People of the Fire (49 page)

 
          
 
"Exactly my point!" she cried, and
clapped her hands.

 
          
 
He looked crestfallen. "Then how can you
believe in anything? Why even talk to another person? Ignore me. I'm not
real."

 
          
 
She winked at him. "Because for whatever
reason we're here, alive and living, there's a purpose. So what if we're
Dreams? For the time being, act it out. Besides, accepting the illusion works,
for the most part."

 
          
 
"I think it's crazy." But he didn't
look any too sure of himself as he said it. A frown had engraved itself into
his forehead.

 
          
 
"Maybe," she whispered, dropping her
chin on her fingers. For the moment, she lost herself in the images of Six
Teeth and his wonder that man could Dance with fire. But how? She blinked and
looked up, seeing the amused disbelief in Little Dancer's eyes.

 
          
 
"Thinking about not being real?" he
asked.

           
 
"No, I was thinking about what it would
take to Dance with Fire."

 
          
 
"Skin made of water. Even if you don't
exist, that's impossible," Little Dancer replied.

 
          
 
"More things are never tried because
they're impossible than are tried because people believe in them." She
reached for her stick to stir the fire. "And what kind of world would we
have if people believed in the impossible? Think of what we could do. Now,
there's a Dream for you."

 
          
 
She pointed with her walking stick. "That
line there means the worst of the cold is over. When the sun rises there, it's
halfway to the summer solstice."

 
          
 
Little Dancer moved around the outside of the
circle, seeing how the rocks aligned. Only the gray tops of the stones stuck
out of the windblown snow that had mounded and begun to melt as Father Sun
picked a more northerly path through the sky.

 
          
 
Where they stood on the ridge top, the cruel
fingers of the wind shot through hide and flesh like obsidian-tipped darts,
chilling the very soul. Still, this high ridge had an unrestricted view of the
irregular horizon.

 
          
 
"But how did you figure this out?"
he called against the gale.

 
          
 
"Time, boy." She cackled like a sage
hen over a green sprout. "By watching the sky, the path of Father Sun, and
how the
Starweb
has been woven over the earth. It's
all part of the Circles. You see, when you come stand here and look down this
line, you'll find that on the day the sun comes up over that rock, it's the
height of summer. Days get shorter until just after the beginning of the deep
cold. Then, on the shortest day, the sun comes up over that rock down
there."

 
          
 
He walked around the stone circle, sighting
down each of the transecting spokes. "So you always know when the seasons
break? I never knew it was that easy."

 
          
 
"Bah!" She waved it away while the
wind flapped the skirts of her dress. "Most of knowing how the world works
can be figured out by just watching it. For instance, which way is really
north? Point."

 
          
 
He did, picking the mountain he'd always
thought lay north.

           
 
She hitched around the circle, picking a line
of rocks. 'There. Come stand here and look and you'll see straight north.''

 
          
 
"And how do you know that?"

 
          
 
"Simplest thing in the world. I sat up here
and marked where the stars appeared on the horizon. Then I marked where they
set. A person just sits there in the same place all night long marking the star
paths; the place in the middle is north. That's how you prove the north star is
really the north star. Must be pretty Powerful not to move in the night like
the others."

 
          
 
"That or it's dead."

 
          
 
"Maybe, but I doubt it. It twinkles like
all the others. It just doesn't move." She tapped her walking stick
against the rocks to make a clicking sound. "Yes, all it takes is watching
long enough and you can figure out how things work. Of course, I still haven't
figured out what the sun burns. Can't be wood, there's no smoke up there. And
the light's too bright. You ever noticed? Not like firelight, it doesn't have
that yellow cast to it. And then there's the moon. Whatever it burns, it
doesn't put out heat—and no smoke there, either."

 
          
 
"But I remember you saying everything has
a spirit of its own."

 
          
 
She nodded. "It does. Spirit Power lies
in everything, it's just a matter of opening parts of your soul to feel it.
Animals, of course, have souls, but so do trees and mountains, and streams and
the clouds in the sky. It's all pulsing and throbbing around us all the time.
It's just that humans are always throwing mud in the waters of their lives to
muck it up. They're not happy unless they're floating along in dirty water so
they can't see where they're going or what the channel looks like."

 
          
 
He laughed, shivering despite his warm
sheep-hide cloak.

 
          
 
She saw and hugged herself. "Come on,
let's get off this hill. I'm about frozen to the bone."

 
          
 
"No, you're not cold. It's all
illusion!" he teased, helping her down off the steep trail. He had to grip
her hand to keep her steady on the treacherous parts. Rocks rolled underfoot
and ice had packed the shadows. "How long did it take you to make the
wheel up there?"

 
          
 
"Couple of years. Sometimes it's cloudy
in summer and you need to wait another year to get the rocks placed just right.
The hardest part is the winter. Lots of clouds then. And it takes a certain
amount of dedication—or idiocy—to sit up there in the dark waiting for morning
while the wind blows snow up your skirt and your skin turns blue. Ice freezes
in your hair and you get to shivering so bad you're not certain if the sighting
you took on the top of the rising sun was correct or not because your teeth
were clattering so hard as to jar your eyeballs in the sockets. It reminds you
this world might be illusion—but it's a cursed powerful one!"

 
          
 
"What gave you the idea for the star
wheel? Did you Dream it? Just think it up one day?"

 
          
 
She shook her head and wobbled out onto the
flats at the bottom of the trail. Snow crunched under her moccasins. "Dung
and flies, no. I saw one up on a butte overlooking
Big
River
one time when I went up there with Cut
Feather to see some of his relations among the White Crane People." She
paused, seeing it again in her mind. "I remember going up there one night
because the White Crane thought it was a Power place. I lay down to sleep
between the spokes and had a wonderful Dream. I woke up just at dawn. I got up
and was rolling up my bedding as the sun was coming up. I noticed a spoke
pointed right into the red eye of the sun. That set me to thinking, so I
watched that star wheel for a while. The whole time we were there I watched
where the sun came up and set. Watched it move around the wheel.

 
          
 
"No, I didn't make it up. I don't think
there's much to make up in the world. That's the beauty of the Spiral, you see.
Everything comes around and happens all over again. Like life. A baby is born,
learns to walk, learns to talk and play, and gets to be a young person. Then
the young person learns to be an adult. A penis finds a vagina and another baby
is born and learns to walk and talk and do everything over again. Circles
within Circles, but all connected: the Spiral."

 
          
 
He paused to take a swipe at a snow-heavy
branch. "And where do you think Heavy Beaver fits into all that?"

           
 
White Calf ran her tongue along the insides of
her cheeks, a determined look on her face as she walked. "The problem with
Heavy Beaver is that he's found Power without knowing how he did it."

 
          
 
"But you’ve told me for years that he's a
liar, that his Power is all made up."

 
          
 
"It is. You see, he does make it up. But
think about it for a bit. I know you hate the idea that the world is illusion,
but consider this because it's the secret of his strength. Heavy Beaver's Power
is in the heads of others."

 
          
 
Little Dancer stopped, turning on his heel.
"Huh?"

 
          
 
She gave him a knowing squint, a trace of
satisfaction in the set of her lips. "That's right. His Power is in the
heads of other people. They believe for him. If you will, they Dream the
reality of his Power—and it's all illusion."

 
          
 
"Illusion?"

 
          
 
"As compared to the One."

 
          
 
"But what if Oneness is illusion,
too?"

 
          
 
"Then it's the ultimate illusion. But it
works. Since you've been here, you've told me about the bighorn trap. You've
told me how you Dreamed the antelope to come to your mother's trap and feed the
People. You've told me about the Dreams, but what I've never told you is that
your Dreaming with the One was so powerful that time that I shared it."

 
          
 
He stared at her. "You ..."

 
          
 
She waved it away. "Oh, yes, I felt you
and your hunger. So did the antelope . . . and the mountain sheep. That's why
if the One is illusion, it's the most powerful. Think about it and remember
when we had our argument that first day about me proving you really existed. I
knew you were real by having shared that Dream. And that's how you know
antelope and mountain sheep exist. You've been One with them/'

 
          
 
A chill realization, colder than the icy wind
tearing over the rocky crags, ate into his very soul. For long moments, he
stood, locked in his thoughts as the pieces began to tumble into place. He
nodded absently, raising his gaze from the crusted, ice-flaked snow to ask her
more, but she'd left. He stopped to kick at a sagebrush, exulting, before
racing after her disappearing back.

           
 
Lost in thought, Elk Charm handed Two Smokes a
horn bowl of steaming mountain-sheep stew. She walked over to sit cross-legged
on the fill before the shelter, eyes unconsciously straying to the trail that
led down from the high ridge.

 
          
 
''Still waiting for him?"

 
          
 
"Yes." And her heart tore.

 
          
 
"He'll be back," Two Smokes told
her, sipping the hot stew.

 
          
 
"He'll be back," Rattling Hooves
echoed from where she sat weaving grasses together for a collecting basket.

 
          
 
Elk Charm didn't need to turn to know the
worry in her mother's face. Although she'd been a child at the time, that
assurance had filled many a night in her father's lodge during the long spring
of his absence. Not until
Ramshorn
found his body
melting out of the snow slide the next spring had the phrase been dropped.

 
          
 
She bit her lip as she did so often these
days, anxious gaze tracing every crook and turn of the trail as it made its way
up the slope, over the outcrops, and around the patches of
rabbitbrush
and sage.