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While the others danced with eyes focused on the fire, Indigo watched the weird shadows play on the hillsides, so she was one of the first to see the Messiah and his family as they stepped out of the darkness into the glow of the swirling snowflakes. How their white robes shined! Indigo glanced around quickly to see if the others had noticed. She watched the Messiah and the others, who seemed almost to float as they descended the high sandy hill to the riverbank. How beautiful he was, just as the Paiute woman said. No wonder he called himself the morning star!
    The others saw him now, but they all kept dancing, as they knew they must, until the Christ reached the middle of their circle. Wovoka the Prophet came too. He walked beside the Messiah’s mother; behind them came the Messiah’s eleven children. They all wore white robes but their dark faces were not painted. Now the dancers gathered around the Messiah and his family. Indigo held Sister Salt’s hand tightly and stood on her tiptoes so she could see between the dancers crowded around.
    â€œYou are hungry and tired because this dance has been going on for a long time,” the Holy Mother said. Then she opened her shawl, and the Messiah’s wife opened her shawl too, and Indigo was amazed to see plump orange squash blossoms tumble to the ground. The Holy Mother motioned for the dancers to step forward to help themselves to the squash flowers.
    Now it was so quiet only the fire’s crackle could be heard; no one spoke as they waited their turn to take a squash flower. Later, when Indigo and Sister Salt discussed that night, they remembered with amazement that whenever the Messiah or the Holy Mother spoke, all the dancers could understand them, no matter what tribe they were from. The Paiutes swore the Messiah was speaking Paiute, but a Walapai woman laughed and shook her head; how silly, the Messiah spoke her language. When Grandma Fleet and Mama knelt to pick up blossoms, the Holy Mother blessed them in their Sand Lizard language. When the Mormons approached the Messiah, Sister Salt stayed nearby to listen for herself; she was amazed. As the Messiahgave his blessing to the Mormons, Sister Salt distinctly heard the words he spoke as Sand Lizard, not English, yet the Mormons understood his words and murmured their thanks to him.
    When Sister Salt excitedly told Mama and Grandma what she had heard, a Paiute man standing nearby smiled and nodded his head. In the presence of the Messiah and the Holy Mother, there was only one language spoken—the language of love—which all people understand, he said, because we are all the children of Mother Earth.
    The sky went from dark to pale gray, then from milky to pale yellow as dawn approached. Indigo left the others and went to their lean-to as the dawn lit the sky in flaming reds, yellows, and golds. Away from the people and the campfires, the air was cold and damp though much of the snow had melted. Indigo pulled her white robe closer to her body. She was careful not to crush the squash flower; she wanted to keep it as long as she could.
    At home, with the big quilt all around her to keep warm, she sat propped up, facing the east; orange-gold light from the rising sun shined between the lattices of willow and tamarisk branches. Inside the lean-to, everything the sun’s light touched turned warm and golden. Indigo took the big orange flower in both hands and held it to her face, with her eyes closed. She inhaled the old gardens after a rain when the edges of the dunes were crisscrossed in all the brightest greens—moss green and grass green and the green of the big pumpkin leaves.
    As Indigo drifted off to sleep, she heard one voice and then another voice address the dancers. Wovoka led the dancers in the final rituals of the dance: they all must clap their hands and shake and wave their shawls vigorously to repel diseases and sickness, especially the influenza. They had just completed the final