The Flute of the Gods Part 16

CHAPTER XI

THE MAID OF DREAMS

Indian prayer is not the placid acceptance of thoughts comforting. The complete man is both mind and body--and all of him must work when the G.o.ds are called upon for work, and by fasting and exhaustion must the spirit path be made clear for dreams.

The first day Tahn-te had sat in meditation before the sacred wall of the stone face, chanting the songs to the clouds and the yellow birds of the sun color, watching the pictured rock until the lines moved when his body swayed to the chant, and a living thing seemed before him--the acc.u.mulated faiths of all the devotees in that place since the G.o.d was born!

As the sun went behind the mountain he knew the village herald was telling the people, and the leaders of Povi-whah would fast that night and send their thoughts to him. Po-tzah would fast although Po-tzah was not called upon by his position to do so.

And Po-tzah had said, "Speak for our children to the G.o.d."

He seemed to hear Po-tzah's voice, and the words repeat themselves in the dusk, and--stranger still--another voice back of Po-tzah's! it also spoke of children--through the chanted prayer he heard it--baffling yet insistent.

Then he knew it!

He knew it as the first shadow of the visions which the prayer was bringing:--it was the voice of the Ruler whose office he now held--the aged man who had once worn the white robe and said--"If she had not died--her children would be your children!"

The picture of Po-tzah's small brown babe came between him and the sacred figure on the rock,--a strange thing for the voice to suggest!

A little child--in the dusk--and--sheltering arms around it!

"Oh You!

Oh--Indwelling G.o.d!

Come to me!

Grey ghost--white ghost Why is the false enchantment?

Grey ghost of darkness-- White ghost of high hills Make way for sacred magic, Sink far your darkened spells!

O You!

O Indwelling G.o.d Come to me!"

In the dusk a shadow--or it might have been a drooping bough of the pinon tree--gave outline of a bent head above the outline of the babe--only a strange trick of carving on the gray stone, and swaying branches outlining a head--then the shoulders--then an arm about the babe! To the mind of the mystic it was the visible temptation of a black enchantment in the very presence of the G.o.d!--The strongest the opposing powers could send to man under vows of prayer and search for the spirit medicine of the highest thought.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SIGNAL FIRE TO THE MOUNTAIN G.o.d _Page 129_]

"Oh You!

G.o.ddess of the stars You--who gives the life!

Why is there for me false magic?

Mother mine of the starry skirt Why for me the darkened star?

I, Master of spells, call to you!

Ho:--there! It is I!

Green and black spirit of power Seek elsewhere your victims!

I seek the light--I find the light!

Mother mine of the starry skirt I find the light!

I--Master of spells!"

He was no longer merely a singer of prayers now. The dance before the Ancient G.o.ds had begun as the first stars glimmered in the blue.

After many hours of the dance all the world drifts far. There is nothing real left but the circle where the prayer is, and the s.p.a.ce where the feet touch in the dull pad-pad on the trail to the swoons where visions come.

A lone figure chanting breathless things:--not aloud now! The utterance is only broken whispers--only a G.o.d could read the meaning of them!

But he did not feel alone. All the Lost Others were back of him looking on from the dusk of the pinon boughs, and there to the right, ever in shadow, was a Presence! It stood close to the rock wall. The arms were folded, the line of the body strong and erect. The face was a hidden face, but if he--Tahn-te, faltered in the lines of the prayers,--or sank in the dance before the time--then he felt that the phantom there would become real, and the face would be seen, and that strong Thing would come forward--it would dance for jealous ghosts the dance of triumph--it would wipe out in mockery the unfinished homage to the G.o.ds!

The dawn came, and Tahn-te danced the stars of morning into the glow of the sun. The prayers had been all said, and the Watcher no longer stood by the rock!

Tahn-te saw nothing now but the glare of the sun on the rock wall--a spot of light in the circle of black pinon.

He no longer even whispered. His moving arms seemed no longer a part of him--it was as if numbness was there. His feet moved mechanically--not able to lift themselves more quickly--neither able to cease by his own will.

The Trues were watching him now, waiting to help. There was the white bear of the North and the mountain lion of the East. There was the wildcat of the West, and the serpent of the South. There was the eagle of the upper world, and the mystic creature of the earth home which tells the weather wizards of the number of winter days.

They were all there--so the prayer had been a good prayer.

From some of them would come the medicine dreams!

The sun stood straight above,--then little by little reached towards the mountain. It made shadows, and as the shadow of the sacred rock touched the blinded dancer, he sank to the earth.

As he fell he strove to echo the prayer thought:--

"I find the light I--master of spells!"

But he did not speak it. Only the eagle of his dream repeated it over and over as it lifted him from the place where he had fallen, and bore him swiftly to the highest point of the mountain of Tse-c[=o]me-u-pin.

It has been the Sacred Mountain since men first spoke words in the land. When a man has climbed to the shrine of the summit there, it is as if all the world is very far below.

And that makes it lonely for the dweller there.

The stars were again alight in the heavens when the devotee awoke from his sleep of exhaustion. To his entranced senses the stars were as the eyes of the G.o.ds who watched the shrine where few men had ever danced and lived. The wind touched the pines--and he thought their whispered movement was the rustle of the wings of the eagle who had come in his vision.

For the eagle was now his medicine, and the place where the eagle had carried him in the dream was the best of all good places for medicine that was strong.

In the starlight he again faced the ancient diety of the Lost Others:--those Others who had carved the stone lions of Kat-yi-ti at their entrance to the Under world, and had set the white stone bear of the North on guard in the western hills. They did fine things--those people who had perhaps first named the stars above. And this one ancient cave G.o.d of the stone face was a link--so the wise old Ruler had told him--with strange Mexic Brothers of the far south--who gave wors.h.i.+p--and gave human sacrifice, to a solitary mountain shrine, called the shrine of the Sleeping Woman, where few men could dance--or even learn the prayers of that dance.

No awesome Presence now faced him in the shadow of the rock as he chanted his prayer of farewell under the stars. He had danced all adverse spirits out of the charmed circle. His way was clearly marked now to follow the way of the eagle,--there on the shrine of Tse-c[=o]me-u-pin he must say the final prayer. All of harmony and all of hope was about him. Three days and three nights had he ran or chanted prayers, or danced fasting, yet weariness was not with him as he ended the ceremony which no man since his birth had made in this place.

Somewhere, he would perhaps fall on the trail, and the men of Kah-po or of Povi-whah would find him, as fainting medicine men had been found ere this--but that must be after he had reached the shrine, and gave prayers at the place of the eagle dream.

Past Pu-ye he went--scarce seeing the ghost walls of the older day; in sight of Shufinne, the little island of forgotten dwellings on the north mesa--through the pines to the canon of Po-et-se where rocks of weird shapes stood like gray and white giants to bar his way. He thought at times voices sounded from the stone pillars, but it might be the echo of his own.--He knew evil spirits did lurk along his trail--no mortal could escape their shadows. Even the G.o.d who had lived in the sun had been hurled to earth by them when the earth was new, and the first trees--the pines, had begun to grow at the edges of the ice. Since that time the Sun G.o.d only lived in the sky one half the time. In the night he went to the Underworld, and the strands of his dark hair covered his face. He must not let himself think that the adverse spirits were less than men in strength--for man needed all the medicine of the G.o.ds to war against evil!

Thus he thought--and muttered and stumbled blindly towards the north.

Into the stream of Po-eh-hin-cha he crept and drank,--then up--up to Po-pe-kan-eh--the Place where the Water is Born, and from there to the shrine of the Sacred Mountain, though his hands reached for help from every tree and rock past which he staggered or crept.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AND REACHED HIS HANDS TO HIS BROTHERS--THE STARS _Page 129_]

Only water and the smoke of the medicine pipe had been his portion.