he first time he had seen Owl Carver, with his long white
hair and his necklace of small shells of the lake-dwelling megis and his
owl-crested cedar stick, step into the firelight. That long-ago night
Owl Carver had spoken, not with the voice of a man, but with the voice
of a spirit, an eerily high-pitched singsong that frightened and
fascinated Gray Cloud.

The shaman of the tribe was greater than the bravest brave, greater than
any chief. He had the power to heal the sick and to foretell the future.
Gray Cloud wanted to stand high among the Sauk and to go where the
shaman went, into the spirit world. He wanted to penetrate the deepest
mysteries and know the answer to every question.

After he began teaching Gray Cloud, Owl Carver had tried to discourage
him--as a way of testing him, Gray Cloud was sure.

Owl Carver had said, _Many times the people do not want to listen to the
shaman. The truer his words, the less they hear him._

The warning had disturbed Gray Cloud. But he never saw the people refuse
to listen to Owl Carver. And he did not lose his determination to become
a shaman himself.

No one could gain such a great reward without risk. A warrior must kill
an enemy at great peril to himself to gain the right to wear the eagle
feather that marked him as a brave. A hunter had to kill an animal that
could kill him before the tribe would consider him a man.

How, then, could one speak to these spirits of the tribe unless he, too,
had faced death?

But what kind of a death? Would he freeze and starve here in this cave,
his dead body remaining until Owl Carver came and found it? Or would an
evil spirit come and kill him?

Whatever might come, he could only sit and wait for it in the way that
Owl Carver had taught him.

He turned his back on the unknown depths of the cave and seated himself
at its entrance, pulling the bearskin cloak around him for warmth. He
dipped his fingers into a pouch at his belt and took out the bits of
dried mushroom Owl Carver had given him from a medicine bag decorated
with a beadwork owl. The sacred mushrooms grew somewhere far to the
south and were traded up the Great River. One by one he put them into
his mouth and slowly chewed them.

_You do not need to swallow_, Owl Carver had said. _Hold them in your
mouth until they slide down your throat without your knowing how it
happened._

His mouth grew dry as the mushrooms turned to paste. And it was as Owl
Carver had said; they w