Lovedeath

by Dan Simmons

  Hoka Ushte’s face fell, but Good Voice Hawk went on quickly, as if to soften his words. “You know that we do not demand all of our young men to be warriors or heroes, Lame Badger. We know that what you dream and what is in your heart will determine what kind of man you will be…” He set a gnarled hand on the boy’s shoulders. “You know that we honor even those born to be winkte…”

  “I am not winkte!” snapped Hoka Ushte, finally stung to anger. A winkte was a man who dressed and acted like a woman. Some whispered that the winkte had the organs of both men and women. Although winkte were considered wakan and were paid well for giving children secret names of power, no self-respecting Lakota brave would want to be one. “I am not winkte,” Hoka Ushte said again, his voice thick.

  “No, you are not winkte,” agreed Good Voice Hawk. “But what are you, grandson?”

  Hoka Ushte shook his head. “I do not understand your question, Grandfather.”

  The young man’s tunkashila took a slow breath. “You have chosen not to join any of the warrior’s societies, nor to go on pony raids, nor to learn to be a strong hunter to provide for the tribe…is there anything you have thought of doing that would make you a suitable husband for Calf Running? This thing must be decided so that my friend and kola Standing Hollow Horn can decide his daughter’s future properly.”

  Hoka Ushte looked at his grandfather and his beloved’s father. He had never known that the two had vowed kola together: had tied the rawhide thongs around their wrists to become such strong friends that they were essentially one person. Hoka Ushte realized that his attempted crime against Standing Hollow Horn the night before would have been a direct crime against his own tunkashila and he closed his eyes in gratitude to the horsehair braid Loud Woman had tied around her daughter’s waist.

  “Well?” prompted Standing Hollow Horn.

  Hoka Ushte realized that both men were waiting for an answer that would determine his and Calf Running’s future. Lame Badger’s mind was a blank.

  Both of the older men looked at him with eyes gone rheumy with the kinnikkinnik smoke.

  “I had a dream…” began Hoka Ushte.

  Both men leaned forward slightly. Dreams were important to the Ikče Wičaśa.

  Hoka Ushte felt giddy himself, light-headed from the sleepless night, the terror, the tobacco, and the strong pejuta sapa. “I had a dream where I went on hanblečeya and became wičaśa wakan,” said Hoka Ushte. Despite the firmness of his voice, the boy almost fainted from surprise when he heard the words that had emerged from his mouth.

  Standing Hollow Horn’s head jerked back in surprise and he looked questioningly at Good Voice Hawk. “A wičaśa wakan,” he murmured. “And Good Thunder is growing old and has turned inward, especially since his wife died of the fever this past winter. A hanblečeya to see if this young one is called to be a wičaśa wakan.” Standing Hollow Horn grunted and handed the pipe to Hoka Ushte. “Washtay!”

  Good Voice Hawk looked at his grandson smoking and then he reached for the pipe himself. His lined face had softened to something perilously close to a smile. “Washtay” he agreed. “It is good. Hecetu. So be it.”

  Early the next morning, when the breaths of the ponies were visible in the cold air and the barking of dogs sounded almost painful to the ear, Hoka Ushte trudged to the tipi of the camp’s only surviving holy man, carrying a gift of kinnikkinnik tobacco in a special pouch. After sharing the smoke of the gift in the fine tribal pipe the wičaśa wakan was custodian of, Good Thunder finally turned to look at the boy. “Hiyupo, tell me why you are here.”

  Hoka Ushte swallowed and told the holy man of his plan to go on hanblečeya and see if he also would be called to become a holy man.

  Good Thunder squinted at him. “This is surprising to me, Hoka Ushte. In all of the seventeen summers I have known you, you have never asked me questions or come to my tipi to inquire about wakan things or seemed to pay much attention to the rituals I have performed for your grandparents. Why do you have this sudden inspiration to go on hanblečeya?”

  Hoka Ushte swallowed before saying, “A dream, Ate.” The boy called Good Thunder “Father” out of respect.

  The wičaśa wakan looked piercingly at the young man. “A dream? Tell me of your dream.”

  Hoka Ushte swallowed again and wove together bits of various dreams to create a convincing vision-dream. He was not lying. Not totally. To lie to the wičaśa wakan while smoking from the tribal pipe was to invite instant death from the Thunder Beings.

  When the boy was finished, Good Thunder remained squinting at him. “So you dreamed that you were on a high place and a horse came out of the clouds and came down and told you that the spirits wished to speak to you? Is this your dream, Hoka Ushte?”

  Hoka Ushte took a breath. “Ohan.”

  The old holy man rubbed his chin. “It is not a dream that would have sent me on hanblečeya when I was your age…” He looked up at the boy. “But then, times change…dreams change. None of the other young men have had any dreams that would lead them to the path of the wičaśa wakan.” He touched Hoka Ushte’s shoulder. “Do you know what the hanblečeya will demand of you?”

  Lame Badger chewed his lip a moment. “I know that I must fast for four days, Ate,” he said. “And there will be a sweat lodge…”

  “No, no,” interrupted Good Thunder, setting the sacred pipe aside. “These are things to do. I asked you if you knew what would be demanded!”

  Hoka Ushte did not speak.

  “After you are prepared and the place is prepared,” said Good Thunder, his voice suddenly stronger and more sonorous than Hoka Ushte had remembered for a long time, “you will be required to think only of seeing a vision. You must empty your mind of all other things. No thinking of food. No thinking of the winčinčalas…”

  Hoka Ushte tried not to blink.

  “You must think only of the vision,” continued Good Thunder. “You must offer the smoke of the čanśaśa to the Spirit of the East, then the Spirit of the North, and if these spirits do not grant you a vision, then you must offer smoke to the Spirit of the West, and if he does not gift you with a vision, you must do the same to the Spirit of the South.”

  “Ohan…” began Hoka Ushte.

  “Shut up,” said Good Thunder. “Now, if these spirits do not respond and you have fasted and meditated properly for several of your four days, then you offer smoke to the Spirit of the Earth, and, if this spirit does not grant your vision, you must make the smoke offering to Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit of heaven itself…but only if you are sure the other spirits have not responded. Is this clear?”

  Hoka Ushte bowed his head.

  “Do not be discouraged if you wait a long time before you receive a vision,” said Good Thunder. “The spirits are in no hurry. When you have seen a vision, do not beseech the spirits any further, but return here and we will advise you about the meaning of the vision.”

  Hoka Ushte nodded slightly, his head still bowed.

  “If you do not have a vision we will be disappointed, but if we find the vision not acceptable,” said Good Thunder, his voice sharp, “you will be disgraced and your grandparents will disown you and you will be the shame of the tribe…”

  Hoka Ushte glanced up, his head still lowered. Good Thunder’s lined face was glowering like a rain cloud.

  “Or, if you were so foolish as to lie to us about having a vision,” continued the wičaśa wakan, “then we would end up advising you to do things that the spirits do not want you to do…and this would bring harm upon you and all who know you.”

  Hoka Ushte closed his eyes and wished that he had never lusted after Calf Running.

  Good Thunder touched Hoka Ushte’s lowered head and the boy jumped. “And even if you have a true vision,” said the older man, “things may not go well for you or the tribe. If, for instance, you dream of the Thunder Beings or your hill is struck by lightning while you are on hanblečeya, then you instantly become a heyoka, a clown, a contrary…”

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nbsp; Hoka Ushte opened his eyes in shock. There had been a heyoka in the camp when he was little. The contrary holy man’s name had been Passes Water in a Horn and although respected and feared—contraries were, after all, wakan—the heyoka was also rather onsika. Pitiful. In the midst of winter, when all others stayed by their lodge fires and huddled in thick robes, the heyoka Passes Water in a Horn wandered through drifts wearing nothing but a loincloth and complaining of the heat. In the summer, when Hoka Ushte and the other boys swam naked in the stream, the heyoka had sat shivering under robes and griped about the cold. Hoka Ushte remembered listening to the gibberish that Passes Water in a Horn had babbled and recalled his grandmother saying, “He speaks backward and only the spirits understand him. He is, after all, heyoka.” The last Hoka Ushte had seen of Passes Water in a Horn had been when the contrary had ridden out onto the plains—backward on his horse—and had never returned. Lame Badger remembered his grandfather whispering to his grandmother that week that the camp had lost some wakan but gained some peace.

  “Heyoka?” said Hoka Ushte, his chin coming up a bit.

  Good Thunder’s eyes were slightly unfocused. “Or Wakan Tanka may call you to be a holy man other than the wičaśa wakan such as me,” he said softly. “You could become the healer and do yuwipi and be wrapped tightly in blankets in the darkness so the spirits can find you. Or you might become waayatan, a man of visions, and give the tribe wakinyanpi that will determine our fate. Or you could be called to be pejuta wičaśa and become a man of herbs to create our medicine. Or perhaps…”

  Good Thunder paused and his face grew darker. “Perhaps you will be called to be wapiya, the conjurer, and will shoot at disease with waanazin. Or perhaps you will be the most dangerous kind of conjurer, the wokabiyeya, who works with the witch medicine, the wihmunge, and sucks the disease straight out of a dying person with his own breath.”

  Hoka Ushte found himself shaking his head. “No, Ate, I only wish to be a regular wičaśa wakan like you and to marry Calf Running and to live a simple life.”

  The holy man’s gaze regained its focus and Good Thunder looked at Hoka Ushte as if surprised to find him in his tipi. “Your wishes have nothing to do with what will happen next. Come to me tomorrow with more tobacco, and we will begin preparation for your hanblečeya.”

  In the days that followed, Hoka Ushte and Good Thunder did the things necessary to prepare for the boy’s vision quest. Because Good Thunder was the only holy man in the camp and the other camps of the Ikče Wičaśa were too far away for the other wičaśa wakan to be summoned, Good Thunder deputized such elders of the tribe as Hoka Ushte’s Tunkashila Good Voice Hawk, the one-armed old man Wooden Cup, the blota hunka war-leader Tries to be Chief, the eyapah, or crier, Thunder Sounds, and old warriors Hard to Hit and Chased by Spiders to help the boy on his hanblečeya. Together they supervised Hoka Ushte’s inipi, or first sweat lodge ceremony.

  First, Lame Badger cut twelve white willow trees, stuck the poles in a circle about six feet across, weaved them into a dome, and covered over the dome with skins and robes and leaves. Lame Badger dug out a hole in the center of the lodge, and saved the scooped out earth to make a little path that the spirits might follow to the sweat lodge. At the end of the path, Hoka Ushte built up a little mound called an unci, the same word he used for grandmother, because that is the way Good Thunder taught him to think of the whole Earth: Grandmother.

  Meanwhile, his real grandmother was busy. While humming softly to herself, she cut forty small squares from the flesh of her arm and set them in a wagmuha rattle along with yuwipi stones, tiny fossils that ants had gathered in their anthill.

  Wooden Cup, Tries to be Chief, and Chased by Spiders took Hoka Ushte to the stream that ran out of the hills and directed his collecting of sintkala waksu, the special stones with tiny “beadwork” designs that showed they were safe for use in the sweat lodge. They would not crack and explode when water was thrown on them while they glowed from the heat. Good Thunder looked over the stones that Hoka Ushte had chosen and pronounced them good. Tunkan, the ancient and hard stone spirit who had been present at creation, had touched these sintkala waksu.

  All this was done almost half a day’s ride from the camp, because Hoka Ushte’s hanblečeya would take place in the Paha Sapa, the sacred Black Hills, and the old men were trying to make it easy on him so that he would not have so far to go to and from the sweat lodge. During this time the old war leader Tries to be Chief had loaned Lame Badger a pony of his own, so for the first time the boy felt like a man as he rode across the prairie with the wind pulling at his braids. As he basked in the attention of the older men and in the approving gaze of the women in the camp, including Calf Running who watched him always now out of the corner of her eye, Hoka Ushte wished that he had thought of this vision quest idea earlier.

  Finally the sweat lodge was completed, the opening was cut out facing west—Good Thunder had warned that eastern doors were only for the heyoka—and the sticks were set in place to hold the sacred tribal pipe. Good Thunder set a buffalo skull near the entrance and laid six tobacco offerings around it for good luck. Then the older men came for the inipi ceremony itself.

  All of the men were naked in the sweat lodge, and at first this disconcerted Lame Badger. He was not used to seeing his elders in nothing but their own sweaty skins, nor was he comfortable being naked before them. But soon the intimacy of the tiny lodge and the steam made him forget his bashfulness.

  Hoka Ushte’s grandfather, Good Voice Hawk, did not enter the lodge but was the special person who closed the flap from the outside when all of the heated stones were in place. Thus Hoka Ushte was sealed within the inipi with Good Thunder, Chased by Spiders, Tries to be Chief, Wooden Cup, Hard to Hit, and Thunder Sounds.

  The men sang “Tunka-shila, hi-yay, hi-yay” until the earth seemed to rock. They inhaled the steam and inhaled the smoke from the sacred pipe. Four times they opened the flap to let cool air and light in the lodge, four times they poured the water again, and four times they smoked the red willow tobacco. And all during this, the six old men gave advice to Hoka Ushte and Hoka Ushte listened with as much concentration as he could muster. It was very hot and very dark and the tobacco was very strong.

  Finally, Good Thunder set down the pipe, said, “Mitakuye oyasin,” which means “All my relatives, everyone, all of us,” and Good Voice Hawk opened the lodge flap from the outside, the old men crawled out into the light like babies being born, and the inipi was over.

  Then Hoka Ushte set off into the Paha Sapa alone for his vision.

  This I must tell you: visions are not easy. Some men of the Ikče Wičaśa wait all of their lives and never have a vision. Others have only one…but the rest of their lives are lived in obedience to that single vision.

  Now Hoka Ushte did not know how he felt about having a vision as he crouched in his vision pit high on a ridge in the Paha Sapa. He was naked except for a beautiful blanket his grandmother had given him to wrap around him during the vision quest. He was unarmed except for the pipe Good Thunder had loaned him and the rattle he carried with its 405 sacred stones and the small squares of his grandmother’s flesh making a soft noise within whenever he moved his hand. He was tired and a little stupid from the smoke and steam of the inipi, but he felt very clean, as if someone had scrubbed him thoroughly on the outside and the inside. He was hungry but he knew that he must not eat or drink for another ninety-six hours. Four days.

  Or sooner, if the vision came sooner.

  Hoka Ushte tried to pray, but his mind was full of images of Calf Running. His fingers remembered the heat of her groin before he had touched the horsehair rope. Even the memory of the horsehair made him excited. As empty as he was, as clean as he felt, the excitement seemed almost a vision in itself as his che, his child-maker, stirred almost of its own accord.

  That first day and evening up in the Paha Sapa, the wind blew cold for the Moon When the Ducks Come Back, the medicine flags twitched and tugged on the end of the s
ticks around Hoka Ushte’s chosen place, and he hunkered down in his shallow vision pit, trying to pray hard to the appropriate spirits but continuing to be haunted only by the visions of Calf Running’s legs and thighs and shiny black hair. After dark, the air grew even colder and the April wind carried the hint of snow in it. Hoka Ushte curled in on himself and tried to empty his mind of anything except the proper thoughts suggested by the wise old men in the sweat lodge.

  Toward dawn, Lame Badger fell asleep, curled tightly against the fresh soil of his vision pit, the wagmuha falling from his hand with a soft rattle of sacred stones and the pellets of his grandmother’s flesh. Neither the cold wind nor the soft sound of the rattle woke him.

  Then Hoka Ushte dreamed this thing: he saw himself sleeping in the vision pit with the stars shaking in the cold night air above him, and between his chosen place and the stars was a great boulder set in the sacred soil on the hillside above him on the mountain. And as he watched from this strange place outside his body, this giant boulder broke loose and went hurtling down the slope toward his own sleeping form.

  Hoka Ushte screamed then, but his sleeping self did not waken and the scream was like the whistling of a wanagi, a ghost—thin and reedlike and not at all like a true man’s scream. And the boulder crashed down the hillside toward his curled and uncomprehending form until all the watching Hoka Ushte could do was close his eyes and watch his sleeping self be crushed. But the nagi, or spirit form of himself, had no eyelids to close, so Hoka Ushte was forced to watch what happened next.

  The boulder stopped inches from the sleeping Hoka Ushte. Then a voice came from the boulder and the hillside and the trees and even from the wind: Go away, little man, it said. Go away and leave this place in peace. There is no vision here for you today.

  And Hoka Ushte awoke with a start. It was almost dawn. The boulder was in its proper place far up the hillside, just a large shape against the paling sky, and the only sound was the wind humming through the pine trees. But Hoka Ushte was shaken by the vision of no-vision, and he rose and wrapped his blanket tightly about his naked flesh and walked the hillside and tried to stay warm and awake at the same time.