Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hillerman, Tony.
The boy who made dragonfly.
Reprint. Originally published: New York: Harper & Row, 972.
Summary: Retells a Zuñi myth in which a young boy and his sister gain the wisdom that makes them leaders of their people through the intercession of a dragonfly.
. Zuñi Indians—Legends. 2. Indians of North America—New Mexico—Legends. [. Zuñi Indians—Legends. 2. Indians of North America—New Mexico—
Legends] I. Grado, Janet, ill. II. Title.
E99.Z9H55 986 398.2’08997 86-6996
ISBN 0-8263-090-0 (PBK.)
Text Copyright No 972 by Tony Hillerman.
All rights reserved.
University of New Mexico Press paperback edition reprinted 986 by arrangement with the author.
Illustrations Copyright No 986 by Janet Grado.
All rights reserved. Third paperbound printing, 988
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Book •
For Anne, Jan, Tony, Monica, Steve,and Dan—and all other children(and former children) who havetime to listen.
The Boy
Who Made
Dragonfly
1
It happened before the A’shiwi, the Flesh of the Flesh, finally found the Middle Place and ended their long wanderings. It happened before the A’shiwi came to be called the Zunis, before the Water Strider stretched his arms and legs to the edges of the world and lowered his body to the place where the A’shiwi were to live. It happened when the people still lived in the Valley of Hot Waters in the good stone town they called Ha’wi-k’uh. It happened long before the white man came.
In those days the A’shiwi had been given by the Beloved Ones an abundance of water blessings. In the Valley of Hot Waters, there was a richness of rain. The mud washed down the arroyos and the
A’shiwi spread it across their flatlands with dams of brush. It was that way year after year. And in the winter, the Ice God rarely blew his breath toward them because two of the Corn Maidens lived just south of there and looked after the people-who-would-be-called-Zunis. Summer after summer, the A’shiwi grew more corn than they could eat. The storerooms of all the women were filled to the raf-ters and all the A’shiwi were as fat as October go-phers.
One day in the autumn, when the people had brought in their corn, they had so much that they would have to build new storerooms and they piled it in the plaza. The Chief Priest of the Bow was standing on top of his house looking down at this great wealth of corn. As he looked, his mind became swollen with pride in his people. None other of all the tribes around the Middle Place had accumulated such an abundance that their storerooms overflowed.
While he was thinking about this, and what he should tell the A’shiwi to do with this richness of seed food, he noticed some children playing at war.
They were throwing balls of mud at each other, and as he watched their game, this Priest of the Bow, this member of the great Bow Society, this valuable man of the village, began to think as a little child thinks before he learns how to live. The Priest of the Bow
2
thought that it would be good to let the Navajos and the Utes and the Lagunas and the Acomas and the Hopis and all the other nations know how rich the A’shiwi had become.
The Bow Priest called together the valuable men of all the clans, and the Pekwin, and the six A’shi-wa-ni priests, and the leaders of the kiva societies, and the Mudheads, and everybody else who was the most valuable. When they were in council, he spoke to them.
“Listen,” he said. “I think it would be a good thing for the A’shiwi if we showed all the other people how rich we have become. I think it would be a good thing if we had all our people prepare a great feast. It would be good if we had the women bake a great store of hard bread and soft bread, corn cakes, tortillas, and other things, and make a great supply of sweet mush and all other foods. Then it would be good if we sent out our fast-running young men to summon al the other nations to come to Ha’wi-k’uh to join us in celebrating our water blessings. We will have all who come join us in a great battle, such as the children play, and we will use bread, and mush dough, and foodstuffs for our weapons. Valuable men, think on this! Think of how these strangers will marvel at the wealth of the A’shiwi, when they see us treating the food for which others labor so
3
hard as the children treat the mud by the riverside and the stones of the mesas.”
The other valuable men were just as foolish as the Bow Priest. “Ha’tchi!” they all said. “You have thought well, and spoken well. Let it be done as you say.”
And so the vil age of Ha’wi-k’uh became loud with sounds. There was the noise of the men breaking the wood to fit into the ovens, and the noise of the metates grinding mountains of yellow corn, and the roar of the fires in the hornos where the food was baking. And the village was covered with a cloud of piñon smoke from the ovens and the steam from the boiling pots of mush. And while this was happening, the runners went out in all the directions to tell the other nations.
Now the Corn Maidens heard of what the people of Ha’wi-k’uh were doing. It made them sad that their children would waste the food of the water blessing.
But the White Corn Maiden said that perhaps it was not as they heard it was. And the Yellow Corn Maiden said that perhaps the people of Ha’wi-k’uh were seeking a way to share their seed foods with other people who had been less blessed. So they decided to make a test. They left the Place Where the Summer Stays and came to Ha’wi-k’uh, and as they came they put away all their brightness and
4
their beauty and they made themselves look like old women. Their blankets were torn and dirty and their moccasins were so worn out their toes stuck out through the deerskin, and they made themselves look thin and hungry. They did this because they wanted to give the people another chance. They did not want to believe bad things about them. And when the Corn Maidens stumbled into the village, a misty rain cloud was all around them. They had brought their water blessing right into Ha’wi-k’uh.
There was more rain then, and the A’shiwi weren’t quite as thankful about it as they are now. They thought it was something the Rain God of the South had to send down to them because they had it coming to them. So when the Corn Maidens wandered through the village, the people just looked out their doors at them. Nobody said, “Come in. Sit happy.
Eat. Be satisfied.” Everywhere the Corn Maidens went they saw seed food stacked up. The village was filled with the smell of cooking—of pots of mush, corn cakes, hard bread, soft bread, everything good.
Everybody could see the Corn Maidens were tired and hungry, but nobody told them, “Come in. Sit happy. Be satisfied.”
The only people who offered the Corn Maidens food in Ha’wi-k’uh that day were two children. They were a little boy and his baby sister. They were sit-
5
ting on the roof of their mother’s house eating corn cakes. When they saw the old women trudging past, they reached down to give the strangers some of their cake. But their mother’s sister saw them and made them stop it.
6
“Don’t waste good cooked food on those nomads,”
the mother’s sister told the children. “They must be Navajos or Apaches who ought to stay home and plant their own corn instead of wandering around following the smell of other people’s cooking pots.”
It was different then. The A’shiwi knew the Navajos and Apaches were their younger brothers, but not all of the lessons of living had been taught to them yet by the Holy People. They had not yet learned that abundance must be shared to be enjoyed. They had not yet learned how to treat the Flesh of Their Own Flesh.
For in those days there was one A’shiwi who could not, because of years of misfortunes, share in the plenty of the people. She was an old mother who lived down at the bottom of the village in a fallen-down house. Her brothers had all been killed in wars and her husband was dead of a disease, and she didn’t have any daughters to bring their husbands into her home, and all her sons had moved away to live with the families of their wives, and all had forgotten her. So she lived alone, with no one to help her plant her corn seeds, or to water the plants, and she was very poor. The old woman had no men to bring her deer hides, and no way to get cotton.
So her clothing was rags. The people of the village
7
threw their trash and garbage down the slope to get rid of it, and it fell all around her house, and even on her roof. So she had to spend much of her time every morning cleaning it up.
That’s what she was doing when she saw the Corn Maidens coming out of the vil age. At first she didn’t say anything to them, because the people of the village didn’t like her to talk to them or to be around where they could see her. The A’shiwi were rich, now, and the ragged old mother reminded them how it had been when they were poor. But quickly, the old woman saw that the Corn Maidens looked cold and ragged and old and tired, and hungry, too.
She thought they wouldn’t mind. So she shouted to them in her old, weak voice.
8
“Come in and sit happy,” she said. “Your hunger will put good taste in the poor food I can offer you tonight. Come in and sit happy by my fire, and be satisfied with my little food and rest yourself. And tomorrow it will be better for you. For tomorrow the people of Ha’wi-k’uh will hold a great feast and a great game at which all the good food will be thrown around as if it were nothing but mud from the river. Tomorrow you can go back into the vil age and pick up all you wish to eat from the ground.
But tonight, your great hunger will add taste to my poor food.”
So the Corn Maidens came in and the old woman took off her ragged blanket and spread it on the floor for them to sit upon. She put the cornmeal she had boiled for her own supper into a bowl for them and worked straightening out things around the room—
the way women do—so her guests wouldn’t notice there was nothing for her to eat. But the Yellow Corn Maiden noticed anyway.
“An old mother as kind and gentle as you should not go without your supper,” the Yel ow Corn Maiden said. “Sit happy here and join us at this meal because we, too, have some food.”
Then the White Corn Maiden brought from under her torn blanket a pouch made of buckskin and beaded with turquoise and the whitest shells. From
9
that, she took out honeycomb, corn cakes, and the bread that is made with meal and piñon nuts. Then she took out a pouch of pollen and sprinkled it over the old woman’s lumpy cornmeal mush. A mist rose up from the pot and it smelled like a meadow of spring flowers. And when the old mother saw this happen, she knew that these poor women must be two of the Corn Maidens, or two of the other Beloved Ones whom A’wonawil’ona made to help look after the A’shiwi. The old mother felt ashamed that she had been so bold as to invite the Beloved Ones into her broken old house. She huddled over by the wall away from them.
Then the Yellow Corn Maiden spoke to her. “Old mother, know now who we are and know why we come here. We are Yellow Corn Maiden and White Corn Maiden, and we come to look at our children, the A’shiwi, the Flesh of the Flesh. But now we find that you and two little ones up in the village must be the only true A’shiwi who are left in Ha’wi-k’uh.
So come, sit happy with us and be satisfied. You asked us to eat with you. We ask you now to eat with us.”
The old mother was still afraid but she got out her prayer meal and sprinkled it on the heads of the Corn Maidens, blessing them. And as she sat to eat with them, she saw their hair was no longer 20
grizzled white with age, but black and glossy with youth, and their wrists jangled with perfect silver, and their faces were beautiful with happiness. The old mother dipped her fingers into the coarse corn mush and found it had become sweet and rich to taste, as if it had been mixed with honey. And the Corn Maidens talked to her and laughed and made jokes. The old mother’s lonely old heart forgot its years of solitude and remembered how it had been when her sons had been around her and her house had been full of the sounds of children.
When they had al satisfied themselves, the White Corn Maiden brought out a bundle and unrolled it on the floor. Inside was a white cape of fringed doe-skin. “Hang this on your blanket pole, kind mother,”
the White Corn Maiden said, “and on the morning after you hang it there, you will find under it meal, and melons, and all good things to eat, in plenty.
We leave you this because our water blessing wil no longer come to Ha’wi-k’uh.” By then Sun-Father had left the sky and gone to his sacred place, and darkness covered Corn Mountain, and the Corn Maidens breathed on the hands of the old mother, and she breathed on their hands, and they went away.
When the last knot in the calendar cord was untied and the day for the great festival came, the people of Ha’wi-k’uh put on their finest sil-2
ver and turquoise
and their strings of
whitest shell and the
best of their blankets
and the softest deer-
skin. As Sun-Father
came standing out
from his sacred place,
the pathways to the
pueblo were covered
in all directions with
the strangers com-
ing in, as bidden by
the A’shiwi runners.
The housetops of the
village were covered
with breadstuffs, with
hard cakes and soft,
and with great pots
22
of batter and meal. As the morning passed, the priests of the Bow Society began dividing up the clans into armies for the great war game. The Bad-ger Clan would be on this side, and the Turkey Clan on that, the Yellow-wood Clan on this, and the Tobacco Clan on that. And when the Sun-Father had reached his highest point in the sky for that day, the mock battle began.
The air over the pueblo of Ha’wi-k’uh at that moment was filled with flying bread, and blobs of boiled mush, and al other food. Some warriors were knocked to the earth by hard bread, and some were splattered across their faces with dough, and everyone’s hair and robes were smeared with cornmeal batter. The A’shiwi shrieked with laughter and the visiting strangers smiled a little, but mostly they talked quietly among themselves—trying to think of the reasons the A’shiwi behaved in this way. The girls were standing on the rooftops, laughing and throwing hard bread down at the young men fight-ing below. As it is when young men are being looked upon by maidens, the warriors began to fight harder with one another, and to get angry, and to cause pain. By the time darkness finally came, almost everybody in the pueblo was angry and disgusted and soon the moon rose over a town that was sul-len with silence.
23
When dawn came and the people climbed out of their roofs to make their prayer to the Sun-Father, they were astonished by what they saw. A murmur of surprise and worry could be heard all across the village. The great plaza of Ha’wi-k’uh had been covered the night before with the breadstuffs used in the great war game, but now in the light of the dawn the people saw that it had been swept clean.
The A’shiwi were disturbed by this—some because they had planned to gather in the food they had thrown (after the strangers had gone and could not see them do it) to save it for the winter, and some because it seemed strange and unnatural that al the foodstuffs would thus vanish during the night. They soon understood that the seed-eaters had taken it, because all around the pueblo they found the tracks of the animals. But even this seemed unnatural. How had the seed-eaters known to come?
Even so, they said to each other: “What matters it? Be happy. Our storerooms still hold enough corn to last us through the winter. And when summer comes again, there will be another harvest of great bounty.”
For the old mother in the broken house below the village, the view at dawn caused great dismay.
She had gone to her bed the night before thinking that when morning came the people of Ha’wi-k’uh 24
would throw the breadstuffs they had used in the war game down around her hut as they always threw their trash. She awoke that morning happy, thinking to go out from her house and gather in this wasted food and thus have something to keep her old body alive through the winter. But alas! When she climbed through her roof hole and looked about her, she saw there was no wasted food—the village had been picked as clean as an old bone. She climbed back down the ladder, thinking to make herself a breakfast of her rough ground meal. But as she did, she remembered the robe the Corn Maidens had left for her—and the magic they had told her the robe would work. She went into the room where she had hung the robe on the blanket pole. Lo! In that room, under this robe, the old mother saw a sight to startle her eyes. Against the walls were stacked cords of white corn, and yellow corn, and corn of mixed colors. And around it were baskets of squash, and melons, and dried fruits, and piñon nuts, and jerked venison.
When she saw these things, tears came to the eyes of the old woman and a great weight lifted from her heart. Because, now, the winter held no fear. She would survive the days and nights of cold.
But there was also a sadness to her thoughts. She longed for a chance to tell the Corn Maidens of the 25
peace they had brought to her. But she longed even more for someone to tell of her good fortune—and to share it with her.
2
Time and winter passed and then came the winds of spring. But this year the winds blew steadily from the west. Never did they blow with the water blessing from the Rain God of the South, and no rains came to make the flatlands of Ha’wi-k’uh ready for the corn seeds. The people of Ha’wi-k’uh were troubled by this. But they planted even more of their supply of corn seed than they usually would, because they wished to repeat their war-game-with-food festival when the harvest came. The corn sprouted weak and yellow from the dryness of its roots. The A’shiwi planted prayer plumes of the most beautiful feathers, and sang the proper prayers most carefully, and performed the most valuable dances, with every 27
word sung and every step done exactly in the proper fashion. But the water blessing did not come. Each afternoon, the clouds would climb the sky from the horizon. But as the prayers of the A’shiwi drew them toward the cornfields of Ha’wi-k’uh, the monster called Cloud-Swallower would rise into the sky and drink them all down. Day after day through the hot summer this would happen. The priests and valuable men of the kiva fraternities would perform their most precious dances, and bury prayer plumes made in the most valuable way, and the clouds would be drawn toward the cornfields. And then Cloud-Swallower would arise, invisible to the A’shiwi, and suck down all the mist and vapor, so no rain could fall.
The corn yellowed. The corn died, its dead stalks brittle in the fields.
Many weeks earlier, the people of Ha’wi-k’uh had stopped talking of holding another war game and began talking only of whether there would be enough to eat. Now they felt despair. As winter came again, the A’shiwi roamed the mesas collecting the dried fruits of the cactus, and the roots of plants that can be eaten, and the nuts of the piñons. But the failure of the water blessing had left even these poor foodstuffs scarce in the countryside. The mule deer had moved northward where the springs still ran and the browse was better, and even the rabbits 28
and the prairie dogs had left the drought-stricken countryside.
By the time of the days of the longest darkness, in the dead, cold heart of winter, the last of the corn from the storerooms had been ground and eaten.
The people then were pitifully poor. The children sorted through the dust in search for stray kernels that might have fallen from the cobs, and the men hunted through the snowy mesas for game which would no longer be lured by their hunting chants.
The buckskin of their robes was toasted, old bones were ground for food on the meal stones, and everywhere there was hunger.
From her broken house below the village, the old mother saw the misery of her people and wished to help. But when the A’shiwi saw the woman of the broken house was no thinner than she had ever been and had food when they had none, they concluded that she had joined the brotherhood of sorcerers. Thus, when the old woman offered food, in her kindness, they were afraid to take it. Each of them knew in his heart that he had treated the old mother cruelly. Each presumed that she now sought her revenge as a sorceress. So it happened that only the birds and the hungry animals of the village shared in the blessings given the old woman by the Corn Maidens.
29
In the darkest days of winter, the very old and the very young among the A’shiwi began to weaken from hunger, and to sicken, and to die. A council was called of all the kivas and the fraternities and the clans. The priests and the valuable men each spoke their thoughts. And when the council ended, it was decided that if the people were to survive they must abandon Ha’wi-k’uh and find food. The Council sent runners westward to the villages of the Hopis to ask if they could feed the A’shiwi until spring. After many days had passed, two young messengers from the Hopis arrived at Ha’wi-k’uh bearing lengths of knotted cord numbering the days until the Hopis would be prepared to greet and feed the A’shiwi.
There was great excitement among the houses of Ha’wi-k’uh then. To reach the Hopi villages they must walk many days across the broken lands covered with snow and barren of food. Would they have enough food to keep them alive on this bitter journey? Perhaps, the priests decided, but only if they left that very night—before more of their pitiful supply was eaten.
That night there was much haste. In al the houses of Ha’wi-k’uh the people worked through the dark hours gathering what leather and bone meal could be found, searching everywhere for anything that could be eaten to keep them alive. Long before morning, 30
the call went out from the rooftops of the village that all was ready and that the sturdy young runners from the Hopi villages were leaving to lead the A’shiwi. When the people heard this call, they rushed from their houses. They were terrified that, weak as they were from hunger, they would be left behind by the strong young strangers.
Now it happened that in the house of the boy and girl who had offered bread to the Corn Maidens, there lived an old uncle who had good reason for such fear. This man had been a Koyemshi, one of the wisest of the wise fraternity of Mudhead Clowns.
But now he was the oldest man of Ha’wi-k’uh, too weak to wear the mask of mud and do the hard work of the brotherhood of clowns. He had the hardi-hood of the aged, and the walk through the snow to the Hopi villages held no fear for him. But his legs hobbled only slowly. This old uncle had already earned the anger of many of the villagers. He had warned the valuable men of the kivas, before the great war games, that treating foodstuffs as children treat the river mud was not the way of the A’shiwi.
He had chided the people for failing to feed the ragged beggar women. And, when the priests and their student priests vainly danced their most sacred rituals to draw the blessed clouds over the dying corn, he had told the A’shiwi that their own foolish-3
ness had caused this great trouble. That had angered the village, and he wished not to anger his people again by lagging behind. So this old uncle left early, knowing the villagers would soon overtake him.
The boy and the girl had worked late helping prepare for the trip, but finally they had fallen asleep in a warm corner beside the hearth. When the voice of the Pekwin sounded over the village, urging all forth to follow the Hopi guides, there was a rush in this house for the ladders to the roof holes, and in this rush the two little ones were forgotten. It was only when the night was gone and the villagers had struggled many miles past the Zuni buttes 32
that their parents realized they were not with the column. And then it was thought that perhaps they had gone ahead with the old uncle. If not, their path was certainly completed. By then it was clear that this journey would be very hard, few of the little ones would survive, and those who straggled behind would surely die. It was better to let them sleep. If someone went back for them now, neither he nor the children would ever catch up again.
The brother and his little sister slept peacefully.
The Sun-Father emerged from his sacred place and lit the eastern sky, but still they slept because they were both tired from their labors and weak from the long hunger, and because the village was drained now of all other life and was as silent as the snow. When the little boy finally awoke, he looked around the great room of his house, saw that it was empty and silent, and realized at once
what had happened.
A great fear overcame
him for a moment, and
tears welled from his eyes.
But then he thought of
his little sister. He must
somehow keep her from
fear and harm.
33
The boy built a fire of bark and piñon sticks in the hearth to warm the room, and then he scrambled up the ladder through the roof hole. It was just as he had guessed. Al around him, the vil age of Ha’wi-k’uh lay silent and empty. No smoke rose from the roof holes of any of the houses. The boy would have cried again in his hunger and his loneliness, but just then he heard his sister awakening. The little girl cried out for mush (of which, maybe, she had been dreaming) so the boy climbed down the ladder and looked everywhere he could think of for something to cook for her.
Alas, there was nothing. But then the boy remembered that from the rooftop, he had seen a flight of birds in the air below the village. And he remembered that he had been told how to catch birds.
He pulled from his head some of the long hairs.
These he tied careful y into slip nooses and arranged them neatly over cedar and piñon twigs from the pile of firewood. And then he tied rags around his feet to protect them from the snow (his moccasins had long since been parched and eaten) and went out to set his snares.
The boy noticed hundreds of wrens, and sparrows, and snowbirds, and even piñon jays clustered around the broken house under the village where the old mother lived. But the boy knew that the villagers 34
had avoided this house, and had kept away from the old mother who lived there. He thought she would be gone, now, with the other villagers. But perhaps she had been a sorceress. It would be best to avoid a house where sorcery had been practiced. The boy did not know the birds were attracted there because, early each morning, the old mother fed them from her doorway. He thought they might be some magical lure of witchcraft. And so it happened that as the winter grew in cold and darkness, neither the boy nor the old mother knew the other was in the village. The old woman, whose ancient bones were quick to chill, stayed inside her broken house, and the boy kept to the other side of the village. There he set out his twigs, with the nooses attached, and hid himself away. Within the hour, three birds had caught themselves. The boy gathered them in and skinned them and took them home to his sister.
When he had spitted them and roasted them over the coals, he gently awoke the child. At first she cried for parched corn. And then she noticed there were no old ones around the house and she cried for her mother. But the boy finally got her to drink water and to satisfy herself with the roasted birds.
Thus the two little ones lived, day after day. But the little sister grew sadder and sadder, wishing for seed food, and parched corn, and breadstuffs. She 35
tired of eating nothing but the winter birds and longed for the food to which she was accustomed.
More and more, she cried, and the boy found it more and more difficult to comfort her.
Thus it happened that one day he said:
“Hush, little sister. Hush your crying. If you will smile again I will get you something pretty with which to play. I will get you whatever would please your heart.”
On hearing this the little girl stopped her crying and thought. And after she had thought for a moment, she told her brother that her sadness would end if he would bring her a butterfly. She said this, probably, because she was weary of the hunger and cold of the winter and the butterfly is the insect of warmth and summer, the time of green corn, and fruit, and squash. Whatever reason she said it, the words at first brought despair to the mind of her brother. He climbed to the roof hole and looked around. Everywhere the landscape was the black and gray and white of winter. The first butterfly would be months away. As he looked across the cornfields where the insects flew in the summer, a thought came to him. He would make a butterfly.
The boy hurried to the fields and gathered dried stalks of corn and the straw of grasses and with these he hastened home lest his sister would miss 36
him and cry
again. He arranged
his materials on the blanket
beside the child so that she could be amused by his work.
First he built a cage. He cut eight equal sections of cornstalk, and stripped away the hard covering so that only the pith remained. In both ends of each of these eight pieces, he bored holes. Then, using the softer grass as a weaver uses his yarn, he tied the sections together into two square frames. These shaped the top and bottom of his cage. Then he cut stiff straws of grass into identical lengths, and used these as the bars of his cage—sticking their 37
ends into the softness of the pith. Soon the cage was made.
He decorated it with feathers and paints from the boxes of ceremonial things his father and his uncles had left behind. A string of woven hairs served to hang it over the robes where his sister slept, by the hearth.
When his sister had wearied of watching him and had fallen asleep, he began the butterfly. He shaped the body from a long piece of pith, carving the head round and the proper body sections. And then he tried to make the wings. But the biggest pieces of pith he could find were far too narrow, and when he tried to join sections into the shape of wider wings the brittle substance would crumble. Finally the boy knew he could never make the wide wings of the butterfly from the materials at his hands. Instead, he gave the insect two long, narrow wings on each side of its body. And then he gave the fly its six legs, made of bent grass straws. On both sides of the head, he used black paint to form the eyes. But the paint was mixed too thin and the eyes spread much too large for those of a butterfly. He had the same trouble when he tried to paint the spots that give the butterfly wings their color. The red, yellow, blue, and black pigments spread and ran, forming stripes instead of circles. And finally, when the boy 38
was finished and ready to put the paint pots away, the toy looked very little like the butterfly he had promised his sister. Instead he had created a wonderful creature, like none before him had ever seen.
And to this, at the point of balance between its wings, he looped a knotted hair and thus suspended his little effigy from the top of the cage.
When the little girl awoke and saw this being so suspended, just out of reach above her sleeping robes, the sound of her laughter was heard in the house for the first time since the old ones had left them. She wanted, in her joy, to call this bright and graceful being a name. Butterfly was not the right name, that was easy to see, so she cal ed it the words which mean “being-which-flies-on-double-wings.” All that day the little one talked to the Cornstalk Being, laughing and chattering and making it swing in its cage. She told her brother that Being-That-Flies lived and understood her words, and the boy’s heart was light to see that it made his sister forget her sorrows.
That night before she slept, the pains of her hunger came again to the little one as she played, and she said to Being-That-Flies:
“Fly away to where you can find yellow corn and bring back grains to my brother that he may parch them for my breakfast.”
39
As these words were said, the boy believed, for a moment, that he saw the wings of the Cornstalk Insect flutter with such speed that they blurred before his eyes and hummed like the sound of summer bees. But as he saw this, he knew that the blurring was caused by nothing more than the diz-ziness of his hunger—that wings made of corn pith do not fly.
The sister, too, thought she had seen the wings flutter. She bounced with joy and laughed. “O, my brother. Did you see that the Being heard my voice and moved his wings?”
“Yes, I saw, little sister. I was afraid he would break out of his cage and fly away,” the boy said. He said it only to cheer his sister.
But that night, as the boy lay on his sleeping robes waiting for sleep to take him and watching the light of the stars through the smoke hole, he thought of how it would be if the Corn Being he had made could indeed fly and could somehow find food as his sister had asked. Without it, he feared that the child would not live through the winter. And while he was thinking this, feeling a great longing for some way to help the little one, he heard something like the humming of tiny wings and a whispering sound.
“Thli-ni-ni,” the whisper said. “Let me go.”
The boy lay rigid on his robes, listening.
40
“Let me go, let me go,” whispered the sound.
The boy was so frightened that he could hardly move his tongue. “Where are you?” he said. “Who are you?”
“In this cage,” the whisper said.
The boy saw then that the cage with the Cornstalk Creature was shaking on its string. In the dim light of the stars, he could see it flying against the straw which barred its passage—circling on the thread of hair on which it hung from the cage top.
“Wait, little creature. I will get you water to drink and I will try to find you food, if I but knew what you eat,” the boy said. “I would let you go, but if you fly out of our house you will surely die of cold. And if you fly away, my sister will mourn for your going.
Therefore you must say to me before I open your cage that you will not fly outside this warm room.”
“I do,” the Corn Being said. “I say it.” So the boy opened the cage and carefully released the noose of hair which held the Cornstalk Insect. The little creature flew with marvelous swiftness, darting into all corners of the room. And finally it hovered near the ear of the boy.
“Your heart is greater than the hearts of most of the A’shiwi,” the creature said. “You, who have had great reason for anger, have kept anger away from you, and you have loved this poor child, thy sister, 4
faithful y and wel .” The voice of the insect was a low humming voice and the boy had to strain to hear it, even in the silent night. “You, great-hearted boy, are my father. Because you have given me a body where there was no body before, and twin wings with which I can hover, as no other flying thing.
And because you made me out of unselfish love you have touched me with life. And I, the product of your mind, am your creature and wish now only to serve you. Release me from my promise. Let me fly through the smoke hole through which the starlight 42
comes. I will return before Sun-Father lights the east. I will spend the night seeking a way to serve you and your sister. But whether or not I fail, I shall return. I will not leave you.”
The boy was frightened by this. But he found a tiny pinch of prayer meal and scattered it over the insect in blessing, and told the creature it was free to go.
The insect darted twice around the darkness of the room, with a buzzing hum, and then shot through the smoke hole like an arrow shot by a strong-armed hunter.
The boy lay back on his sleep robes, wondering at what he had seen and heard and if the creature he had made of cornstalk would ever return. And soon sleep took him in.
3
The Cornstalk Being soared high over the rooftops of Ha’wi-k’uh, circled higher than the hunting eagle, and finally darted westward. It flew like an arrow across the great mesa and the val eys and the depths of the arroyos and finally it came to the canyons of the Colorado Chiqueto where the water runs roaring red, and at last it hovered over a great blue lake. From where it hovered on its double wings, the insect could see deep into the blue water, see below the surface dim lights as numberless as the winter stars. And on the sandy shores he saw the Water Beings, their ugly bird faces smiling with their kindness, pacing and watching ceaselessly for the souls of men who had fulfilled the pathway of their lives, and who 45
were ready to begin the
second life of endless joy.
And when the insect saw
these things he knew he
had found the Sacred Lake.
At that moment, he pointed
his tail at the sky and his head at the blue shield of water, and dove with the speed of a plum-meting falcon. He paused not
to speak to the Water Beings
but sped past them, plung-
ing into the cold, clear water
with the sound of an arrow
striking.
Almost at once, the
Cornstalk Being pene-
trated the water roof
and found
himself
in a hall
blazing
with the
light of
a thousand fires
and crowded with
happy souls of the
46
Beloved Ones. He was in the Dance Hall of the Dead where the souls of men with their paths fulfilled celebrate their happiness. And at one end, the insect saw the Council of the Gods, with the great Shalako Messenger Birds attending them. He buzzed and darted around the room, resting a moment on a blanket pole here, and on the lip of a pot there, until finally the Little Fire God, Shulawitsi, noticed him.
“Look, my uncles,” Shulawitsi cried. “Look upon the shape formed by Grandfather of Gods—a shape never seen before.”
Sayatasha, the Rain God of the North with the misty rain clouding around his single long horn, spoke then to the insect. “Why do you come, Our Grandfather? And what message do you bring to the Council of the Gods?”
“I come, oh Beloved Beings of the Sun-Father, to ask that you place your blessing upon two poor children: they who gave me this form and permission to be their messenger.”
The Cornstalk Being then told how the boy of Ha’wi-k’uh was keeping life in the body of his sister and how, if their paths were to be fulfilled, they must have seed food to survive the winter.
The Council listened and when the insect had finished speaking, Sayatasha spoke: 47
“Sit happy, Our Grandfather, and we will instruct you what must be done, for we will happily help our beloved children at Ha’wi-k’uh.” And Sayatasha showed the insect how the boy should cut prayer plumes and how they should be decorated with paint and with feathers, and how they should be offered, that the Council of the Gods might bring its blessings upon the children. And then Sayatasha summoned the He’hea-kwe, the Runners-of-the-Sacred-Dance, and instructed them to take corn grains and place them at Ha’wi-k’uh where Grandfather Insect would easily find them, so that the children would be fed while they were taught their duties. “Fly away now, Our Grandfather, to our beloved children, and instruct them well that they may have great blessings. Go happy!”
“Sit happy,” said the Cornstalk Insect. With his wings buzzing, he darted upward through the watery roof and in a moment was flashing over the rooftops of Ha’wi-k’uh. Just as he flew down the smoke hole into the great room where the children were sleeping, he saw through the window of the upper room that the Runners-of-the-Sacred-Dance had already deposited hundreds of piles of yellow corn grains there.
The insect began darting back and forth, dropping corn kernels from the piles through a crack in 48
the ceiling over the sleeping robes of the boy-child.
“Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, click,” the kernels fell on the buffalo robe. Soon the robe was yellow with corn. The sound brought the boy part way out of the cave of sleep, enough to hear the sound and think in his doze that it was made by raindrops dripping, enough to feel the weight and think that his robe was growing with the weight of soaking dampness. He huddled under the robe, dreading the dawn when he would have to rise with everything cold and wet.
But when morning came and the boy pushed the robe back from his head, he shouted with delight.
As he rose, hundreds of corn kernels poured down upon the floor in a golden flood. As he saw this, he thought of his Cornstalk Being and remembered releasing it the night before. But now it hung in its cage, just as it had since he had placed it there, without sound and without motion.
That morning the children were so happy they forgot, for the first time, that they had been left alone. They toasted some of the corn among the hot coals of the fireplace. Some they ground on the millstone into meal and this they cooked into mush.
Some they boiled with the poor bodies of the birds the boy had trapped. For the first time that winter, they were satisfied and their bellies were warm with 49
food. Al the long day they feasted, eating a little at a time, and as they ate they would raise their hands in blessing toward the insect—who simply hung there as if he were nothing but dead winter stalks.
When night came, and shadows danced around the room in the light from the fire, and the boy and his sister were full from feasting, the insect began to swing, ever so slowly, back and forth in his tiny cornstalk cage.
At first the boy was not sure. He had watched the insect all day long, and his sister had watched, but there had been no movement. Now the insect was swinging back and forth, and soon he began to speak.
“Thli-ni-ni,” said the insect in his low humming whisper. “Let me go, for now I must teach you to make prayer plumes for the Council of the Gods.”
The boy did not understand these things, for the old ones had left without instructing him. But the insect was now his friend, and he let him out of the cage.
No sooner was the door to the cage unfastened than the insect darted out and circled around the room in the red glow from the firelight. He flew around the room three times, for his wings were stiff from sitting in the cage all day. Then he flew down next to the boy’s ear.