XXI
In the village of buffalo-hide lodges, in the depths of the night, Little Elk holds the pink girl-child in her arms.
Her father throws open the flap and searches by starlight for signs of danger. “I see nothing,” he says.
“But something is wrong!” Little Elk says. “Where does this sound come from?” The cacophony of voices grows louder, now mixed with the rumble of drums. “It is as if the sound comes from the ground all about me!”
Her father’s face darkens. “No.” He comes to her and touches the baby’s cheek. “Listen.”
She bends over and discovers that the sounds emanate from the child’s mouth, as if an entire village dwells inside the child.
Her father draws back, fearful, and his voice is grim. “Iya, the Camp Eater, the brother of Iktomi the Spider, has come to our camp in the guise of this child. It is a lucky thing that you did not fall asleep. If you had, he would have cast off this baby’s skin and devoured our entire camp. We must leave the child here and flee!”
Suddenly she feels weak and out of breath, stifling hot. The child is slipping from her arms, but if she drops it, it will throw off its disguise and destroy them all. Her fingers clutch at the blanket but can find no purchase. The child becomes immeasurably heavy, and the blanket becomes smoke and steam.
O O O
Little Elk walked with her feet in both worlds, and called out for the third round of stones, which were soon passed inside. The already hot air grew even hotter. Fresh sweat burst forth. Four long draughts on a fresh pipe. Four splashes of water on the stones and four more gouts of searing steam. She coughed and gasped and covered her nose to protect it from the heat. Areas of her flesh began to burn, areas where impurities had gathered, so she took sage leaves and chewed them into paste, which she smeared over the burning spots. Her eyes watered and her lungs burned and her limbs felt as if they were turning to water.
O O O
She can no longer hold up the baby, so as gently as she can she lays it upon the ground, cooing to it and treating it like a real child.
The baby begins to cry.
The chief runs outside and rouses everyone and tells them that Iya the Destroyer has come to their camp and that they must all flee. The people are afraid, and they pack up their lodges. By midnight, there is nothing left of the camp but small heaps of ashes. They flee across the river and wait for the mother of Iya to catch up with them.
Meanwhile, she sits beside her child and tries to comfort it until her people have reached safety, singing to it, stroking its soft, golden hair. As Little Elk sings, the child’s belly begins to swell as if filling with air, and its mouth opens wider and wider until the quivering pink orifice is large enough to swallow a horse.
The sound of the other camp emanating from the child grows louder and louder.
The time to flee has come, so Little Elk dashes away.
Suddenly a great roaring wind bursts forth from the child’s mouth and rises into the sky in the shape of a thunderous black cyclone.
Little Elk flees toward her people as fast as she can, but her legs feel like sacks of water. Swirling within the cyclone is not just one camp, but many, thousands of people, horses, dogs, and lodges, a tumult of suffering, trapped forever in Iya’s gullet.
Iya’s rage booms over the land in the form of thunder in a great voice. “I will devour you all! No one escapes me!”
Her father shouts to her, “Hurry! If day breaks you will be safe! Iya’s tricks are powerless in the light of the sun!”
Scalding rain spews from the cyclone, burning her flesh, turning the land around her into a morass of sucking mud. She falls facedown into the mud and tries to breathe but only smoke and steam come from her mouth.
O O O
Little Elk sat up in almost utter darkness, gasping, her face feeling tender and scalded from the steam, but there was still one more stage to be accomplished, and it was almost always in the fourth stage that the deepest truths were revealed. Her voice was a mere croak as she called again for Jane Two Hawks.
The final round of stones were passed inside, the final four draughts of smoke, the final four splashes of water. In the stifling, sweltering, smothering thickness, she gasped for purchase until the pungent, crackling sage leaves on the floor came up to meet her cheek.
O O O
A young girl’s voice says to her in strangely accented English. “Let me help you.”
Gentle hands close around her thin arms, her thin arms wrapped in a new gingham dress that the sisters have given her, a dress with long sleeves and a high neck and a lower hem that reaches to her ankles.
The girl’s voice says, “You’re new here.”
“I am … new.”
“You must get up. It is time for morning prayers. If you are slow, the sisters will take away your lunch.”
Little Elk sits up, and morning sunlight slants through square windows of glass and wood over the rows of beds lining the walls of the dormitory. The room is empty of other children.
Where is the river? Where have her people gone? Where is the cyclone that had been bearing down on her? She jumps up and looks out the window at the bright sunny sky sweeping over lush trees and soft grass, the open sward where the children play.
The other girl is a little older than her, with a kind face but features that bespeak a different tribe. “My name is …” Her words were incomprehensible to Little Elk, but somehow she knows them to mean “Laughing Otter.”
“We are friends,” Little Elk says. She did not know English yet, but somehow the other girl understood her.
The girl giggles. “Perhaps.”
“Why are we here?”
“So that we can tell each other stories.”
Vague recollections of Iya and Iktomi impinge upon Little Elk’s memory, but they do not seem important.
Little Elk says, “All the world is stories.”
Laughing Otter nods, “We make our own stories new from the old. But come! We must go.”
“What about the stories?” She feels some sort of danger, as if every moment was not to be wasted. “I must know them all right now. It is … important.”
Laughing Otter shakes her head. “Let us live them and touch the face of gods.”
And oh, the stories they live.
And then the cyclone descends from the sky and devours the school and the church and everyone in it, an explosion of splinters and dust.
Little Elk feels herself lifted from the ground, rising into the sky, powerless, clutching vainly at anything to halt her ascent, with the thunder of laughter booming in her ears.
O O O
With a great thud she landed upon a bed of sage leaves, and her awareness trickled back in. The darkness of the tent pressed her down. Earth and sage leaves clung to her face, to her sweat-soaked flesh, filled her nose with their rich scent, as she righted herself and breathed deeply of the smoke and steam one last time.
With arms that felt like soggy marsh weeds, she crawled toward the opening and called out to her helpers.
Moments later, the flap opened and dresses surrounded the entrance. She wormed out, fought her way to her feet, shivering in the shock of cold, gasping tremendous breaths of cold, clean night air. After a moment to steady herself, she took the heavy leather bladder of water from Jane Two Hawks and emptied the ice-cold water over her head.
A gasp tore from her, and a spasm of pain shot through her skull.
For a moment, an eyeblink, a breath between heartbeats, Laughing Otter stood before her in her Catholic school garb, but her cheeks were drawn and tight, her eyes sunken, her hands skeletal, her shoulder bones protruding from her dress. The girl’s face was grim, eyes wide and sharp, lips were wet and red, and they peeled back to reveal broad, bloody teeth, bits of raw flesh clinging to the crevices between them.
Laughing Otter snatched at Little Elk with a skeletal hand, with a hungry gleam in her eyes. Little Elk flinched back, and nails tore across her forearm, startling all the other women who could not see this apparition, and Laughing Otter evaporated into black cloud.
Moments passed, as the water dripped from Little Elk’s body, pattering to the earth at her feet. A hush fell over the crowd of women gathered there, singing, and Little Elk’s heart thundered.
Three long, red weals burned on her forearm.
A commotion in the distance caught her ear and drew her eye. A group of Lakota men, Red Horse among them, stood between the singing circle and a group of soldiers. Voices raised, harsh words from the soldiers. Stolid, silent refusal in the bodies of the Lakota men. One of the soldiers pointed toward the gathering, shouting something she could not hear. Red Horse shook his head in defiance to prevent the soldiers’ passage. Sergeant Weatherly’s face was stern but worried. One of the soldiers shoved Red Horse. Red Horse held his ground, but did not shove back.
A coldness shot through Little Elk’s heart. She wanted to raise her voice to stop the impending violence, but her lungs were still too full of smoke and steam, her body too unsteady. She could only open her mouth and raise a hand.
Another shove. Red Horse’s fist lashed out. A rifle butt rose and smashed across his face, driving him back, but still he did not lose his feet, like a tree that would not be felled.
The singing stopped as the group of women noticed the fight brewing. Their voices rose instead in warning and protest.
Desperation painted broad across his face, Sergeant Weatherly interposed himself between the soldiers and the Lakota as the two knots of fear and anger rushed each other. Weatherly’s voice roared. “Stop! Get back!” The soldier who had butt-stroked Red Horse caught Weatherly’s fist on his cheek and reeled back. Weatherly roared orders to his men, roared orders to the Lakota, his eyes wide and fearful, but determined. A few more tense moments of scuffling, and they all stepped away from each other, riding the knife-edge of tension.
Little Elk hurriedly dressed herself within her circle of assistants.
The band of women fell into disarray as they rushed toward the men to diffuse the violence.
Red Horse stepped up, holding his head, shaking it. He looked back at the soldiers, then back where the circle had been, and caught Little Elk’s eye. His gaze was hard, but he gave her a little nod, then he shouted in Lakota, “Today is not the day!”
The groups parted, and the women dispersed, and the soldiers fingered their weapons but did not fire.