Black Hills

by Dan Simmons

  It’s at this midnight hour and one of the low points of his life that Paha Sapa sees a light far off to his left.

  His mind, that small amount that is still his and not hostage to an angry warrior’s memories, tells him to turn the horses’ heads to the right and get away from the light. If it’s a campfire, it belongs to wasichu who would kill him on sight or to Crazy Horse, who will torture and then kill him.

  But he turns to the left, to the east, he hopes, and rides on in the night toward the tiny glow, waiting for the light to flicker out or disappear. Instead, between squalls that obliterate it from sight, it grows stronger.

  After half an hour of riding through rain toward the light, his horse slipping and staggering in the deepening mud, Paha Sapa sees a large, dark shape above and around the small circle of light. It has to be Matho Paha, Bear Butte, which means that he is only a few miles north-northeast of the mass of the Black Hills.

  But Matho Paha is a favorite camping place for Lakota bands heading toward the Hills, which is precisely what Crazy Horse was ready to do.

  Riding up to this campfire may well mean Paha Sapa’s death.

  Teetering on his horse, keeping from falling off only by lacing his fingers through Worm’s mane, Paha Sapa continues riding toward the light.

  THE LIGHT IS COMING FROM A CAVE a few hundred feet up the northwest slope of the towering Bear Butte.

  Knowing that he should back into the pouring darkness, Paha Sapa continues to lead his two horses up to the opening and through the waterfall of runoff pouring over the wide cave entrance. The cavern quickly turns out of sight, but there is a broad area just within the entrance where dry grass still grows. Paha Sapa ties the roan and the mare there, pulls Limps-a-Lot’s feathered war lance from beneath wet straps on Pehánska’s back, and proceeds, slowly, carefully, deeper into the firelight-brightened cave.

  Immediately, Paha Sapa’s stomach cramps and his mouth fills with saliva.

  Whoever is back there, they are cooking something. It smells like rabbit to Paha Sapa. He loves just-cooked rabbit.

  Paha Sapa stops and listens several times as the low-ceilinged cavern twists slightly, but the only sounds are a soft humming, the crackle of the fire, and, behind him, the constant munching and occasional shaking of mane and tail of his two horses. Have the people by the fire heard his approach?

  Paha Sapa comes around the last turn, lance in both hands, and there by a roaring fire, in a broad section of the cave, an old man sits cross-legged, humming softly to himself and gingerly turning two spits over the fire, each holding a skinned and quickly browning rabbit.

  Paha Sapa lowers the lance a bit and walks into the circle of firelight. The old man, his long gray hair tied in careful pigtails, wears a loose blue-print shirt that might have been made by wasichus, and his long pants are of some graying blue material that Paha Sapa first thinks is the wasichu-soldiers’ sort of canvas trouser, but realizes is a different, more woven material. The old man’s moccasins have traditional (and beautiful) Cheyenne-style beadwork. (Another pair of moccasins, of a sort Paha Sapa has never seen—they almost look to be made of green wasichu canvas—lies steaming and drying near the fire.) The old man’s eyes, squinting up and across the fire at Paha Sapa now, seem absolutely black except for the reflection of the flames there. But there is no anger or fear in the old man’s neutral but somehow pleasant expression.

  When he speaks, it is in fluent Lakota with a strong Cheyenne accent.

  —Welcome, boy. I did not hear you arrive. My hearing is not what it used to be.

  Paha Sapa lowers the lance a little more but does not set it down.

  —Greetings to you, uncle. You are of the Shahiyela?

  —Yes, I am Cheyenne. But I have spent much time with the Lakota. I have never been the enemy of your people and have taught many.

  Paha Sapa nods and does set the lance down, against the wall of the cave. He still has his knife, there are no signs of other men having been here—the sleeping hides and cooking utensils are all for one—and he doubts if the old man could rise quickly from his cross-legged posture. Paha Sapa, whose stomach is now actively rumbling at the sight and smell of the two browning rabbits on the spits, remembers his manners.

  —I am called Paha Sapa.

  The old man smiles, showing long, yellowed but strong teeth, with only one missing on the bottom. It is a lot of teeth, Paha Sapa thinks, for a man who looks so old.

  —Welcome, Paha Sapa. Odd for the Lakota to name a boy-child after a place. We shall have to talk about that. My name is Robert Sweet Medicine.

  Paha Sapa blinks at the sound of the man’s name. He has never heard “Robert” before, even with Cheyenne names. It sounds wasichu.

  The old man gestures to a hide unrolled across the fire from him.

  —Sit down. Sit down. Are you hungry?

  —I’m very hungry, uncle.

  The sudden smile again.

  —That is why I cooked two rabbits tonight.

  Paha Sapa has to squint at this.

  —You said you did not hear me approaching.

  —I did not, young Black Hills. I simply knew there would be another with me here tonight. There, it should be ready—there’s a wooden bowl over there beneath that clutter. Just use your knife to cut what you want. The whole rabbit is yours. There’s water in that jug there…. The smaller jug holds mni waken, and you are welcome to it as well, as long as you do not drink it all.

  Holy water. The wasichus’ whiskey. Paha Sapa has never tasted it and, despite his curiosity, knows he should not taste it now.

  —Thank you, uncle.

  He chews some steaming-hot rabbit, his face and hands instantly becoming greasy, and drinks some of the cold water. After a while, he wipes his mouth and speaks.

  —I have been to Bear Butte many times, uncle, but I did not know there were caves here.

  —Of course you did. It was in a cave here that Maiyun gave my ancestor Mustoyef the Gift of the Four Arrows. It was in a cave here, before time was counted as it is today, that the Kiowa received from their gods the sacred kidney of a bear and the Apache the gift of sacred horse medicine. You Lakota—and I know you have heard this, Paha Sapa—say that it was in a cave here that your ancestors received the gift of the sacred pipe from Wakan Tanka.

  —Yes, I have heard all of this, uncle—except about the Kiowa and the bear kidney—but I have never seen this cave or any other, although we boys have climbed and played all over and around Matho Paha.

  The old man smiles again. Each time he does that, a thousand deep wrinkles deepen around his eyes and mouth.

  —Well, then, Bear Butte still has secrets from us, does it not, Black Hills?

  Paha Sapa speaks through another mouthful of rabbit. It is excellent.

  —Did my people receive the gift of the sacred pipe, and your people the Gift of the Four Arrows, here? In this cave?

  Robert Sweet Medicine shrugs.

  —Who’s to know? Or who knows if any of that actually happened? Once a place is considered sacred by any tribe, the other tribes hurry to find—or make up—some story of its sacredness to them as well.

  This shocks Paha Sapa. He assumed, when Robert Sweet Medicine said that he’d taught Lakota as well as Cheyenne, that the old man was a wičasa wakan like Limps-a-Lot and Long Turd and the others. Paha Sapa has never heard a real holy man admit that the old stories of the gods and grandfathers might be made up. Just the thought of that makes the boy dizzier. The gabble of his ghost and the awful memories of Crazy Horse buzz louder in his aching head.

  —Are you all right, Paha Sapa? You look ill.

  For a second, Paha Sapa has the wild urge to tell the old man the truth about everything—about his ability to touch people and to see into them and their pasts and futures sometimes (he has no urge at all to touch Robert Sweet Medicine), about the ghost of Long Hair (if it is Long Hair) talking and talking and talking in that ugly and endless babble of wasichu sounds, about Crazy Horse wanting to kill
him, about his own fear (almost a certainty) that he will fail in the coming hanblečeya—tell the old man everything.

  —No, uncle. I have a little fever is all.

  —Take off your clothes, boy. All of them.

  Paha Sapa’s hand creeps to the hilt of his knife in its scabbard on his belt. He knows that some of these wičasa wakan, especially the recluses, are winkte.

  Some winkte dress and act like women throughout their lives; some are rumored to have the organs of both men and women; but most winkte, according to what the older boys told Paha Sapa, prefer putting their stiff child makers up young boys’ behinds rather than in lovely winčinčalas’ winyaˇn shans where they belong.

  Paha Sapa does not want to know what that feels like. He decides that he will have to kill Robert Sweet Medicine if the old winkte comes any closer.

  The old wičasa wakan sees Paha Sapa’s expression and looks at the shaking hand on the knife hilt and then Robert Sweet Medicine laughs. It is a deep, rich, long laugh, and it echoes slightly in and around the bend of the cavern beyond where they sit by the fire.

  —Don’t be stupid, boy. I’m not after your unze. I have been married—to women—eight times. That’s eight different women, little Black Hills, not eight wives at once. So unless you brought one with you, there are no winkte in this cave tonight. You’re feverish and flushed. And shaking hard. All your layers are soaked through, and I think you’ve been soaked like that for days and nights. Get dry and stay near the fire.

  Paha Sapa squints at the old man, but he lets his hand fall away from his knife.

  —Pull those two blankets up, boy. Get out of your clothes—behind the blankets if you wish—and set your wet things on this empty spit to dry. Moccasins as well. Keep your knife if it makes you feel safer. The blankets are clean and free of vermin.

  Paha Sapa blushes but does what the old man suggests, realizing as he does so that he’s shaking so hard he can barely put his clothes on the drying rack. He clutches the blankets around him. They are scratchy against his wet skin but infinitely warmer than the soaked clothing he’s just surrendered. He has kept the knife.

  Robert Sweet Medicine wipes his mouth and sets the spit holding his browned rabbit, barely touched, on Paha Sapa’s Y sticks. The boy is down to the bones of his rabbit. Few things, Paha Sapa has always thought, look as reduced and vulnerable as a rabbit without its skin and head.

  —Here, boy. I’ve eaten all I want. Help yourself to this.

  Paha Sapa grunts his thanks and begins cutting pieces off and into his bowl.

  Robert Sweet Medicine looks to his right across the flames, toward the cave entrance.

  —How long has it been raining? Two days and nights?

  —Three days and nights, uncle. No… wait… four nights now, and three full days. Everything is flooded.

  The old man nods.

  —On the day before the rain began, I met a Wasicun on the trail to the top of the butte. It was a sunny day. Some clouds later, but mostly sunny.

  Paha Sapa speaks through a full mouth.

  —Did you kill him, uncle?

  —Kill who?

  —The Wasicun!

  The old man chuckles.

  —No, I talked to him.

  —Was he a bluecoat? A soldier?

  —No, no. I think he had been a warrior once—I am sure of it—but no longer. He told me… no, that is not right; he did not quite tell me… but he let me know that he had once walked on the moon.

  Paha Sapa blinks at this.

  —So he was witko—crazy.

  Robert Sweet Medicine shows that long-toothed smile again.

  —He did not seem witko. He seemed… lonely. But, little Black Hills, have you never known a wičasa wakan, or some other sort of human with powers—a waayatan prophet, for instance, or a wakinyan dreamer who sees visions sent by the Thunder Beings, or a wapiya conjurer, or a wanaazin who shoots at disease, or a dangerous wokabiyeya who works with witch medicine, or a wihmunge who sucks disease straight out of a dying person with his own breath—who has spoken of leaving his body and traveling to far places?

  Paha Sapa laughs and takes a long drink of the cold springwater in the jug.

  —Yes, uncle, of course I have. But I have never heard any holy man given powers who speaks of…

  He pauses, remembering his own lying-in-the-grass experience (dream?) of rising so high in the sky that the sky grew dark in the daytime and the stars came out.

  —… of… traveling so far. But are you saying, uncle, that wasichus can have Visions, just like real People?

  Robert Sweet Medicine shrugs and tosses more twigs onto the fire. Paha Sapa is growing warm and sleepy beneath his blankets. The second rabbit is now bones.

  The old man’s voice, strongly resonant in the little cave, seems strangely familiar to Paha Sapa.

  —Have you ever noticed, little Black Hills, how all of our tribes—all the ones I’ve ever heard of, even those east of the Big River and west of the Shining Mountains and beyond the Never No Summer range, even those so far south that the plains are desert and no grass grows there—that all of us give our tribes names meaning the same as Tsêhéstáno, the People, as we Cheyenne say; or the Natural Free Human Beings, as you Lakota call yourselves; or the True Human Beings, as the Crow say—and so on and so on and so on.

  Paha Sapa has forgotten the question, if there was a question, and is completely missing the point (if there was a point). He replies only by nodding sleepily and, remembering his manners, by belching softly.

  —I am just asking, little Black Hills, why each of our tribes calls itself “the Human Beings” and refers to no other tribe or group, even the wasichus, in that way.

  Paha Sapa rubs his eyes.

  —I suppose, uncle, because our tribe is—I mean, that we are—the real human beings, while others aren’t?

  The answer seems a little inadequate even to the quickly warming and belly-filled boy, but he can think of no other at the moment. But he will revisit the question more than a few times over the next decades.

  Robert Sweet Medicine is nodding as if satisfied by a particularly clever answer from one of his wičasa wakan students.

  —Perhaps, little Black Hills, when you learn the particular language of the Wasicun ghost now babbling in your brain, you will begin to understand this strange question of naming ourselves a little better.

  Paha Sapa nods sleepily and then snaps awake—he has not told this old man about the ghost of Long Hair in him.

  Has he?

  But Robert Sweet Medicine is speaking again.

  —You’re going to the real Paha Sapa to perform your lonely hanblečeya, so you should fast after tonight’s feast. The place you seek is only a day’s ride from here if you take the proper paths in the Hills. I trust that your tunkašila, Limps-a-Lot, has instructed you well as to the preparations and sent along with you everything you need to do yuwipi properly?

  —Oh, yes, uncle! I have learned what I must have, and for things that I cannot find in the forest, they are all packed away on my white mare you hear cropping at the cave entrance!

  Robert Sweet Medicine nods but does not smile.

  —Washtay! Limps-a-Lot sent with you the properly sacred pipe and the strong caNliyukpanpi fine-smoking tobacco?

  —Oh, yes, uncle!

  Did he? In four nights of rain now, Paha Sapa has not fully unpacked the bundles his grandfather sent with him, usually merely hunkering against the mare in the dark downpour and groping around for the dried meat or biscuits that Three Buffalo Woman packed away for him. Is the sacred, irreplaceable Ptehinčala Huhu Canunpa—the Buffalo Calf Bone Pipe that Sitting Bull had appointed Limps-a-Lot guardian of—really in his bundle of goods, or has Limps-a-Lot sent along the lesser but still sacred tribal pipestone pipe? Come to think of it, Paha Sapa has not seen in his various soaked bundles the red eagle feathers that adorn the priceless Ptehinčala Huhu Canunpa.

  The old man is still talking.

  —Washtay,
Paha Sapa. Stay away from the wasichus’ roads—for the soldiers and miners will kill you on sight. Go to the top of the Grandfathers’ Hill. Yuhaxcan cannonpa! Carry your pipe. Your pipe is wakan. Taku woecon kin ihyuha el woilagyape lo. Ehantan najin oyate maka stimnyyan 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.

  Paha Sapa shakes his head in an attempt to rid himself of the buzzing and confusion there. His fever fills him. His eyes are watering, either from the smoke or from strong emotions he does not understand. Still sitting cross-legged on the blanket while wrapped in two more blankets, he seems to be naked and floating inches above the cavern floor. Robert Sweet Medicine’s voice booms in his head like wasichu cannon fire.

  —Little Black Hills, you know how properly to construct your oinikaga tipi?

  —Yes, Grandfather… I mean uncle. I have helped Limps-a-Lot and the men construct many sweat lodges.

  —Ohan. Wašte! And you know how to select the proper sintkala waksu from those other stones that might blind or kill you?

  —Oh, yes, uncle.

  But does he? When the time comes in the Black Hills, will he be able to differentiate the special stones in the creek beds, those with the “beadwork” designs that show them safe for use in the sweat lodge?

  Paha Sapa begins sweating and shaking under his blankets.

  —Has your grandfather’s wife cut the forty squares of flesh from her arm for your wagmugha to go with the yuwipi stones?

  —Oh, yes, uncle!

  Have Raven’s Hair or Three Buffalo Woman cut the necessary bits of flesh for the sacred rattle or gathered the little fossil stones to be found only in certain anthills? How could they have? They have not had time!

  The old man nods again and throws several scented sticks onto the already raging fire. The cave fills with the sour-sweet smell of incense.

  —You have been warned, little Black Hills, that once you are nagi, pure spirit essence, you will be visited—almost certainly attacked—by ocin xica, bad-tempered animals, as well as by wanagi and ciciye and siyoko.