He was deep in the dream. This dream had been with him since before he could remember. It told him what he must be and how he must achieve his destiny. It was through the dream that he learned of his calling as a medicine man. He was of the Hopi tribe and the Hopi tribe spoke through him. He didn’t ask for this task, but he had accepted his destiny with the same determination of his fore bearers.
A full day ago he had said his goodbyes to his family and friends. He then took nothing but water with him on his journey. The journey was long and the mountains that rose steeply around him were treacherous, but he had gone this way before and the paths were known well to him.
He followed the sun for a cycle, letting it lead him farther west away from his home. He traveled for a day not resting and only sipping small amounts of his limited water.
When he reached the place that felt right he set to his work. Dropping a single pebble on the ground, he turned and walked five feet away from the pebble, the way he had come. From there he brought large rocks and formed a wheel around his initial pebble, creating a very nearly perfectly circular wheel, ten feet across.
He then looked up towards the sky. He had traveled all night without rest and now the sky was starting to lighten around him and the chill of the winter months was just leaving these lands. It was still cool in the desert where he had chosen to make his wheel.
He took a sip of water and removed everything from society from his body. When he was prepared, he took his water and stepped into the circle. Once inside he drew a line running from north to south, and another from east to west, placing a sizeable rock in each freshly drawn quadrant. Then he sat down in the very center of his prepared medicine wheel and began his quest.
The dream always started slowly. He felt the passage of time around him, but inside the medicine wheel, time passed strangely for him. The exertion of the journey here and the burden of what he knew already, always made it hard for him to calm his body and mind and bring them into alignment. It was almost like he didn’t really want to see more of what he already knew. But then that is why he was…
He was traveling north along the great ocean to the west. Their leader and great mother, the Spiderwoman was leading them. It was because of her that they had survived in the first place. When the earth made the great shake and waters flooded in from everywhere to destroy his people, the Spiderwoman had brought reeds out of the great ocean to protect them.
When the storm had finally passed the Spiderwoman showed them how to cut the reeds and make boats. The only reason why he and his wife were still alive was because of the great woman who they now followed.
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Their journey was blocked by a great wall of ice. The Spiderwoman had sent scouts out to either side to see if there was a way around. After two days the scouts returned and reported that the ice seemed to reach out forever in either direction.
The Spiderwoman then consulted with her kind in a form of language and speaking unknown to him or his tribe. She returned sometime later with impatience wafting off of her like steam from a fresh kill in the early winter morning.
She struck at the wall of ice with a power that was beyond his understanding. The ice started to give way, little by little. Then a great crack sounded out through the skies and the Spiderwoman was forced to stop what she was doing.
The gods came down from the sky and publicly restrained the Spiderwoman and the other deities explained to the tribe what was behind the wall of ice. The ice was the only thing holding back a great lake of water, which if the Spiderwoman had succeeded in breaking apart the ice to allow her to continue her journey, they would all have died as a wall of water would have crushed and drowned them all.
The Spiderwoman had been warned and was punished accordingly. She was cursed with the ability to grow old. She remained immortal and she still led the tribe, but her withered, time worn face was a pale shadow of the beauty that her visage once held.
The tribe was angered at the Spider grandmother’s arrogance and her disregard for their lives when she went against her own kind’s counsel. The Spider grandmother, as she was now known, had no apologies for them but led them ever onward, to the east following along the ice wall which she had so recklessly almost broke, and in doing so almost released the cause of their death.
He knew that the Spider grandmother was leading them somewhere; he could feel the power in the earth guiding them. He didn’t know how long this journey would last, but every step they took that brought them farther north he felt the deep-seated power in the earth grow.
He was deep underground. The light of the great cavern was almost as bright as the sun that they had been forced to abandon. The light here was said to be ‘created’ light, light from within the window, not made from the sun, moon, or stars. The gift of light is what made this place seem like a home.
There was great power here, a sense of anger and rage from the earth below, the red hot molten rock just below the surface of the rock they walked on, kept the cavern warm. He had lived here for years and had almost forgotten what the great wheel in the sky looked like. This place was to be their protection from a coming great disaster, maybe even as great as the flood that his elders spoke of that happened generations ago.
The earth conduit that was here, the nexus of earth energy was great and he had been learning how to use it, to channel that power to let him travel along the nexus lines and into the other world that was a part of this world but not of this world.
The great man beasts had built this place and had taught the ancestors of the tribe to live off the fish that swam in the lake and to hunt the animals that shared this place.
He was starving. He was moving clumsily through the night. He was so hungry all he knew was that he needed to eat. The bushes down by the great river were ok but he had lost his way in the night. He stumbled through the brush and sand that surrounded him.
