Shadowplay

CELL 44

Children with Pakoseo ribbons tied in their hair clapped hands in a circle dance about other children who were swinging folded paper birds from strings tied to long slicks; they shouted the Nataminaho Song, the Hunter singing to the birds and beasts:

He is coming, Nataminaho the Hunter is coming, run before him for he will take you to feed the People.

Around them the marching adults smiled indulgently but stopped them after a short while so they wouldn't exhaust themselves and have to be piled on the supply wagons in order to keep up with their families in that grueling, all day, day on day on day march.

Fires dotted the Plain from horizon to horizon along the Pilgrim Road, north and south, east and west.

Ghostdancers in black and white paint came out of the dark and danced their secret, subversive, and very sacred mime tales. They danced to ancient music, music that belonged to them alone, that was never heard outside the secret societies except on the Pakoseo trek, music that was forbidden by the Gospahs and lightside priests of all degrees, music that brought the singer, musician, or dancer instantly to the Question if he was discovered. The list was endless, that name roll of ghostdancers forced to deny and abandon their rites, their dances, their music; whole families seemed to lose ancient, hidden traditions, but the patterns survived, the music lived, the dances were performed and passed on, generation to generation. And every Pakoseo had its ghostdancers, as if the earth herself spawned them in swarms too vast to count.