Little Wolf wasn't entirely sure about this Worm Woman thing. He remembered once catching a glimpse of her in the darkness of her lodge. It had happened last spring when Dancing Bear had finally emerged from his long night with her. The People said that Worm Woman was as old as the red cliffs that surrounded the village. That she had no soul, having lost it on a spirit journey. With his own eyes, he had seen that she had no arms or legs. Or tongue for that matter. The corn meal had dribbled from the corners of her mouth, easily escaping that vacant cavity. He remembered her eyes focusing directly on him, knowing that he would be next. Her wrinkled mouth tried vainly to form words, but no sounds escaped her lips.
Dancing Bear had never been the same after that night. Despite the fact that he and Little Wolf had been best friends, he had passed Little Wolf without even so much as a nod as he left Worm Woman's lodge. They had exchanged but five words since that time. Dancing Bear had even ignored Two Elks' outstretched arms. His own mother. Instead, he had gone to live in the lodge of Laughing Snake and Corn Girl, the parents of Buffalo Tooth. This was only proper, as Buffalo Tooth had been the last member of the tribe to lie with Worm Woman before Dancing Bear. Such was the way of the People.
Now it was Little Wolf's turn. He had passed his eighteenth winter, and it was now his time. To be a man of the People, he must do this thing. To lie with Worm Woman, the limbless crone-witch who harbored no soul.
Little Wolf had spent many days fasting, chewing peyote buds, and courting the rattlesnake's bite. His souls had flown with the crow spirits, who had taken him beyond time and space. The vision thing, as an American President, whose drunken eldest son would also occupy the White House, would say a millennium from now (after the White Eyes would finally get off their sorry asses and tune into the fact that the world was round).
The People stood in a circle surrounding Worm Woman's lodge, chanting Little Wolf's name, and waiting for him to lift the deerskin flap and enter the old woman's lodge. He saw Dancing Bear among them. Or rather Dancing Bear's body. He still wondered what had happened to the real Dancing Bear.
It was time. All the preparation was over. He had cleansed himself in the sweat lodge. He had smoked the pipe of Knowing. He had kept himself pure for this very moment (unless you counted that one time with Fast Vixen behind the chokeberry bush). Horizontal mambo, here we come.
He lifted the flap. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the wizened face of Worm Woman. Her eyes had been gouged out, a detail he had somehow failed to notice on the last occasion. (Damn, the People sure loved their rituals.) Her aged flesh smelled like maggots and rotting fish. Her wrinkled lips smiled in joy at the sight of Little Wolf, and he realized how truly lonely it must be for her, lying limbless in the total darkness of her lodge, patiently waiting for the next brave to pass his thirteenth winter.
Her tongueless mouth began to move and she attempted to speak.
"Awrk, awrk," she said.
Little Wolf supposed that she did not get many visitors other than the braves coming to her lodge for their manhood ceremonies. She did not appear to be the greatest conversationalist in the world.
Pieces of corn meal spilled from her blistered lips as she tried to speak. The few remaining strands of her white hair were plastered to her withered cheek. Sores festered on the stumps of her amputated limbs, and the odor of gangrene was in the air. Her two remaining teeth were jagged and yellow.
Nice tits though.
