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for the call, what I thought would be the voice of the Raven. Here was the call. It was the voice of my other life, my real life. It was the call to live again in the world of Spirit.
    Some dim part of me recognized it.
    I slurred out the words, “I got to go on the mountain.”

PART TWO
    Where Blue Came From

The Voices in Blue
    I knew what Emile meant—“You got to go on the mountain.” He and I had been raised in that same old world, where Spirit reigns, the world I told you about, with magic, visions, and the poetry and song of the unseen. We even grew up together part of the time, a hard part, our white-man schooling. We had an awareness of Spirit that would stay with us. It would help Emile, because he was true to it. Because I wasn’t, it would haunt me.
    Emile is a special man, and to understand how special, you got to be willing to expand your white-man mind some.
    When Emile was five, living with his grandparents, an elder told his grandfather that Emile was a winkte . This is a word we Lakota have, means man-woman, or something like that. Man who wants to be a woman. Man who lives as a woman.
    Hanh , I know what you’re thinking. Means queer. Or whatever insulting word you want to use.
    This is where you got to expand your mind. The old-time winktes , yes, they had men’s plumbing and they did their sex with men, this much is true. But if you think queer or fairy and imagine bathhouses and a gay lifestyle, you got it all wrong, for sure.
    The old-time winktes were picked out by Spirit to live as akind of third gender, neither man nor woman. They adopted women’s way of living completely. They wore women’s clothes, took on women’s responsibilities, married men, even spoke like women, for in our language words take one form for men, another for women. They were female in every way, and were addressed and treated always as women.
    They were good at this switch, too. Old-timers tell a story about a Catholic priest whose church was near the house of an especially good old woman. The priest and the elderly lady were friends for thirty years. When she died, the priest laid her out for burial, and was shocked to discover that she had a penis. That’s how completely she lived as a woman, so that the people called her she, and even today I call her she.
    Men-women lived in this way because it was revealed to them that they should. Sometimes, I guess rarely, a Spirit told them to change back and live as men, and they did that too.
    They were important in our old-time way, these men-women. Certain ceremonies require them—you cannot start a Sun Dance without a winkte . They also made the best flutes, which were used in courting, and were the strongest in elk medicine, the power of romance. If a young man wanted a strong love song, he got it from a winkte . And I think generally they did exceptional beadwork and other arts.
    Emile was picked out to be a winkte , but you can’t really do it the old way anymore. Lots of our people, even, don’t understand the tradition and don’t accept it. Emile wears men’s clothes and is called he , like any other guy. He’s what the modern world calls gay. But it’s a misunderstanding, and he’s never quite going to get over it.
    When Emile was a kid, though, his grandparents kept him out of school, just like me. That elder who was also a winkte , that elder came and taught him how to live right. I don’t think it’s an accident that Emile makes his living as an artist. At his studio on the highway near Keystone he creates his work andsells it—paints hides, drums, parfleches, robes, and such, and sells them to tourists, collectors, and museums.
    I was held out of school to learn some old ways, but different ones from Emile. I was chosen even before I was born. My grandmother, my father’s mother, said she saw signs during my mother’s pregnancy. No one told me what she saw, or heard, or in any way how it came to her—she didn’t communicate much with me. What it