People of the Fire (48 page)

 
          
 
"Power does that."

 
          
 
"Anyway, the Dreams come and go . . .
more so lately. I get one that comes back time after time. I'm alone in the
middle of a forest fire. And a Spirit Wolf walks through the flames and turns
into a man. When he talks to me, he talks in riddles I can't understand, about
being everything and nothing at the same time. I get the shakes for days.

 
          
 
"Then I've had other things happen . . .
like a living Dream. One time we'd gone to trap mountain sheep and I . . . lost
myself in the sheep, I guess you'd say." He swallowed hard, changing the
subject. "Two Smokes and Elk Charm are worried. I guess everyone's
worried. I see it in their eyes. They know I have Dreams—but they don't
understand. Makes Fun and Meadowlark, they're nervous about their children.
Don't know what I'll do to them. Elk Charm and Two Smokes thought I should come
see you."

 
          
 
She lifted an eyebrow. "Elk Charm?"

 
          
 
He began to fidget. "We're married."

 
          
 
She sighed and rubbed her forehead where the
tumpline had bitten so deeply. Her dry laughter surprised him. "Circles,
boy." She shook her head. "Married, eh? Well, I wish you better luck
with it than I had."

 
          
 
"I'm happy. She knows I have trouble with
the Dreams."

 
          
 
"Good, it makes things easier to
explain." She reached into a pouch and pulled out a stick of dried
sego-lily bread and tossed it to him. "I hope Elk Charm understands what
she's gotten herself into. Don't look at me like that. I know what I'm talking
about. I inflicted myself on both Big Fox and Cut Feather. Well, thinking about
it, I didn't know what I was doing when I married Big Fox. That was the first
time. I was young—well, not so young as you—but young. Thought I could simply
settle down and live like a real person. Thought I could deny the Dreams."

 
          
 
"And it didn't work?" He chewed the
breadstick absently, jaws working under smooth skin. Unconsciously, his eyes
kept straying to the spiral pecked in the back wall where the sunlight
illuminated it.

 
          
 
"No. It never worked." She laughed
at the idea. "There's something about the way a human is put together.
We're no different than the rest of the animals, I suppose. I mean, take a
beaver. It doesn't matter that he's got a dammed-up pool full of willow twigs
all cut and stuck down there in the mud. He's still got to crawl out and chew
down trees—even spruce trees if they're the only ones available. I guess you'd
say that's the way the Wise One Above made him. With humans, well, we have the
need to be with each other, and when men and women are together, the robes get
parted and what makes men
men
and women
women
meets. I had all those urges and I thought coupling
would overpower the Dreams."

 
          
 
He looked miserable.

 
          
 
She smiled wistfully. "It works for a
while. You'll be able to lose yourself in Elk Charm for a time yet. It's all
new and wonderful—and there's the coupling itself. Ah, yes, the coupling
..." She lost herself in the memories for a moment before sighing and
returning to the subject. "The problem is that it tears at you. The lure
of the Dream pulls against the lure of the person you love. And what then? You
can't do both.'' She waggled a finger at him. ''Don't lift your eyebrow like
that. I mean it, you can’t do both. Well, all right, don't take my word for it.
You'll find out on your own anyway."

 
          
 
"Maybe."

 
          
 
She reached down and massaged her toes where
they warmed by the fire. Her toenails were getting too long again. Have to trim
them. "I don't know why the Wise One Above does it this way. Seems a
shame, but I suppose it's just another reflection of how the universe was made
in the first place."

 
          
 
"What are you talking about?"

 
          
 
"Circles. Hmm? Oh, I mean about the way
every person learns things. Truths, if you will . . . laws about the way the
world works. Then when people get old, they got all this stuff they've learned
packed away in their brains and they can't show young men and women why it's
the way they say. The young have to go out and find out everything the way the
elders did. Damned inefficient—unless, of course, I'm missing something important.

 
          
 
"Old Six Teeth, the Spirit Man who taught
me, he used to wonder if we all weren't the same person just living the same
life in different ways."

 
          
 
She wondered, Is this the way of it? When I
had the boy, I didn't have him. And now, when he's left and on his own, I get
him? Is that the trick that's been played on me? The lesson I needed to learn?
Perhaps that's the Spiral of teaching, that knowledge can Y be forced—only
withheld. But what does that mean ?

 
          
 
"That doesn't make any sense. How could
we live the same life in different ways in different bodies?"

 
          
 
"Illusion."

 
          
 
"What? Illusion? I don't . . . That's
crazy."

 
          
 
"
So's
the whole
world." She resettled herself and raised a finger to point at him.
"Tell me, Little Dancer, what's real?

           
 
The world? This one?" She gestured around
at the shelter and thumped her knuckles on the rock next to her. "Or . . .
are the Dreams real?"

 
          
 
"This is real." He crossed his arms,
kicking out his feet. As if to emphasize his point, he thumped his heel on the packed
dirt.

 
          
 
"How do you know?"

 
          
 
"Because if I pick up one of those coals
and rub it against the bottom of your foot, you'll scream."

 
          
 
She clapped her hands, laughing. "Will I?
Or will you just think it's me screaming? Hmm? Maybe everything around you is
your Dream of what the world is really like?"

 
          
 
"Then if I believe otherwise, you
won't?"

 
          
 
"What if that depends on how hard you
believe it? Can you be sure you really know that burning me makes me scream?
Can you be sure some little part of your mind doesn't say, burn her and she'll
scream? 'Cause if you burn yourself, you'll scream. Maybe it's shared reality,
hmm? You think I feel pain the same way you do—so I do."

 
          
 
"But don't you?"

 
          
 
"That's not what's at issue here."
She continued to jab a hard finger at him. "We're talking about how you
know what you think you know."

 
          
 
"But I can feel you, touch you, hear you
. . . and this late in the winter, smell you, too!"

 
          
 
"You think so. But tell me, am I always
this way? What happens when you can't see, feel, and smell me? Maybe I don't
exist when you walk out of that flap, hmm? Maybe Two Smokes and Elk Charm and
Hungry Bull don't exist until you get back and find them where you expect
they'll be. Maybe we Ye all part of your imagination of what's real."

 
          
 
"They exist!" he cried. "I know
they do. When I get back, Three Toes will have made new dart points. Father
will have snared some more elk. It'll all be there when I get back."

 
          
 
"Sure it will, but you can't prove that
it's there right now. Do you see?"

 
          
 
He shook his head, bewildered. "No. It's
obvious that Kb there. They have to be! Otherwise . . . otherwise ..."

 
          
 
"Exactly, otherwise. You see, you have no
way of proving to yourself that your father really exists. You could have made
up this entire world. The only person who knows this world is real is you. And
you can't prove to me that it exists the way you think it does."

 
          
 
He gaped. "But suppose I pick up my dart
and drive it through you. You'll feel it . . . die from it."

 
          
 
"Will I?" She leaned back and
crossed her arms. "Or am I only a part of your Dream? Maybe you only
imagine that I'll feel it, that I'll die. You see, you can't prove to me that I
really exist!"

 
          
 
He shook his head, confused.

 
          
 
"Ah, Little Dancer. Old Six Teeth told me
once long ago that life is the Great Mystery, that only within ourselves can we
know what we think is real. I can't prove to you that you're real. I can't
prove that this fire is real—that it isn't just a tool of the Dream. Sure, it
will burn me if I let it, but is the pain real? Or is it imagined?
Illusion?"

 
          
 
"It's real."

 
          
 
She pursed brown lips over toothless gums.
"I wonder. Six Teeth told me he'd seen a Dreamer Dance with fire once. The
old legends, the ones you youngsters don't hear anymore, say the old Dreamers
learned from First Man—and they Danced with fire."

 
          
 
He went pale before quickly adding, "That
could mean a lot of things. Maybe they waved it around on sticks and-"

 
          
 
"No," she insisted. "Memory is
a tricky thing—like a Dream, it changes. Memory itself is illusion. But I
remember Six Teeth so clearly, remember the look in his eyes, like crystal
beads of water lit by spring sunshine. He'd seen it. He said the Dreamer Danced
with the coals in his hands, Danced barefoot in the Fire, and didn't get
burned. According to Six Teeth, the way it was done was to retreat to the One,
to change the Dream so it was real and this world illusion."

 
          
 
"I'd trust in a sharp dart, myself,"
he added. "I mean, think about it. I do things to myself all the time, cut
myself flint knapping when I don't know it and I see the blood afterward and
wonder when I did it. If I made the world up, like you suggest, I wouldn't
imagine myself getting hurt. That doesn't make sense."

 
          
 
"Unless the rock Dreams it's hurting you."

 
          
 
"The rock . . ."

 
          
 
Through
slitted
eyelids, she watched him. "And you don't think the world around you
Dreams? How do you know you're not the illusion of a rock? Or a bat? Or maybe a
tree? What if a mouse is curled in its burrow somewhere, Dreaming your thoughts
and experiences for you at this very moment? Can you prove to me beyond any
doubt that you aren't part of someone's . . . something's Dream?"

 
          
 
He jumped to his feet, twirling around, arms
out. When he stopped, he looked at her. "There, see, I just decided to do
that, I decided to get up and spin around. Me." He pointed to his head.
"In here, inside. I thought to do that."

 
          
 
She laced her fingers, cocking her head.
"Did you? Or did whatever Dreams you plant the idea? Am I talking to
Little Dancer? Or to the Dreamer through the illusion of Little Dancer?"

 
          
 
Frustration reddened his face. "I'm me. This
is crazy! How can I prove to you that I'm me? Anything I think up, you'll say
it's Dreamed. That I only think it, or someone else only thinks it. I—"