by Dan Simmons
All that next day the sun and winds were gentle on Hoka Ushte, but no other vision came and he considered returning to Good Thunder and the others with only the tale of his non-vision. He decided against it. He remembered Good Thunder’s words about a man and the tribe being disappointed if there were no vision but the man being disgraced if it were an unacceptable vision, and Hoka Ushte could not decide which category this no-vision vision fell into. At any rate, he decided to stay there until a better vision came to him.
By nightfall of the second night, with less than a day and a half of the four days complete, Hoka Ushte’s tongue was swollen with thirst and his belly ached with hunger. The wind was even colder that second night and Lame Badger was sure that he would not sleep at all. But shortly before sunrise, when mists began rising from the canyon below him and were wrapping tendrils of white around the trees on his ridge, Hoka Ushte had the following dream:
Once again he was nagi, pure spirit essence, and once again he was floating somewhere above where his body lay twitching in a cold sleep. This time there was no boulder, but slowly he became aware of dark shapes moving between the trees and toward his sleeping self. The shapes moved through the shifting fog until they resolved themselves into the forms of a bear—a larger bear than Hoka Ushte had ever seen or dreamed of—and a mountain lion and a deer—not just any deer but a taha topta sapa, a sacred deer with a black streak across its face and a single fierce horn growing from its forehead—and a badger. The watching Hoka Ushte took some cheer in seeing the badger, but he quickly saw that this animal was not lame and that it had an unpleasant expression on its face. It looked both angry and hungry.
Hoka Ushte wanted to yell at his sleeping self to wake up and run away, but he knew now that his nagi voice was too weak to waken anyone or anything. So Hoka Ushte watched.
Slowly the bear and the mountain lion and the deer and the badger converged on the sleeping boy. The bear was so large that one swipe of his great paw would take the young man’s head off. The mountain lion was so terrible that one closing of its massive jaws would crack bones open so the marrow would flow. The deer’s horn was so sharp that it would pierce the sleeping Hoka Ushte the way a hunter’s arrow would pierce a buffalo’s liver. And the badger looked so fierce that it would grip the skin of the unlucky human’s face and pull it off in a single tug the way Grandmother would tug off the slick belly skin of a rabbit being prepared for the pot.
But inches away from the sleeping Sioux, the animals stopped and the voice came again from all places: Go away, little man. Leave this place in peace. There is no vision for you here today.
And then Hoka Ushte awoke with a very bad heart, lila čante xica, terrified of the ocin xica, or bad-tempered animals. But he sat up, wrapped his blanket around himself, lifted the pipe that Good Thunder had loaned him for this time, held the wagmuha tight in his free hand, and waited for the sun to rise and warm him and renew whatever courage remained in his heart. And he stayed and fasted all that next day long. And he sat there that night as the darkness fell again.
It was a very dark night, no moon at all, clouds covering the stars, soft snow falling but melting as it touched the hillside, and Hoka Ushte was asleep hours before the sun promised to pale the sky.
This time he saw himself sleeping in the vision pit with a clarity even greater than before and for a long time it was just that sight: the boy sleeping with his pipe held in the crook of one arm and a rattle clutched in his hand. He looked like a sleeping baby, even to himself, and he wondered why he had come on this stupid quest.
Then the earth around the pit seemed to ripple and move and before the nagi Hoka Ushte could shout a warning to the sleeping Hoka Ushte, the vision pit had filled with rattlesnakes. Scores of rattlesnakes, perhaps hundreds. Great-grandfather rattlers longer than a man is tall, short fat female snakes ripe with eggs and venom, and countless baby snakes no longer than the boy’s forearm but already armed with fangs and rattles.
This time Hoka Ushte awoke with a start and found that the dream did not flee with the opening of his eyes. He was covered with snakes. They were real. They hissed and rattled and spat and opened the impossible jaws inches from the terrified boy’s eyes.
This is your last chance, little man, came the voice that Hoka Ushte knew so well from his dreams. Will you go away from this place and leave it in peace?
Hoka Ushte almost cried “Ohan!” and almost leapt from the snake-writhing pit, but at the last second he remembered the disgrace this would mean to his grandparents and the old men who had sponsored him on this hanblečeya, so instead of shouting “Yes!” Hoka Ushte closed his eyes, prepared to die, gritted his teeth, and said, “No!”
When he opened his eyes the snakes were gone. The clouds had moved away so that starlight fell on everything. The starlight was so bright that Hoka Ushte could feel it on his skin. He closed his eyes. And slept.
And finally the true vision came.
Hoka Ushte returned to the sweat lodge as instructed. Two young boys had been stationed there to await his return, and while one ran to the camp to fetch the elders, the other stoked the fire to heat the stones. By mid-morning, the six elders were sitting naked in the steam and smoke listening to Hoka Ushte describe his vision.
At first Hoka Ushte had considered not telling about the no-vision visions, but by the time he had walked back to the sweat lodge from the Paha Sapa he had made up his mind to tell all the truth and only the truth.
The old men in the sweat lodge circle grunted as Hoka Ushte described the dreams of the falling boulder and the angry animals, and when he came to the part where he wrestled the rattlesnakes who told him to go away, the six elders cried “Haye!” in unison.
“But then a vision did come to me,” said Hoka Ushte. “I think.”
Good Thunder passed the pipe to the young man, and as Hoka Ushte inhaled, the old wičaśa wakan said, “Washtay. Tell us, wičaśa.”
And Hoka Ushte described his vision in these words:
“After the rattlesnakes were gone I was very shaky, and I closed my eyes and dreamed this dream. First, I dreamed that I was not dreaming but was awake, and a voice said to me, ‘Hoka Ushte, come to the top of the hill. Yuhaxcan cannonpa. Carry your pipe. Your pipe is wakan. Taku woecon kin iyuha el woilagyape lo. Ehantan najin oyate maka sitomniyan cannonpa kin he uywakanpelo. It is used for doing all things. Ever since the standing people have been over all the earth, the pipe has been wakan.’ And so I carried my pipe to the top of the hill.
“And the top of my hill now seemed much higher than I had remembered it, and I could see all of the Paha Sapa as if I were looking down from mahpiya, in the clouds. But I could also see things close up…hehaka, elk in the forest, birds in the branches, beavers in the stream, even insects in the grass…it was as if I had been given the eyes of wanbli, eagle eyes. Then, with my new eagle eyes, I could see a winyañ, a woman, and she was far away in a distant valley in the Paha Sapa, but I could easily make out her long hair, which was unbraided except for a bit of braid on the left side which was tied up with buffalo fur, and her dress was of white buckskin and shone so brightly that it reminded me of Grandfather’s stories of Ptesan-Wi, White Buffalo Woman, who gave us the first chanunpa and who taught the people all of the ways to use the pipe to pray…”
At this the six elders stirred and cleared their throats and looked at each other through the steam and smoke, for White Buffalo Woman was the most holy of all the sacred beings who had visited the Ikče Wičaśa. But the old men held their silence and let Hoka Ushte continue.
“But somehow I do not think it was White Buffalo Woman, for reasons that I will explain later in the dream,” went on Lame Badger, not taking notice of the old men’s close scrutiny. He was lost in his own vision-telling. “But I followed her with my eyes until she went into a cave somewhere deep in Paha Sapa. And then a strange thing happened…” The boy closed his eyes as if trying to see the dream image better. “I saw the Paha Sapa begin to shake as if the hills wer
e a buffalo robe that some woman were shaking out. I saw the trees bend and the birds fly and the rocks go tumbling down into the canyons; I saw the streams stop flowing as the ground went from down to up and back to down beneath the water’s course. I saw large boulders tumble and cracks open in the earth…”
The six old men seemed not to be breathing as they waited for Hoka Ushte’s words.
“…and then, it is hard to describe, but the ground folded back along ridges as if Grandmother Earth were giving birth, and four huge stone heads came up through the soil until they stood as tall as my taller-than-the-mountain viewing place, and their stone eyes were looking at me and I was looking back with my eagle eyes, and I think that they were Wasicun heads…”
Good Thunder cleared his throat. “Why do you think they were Wasichu?” he asked, using the other word for Fat Takers, the white men.
Hoka Ushte blinked as if shaken out of his dream all over again. “I’ve never seen a Wasicun,” he said, “but Tunkashila Good Voice Hawk has described them as sometimes having hair on their faces, and two of these stone heads had hairy faces…one had hair on his chin, the other under his nose like a little sparrow’s wing.”
The six old men looked at each other and grunted.
“Also,” continued Hoka Ushte, “there was something about these stone faces that scared me the way Grandmother’s come-inside-the-tipi-now evening call used to scare me when she cried, ‘Hoka Ushte, istima ye, Wasicun anigni kte…’”
The old warriors smiled. They had also heard the mothers and grandmothers in the camp telling the children to come in and go to sleep or the white men would come and take the children away to their homes. The children were not afraid of wanagi, ghosts, or the ciciye or siyoko boogeymen, but the threat of the Wasicun always worked.
“And so,” said Hoka Ushte, “I thought that these great stone heads that were born in the Paha Sapa were Wasicun. But that is not the end of my dream.” He fidgeted, obviously uncomfortable about going on.
The old men waited.
“Then I dreamed that I went down into this valley and went into the cave where the beautiful woman had gone,” he said in a strained voice. “And there was a fire in there that illuminated a dry place with beautiful white robes set about the floor…”
The men grunted again at the thought of white buffalo robes. Hoka Ushte paid no attention. “…and the dress of brilliant white buckskin was hanging on a deer horn set into the wall, and…” He licked his lips and took a breath. “And there were three beautiful women lying asleep on the robes near the fire. They were naked, and their skin glowed almost orange from the firelight and their hair was so glossy that it reflected the light…” He stopped again.
“Go on,” said Good Thunder sternly.
“Yes, Ate. In my dream I walked softly into this cave room and knelt on the robe near the three sleeping women, who did not wake. And I… I enjoyed looking at their breasts and their smooth skin, Ate…and I thought to myself, kicimu kin ktelo… I will do it with her, but I was not sure which one to choose to do it with, because I was sure that the one that I was going to…going to…”
“Tawiton,” said old Hard to Hit. “Fuck.” The ancient warrior had little time for subtleties.
“Ohan,” agreed Hoka Ushte, “I was sure that the one I was going to tawiton would awaken and cry out and wake the other two women. So I decided to choose the most beautiful of the three, but they were…they were like the same woman.” Hoka Ushte paused and rubbed the sweat from his dripping brow and nose. The oinikaga tipi, sweat lodge, was very hot and smoky and it made him feel dizzy, as if he were still flying above the Paha Sapa in his dream and the six old men leaning close to him in the steamy darkness were just an extension of his dream images. Also, he was sure at this point that his dream was merely another of his dirty fantasies and would never be acceptable. Or worse, it was a vision sent to him by the wakinyan Thunder Beings and he would spend the rest of his life as a miserable heyoka contrary.
But Lame Badger saw nothing to do but go on. “Just as I was about to choose the woman, I heard this noise. It was a soft, grinding and rasping noise. I leaned forward and realized that it was coming from each woman’s…from each woman’s…”
“Go on!” commanded Tries to be Chief.
“From each woman’s winyañ shan,” whispered Hoka Ushte. “From her sex. From all of their sexes…”
Several of the old men pulled their heads back as if Hoka Ushte had pissed on the ceremonial stones. Chased by Spiders put his hand over his eyes. Good Thunder showed no expression. “Continue,” he said.
“I leaned closer,” said Hoka Ushte, sweat dripping from him freely now, “and saw that the maidenhair of the closest woman was very soft and that the lips of her winyañ shan were full and soft and slightly parted…” The boy snapped his head to flick sweat out of his eyes. He realized that his future was being determined by this vision, and that the old men must be shocked and furious by now. Despite their bashfulness with the opposite sex the Ikče Wičaśa were not a prudish people—both men and women enjoyed bawdy tales and coarse jokes within their own circles—but Hoka Ushte had never heard of such a vision as part of a hanblečeya. But he had no choice but to go on now.
“And inside, between the lips of her winyañ shan,” he whispered, “I could see teeth gleaming.”
“Teeth!” exclaimed Hard to Hit, a distasteful expression on his old face. “Hnnnnrrhhh.” He made an angry bear noise.
“Teeth,” said Hoka Ushte. “And I looked at the other two women’s sex, and they had teeth there also. I could see them. I could hear them grinding softly, as when my grandfather grinds his teeth in his sleep.”
Good Thunder poured more water on the stones. Steam hissed and billowed around them. “Is this all of the dream?”
“Which one did you tawiton?” Hard to Hit asked gruffly.
“I do not know,” said Hoka Ushte, answering the second question first. “I knew that I had to choose and that it was important that I be with only one of the women, but then in my dream I was outside again, in the heavens, above the Paha Sapa and looking at the stone faces of the scowling Wasicun again with my eagle eyes. And the wind came up, and in the wind was a voice that said…”
“What?” prompted Thunder Sounds in his deep, rich crier’s voice.
“Finish,” commanded Wooden Cup. The stump of his missing arm, taken by the Shoshoni more than three decades earlier, glowed almost pink in the light from the glowing stones.
“The voice said that I must choose one and only one,” said Hoka Ushte, “and that I must look only with the eye of my heart. And the voice said that I must do none of this until I was purified by the Thunder Beings and was born a second time…”
The old men muttered to themselves. “Is there more?” asked Good Thunder.
“Yes,” said Hoka Ushte. “The voice said that after I was born a second time, I would be given a gift from a Wasichu whose spirit had fled.”
Hard to Hit made a rude noise. “Given a gift by a dead white man? This makes no sense.”
Hoka Ushte nodded his agreement.
“If you fucked any of these women, you would have lost your dick,” grunted Hard to Hit. He glanced down between Hoka Ushte’s legs. “But it must have been just your nagi che, your spirit-dick.”
“I think that these three women were just one woman and she was a winyañ sni,” said Tries to be Chief. “A woman-who-is-not-a-woman.”
Chased by Spiders opened his mouth to speak but Good Thunder touched his arm and said, “Silence! The boy is not tanyerci yaguna. He is not completely finished. Continue, Lame Badger.”
“I was only going to say that the end of my dream was people coming out of the cave where I had been, the cave where one woman had entered and three had been sleeping,” said Hoka Ushte, his voice flat with fatigue. “I saw you come out, and my grandparents, and all the people in our camp, and others—Oglala, Lakota, Brulés, Miniconjou, and others, I think—Sans Arcs, Yanktonais judgin
g from the feathers, Crows and Shahiyela and Susuni. There were many tribes, I think, and as people from each nation emerged, they joined the others and swarmed like ants over the stone Wasicun faces, and I was waking then, Ate, but before I left my dream I saw the stone faces crumble like piled sand in a dry riverbed, and then all the Ikče Wičaśa and the other tribes spread out among the trees of the Paha Sapa…and then I woke and saw no more.”
The old men did not speak then after Hoka Ushte was finished, but finally Good Thunder said, “My son, I think this was a vision and I think it was not a wakinyan vision, not a call from the Thunder Beings, but I want you to swear now that the vision was real. Swear upon pain of death from the Thunder Beings themselves, and remember that you are holding the pipe.”
Hoka Ushte did not blink, “Na ecel lila wakinyan agli—wakinyan namahon,” he swore. There was no flash of lightning and the Thunder Beings did not destroy him.
Good Thunder nodded. “Washtay. Go back to the camp and your grandfather’s tipi and take a nap. We six old men will talk of this thing and see if we can understand it.” He took the pipe from Hoka Ushte’s hand. “Mitakuye oyasin,” he said. “All my relatives.” And the ceremony was over.
Hoka Ushte went home with his grandfather, ate some of his grandmother’s soup although he had little appetite after almost four days of fasting, drank much water, slept several hours, awoke in the afternoon feeling drained and confused, and then slept again for fifteen hours. Good Thunder and the other old men returned to the camp the next morning. Good Voice Hawk went off to talk to the wičaśa wakan while Hoka Ushte sat at the entrance flap of his grandfather’s tipi and waited to hear the direction the rest of his life would take.
