My stomach rumbled with nervousness and hunger. The pony below me climbed briskly down the slope, following the Indian. It was agile and nimble, apparently used to maneuvering on rough terrain. I, on the other hand, was not used to riding bareback and barefoot, and clung to his shaggy mane. I watched the long striding man in front of me. His bare back shone coppery in the sun as if polished. My backpack slung over his shoulder, bouncing up and down with every step, as did his black braids, though he walked as lithely as a predator. I swallowed, remembering the anger his black eyes had expressed.
The whole time I was thinking about what I could have done wrong and what I was about to do. I could explain less and less where I had ended up here. I stopped believing in a hidden camera prank in a long time—not since I hurt my ankle. Something must have happened to me in that cave. It was almost as if I had been 'beamed' to another place, but that was impossible.
Only one thing was certain: something wasn't quite right here. And as long as I didn't know exactly what was going on, I had to play along.
The pinto raised its head and pricked up its ears. Torn out of my thoughts, I looked up and saw that we had now arrived in a valley. The trees thinned out and rolling, grassy hills stretched ahead of us. The young Indian continued to follow the stream, and now I heard something too.
The barking of dogs.
After the next bend in the river, a small forest came into view behind a hill. Thin plumes of smoke rose into the air above the treetops, the wind already blowing the scent in my direction. When we were only a few hundred yards from the first trees, a couple of nimble figures darted out from between the trunks and darted toward us. They were little boys, I noticed, no older than my brother Max. They all had black hair, braided in two pigtails like my companion, and wore nothing but loincloths on their sinewy, slender bodies. Some held bows. Around her legs sprang large, gray-black, shaggy dogs that looked more like wolves. I flinched. Stranger dogs scared me, especially when they barked so loud.
But the boys shooed them back into the grove from which they had come. Then they literally surrounded us and took us between them, but without getting too close to me. I felt the curious stares in her sparkling black eyes as if they had never seen a girl before. One of them said something to my companion. Of course I didn't understand a word.
So surrounded by a horde of little boys, I felt like a condemned woman being led to the scaffold. What was waiting for me behind these trees, between which we now meandered along?
My question was answered shortly thereafter. A clearing opened up in front of me, through which the stream also flowed. Nestled into its curve was a village, if you could call it that: a collection of conical tents with walls of tan-brown leather, some painted with geometric shapes and animal figures—just like the teepee I'd seen at the museum. Was that really just yesterday?
Between the tents there were other people milling around, men and women of all ages; the men in leggings or loincloths, very few older men also wore some sort of leather shirt over them; the women with an approximately knee-length embroidered leather dress and soft pants underneath. I sighed. I really felt like I was in the wrong movie. If I didn't know better, I'd think I'd actually gotten involved in the making of some period movie. But there was no camera equipment and no crew to be seen far and wide.

There was really only one explanation: This was a real Indian village.
I knew that today's Native Americans lived on reservations of varying size throughout the United States — the only land they had left. But until now I had always assumed that they lived there like other people do these days, in houses with refrigerators and televisions, electricity and running water. Perhaps this group had split off and purposely lived as their ancestors had. There were also these Amish people in the USA — white people who lived a life like they did over a hundred years ago, without electricity and all the comforts of modern civilization. I saw a report about them once. The men wore beards and the women wore only long skirts, and they were extremely religious. They lived in small communities for themselves,
Yes, it had to be something similar here. But these people took it a little further by apparently not even teaching their children English. How were they ever going to get by if they had to see a doctor, or something?
I was interrupted in my reflections when my companion stopped in an empty square in the middle of the village. Around me I counted about two dozen tipis. With an unmistakable gesture, he ordered me to dismount his horse. I carefully slid down to the left so that my good foot could catch me. Immediately one of the bronze-skinned boys, maybe ten years old, jumped up, took the pony's reins and led it away. I stood with trepidation in the midst of all these strangers who gathered and stared at me like a curiosity. With my strawberry blonde hair and light skin, in my shorts and sneakers, I really felt like a bird of paradise.
And now a tall, broad-shouldered man came up to me — no, actually to my companion, he didn't even look at me — and spoke to him in a low voice. The younger man was probably now reporting how he found me. I squinted at the older Indian, who might have been about forty. His face was suntanned and sharply cut. He came across as an authority figure, although I couldn't pinpoint why. He wore no distinctive marks that would have identified him as a chief or anything of the sort.
My young companion pointed to my backpack and gesticulated violently. I bit my lip. How I would like to know what had bothered him so much about my book. And the older man was frowning now, too. My heart started beating fast again. Finally the big Indian gave an order. In any case, it sounded like an order, because my companion nodded and immediately turned to me. He grabbed me tightly, but without hurting my upper arm, and led me to one of the teepees on the edge of the village square. This tent had been particularly richly painted; I could identify celestial bodies like the sun and the moon, as well as some animals like snakes and birds... Outside the tent entrance there were other strange things hanging, small stuffed leather bags, raven feathers, an animal skull, even something
My companion let go of my arm, but motioned for me to slip through the leather-covered entrance. I had to bend down to enter the tent through the oval opening and stumbled a step inside while he followed me, again covering the entrance.
I stopped to get my bearings and give my eyes time to adjust to the dim light. I began to make out the shapes of two people—one crouched in the center of the tent by a momentarily cold fireplace, the other hovering in the back. They both sat perfectly still and I couldn't even tell if they were looking at me. Round shields and other things I could not identify were attached to the tent walls. It smelled spicy, like incense, and sweet at the same time.

As I looked around, my companion was already addressing the man by the hearth, who appeared to be quite old: his face was lined with lines and lines that seemed deeper in the shadows. My companion spoke in a lowered voice and pointed to my injured ankle, which I spared by leaning on my other leg.
The old man listened patiently. Only when the young Indian had finished did he wave his hand and immediately the figure in the dark background of the tipi rose and scurried over to us. Now I realized that it was a woman. She was older, too, her hair grey, but still full and also braided in thick pigtails. She stopped in front of me and motioned for me to follow her. I hesitated, but her eyes looked at me cautiously but not unkindly. Finally, she gently grabbed my arm and pulled me to the back of the tent, where I was supposed to sit down.
I sat down on the soft skins that were spread across the floor and looked confused at the tent entrance, through which the young and the older Indians now slipped out together. Stupid though it was, it made me queasy to see my companion go. After all, he had saved me from the bear and given me shelter in his wigwam of branches. And even if he had seemed annoyed and not very polite lately, he at least seemed concerned for my well-being, otherwise he would not have mentioned my injured ankle.
But now he just left me here, in a tent with an unknown woman who probably didn't understand me any more than he did... like everyone here.
I winced when the old woman addressed me in a low voice. She motioned for me to show her my ankle. On the one hand, I was glad that someone was finally looking at the injury. On the other hand, I would have felt far more comfortable with a real doctor. Still, I took off my shoe and stretched out my leg for her to examine. With gentle fingers she touched the still swollen area. I bit my lip to keep from flinching.
She rose effortlessly, despite her age, and walked over to the hearth, where she lit the fire. As soon as the flames licked up and filled the tent with their warmth, she used a pair of wooden tongs to grab a couple of oval stones, about the size of a hand, and placed them in the middle of the embers. Was she trying to cure me with those hot stones? I would fight back if she tried to put one on my leg.
But first she came back to me and filled a liquid from a leather bag into a wooden bowl, which she handed to me together with a wooden spoon. She must have heard my stomach growl, because she put a hand to her mouth in a gesture I guess meant it was food.
I looked skeptically at the liquid in the bowl and then smelled it. It appeared to be some kind of soup with chunks of meat and a few other pieces floating in it, maybe some root vegetables. Not immediately put off by the smell the dish gave off, I tasted a small spoonful. The soup was already cold and tasted rather bland, but I was too hungry to bother with such small things, so I spooned up the whole plate. In the meantime the old woman had got up and returned to the hearth.
I watched in fascination as she picked up the oval stones that she had previously placed in the embers with her tongs and dropped them into a kind of leather bag that was suspended from three sticks driven into the ground and apparently filled with water. Did she perhaps want to boil the water like this? It seemed so. When the water was hot, she took several pieces of bark from a folded leather blanket and put them in, stirred a few times with a long stick, and then used it to fish out the bark.
After it had cooled down briefly, she came to me with it and placed the long, soft pieces of bark on my aching ankle. I knew from the coloring that it was birch bark. Then she wrapped my ankle, including the bark, with strips of leather and tied them together. The warmth felt good on my leg and relieved the pain almost immediately. I was surprised. Maybe these natural healing methods weren't so bad after all.
I thanked the woman and even if she didn't understand my words, she seemed to be able to interpret my expression. She smiled and nodded but said nothing else. Now that I was full, I wanted to stretch out on the soft skins and rest for a moment, but at that moment the tent flap opened again. Bright daylight poured in and I squinted in blindness.
When I opened them again, the young Indian who had found me was standing in the doorway. I recognized him immediately by his slim silhouette, even if his face was in shadow.
"Uwa yo," he said, sounding commanding. I understood what he wanted from me because he waved me over.
I pushed myself up from my comfortable bed, tested my right foot—it didn't hurt as much now when I stepped on it, but I'd spare it—and hobbled to him. He stepped out of the tipi and I followed him.
Outside, the small crowd of curious people had already dispersed, everyone had gone their separate ways. Only a few small children who were playing with small pebbles in the village square stopped and stared at me with big dark eyes. We walked across the pitch to a teepee that was bigger than all the others. Again he let me go ahead when we were standing in front of the entrance. His expression was illegible, almost petrified.
I swallowed and went into the tent. The leather cover stayed open behind me, allowing daylight to filter through. The tipi measured at least five steps in diameter. A large circle around the central fireplace was filled with men, most of them older, but there were also a few younger ones. Across from me I recognized the tall Indian who had spoken to my companion in the village square, as well as the old man from the tent where I had just been tended.
And they all looked at me. Me and the young Indian standing next to me. My backpack lay on the floor in front of the men, and all the items I had stowed in it spread out next to it. The book, the water bottle, a bag of trail mix, my rain cape, my little blue purse with a lizard on it, the key to our hostel room that I took with me. I remembered Sarah and my throat tightened. What do you think she thought of my sudden disappearance? She must be over the moon. And only my parents when they found out... I was hoping to get out of here as soon as possible to tell them all I was fine, that they didn't have to worry. Why had I lost the stupid cell phone?
The tall Indian sitting directly across from me said something, snapping me out of my thoughts. I was beginning to understand that this was some kind of gathering. They advised me. Would you now tell me what judgment you had come to?