Stone Song Read Online Free

of life, the sky empty, the earth empty.
    His hunger did not bother him. His thirst did not bother him. His weakness did not bother him. Even the way his tongue was swelling up in his mouth did not bother him.
    This answer to his prayers—nullity and void—was driving him into a blackness beyond despair.
    All day he prayed. “Take pity on me.”
    All day the answer never changed. Nothingness.
    As darkness fell, he wondered if the red and blue days were coming, the time when the moon would turn red and the sun blue and the world would come to an end.
    He rejected this notion. Earth and Sky refused to answer one pleading boy—so what? That didn’t mean Earth and Sky were mute forever. They were just giving the one boy, a contrary, mule-headed boy, what he deserved.
    The second night Curly didn’t fight sleep. It silenced the accusing voices in his head. Instead his dreams became galloping accusations.
    Nothing changed on the third day. Sunup to midafternoon of eloquent praying. Sunup to midafternoon of eloquent silence.
    He waited most of the day. Sometime between midafternoon and sundown he sat down and blew his breath out. He breathed in deeply, and out. Once more.
    Then he surrendered.
    He quit.
    He had failed.
    Walking, stumbling down the hill toward his pony, he seemed almost to be hearing two voices, both of them his own. As he fingered his light hair, one voice told him being different had nothing to do with it. He was notpart wasicu , that wasn’t it. He wasn’t so strange. True, he didn’t like paint, he didn’t like beads, he didn’t like dancing. He didn’t want to trick himself up in fine clothes, the way most Lakota men did. That didn’t matter. The loneliness he felt, the need always to be alone, didn’t mean he was alien.
    Even having Hawk in his breast did not mean he was a monster. Didn’t other men feel the yearning to be out hunting, out raiding, free?
    So he stumbled down the hill telling himself that he wasn’t an alien, he was a Lakota.
    The other voice didn’t answer directly. It only whispered: Failure, humiliation . This voice would tell everyone, instantly, it would blurt out his shame, he knew it would, he could not imagine it doing otherwise. He would be unmasked, exposed as a fraud. Powerless, spiritless, a nothing, a void.
    Which was what he deserved.
    When they heard his tale of nothingness and silence, they would mock him, they would throw spears of laughter.
    He had been foolish to go unprepared, to try without the guidance of his elders.
    Unprepared? His mind threw the word back at him in echoes. What arrogance! To assume preparation would make a difference. It’s not preparation. It’s just you .
    As he neared the river, he limped toward his hobbled horse. He was aching all over and dizzy. After three days without food or water, he felt giddy and weak. He took the pony by the bridle, but he felt too woozy to mount. Besides, his belly hurt. He sat against the sunpole tree. He would be stronger in a moment, clearer-headed in a moment.
    He leaned back. He let his body flop against the tree and on the ground. He gave up. He shuddered with surrender. He had hurled himself into the maw, and he had failed. He gave up.
    His eyes fluttered.
    Gently, he felt a release of some kind, a loosening of grip, a lightening of heart.
    Suddenly he … was it dreaming? Or seeing? He was wide awake. His eyes were open, and he felt intensely aware, and he saw …
SEEING
    The horse trotted lightly, appearing to float, seeming not to touch the earth.
    Now Curly saw it was his hobbled pony running free, trotting toward him, legs prancing, neck held high.
    On its back a rider sat leaning forward, perfectly motionless on the moving mount, except that the fringe on the heels of his moccasins trembled.
    What Curly saw seemed more real than real. The colors were brighter, edges sharper, motions more vivid, sounds clearer, the air somehow brilliant, the world radiant. Sight, hearing, and touch were keener,