Shaman by Robert Shea (nice books to read TXT) 📖

and stately. She turned to Star Arrow, and White Bear saw love mingle with the pain in her dark brown eyes.

"I am happy to call Star Arrow husband. He has not wronged me. It is right that a man should live among his people."

White Bear thought, Now she will say that we must stay with our people and cannot go with him.

"I am glad that Star Arrow remembers me and White Bear, that he comes to ask us to live with him. But I cannot go. I have my work, the gathering of medicines, the healing, the teaching of what I know." She turned to Redbird, who smiled uncertainly.

Sun Woman spoke on. "I could not look into pale eyes faces all day long. My heart would dry up."

In the long silence that followed, White Bear waited uneasily. Why had his mother not spoken of him?

Star Arrow unfolded his long, thin limbs, went over and stood before Sun Woman. He put his hands on her shoulders. A sudden breeze rattled the bark walls of Saukenuk.

"I understand what Sun Woman says."

Sun Woman and Star Arrow both looked at White Bear. He felt as if the ground were trembling under him. He wished it would open up and swallow him.

"This young man," said Sun Woman. "Your son, White Bear. Half of him is you. It is right that he should see the pale eyes who are also his people."

The earth was tilting. White Bear was falling.

His own mother—betraying him. Sending him away.

"I have always believed that Earthmaker meant some special destiny for White Bear," Sun Woman said.

The shout burst from White Bear. "No!" He did not even remember getting to his feet, but he was standing.

Heads turned toward him. Eyes opened wide. He saw Black Hawk lift a hand to silence him, then lower it again. The three chiefs stared angrily.

Words tumbled out of him. He spoke to his mother, who had turned against him.

"Earthmaker meant me to be a shaman. How can I learn to be a shaman if I live among pale eyes? If I spend many summers and winters away from the tribe I will no longer be a Sauk."

White Bear could see the pain-taut lines in Sun Woman's face.[82] This was hurting her, he knew that. But his anger at her burned in his chest. She was trading his life for hers. She would stay here in Saukenuk, but she would give Star Arrow part of what he wanted—his son. Why should he be sacrificed to make Star Arrow happy? It was she who had chosen to take this pale eyes into her lodge.

Sun Woman turned to Owl Carver. "We need to learn much more about the pale eyes if we are to protect ourselves from them. Some of us must live with them and come to understand them from within their tribe. Such a one must be young enough to learn new ways. And he should be specially gifted, a favorite of the spirits."

Then Owl Carver stood up to speak, facing White Bear.

"White Bear, listen to the words of your teacher. There is more than one way to become a shaman. Here in Saukenuk live many people of the Fox and some of the Winnebago, Piankeshaw and Kickapoo tribes. Who says their lives are over because they live among the Sauk? If you live with the tribe of pale eyes, it will make you a man of greater knowledge. To go among them will take the courage of a warrior and more. Of knowledge, of courage, is a shaman made."

Owl Carver turned to Black Hawk. "Sun Woman is right. Let the boy go with Star Arrow. I know Earthmaker has blazed this trail for White Bear." He crossed his arms before his chest and sat down again.

White Bear cast about desperately for words that would answer Owl Carver. He felt helpless to fight the current that was sweeping him away.

"If Earthmaker wants this for me, how is it that I do not know it?" he cried. He went cold inside, realizing that in his desperation he was defying Owl Carver before all the people. He was questioning Owl Carver's powers.

He wanted to say that he hoped to be the great prophet of the Sauk after Owl Carver had departed to the land of the spirits. But he did not dare say such a thing. Earthmaker himself might punish him for such presumption.

"Did I not come back to you from the sacred cave with the very words of the Turtle?" he said, holding his hands out in appeal. "Surely I will bring you other great visions if I stay with you. Among the Sauk I have grown to manhood. Why does this man come now to tear me away from the only tribe I have known?"

He was surprised to see Star Arrow smile warmly at him.[83]

"This man is your father," Owl Carver declared. "You are a Sauk. A Sauk never shirks the demands of honor. A Sauk is loyal and respectful and obedient toward his father."

"I am proud of my son," said Star Arrow. "He speaks with power before the people."

At that, a hopeless feeling swept over White Bear. Star Arrow was not fighting him, any more than water fights a drowning man. Star Arrow was a current dragging him away from his people, his village.

And the village was not trying to hold him. Sun Woman, Owl Carver, Black Hawk, were pushing him out, as they would a man who was so wicked he could not be allowed to live with the people. He felt utterly alone.

What did he know of the pale eyes? Only the little that Père Isaac had taught him. And that they were great land thieves. Always they were scheming to take land away from the people who had held it since the Great River first began to flow from the Turtle's breast. Why must he live among his people's enemies?

Owl Carver sprang from his seat. He leaped at White Bear and crouched before him. His eyes opened wide as those of his totem bird. White Bear felt himself pulled toward their black centers, as if they were whirlpools in the Great River. Owl Carver's long white hair fanned out like wings on either side of his head.

"You will listen!" Owl Carver said in a soft voice of terrible intensity. "You will hear!"

Silently White Bear stood looking at the shaman.

"You are the son of my spirit as much as you are the son of Star Arrow's body. I tell you to live with this man as I told you to go to the sacred cave in the Moon of Ice. This is a far greater test for you. Going to live with the pale eyes will be like journeying to another sacred cave. And you will bring back other visions."

White Bear saw in the blackness of Owl Carver's eyes that if he defied this decision he would lose his place in the tribe. There was no way to break free from the current that was sweeping him away from Saukenuk.

White Bear felt as if something in him had broken. He held his face expressionless. He did not want to show his hurt before the tribe. But he knew he would soon be unable to stop himself from weeping.

Among the witnessing people he saw anguish and determination[84] struggling in Sun Woman's face. Others looked at him only with curiosity, not sympathy. In all the people around him, the only face that shared his unrelieved wretchedness was Redbird's. His gaze met hers, and the pain they felt together deepened his despair.

Black Hawk spoke in a low voice over his shoulder to Wolf Paw, who stood up. As he left the circle before Owl Carver's medicine lodge, Wolf Paw glanced at White Bear, and White Bear saw the light of triumph in his eyes.

Black Hawk held a hand out to Star Arrow. "If we let you take White Bear, you must one day let him return to us, bringing his new knowledge to help the Sauk."

Owl Carver moved from his crouching position before White Bear and sat down again, facing Star Arrow. "This young man is most precious to us. The mysteries have been told to him, and he has seen visions of the past and future."

At this White Bear's heart was eased a bit. The tribe did want him to return.

I am both red and white.

And both his tribe and the pale eyes wanted him.

To go among the pale eyes will make you a man of knowledge, Owl Carver had said, and Black Hawk had agreed. Perhaps he could become a star arrow, pointing the way for his people in the troubled days the Turtle had foretold.

"I promise to keep him with me only for a time," said Star Arrow.

He has not long to live. That is why he can promise.

And that meant that White Bear's time of exile from the Sauk would be short. But knowing that brought White Bear no relief. He did not want his father, whom he had just met, to die so soon.

"I ask one more thing," said Star Arrow. "It will be harder for the boy to learn the ways of the pale eyes if he always feels the pull of his Sauk people. For the first few summers and winters that he is with us, I ask that he not return to you even for a visit, and that you send no messages to him and he send none to you."

"That is much to ask," said Owl Carver. "That is hard. The boy may die of longing for his people."

Star Arrow shook his head. "I would never let that happen. If I see that it is unbearable for him, I will send him back to you. But I will do everything I can to make him happy, and if he does not see[85] the British Band or hear from them, the pain of parting will go away sooner."

"I understand what Star Arrow says," said Black Hawk. "It is granted."

White Bear sat down slowly, feeling as if he had been mortally wounded. Never to have a word from his mother or from Redbird—how could he bear it?

Star Arrow continued, "He will go to a fine school in the East. And when he has learned all he can learn, I will send him back to you."

"Let it be done," Black Hawk said.

Wolf Paw came through the crowd, holding up in both hands a calumet, a sacred pipe. Its hickory stem was as long as a man's arm, wrapped in blue and yellow bands, and its high, slender bowl was of dark red pipestone, quarried in a valley far to the west.

Black Hawk took the pipe from Wolf Paw and filled the bowl with tobacco from a beaded pouch at his waist. Owl Carver went into his lodge, and brought back a burning twig that Black Hawk used to light the pipe.

Black Hawk said, "By the smoking of the sacred tobacco let all these promises be sealed."

White Bear went cold as he saw the light gray smoke curl up from Black Hawk's pipe and smelled its sweet scent. Once he put the pipe to his lips and drew the smoke into his mouth, he would be bound to go with Star Arrow as firmly as he was bound to the Sauk tribe.

Holding the pipestem with one hand in the middle and the other at the end, Black Hawk ceremoniously drew on the pipe and let a cloud of smoke out of his mouth. He handed the pipe to Star Arrow, who fixed his gaze on White Bear and did the same. Next the pipe went to Owl Carver, who took the single puff that bound him to the agreement. Owl Carver took the pipe in turn to Jumping Fish, Broth and Little Stabbing Chief. Each puffed on it, bearing witness.

Then Owl Carver walked over to White Bear and handed him the pipe.

Trembling with fear that what he was about to do might be the ruin of him, White Bear took the pipe in his hands. His fingers felt the ridged wrappings and the smooth, warm stone of the bowl. He had never smoked a sacred pipe before.[86]

He could hand the pipe back to Owl Carver and refuse. But he knew that this had gone so far that if he did that, not only would he never be accepted as a shaman, he might not even be accepted as a Sauk.

He wanted to look at Redbird, but he dared not. He looked instead at Sun Woman and saw her eyes warm with the wish that he would smoke the pipe.

He put the calumet to his lips and pulled the hot smoke into his mouth. It burned his tongue and