So they sent him at nightfall to the hill of dreams—as is the custom of our people.
Wahoo! the bitter hill of dreams! Many have I seen go up there laughing, but always they came down with halting feet and with sadness in their faces. And among these many, lo! even I who speak—therefore should my words be heard.
And he of the many names went up into the hill of dreams and dreamed. And in through the mists that strange winds blow over the hills of sleep burst a white light, as though the moon had grown so big that all the sky was filled from rim to rim, leaving no place for sun and stars. And upon the surface of the white light floated a face, an awful face—whiter than the light upon which it floated; and so beautiful to see that he of the many happy names ached through all his limbs, and cried out and woke. Then leaping to his feet, he gazed about, and all the stars had grown so small that he looked thrice and hard before he saw them; and the world was shrunken.
And frightened at the strangeness of all things, he fled down the hillside into the village. His mother and his father he wakened with bitter crying.
“How came the dream?” they whispered; for upon the face of him who went up a boy they saw that which only many years should bring; and in his eyes there was a strange light.
“A face! a face!” he whispered. “I saw the face of the Woman of the Moon! Whiter than snow, it was, and over it a pale flame went! Oh, never have I seen so fair a face; and there was something hidden in it swift as lightning; something that would be thunder if it spoke; and also there was something kind as rain that falls upon a place of aching heat. Into the north it looked, high up to where the lonesome star hangs patient.
“And there was a dazzle of white breasts beneath, half-hidden in a thin blanket of mist. And on her head, big drifts of yellow hair; not hanging loose as does your hair, O mother, but heaped like clouds that burn above the sunset. My breast aches for something I cannot name. And now I think that I can never play again!”
And there was a shaking of heads in that lodge, and a wondering, for this was not good. Not so had others, big in deeds, dreamed upon the hill in former times. Always there had been a coming of bird, or beast, or reptile, wrapped in the mystery of strange words; or there had been the cries of fighting men, riding upon a hissing of hot breaths; or there had been a stamping of ponies, or the thin, mad song of arrows.
But here it was not so, and the mother said: