Stone Song by Win Blevins Read Free Book Online Page B

Curly, No Water jabbed him in the face with an elbow. “Didn’t mean to,” he said baitingly.
    Hump saw Curly start to flash in anger and then control himself. Good.
    “That hurt! ” complained No Water, rubbing his gut and scowling at Curly.
    Curly said nothing.
    “Did you come to gloat?” Black Twin asked Young Man-Whose-Enemies challengingly.
    But the youth was not the son of a chief for nothing. “No,” he said, “we came to tell you that Horn Chips has looked into Inyan and seen that the buffalo are at the forks of Rattlesnake Creek. We’re going with the wolf,” scout, “to make sure.”
    “Why don’t some of you Bad Faces go, too?” said Chips. He was related to both bands but lived with the Bad Face people.
    “I’ll go,” said Black Twin quickly. White Twin said the same. They looked at their brother expectantly, but No Water walked off with an angry look, rubbing his belly.
    As the group headed back toward camp, Horn Chips said to Curly, “Come with me.”
    Curly started to speak, but he didn’t know what to say. He shrugged. He started to speak again, and nothing came out.
    Chips just turned his back and set off for the Bad Face circle.
    Scared, Curly followed Chips to his lodge. The wicasa wakan sat behind his center fire and got out his canupa and lit it. Curly noticed how he watched the shifting shapes of the smoke as they wafted toward the center hole. He wondered if Chips saw the future in the smoke, which was the breath of the earth.
    Chips patted the ground and Curly sat next to him. Chips burned alittle sweetgrass to invite the presence of the spirits. Curly accepted the canupa and smoked. When he was finished, Chips said, “You must tell your father what you dreamed.”
    Curly gushed his breath out. He had been afraid Chips would make him tell his vision right now, to Chips. He was half-afraid of the wicasa wakan . The man had power, and all power cut both ways, for good and ill.
    Curly’s throat tried to squeeze shut before the words could get out. “I understand, Cousin.” Having to tell his father was not a bit better.
    “When you’ve told your father,” Chips said, “come to me. I have things to show you.”
    Curly felt riven. Fear, panic, excitement, he couldn’t tell his own feelings. Hawk was clasping and unclasping her claws in Curly’s heart.
    Chips knew the spirit power of Inyan, Stone, a great power, hard to control. Curly hoped that wasn’t what Chips wanted to show him.
    “That’s all, Cousin,” said the holy man gently.
    Curly hurried across the Bad Face circle through the darkness toward his father’s lodge. His legs felt unsteady. He kept an eye out for the Bad Face youths other than He Dog. Curly was sure they would dislike him more now. It showed what gaining power did to you, any kind of power.
    Hawk pranced within him, tense.
    At the Hunkpatila camp he stopped and let himself be aware of standing within the circle of this village, of sleeping in the circle of his family’s tipi, of living in the big circle of the Oglala and the bigger circle of all the Titunwan Lakota. He looked up at the moon. He lived within the circles made by Moon and Sun every day. This was all a sacred hoop, and it was his life.
    He murmured into the infinite night, “I should tell my father my wakinyan dream.”
    Curly stood there looking up, waiting for an answer.
    He heard nothing.
    Hawk dug her claws into his chest.
    So he wouldn’t tell, not yet. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t think Hawk wanted him to.
    Yes, for Hawk I will defy Horn Chips .
LEAVING HOME
    The hunt was good, lots of meat and robes for the Oglala and Sicangu. Curly got a four-teeth, a four-year-old, the best for robes. When his two mothers had the meat on a travois and headed back to camp, he nudged his pony alongside Buffalo Hump. His hunka ’s eyes were glittering.“They say the Sahiyela and the Mahpiyato are hungry.” Their friends the Cheyenne and Arapaho had stayed back at the soldier fort