evil.” He intoned, “Send us the one that has wings, but no shape. Send us the one that has an eye of lightning. Send us the one that has no head, yet has a beak filled with the teeth of the wolf. Send us the winged one to devour whatever is bad inside us, just as it devours its own young.”
Stephen listened, his hands resting on the outside of the sweat-lodge. He heard a flapping noise like the working of wings. It sounded as if there was a huge bellows inside the sweat-lodge. The noise grew louder. Something was beating against the inside of the sweat-lodge. Stephen could hear and feel it slapping against the blankets and tarpaulins. It was as if a great bird was trapped in there with John and Whiteshirt, and it was thrashing its wings, beating to get out of the darkness … to find the cold blue of the upper air.
But that’s impossible, Stephen thought, even as he felt the sweat-lodge shake.
There was scuffling inside … and screaming.
Then there was sudden silence.
Stephen pressed the side of his face against the roug
h canvas of the sweat-lodge to hear better, but all he could hear was his own heart beating in his throat … a tiny trapped eagle.
“Open the door,” John said in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper. “It’s over … .”
They quickly pulled the tarpaulins and blankets away from the willow frame of the sweat-lodge … and found John sitting by himself. He blinked in the bright sunlight. His pipe rested on his lap. He didn’t seem to notice that he was sitting stark naked, his blanket underneath him. He looked pale and drawn, as if he had just sweated away part of his life. The dead coal that had been in Whiteshirt’s mouth lay in the dirt before him. It was all that was left of Whiteshirt.
“Do you believe in the eagles now?” John asked Stephen.
Stephen could only shrug. It was all some sort of a trick, he told himself, even though the hairs on the back of his neck were still standing up. Whiteshirt couldn’t have just disappeared … he had to have sneaked away somehow.
John smiled weakly. “Next time, maybe the eagles will bite your pecker off.” Then he raised his head and gazed into the sky. He was still smiling.
Stephen looked uneasily upward at the eagles circling high overhead, and he thought about Helen and his children and the blood he had tasted inside the sweat-lodge. There wouldn’t be a next time, he told himself, He was certain of that. He was ready to go home.
Perhaps John understood, because he started laughing like a spirit.
ELIZABETH A. LYNN
At the Embassy Club
Born in New York City, Elizabeth A. Lynn now lives and works in San Francisco. Lynn made her first sale in 1977, and rapidly established herself as one of the most popular and respected writers of her generation. Her first novel was A Different Light, published in 1978. It was followed by the three volumes of the popular “Chronicles of Tornor” fantasy trilogy—The Watchtower, The Dancers of Arun, and The Northern Girl—and, in 1981, by a complex and sweeping SF novel, The Sardonyx Net. Her short fiction has been collected in The Woman Who Loved the Moon and Other Stories. In 1980 she won two World Fantasy Awards, one for her novel The Watchtower, and one for her short story “The Woman Who Loved the Moon.” Her most recent novel is The Silver Horse.
Year's Best Science Fiction 02 # 1985 Page 37
