Ryan Marah Ellis - The Flute of the Gods стр 3.

And she drew the child close, and looked in its face, and said, Yesa white god!the God of the Great Star.

And the old men sprinkled the sacred meal to the six points, and told the council, and no one was allowed to question Mo-wa-thé ever again.

The seeds were planted near the well of Sik-yat-ki, and grew there. One was the tree of the peach, another of the yellow pear, and the grain was a grain of the wheat. The pear tree and the wheat could not grow well in the sands of the desert, only enough to bring seed again, but the peach grew in the shadow of the mesa, and the people had great joy in it, and only the men of the council knew they came from the gods.

And so it was in the beginning.

CHAPTER II

THE DAY OF THE SIGN

Mo-wa-thé,the mother of Tahn-té, drew with her brush of yucca fibre the hair-like lines of black on the ceremonial bowl she was decorating. Tahn-té, slender, and nude, watched closely the deft manipulations of the crude tools;the medicine bowls for the sacred rites were things of special interest to himfor never in the domestic arrangement of the homes of the terraces did he see them used. He thought the serrated edges better to look at than the smooth lines of the home dishes.

Why can I not know what is that put into them? he demanded.

Only the Ancient Ruler and the medicine-men know the sacred thing for Those Above.

He wriggled like a beautiful bronze snake to the door and lay there, his chin propped on his hands, staring out across the plainsix hundred feet below their dooronly a narrow ledgescarcely the length of the boys body:divided the wall of their home from the edge of the rock mesa.

Mo-wa-thé glanced at him from time to time.

What thoughts do you think that you lie still like a kiva snake with your eyes open? she said at last.

Yes, I think, he acknowledged with the gravity of a ceremonial statement, These days I am thinking thoughtsand on a day I will tell them.

When a boy has but few summers his thoughts are not yet his own, reminded Mo-wa-thé.

They are hereand here! his slender brown hand touched his head, and heart,How does any other take them outwith a knife? Are they not me?

Boy! The old men shall take you to the kiva where all the youth of the clan must be taught how to grow straight and think straight.

Will they teach me there whose son I am? he demanded.

Her head bent lower over the sacred bowl, but she made no lines. He saw it, and crept closer.

Am I an arrow to you? he askedsometimes your face goes strange like that, and I feel like an arrow,I would rather be a bird with only prayer feathers for you!

She smiled wistfully and shook her head.

You are a prayer;one prayer all alone, she said at last. I cannot tell you that prayer, I only live for it.

Is it a white god prayer? he asked softly.

She put down the bowl and stared at him as at a witch or a sorcerer;one who made her afraid.

I found at the shrine by the trail the head you made of the white god, he whispered. No one knows who made it but me. I saw you. I am telling not any one. I am thinking all days of that god.

That?

Is it the great god Po-se-yemo, who went south? he whispered. Do you make the prayer likeness that he may come back?

Yes, that he may come back!

My mother;you make him white!

She nodded her head.

I am whiter than the other boys;than all the boys!

She picked up the bowl again and tried to draw lines on it with her unsteady fingers.

And you talk more than all the boys, she observed.

Did the moon give me to you? he persisted. Old Mowa says I am white because the moon brought me.

It is ill luck to talk with that womanshe has the witch charm.

When I am Ruler, the witches must live in the old dead cities if you do not like them.

Mo-wa-thé smiled at that.

Yes, when you are Ruler. How will you make that happen?

All these days I have been thinking the thoughts how. If the moon brought me to you, that means that my father was not like others;not like mesa men.

Nonot like mesa men! she breathed softly.

Mo-wa-thé was very pretty and very slender. Tahn-té was always sure no other mother was so pretty,and as she spoke now her dark eyes were beautified by some memory,and the boy saw that he was momentarily forgotten in some dream of her own.

No one but me shall gather the wood for the night fire to light Po-se-yemo back from the south lands, he said as he rose to his feet and stood straight and decided before his mother. The moon will help me, and your white god will help me, and when he sees the blaze and comes back, you will tell him it was his son who kept the fire!

He took from his girdle the downy feather of an eagle, stepped outside to the edge of the mesa and with a breath sent it beyond him into space. A current of air caught it and whirled it upwards in token that the prayer was accepted by Those Above.

And inside the doorway, Mo-wa-thé, watching, let fall the medicine bowl at this added evidence that an enchanted day had come to the life of her son. Not anything he wanted to see could be hidden from him this day! Powerless, she knelt with bent head over the fragments of the sacred vesselpowerless against the gods who veil thingsand who unveil things!

It was the next morning that Mo-wa-thé stood at the door of Ho-tiwa the Ancient one;the spiritual head of the village.

Come within, he said, and she passed his daughters who were grinding corn between the stones, and singing the grinding song of the sunrise hour. They smiled at her as she passed, but with the smile was a deference they did not show the ordinary neighbor of the mesas in Hopi land.

The old man motioned her to a seat, and in silence they were in the prayer which belongs to Those Above when human things need counsel.

Through the prayer thoughts echoed the last thrilling notes of the grinding songs at the triumph of the sun over the clouds of the dusk and the night.

Mo-wa-thé smiled at the meaning of it. It was well that the prayer had the music of gladness.

Yes, I come early, she said. I come to see you. The time is here.

The time?

The time when I go. Always we have known it would be some day. The day is near. I take my son and go to his people.

My daughter:his people he does not know.

My father:no one but the winds have told himyet he knows much! He has said to me the things by which I feel that he knows unseen things. I told him long ago that the stars as they touch the far mesa in the night are like the fires our people build to light our god back from the south. Yesterday he tells me he wants to be the builder of that fire and serve that god. My father in this strange land:my son belongs to the clan whose duty it is to guard that fire! I never told him. Those Above have told him. I have waited for a sign. The gods have sent it to me through my sonwe are to go across the desert and find our people.

It is a thing for council, decided her host. The way is far to the big river,it is not good that you go alone. Men of Ah-ko will come when they hear us stamp the foot for the time of the gathering of the snakes. When they come, we will make a talk. If it is good that you go, you will find brothers who will show the trail.

That is well; and Mo-wa-thé arose, and stood before him. You have been my brother, and you have been my father, and my son shall stay and see once more the rain ceremony of the Blue Flute people, and of the Snake people, and when he goes to his own land, he can tell them of the great rain magic of the Hopi Priests.