XVIII
The darkness and smoke smothered away the earthly world, and the barriers to the spirit world thinned before Little Elk, as if thick knee-deep mud holding back her steps were becoming cool, clear water. Sweat dripped down her back, her cheeks, between her breasts, rivulets following scars on her arms.
A strange keening reached her ears, a plaintive, tenuous sound.
O O O
She is Tahca Chistila once again, not the sounds from an alien tongue. Her spirit-self steps outside her sweat lodge into the camp of buffalo-hide dwellings, where slabs of buffalo meat from the recent hunt hang from racks while the camp dogs sit under them, waiting, drooling, tongues lolling, for one of the slabs to shift in the breeze and fall to the dirt. Children scamper and play among the lodges, and everyone is oblivious to the faint cries coming from the direction of the river. Around the camp, stretching to forever, lie seas of swaying grasses.
She follows the sound. The band’s herd of horses grazes on a broad sandbar that is straddled by the river.
The tiny wail grows more insistent, building in strength until she can pinpoint the source, a clump of bushes beyond the horses. Through the cold spring river water she wades, past the camp’s horses, toward the sound. Reaching the bushes, she parts the branches, and there on the ground lies a child swaddled in a scarlet cotton blanket, a child with curly golden locks, skin as pink and plump as a cherub.
She picks up the child and cradles it. “Strong lungs you have, little one.”
It pauses long enough to take a deep breath, and its eyes open, and she sees they are as dark and deep and gray as a storm.
As she returns to the village with the child, its cries wax and wane. At times, the tenor of its voice shifts, sounding at times almost like an old woman, perhaps even an old man. She takes the child to her father, the chief, who smiles and greets the child. Together they open the blanket and see that the child is a girl.
“My daughter,” the chief says, “You now have a daughter of your own.”
Several men gather at the entrance to the chief’s lodge, murmuring amongst themselves.
“What are you talking about?” she says to the men.
Their heads become heads of elk and buffalo, deer and coyote, wolf and bear, eagle and thunder. They say, “Sometimes evil spirits come to camp in the guise of small children.”
The chief says, “Let us not be overcautious. This child needs our aid. We cannot leave her for the coyotes. Instead we will have a feast for my new grandchild.”
Word spreads like wildfire through the camp, sparking excitement and preparation. The women plait their hair; the men paint their cheeks with bright red paint. Women put on their best dresses, and children frolic in their buckskins. Everyone gathers for the feast, sitting in a great circle, but still the pale-skinned child wails.
When the preparations are made, the feast commences, and the air is filled with the rich scents of many foods, smoke from tobacco and cookfires.
The chief holds up the child and introduces her to his people, and they greet her with cries of “How!”
The drummers burst forth into a lively tune, and people jump up to dance and sing. Late into the night they feast, and finally the little girl falls asleep in Little Elk’s arms. As the people tire and fall asleep, as the last sounds of revelry diminish, she looks down into her new daughter’s face, all pink cheeks and little wet lips slightly parted in slumber. She smiles for a long time, because her own children were shot by white men on the same day her husband was killed.
A deep quiet settles over the village.
In the silence, the web of stars peeps through the smoke hole of the lodge, and she rocks her new daughter in gentle arms. But then she notices the far-off murmur of many voices. The murmur seems to be growing louder, drawing nearer. She stands and listens with increasing alarm. The number of voices is great, as of a whole tribe speaking at once.
Nearby, her father snores quietly. She shakes him and says, “Father! There are people coming. I can hear them!”
And then the child in her arms becomes smoke that chokes her lungs, and she sits in the dark and the steam, drenched in sweat.
O O O
Through the veil between worlds she called out to Jane Two Hawks, and four more snapping-hot stones were passed inside. Little Elk arranged them with the others, and then the freshly refilled pipe found its way into her hands again, and she smoked it four times, and she cast four more cupfuls of water onto the stones. Gouts of steam and smoke blinded her and seared her throat, and the sweat poured from her body, and she reached again for the vision.