e lihmhun (the rules of the sixteen-day purification ceremony)

e lihmhun (the rules of the sixteen-day purification ceremony) is the observance Lani Walker undertakes after killing Mitch Johnson in self-defense. Its defining significance is that justified violence still demands a period of reflection and care: Lani must live apart, fast, avoid salted food, and pray, while confronting what the death means for her and her soul. Fat Crack Ortiz supports her through the sixteen days and helps her understand the observance not as a denial of her survival, but as a way to reckon with the life she has taken.

Conditions and Purpose

The ceremony follows Mitch Johnson’s death on Ioligam, where Lani had been held captive. When Brandon Walker arrives expecting to take his daughter home, Fat Crack tells him that Lani must remain by herself, fast, eat no salted food, and pray for sixteen days. Brandon objects to the isolation and to the conditions on the mountain: the days are hot, the nights cold, and he wants to know where Lani will sleep and what she will eat. Fat Crack answers that Lani herself wants to observe the ceremony and that her decision matters. He undertakes responsibility for her care, describing it as his duty as one medicine man to another.

The rules are therefore presented through a particular crisis, not as an abstract list detached from circumstance. Lani has killed a man, and Fat Crack acknowledges that the killing was self-defense and justified. That judgment does not make the death inconsequential. He explains that taking a human life is still terrible for Lani and her thoakag, or soul, and that she needs to understand why the event happened, why she is alive, and why Mitch Johnson is dead. The fast and solitude create the conditions for that reckoning; the account gives no basis for treating them as a judicial penalty or for assuming that every detail of Lani’s observance applies identically to every person.

Care During the Fast

Fat Crack’s role is practical as well as spiritual. He visits Lani every day, bringing soothing salve and the salt-free evening meal required during the fast. The routine makes clear that solitude does not mean abandonment: Lani remains apart, but her godfather attends to her needs throughout the period. Their conversations range across many subjects, although the account notes that they do not discuss the salve. The care is quiet and regular, carried through food, medicine, and presence rather than through a single formal instruction.

The ceremony also follows the bodily consequences of Lani’s earlier ordeal. Six years after Mitch Johnson burned a scar into her breast with superheated kitchen tongs, she still cannot ignore the mark. She connects it inwardly with the scars her adoptive mother, Diana Ladd, bears from an earlier assault. Lani understands these shared injuries as a bond deeper than adoption papers, but keeps her own scar secret because she believes disclosure would hurt Diana and would require too much explanation to her best friend. This private burden does not become a stated rule of e lihmhun; it gives the observance a context in which the body carries memories that Lani has not made public.

The Final Night and Its Inheritance

On the last night, Fat Crack brings more than the evening meal. He carries Looks at Nothing’s medicine pouch, which had been given to him years earlier by the blind medicine man S’ab Neid Pi Has, also known as Looks at Nothing. After they eat together, Fat Crack draws a circle around himself and Lani. Within it, he takes wild tobacco from the pouch, rolls it into a cigarette, and lights it with Looks at Nothing’s old Zippo lighter. Lani smokes the traditional peace smoke for the first time, in the company of a family friend who is also her godfather, a tribal chairman, and a respected medicine man.

Some of their conversation drifts from Lani’s conscious memory after the smoke leaves her light-headed, while other parts remain clear. She asks why the ceremony requires her to stay alone for so long. Fat Crack turns the question back toward what she has done with the time. Lani answers that she has made a medicine basket of her own and given Nana Dahd’s basket to Davy because she knew he wanted it. The exchange gives the period a purpose beyond waiting: Lani has used her isolation to make something and to pass on an inherited object rather than keep it for herself.

Identity and Narrative Significance

Fat Crack’s teaching makes the ceremony a question of identity as well as conduct. He asks Lani who she is, and she answers with her name, Lani Walker. He then asks what Nana Dahd called her, opening a further question about how Lani understands herself within inherited tradition. The available account does not supply her ensuing answer, but it makes the question itself part of the ceremony’s work: survival and self-defense do not end the need to understand one’s place, obligations, and purpose.

The observance also reveals a relationship of reciprocal care. Brandon initially sees the mountain’s exposure and the sixteen-day separation as dangers from which he should remove his daughter. Fat Crack insists that Lani’s wishes count and accepts responsibility for supporting them. In this way, e lihmhun is shown through both its discipline and the relationships that make the discipline possible. Its central tension is neither that Lani was wrong to defend herself nor that the killing can be dismissed because it was justified. The ceremony holds both facts together, asking her to continue living while taking seriously what has happened.