See with the cante ista, his dream had said. With the eye of the heart.
Four hands caressed his chest and ribs. Sharp fingernails slid across his cheek, down his throat to his collarbone. Warm, sweet breath hissed in his ear.
One of them has to be lying. And unless my hanblečeya was a lie, one of them has to be good…the mother of our race. A descendant of White Buffalo Woman. They can’t both be lying to me.
He could feel the sisters unrobe next to him. Their skin smelled of wahpewastemna, the sweet perfume used before important ceremonies. Of that and something infinitely more musky and exciting.
Hoka Ushte felt himself becoming aroused despite his fear. The girls’ bare breasts touched his forearms and side now. One of them slipped down lower so that her breath was on his thigh.
The vision.
Sweat oiled their sliding against him now. The tipi was very dark, but he could make out the black hair on their heads and between their legs, the gleam of reflected starlight on eyes and lips and teeth. There came a grinding sound, as of small teeth rubbing against one another, but Hoka Ushte could not locate the source.
One of the sisters rubbed his che even more erect while the other slid her breasts back and forth across his bare chest. They rolled over him like otters at play.
“I am ready,” whispered one, pulling his hand toward her groin. He felt moisture there before he tugged his hand away. Had there been a sharpness there among the slickness?
“Now, please, now,” whispered the same sister, or perhaps the other. Both were tugging at him. A firm hand cupped his balls, then slid up his child-maker to its swollen tip. “Now,” came the same voice. Or perhaps a different one.
Fingers touched his cheek. One girl rolled on her back, all sweet-scented skin and sweat, and opened her legs to him while the other slid against him and helped him rise with a strong hand on the small of his back. Hoka Ushte felt breasts compressing beneath him, other breasts against his arm. He realized that the knife was no longer in his hand. His che slid against the girl’s slick belly, felt the wiry softness of her lower hair. Hands reached to glide him into place.
The vision. There were three sisters. The one who did not speak was the one whose voice I heard.
Hoka Ushte tried to roll away. Hands held him in place while other hands roughly grabbed his che and pulled it into the girl beneath him. He could hear the teeth clicking in anticipation.
Lame Badger reared back, kicked away, heard the hiss and snap of frustration, and then had both sisters swarming on him, their legs wide and strong around him. They rolled out through the tent flap into the starlight. He could see the nether-teeth now, gleaming and snapping at his still-erect member. The sisters’ faces were no longer beautiful as they shape-changed into something black and spiderish. Too many eyes gleamed at him.
One of the sisters rolled atop him with a hiss of triumph. The other scraped his tender places with long nails, forcing him there. Hoka Ushte could see the second sister’s backbone snap free of her spine, its barbs coming around like a scorpion’s tail.
Hoka Ushte reached out, found a bit of log unburned, and swept it under his own thigh and up.
The sister atop him snarled something as her winyañ shan seized the log and began chewing it like a dog with a stick. Splinters flew between their sweaty thighs. The sisters screamed in triumph and the scream was not human.
Hoka Ushte rolled free, kicking the occupied sister away. The second one leaped at him, the force of her leap throwing both of them back into the dark tipi. The teeth in the girl-thing’s mouth snapped at his neck while her other teeth scraped his thigh. Hoka Ushte’s far-flung hand fell on the hilt of his knife beneath a robe and he swung it around, feeling it go deep between the scaly breast above him. The girl-thing thrashed and hissed, screamed once, and died, rolling away with the knife still embedded in it.
Its sister filled the tipi entrance. The thing’s barbed tail was snapping back and forth now, shredding the tipi fabric and letting starlight in. Hoka Ushte realized that the tipi had been wrapped about in layers of human skin. He rolled away through the tumbled lodgepoles and flapping skin, into a heap of robes made of human hair. The girl-thing crouched like a spider with a scorpion sting.
Hoka Ushte sat on something sharp, felt his stolen arrows under the robe, and lifted a bunch of them, knowing that he would not have time to find the bow. The girl-thing was almost on him, hands, legs, and tail writhing.
Instead of trying to run, Hoka Ushte leaped closer and drove the bundle of arrows deep into the thing’s gleaming eyes. Then he rolled away to avoid the spasming tail.
The spider-scorpion screamed so loudly that its cry echoed from the mountains for minutes. Then, still clutching the bundle of stone arrow points in its eyes, it ran blindly, stumbling over the skin of the tumbled tipi, getting to its feet again, and going over the cliff edge near where the death sacs hung.
Hoka Ushte rushed to the edge to make sure the thing was not hanging there, but he could see it in the bright moonlight as it fell a thousand feet to the rocks below. Its scream and the echoes of its scream made a terrible harmony. The silence after it struck the rocks was very loud.
The boy staggered back to the tumbled tipi, pounded the robes until he found his bow and a single arrow, and then backed away as the thickly robed hag-mother came slowly out of the lodgepole ruins.
“Stop,” he rasped, lifting the bow to full pull.
“I mean you no harm,” came the thick voice from within the robes.
“I believe you,” said Hoka Ushte. “But come no closer now.” The old woman stopped. Hoka Ushte sat cross-legged and relaxed his pull on the bow, watching to make sure the dark form did not approach. “Who are you?” he whispered after the moon had crossed half the sky toward morning.
“I am winyañ sni,” said the one-eyed form, “the woman-who-is-not-a-woman. I am both sister and cousin to White Buffalo Woman who visited your people some time ago. See…” And she touched the dead embers with her gnarled hand and a fire sprang up.
“That proves nothing,” said Hoka Ushte. “The Iktomé creatures that I slew almost certainly could do such wapiya tricks.”
“Yes,” sighed the hag. “And there is no way to prove to you that this flame is the same spark that my sister-cousin gave to your people, the peta-owihankeshni. The fire without end.”
Hoka Ushte looked at the flame and said nothing for a while. Finally he said, “If you were with White Buffalo Woman, how did you come to be here…” He nodded toward the tumbled tipi.
“I was very beautiful but very promiscuous in the spirit place,” she said in her raspy hag voice. “Lila hinknatunpi s’a… I repeatedly had many husbands. I caused the men near me to be possessed…wicayuknaxkin. Possessed with desire for me. One of these men was the spider man himself, Iktomé. When I grew tired of him and cast him aside, he gave me to his spider sisters. It was not their attraction which drew men here, but mine. Iyuhawica yuknaxkinyanpi… I cause those who stand near to be possessed.”
“I am not possessed,” growled Hoka Ushte.
The hag showed a single tooth in her smile. “You have been since your vision. But it is not the possession magic which drew you here, but teriyaku…the fact that you love me.”
Hoka Ushte tried to laugh at this—the hag was, after all, a bundle of wrinkles, warts, boils, and old-woman flesh—but he could not laugh. He realized that it was love that had been behind his vision and that had led him here. He put down his bow and came closer.
“If you touch me,” said the hag, “I am not responsible for what will happen.”
“Nor am I,” said Hoka Ushte and gently touched the ancient creature.
And in that second he saw with the eye of his heart. And the old hag was no hag, but was the most beautiful maiden he had ever seen. Instead of rotting rags, she wore a dress of dazzling white doeskin. Her lips were soft and full, her skin a thousand times more beautiful than the deceptive creatures who had tried to fool him, her eyes
lovely and deep under heavy lashes, and her hair alive with starlight. Their kiss flowed on and on until Hoka Ushte lifted the maiden and carried her to his blanket. There he parted the ties on her dress and slipped it off her warm skin. Her breasts were perfect; her navel was a tender hillock upon which he rested his cheek.
She pulled his face to hers. “No, Hoka Ushte,” she whispered. “In one thing I am like the spider man’s cousins…” She moved his fingers to her winyañ shan. It was moist with excitement, but that was not what she wished to show him. He gently parted the tender lips with his fingers and felt the small teeth there. “I married many men because none could have me when they discovered…”
“Hush,” whispered Hoka Ushte, his fingers exploring. “This can be fixed.”
The maiden sighed with passion. She curled his fingers into a fist. “Yes, if you knock them out…”
“What?” whispered Hoka Ushte, stroking her hair with his free hand. “And hurt you? Never.”
White Buffalo Woman’s cousin turned her face to the blanket. “Then we can never…”
Hoka Ushte reached across her to retrieve the Wasichu holy water gourd from where the spider girl had hidden it. “Drink this,” he said, “and when the spirits have entered you so that you feel little pain, then I will use the Wasichu gift.”
“Gift?” said the maiden. Her eyes widened as he lifted the Fat Taker soldier’s pair of pliers from its place in the rolled blanket.
And so it was that the sister-cousin to White Buffalo Woman, a maiden who was later known to our people as She Who Smiles, came to be Lame Badger’s first lover and only wife. And when she returned to our camp, a great meeting of holy men was called and it was confirmed that she would be the mother of the children whose children’s children would someday lead the Ikče Wičaśa out of their cave of darkness and back into the real world.
And later, when the story was told, my great-grandfather admitted that when he pulled the teeth that were in the wrong place, he left one little tooth there because of the wonderful sensation it offered. And my grandfather, whom I have mentioned in this tale, was the first male child born to Hoka Ushte and She Who Smiles and the scar on his scalp and forehead—the birth scar caused by that single little tooth—became the wakan source of much of his power when he became a holy man and a vision man and a conjurer.
I never met my great-grandfather, but I have heard in the stories that he and my great-grandmother lived to be very old, and were honored by all of the natural free human beings, and were very happy, and were especially blessed to die before all of the world they knew came under the shadow of the Wasicun. And they died believing that someday Hoka Ushte’s vision would be fulfilled and that the shadow will be lifted.
I see your expression. I know your doubt. But never doubt that I know this story to be true. And know that I never doubt that my great-grandfather’s hanblečeya vision will someday be true. You can take your machine and go now. The story is over. This thing has been said that had to be said.
They say that my aged great-grandfather’s last words to his dying wife were, “Toksha ake čante ista wacinyanktin ktelo. I shall see you again with the eye of my heart.”
And this I also do not doubt.
Good-bye then. Mitakuye oyasin. All my relatives. It is done.
FLASHBACK
Carol awoke, saw the light of morning—true morning, realtime morning—and had to resist the urge to pop her last twenty-minute tube of flashback. Instead she rolled over, pulled the pillow half over her face, and tried to recapture her dreams rather than let the realtime shakes get her. It did not work. At bedtime the night before she had flashed three hours’ worth of the second trip to Bermuda with Danny, but afterward her dreams had been chaotic and unrelated. Like life.
Carol felt the rush of realtime anxiety hit her like a cold wave: she had no idea what the day could bring—death or danger to her family, embarrassment, pain—unpredictability. She hugged her arms to her chest and curled into a tight shell. It did not help. The shaking continued. She had unconsciously opened the drawer of the bedside table and actually had the last tube in her hand before she noticed the three collapsed and empty vials on the floor beside her bed. Carol set the twenty-minute tube on the table and went in to drive the cold shakes away with a hot shower, shouting to Val to get out of bed as she turned on the water. She saw her father’s open door and knew that he had been up for hours, as he always was, having cereal and coffee before the sun rose and then puttering around in the garage before coming in to make fresh coffee for her and toast for Val.
Her father never flashbacked while the others were in the house. But Carol always found the tubes in the garage. The old man was doing three to six hours per day. Always three to six hours of the same fifteen minutes, Carol knew. Always trying to change the unchangeable.
Always trying to die.
Val was fifteen and unhappy. This morning as he slumped to the table he was wearing a Yamato interactive T-shirt, black jeans, and VR shades tuned to random overlays. He did not speak as he poured milk on his cereal and gulped his orange juice.
His grandfather came in from the garage and paused in the doorway. His name was Robert. His wife and friends had always called him Bobby. No one called him that anymore. The old man had that slightly lost, slightly querulous expression that came from age or flashback or both. Now he focused on his grandson and cleared his throat, but Val did not look up and Robert could not tell if the boy was tuned to the here and now or to the VR flickerings behind his shades.
“Warm day today,” said Carol’s father. He’d not been outside yet, but most days in the L.A. basin were warm.
Val grunted and continued staring in the direction of the back of the cereal box.
The old man poured coffee for himself and came over to the table. “The school counselor program called yesterday. Told me that you’d ditched another three days last week.”
This got the boy’s attention. His head shot up, he lowered his glasses on his nose, and said, “You tell Mom?”
“Take the glasses off,” said the old man. It was not a request.
Val removed the VR shades, deactivated the telem link, tucked them in his T-shirt pocket, and waited.
“No, I didn’t tell her,” his grandfather said finally. “I should, but I haven’t. Yet.”
Val heard the threat but said nothing.
“There’s no reason why a young boy like you has to screw around with flashback.” Robert’s voice was phlegmy with age and brittle with anger.
Val grunted and looked away.
“I mean it, goddammit,” snapped his grandfather.
“Tell me about not using flashback,” said Val, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Robert took a step forward with his face mottled and fists clenched, as if he were about to hit the boy. Val stared him down as the old man stopped and tried to compose himself. When his grandfather spoke again, his voice held a forced softness. “I mean it, Val. You’re too young to spend your time replaying…”
Val slipped out of his chair, grabbed his gym bag, and tugged the door open. “What do you know about being young?” he said.
His grandfather blinked as if he had been slapped. He opened his mouth to speak, but by the time he could think of what to say, the boy was gone.
Carol came in and poured herself some coffee. “Has Val left for school yet?”
Robert could only stare at the door and nod.
Robert looks down, sees his own hands gripping the side of the dark limousine, and knows instantly where and when he is. The heat is intense for November. His gaze moves from the windows above, then to the crowd—only two deep along this stretch of street—then back to the windows. Occasionally he glances at the back of the head in the open Lincoln ahead of him. Lancer looks relaxed today, he thinks.
He can hear his own thoughts like a radio tuned to a distant station, the volume little more than a murmur. He is thinking about the open windows and the slowness of the motorcade.
Robert jumps off the running board and easily jogs to his position near the left rear fender of Lancer’s blue Lincoln while his eyes stay on the crowd and the windows above the street. His running is relaxed and easy; his thirty-two-year-old body is in excellent condition. Within two blocks the neighborhood changes—no more tall buildings, more empty lots and small shops, the crowd no longer even lining the route—and Robert falls back and steps onto the left running board of the number one chase car.
“You’re going to wear yourself out,” says Bill McIntyre from his place on the running board.
Robert grins at the other agent and sees his own reflection in Bill’s sunglasses. I’m so young, thinks Robert for the thousandth time at this instant while his other thoughts stay tuned to the windows on the taller building ahead. He hears himself think about the route as street signs pass: Main and Market.
Get off now! he screams silently at himself. Let go now! Run up there now.
He seethes with frustration as he ignores the internal screams. His other thoughts contemplate running up to the rear of the Lincoln, but the low buildings here and thinning crowds convince him to stay on the running board.
No! Go! At least get closer.
Robert’s head is turning away from the crowds and toward the blue Lincoln. He braces himself for the sight of the familiar thatch of chestnut hair. There it is. Then Lancer is lost to sight as Robert’s gaze continues to track left. There is an open area: a hilly patch of grass and some trees.
Robert knows to the instant when he will step down off the running board, but he tries to tense his body to make himself jump sooner. It does not work. He steps off the same instant that he always does.