CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They were calling to him.
No! Not again! Not now! He was not the same person he had been all those years ago. He didn't want this!
Yet, they were here, and they stood over him: his mother, his father and all his siblings…even his former love.
"You have not yet done enough or killed enough!" It was his father speaking, but the rest of the images nodded in agreement.
"I have done enough! I have acted as you have begged me to do," Strikes Fast defended, speaking in the mind-to-mind talk. "I have killed more than I ever should have done—and I did this to avenge your deaths!"
"Your words are untrue!" scolded his mother. "Do not listen to your wife! What does she know of revenge? What does she even know of being a man? Do not listen to your two medicine friends, either! Those two Pikuni men are not even Crow! We are your family, not them! You must avenge us!"
Baaleetáa!No!Baaleetáa!Strikes Fast tried to scream the words, but his tongue couldn't say them. This caused him to sit up so quickly he almost hit his head on the shallow roof overhead. He looked around his environment, disoriented. Where was he?
Momentarily, he shut his eyes, trying to reacquaint himself with the recent past. He remembered it now: he was in a tiny lodge he had built himself, and his wife lay beside him, though she was still asleep.
Had the dream been a mere nightmare?
No. Looking forward toward the entrance of the hut, there stood each of the people from his family: his mother, his father, his aunties, his siblings, even his former sweetheart. All were frowning at him.
Strikes Fast heaved in a deep breath. They were back.
Since he'd been living amongst the two medicine men, Eagle Heart and Gray Falcon, these spirits had not bothered him. Now they were here again, and they had returned with more demands for violence. When would it stop?
Strikes Fast didn't desire to seek out more of the Pikuni and kill them. He wished to put the past back into the past and move on with his life. In truth, what he wanted to do was to regain Sun, the Creator's, favor; he wished to return to his former medicine ways if it were possible. He missed the old ways; he missed the sacred ceremonies and songs.
How could he tell his relatives he wanted to heal others again, not take more lives?
He sat up to his haunches, and, with his mind, he commanded the ghosts to go away and leave him alone. But, they would not go. Instead, they stood before him as though they had been glued into place.
"Dée akukkó!Go away!"
With his shouted words, his wife came awake; she sat up, and, looking toward her husband, she took his hand into her own. From his peripheral vision, he watched his wife as she slowly looked in the same direction as he did. She asked in English, "What is it, my husband?"
Though he didn't understand her words, he yet knew what she was asking. Waving his hand toward the entryway, he signed, "Ghosts."
"Oh?" she asked in English. Then, in sign, she asked, "Who are they?"
"Family…mine," he said in English, but then signed, "They are ghosts of my family and the woman I was once pledged to marry. I have not been bothered by them for the last five snows. But, they are back."
"And, are they demanding something from you?"
He nodded.
"What do they want?"
"Me," he answered in English. "Wish…they…I…seek…vengeance. For them." He followed these words with signs.
Suddenly, all at once and in a group, they disappeared.
He asked in sign, "Did you see them?"
"I did not," said Daasé Isée. Calmly, as though she dared not move too quickly, she squeezed his hand. "Did they talk to you?"
He nodded.
"Could you tell me what they said?"
