by Mike Blakely
Shadow stopped and stood like a tree, amazed that a pony had spoken to him. Affecting the tone and voice of the pony, he answered, saying, “Noomah. Noo-oo-mah-ah.” The big dun came to meet him. Without bothering to slip the bridle around the horse’s jaw, he grabbed the mane and swung onto the dun’s back. Guiding the animal with his knees, he kept the other ponies bunched so Whip and Trotter could catch their mounts. Yet, he was thinking about the way he had learned to talk to the horse he now rode. It did not seem that Whip and Trotter had heard the pony say, “Noomah,” or heard Shadow reply the same way. It was as if the spirits wanted only him to know the language of the horse.
While the other two boys were fixing their war bridles and mounting, Shadow began leading the band of horses away. He held the mane tight as the dun changed from a lope to a gallop. The riderless horses beside him kicked their heels and tossed their heads, making Shadow smile. He could feel his own hair pulling in the wind, like the mane of the dun horse he rode.
Thundering around the big camp of the Corn People and Burnt Meat People, Shadow saw the rest of the horses—nine of them in all—grazing across the high ground above the camp. He made his pony circle them, and closed the circle tighter as they became excited. He leaned forward and hooked his heels beneath the curve of his horse’s ribs. The big dun responded, leaping ahead with greater speed, snorting for breath.
As he circled the herd, he saw Whip and Trotter, and rumbled past them.
“I need my pad,” Whip yelled as he passed. “This horse makes much sweat against my legs.”
“Then go and get it!” Shadow shouted. “I will get on a different horse when this one sweats too much!”
As Trotter and Whip watched him, he angled into the herd, like a hawk diving on a raft of ducks. Pacing a small black, he grabbed a handful of the black’s mane with one hand and placed his other hand in the middle of the black pony’s back. Throwing his weight to his shoulders, his seat left the dun and he pushed off with his legs, landing behind the withers of the black horse. He still carried his bridle looped across his shoulder, and now used the reins like a quirt, whipping the black ahead of the other horses, guiding the animal with his heels and knees, as his father had taught him.
Trotter and Whip loped away to the camp to get their pads. Beyond them, Shadow saw a group of people standing, watching him as he sped around the herd. This made him bolder, and he drove the horses in a serpentine path, Mother Earth drumming under him contentedly. The black began to sweat, which made Shadow stick better to its back, yet it irritated his skin, so he angled against a red mare he knew well, and sprang to her back, now driving her through the middle of the others, forming two herds. Quickly, he had the horses together again. He pushed them toward the lodges, closer to the growing group of onlookers.
Riding by the people, he yelped in victory—“yee, yee, yee!”—as if he had stolen these horses from some enemy, and he saw his father, smiling, standing beside an old man of the Corn People. The old man was squinting to see, and his toothless mouth was open.
Next he glimpsed a face as sweet as a dew-kissed blossom and smiled at Teal as he rode by her. But before she could respond, Slope Child had stepped in front of her, staring provocatively, and then Shadow had passed.
Now he whipped the red mare ahead of the other horses, turning them sharply away from the camp. He found himself against a bay colt, and sprang to its back, realizing only as he lit that this colt belonged to some Corn People warrior, and not his father. The moment his weight settled, the colt humped his back and sprang on four stiff legs, then leapt, then ducked his head low, whirling as his rump rose.
Shadow tumbled like a war axe thrown long through the air, and he caught glimpses of the lodges, the horses, and the people. Bouncing across the back of another horse, he saw himself engulfed by horseflesh, shadows, and dust. The ground flattened him, and he heard hooves thump near his ears. A blow tore his inner thigh and another shifted hard across his chest as sunlight burst down on him like the pain that flared through his body.
His breath was gone, but his first concern was that his father would think him dead, so he rolled to hands and knees, then knelt, facing the fleeing herd. Dust caked the raw flesh across his chest and clung to the blood that trickled down his leg. A great peal of laughter came from all the people who had been watching him show off. A gasp of air came to him as Whip arrived, his mount now wearing the pad saddle.
Whip laughed and said, “You must heed what you say when you talk horse, my friend.”
Shadow rose to his feet, wincing at his pain, yet proud of his wounds. “Hah,” he wheezed. “Drive the horses back to me. I want them to smell my blood.”
Trotter arrived now and helped Whip turn the horses back. Shadow spread his arms as they came to him, and he spoke to them again, saying, “Noomah. Noo-oo-mah-ah.” His father’s dun came forward first, snuffing in the boy’s direction. Shadow took this horse by the muzzle and exhaled into his nostrils, the other horses now gathering around him as if he were one of them. Taking the dun’s dark mane, he sprang to its back, the horse sweat stinging the gash to his inner thigh.
He turned again to the village, the dun obeying a tug to his mane and the pressure of moccasins against his sides. Riding past the people who had come to watch, Shadow raised both arms and swept them backward, his legs clamped around the loping dun. He thrust his wounded chest forward that the people might admire the injury. When he passed his father, he saw that Shaggy Hump no longer smiled, yet neither did he scowl. Beside him, the toothless old man of the Corn People was laughing like a wheezing dog.
* * *
When dark came the boys played the flaming stick game. They chose straight, spearlike sticks, making one end blaze in a fire. They took turns throwing these blazing lances through the night sky, none flying farther than Shadow’s, in spite of his injuries.
Later, they lay outside a lodge where many warriors had gathered. There, the boys listened to stories of battles and escapes, of great hunts for buffalo and huge humpbacked bears. There were several boys listening here, and some began to fall asleep. At last, Shadow yawned and slipped away, wending his way among the lodges to his own tipi—a comfortable little shelter of four poles and five skins. When he entered, he saw that the half-moon was shining down through the smoke hole, casting its soft light on a grassy place he had yet to cover with robes.
Shadow was tired, but he felt well. After riding today, he had bathed in the stream called Sometimes Water, getting the dirt out of the places where the horses had stepped on him. These wounds were getting sore and tender now, and he was very proud of them. He would sleep well.
He left his loin skins where they fell and lay naked upon the soft hairy side of an old, supple buffalo robe. He pulled the robe gently over his chest, careful not to irritate his wound. He was drifting quickly toward the land of dreams when he heard the faint rustling of the hide that covered the entry hole to his lodge.
Forcing his eyes open, he saw Slope Child step in and kneel beside him inside the small lodge. He started to rise, but she motioned for him to be still and quiet. She carried something in her hand—a small container made of buffalo horn.
Bending over him, she whispered, “I bring medicine for your wounds.”
“They are nothing,” he said, whispering back.
She gave the sign for silence, dreamlike in the moonlight that shifted down through the smoke hole. She lifted the buffalo robe from his chest. She dipped her finger into the buffalo horn container and gently, sparingly spread the medicine of herbs and bear fat on the skin that the hoof had scraped and gashed. She worked slowly, her eyes moving from the injury to Shadow’s eyes. She put the horn on the ground so she would have a free hand to rest on his bare chest. Her hand was warm. She took a long time.
“Now the leg,” she whispered.
Shadow tried to remain calm, but when she shifted the robe across his lower body, he felt a surge of pleasure like lightning pulsing through clouds. He kicked the ro
be away and was embarrassed, thinking Slope Child might make fun of him, as it was a woman’s place to shame a warrior’s every weakness. She said nothing, but he was afraid to look into her eyes. He just stared at the sky through the smoke hole and felt her hands go through the exquisite process of treating the wound on his inner thigh, her free hand wandering ever farther up his sound leg.
Finally, she put the medicine horn aside and lifted the deerskin dress over her hips, over her breasts. He closed his eyes, for he had been told that looking upon a woman completely naked would cause him to go blind. He wondered what to do next, but felt her straddle him, and knew he only had to lie there and learn.
Her face was just above his, for he could feel her breath upon him. “I will be gentle this time,” she whispered, very softly. “When your wounds heal, I will be wild. As my friend Teal has said, I am wilder than wild, Shadow.”
9
The Na-vohnuh had caught him sleeping and were torturing him, galling the flesh of his chest and inner thigh with knives and hot coals. He could hear his friend, Whip, screaming outside the lodge, and Slope Child was calling his name in a voice that sounded grotesque:
“Shadow! Shadow!”
He awoke and saw his father’s face looking in at him.
“There you are!” Shaggy Hump said. “Why do you sleep with the sun so high? Come!”
The waking youth looked around to make sure Slope Child was gone, then flung the robe aside. “Ah!” he cried, his wounds feeling very sore now.
“Come, my son!”
Grimacing, Shadow rose and took a hobbling step to the entrance hole.
“Where will you carry your medicine pouch?” Shaggy Hump demanded.
It took Shadow a moment to figure out what his father meant, for he didn’t even own a medicine pouch, as he had yet to seek his medicine. Once he acquired it, the pouch would be carried inside his loin skins, but …
Suddenly he knew why his father sought him, and he hurriedly tied his skins about him before stepping outside.
They walked briskly across the camp, Shadow favoring the leg that the horse had stepped on.
“Do you wish the women to shame you and call you elder sister?” Shaggy Hump asked.
“No, my father.”
“Then do not walk like a cripple. That is only a scratch!”
“Yes, my father.”
They passed by his parents’ lodge, where River Woman was tending to her chores.
“Give our son something to eat, woman. He will go hungry soon enough.”
River Woman drew a knife from her belted sheath and cut a length of pemmican—tallow, berries, seeds, and dried meat encased in deer gut. As Shadow ate this, she went to fetch a gourd dipper filled with milk taken from the udders of an antelope Shaggy Hump had killed at dusk yesterday. He ate and drank voraciously, on his feet. His mind swam with thoughts of Slope Child last night, his vision quest to come, great hunts and battles, and Teal in his lodge of days ahead.
Looks Away came with an armload of wood. She began placing the wood stick by stick on the pile. Another woman would have thrown the whole load down at once, but Looks Away was quiet and meticulous about her work. She smiled at Shadow and spoke many wishes with just her eyes and her smile.
“Finish your food as we walk,” Shaggy Hump said, pulling his son away.
They marched across the camp, until Shaggy Hump put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Do you see that lodge?”
Shadow beheld a small tipi, not much larger than his own, but painted elaborately with all manner of signs and animals and colors. The flap was open and a trail of smoke streamed from the peak. “Yes, my father.”
“That is the lodge of your Naming Father. He is called Spirit Talker. He will tell you about the journey, my son, and you must listen if you wish to have good medicine. Now, go. He waits.”
Shadow handed the empty gourd to his father and approached the lodge cautiously. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw his father already stalking away, so he stuck his head into the open entrance hole of the painted lodge.
“Is that you?” the gravelly voice said. “Are you the boy called Shadow?” It was the old man who had laughed at him yesterday for having gotten thrown from the colt.
“Yes, Grandfather,” the boy said, respectfully.
“Before you come in, move the wind-flap poles for me. The wind has shifted and my lodge is full of smoke.”
From outside, Shadow moved the poles various ways as Spirit Talker yelled, “Yes, that way … No, the other way … That is better, now … No, no! More to the west!” until finally the smoke hole was drawing well enough to vent the tipi.
“Now, sit,” the old man said, once Shadow had entered the lodge, “and I will tell you things you need to know.”
Shadow sat rigidly on a buffalo robe.
“Get comfortable. You are going to be here a long time, listening to me.”
Shadow shifted and sat as naturally as his sore chest and leg would allow.
“I have heard many stories about you, young horseback. They say First Horse circled your lodge as you were born. They say you will have strong medicine because of this.”
The old man paused, either to chuckle or to wheeze—Shadow could not tell which.
“What the spirits caused to happen in days behind us means nothing. The spirits sometimes change their mind.” The old man sighed, threw a pinch of some kind of powder into the fire. “They are like the clouds that promise rain and bring only hail. I have spent all of my life looking for signs and talking to spirits, and still I cannot make sense of everything they bring about. So, do not think you are favored because a stray horse circled your lodge as you were born, or you will offend the spirits on your vision quest.”
“I do not think I am favored, Grandfather. I only want to make my people proud.”
Spirit Talker grunted. “You speak well. Now, listen well. I will tell you about my vision quest when I was a know-nothing boy like you.”
Spirit Talker started in on the walking, fasting, and thirsting of the quest. He spoke of the standing, the smoking, the praying. He went on so long that Shadow thought he must be telling it at about the same pace it happened. The old man related all this sitting upright on his couch of robes, his eyes closed and his face turned up.
Then the old man began to tell of the vision he had received so long ago. It fascinated Shadow at first, but it went on too long, and began to make no sense at all. Spirit Talker spoke of birds that turned into arrows and flew far away to kill, of ancient owls that caught and ate the flesh of still-living men, of antelope that ran upside-down on the bottoms of clouds, of great lodges in the sky, of trees that sprouted and bloomed and made fruit and died in the blink of an eye, of bears who spoke the tongue of wolves who spoke the tongue of snakes who spoke the tongue of True Humans. There were councils underground where buffalo and deer and great humpbacked bears met with the grandfathers’ grandfathers of the True Humans. There were worlds in the clouds, across the waters, beyond the stars. It was so confusing that after a great while, Shadow’s thoughts slipped back to Slope Child in his lodge last night to Teal in his dreams of greatness to come. He began to ignore completely the old man and listen to what was going on outside the little painted lodge.
He heard the hooves of horses trotting. He heard small children laughing as they played games. He heard a woman breaking sticks with a stone axe. Once, he heard a hawk call from high up in the sky, and glancing through the smoke hole, happened to see the hawk pass. He could not believe that anybody could go on as long as Spirit Talker without moving anything but his mouth.
“… and when I looked again,” the old man was saying, “the coyotes had turned into spirits in the shape of…”
The voice fell silent, and Shadow looked quickly at the old man’s face, thinking maybe the puhakut had caught him watching for people through the open lodge entrance. But he soon realized that the old man had fallen asleep, for his mouth was open and his breathing was coming i
n long, slow rasps. He did not know what to do, so he lay down and went to sleep himself, until the old man’s voice woke him.
“… in the shape of jackrabbits, yet I could tell from their smiles that they were still coyotes. Then, the four bull elk in the north turned and ran away, making a cloud of red dust…”
Shadow sat up and listened again. As the old man went on, the sunlight moved across the floor of the painted lodge. Finally, Spirit Talker said, “then I found myself upon my robe, and I was very hungry and very thirsty, so I went back to my village to tell the old men what I had seen. They tried to tell me what it meant. But, they were wrong.” He threw the strange powder on the pile of ashes, where the fire had gone out. “Do you understand what I am saying, Shadow?”
The boy waited a long time before he answered, thinking. “No,” he finally said, though he feared the old man might start over. “But I wish to understand.”
Spirit Talker opened his mouth wide, his laughter sounding like the roar of a fox. “The more we wish to understand, the more we learn. The more we learn, the less we understand.”
There was silence in the lodge that lasted as long as a beaver could stay underwater. Then, Shadow asked a bold question:
“Grandfather, what manner of dust did you throw onto the fire?”
Spirit Talker put his fingertips in the pouch that held the powder. “Do you ask this question to make me think you want to understand things, or do you truly want to know what kind of dust it is?”
Shadow considered this question some time, thinking about how he would speak his reply. “I truly wish to know what kind of dust it was, because it smelled strange to me when it burned. I did not ask the question only to make you think I wish to understand things, but I do wish to understand, and that is why I asked the question.”
“What do you wish most to understand?”