THE BIRTH OF THE OLD-ONES OR ANCIENTS OF THE K´KÂ.
In time there were born to these twain, twelve children. Nay, neither man-children nor woman-children they! For look now! The first, was a woman in fulness of contour, but a man in stature and brawn. From the mingling of too much seed in one kind, comes the two-fold one kind, ‘hláhmon, being man and woman combined—even as from a kernel of corn with two hearts, ripens an ear that is neither one kind nor the other, but both! Yet not all ill was this first child, because she was born of love—what though crazed!—ere her parents were changed; thus she partook not of their distortions. Not so with her brothers; in semblance of males, yet like boys, the fruit of sex was not in them! For the fruit of mere lust comes to naught, even as corn, self-sown out of season, ripens not. For their parents, being changed to hideousness, abode together witlessly and consorted idly or in passion not quickened of favor to the eye or the heart. And lo! like to their father were his later children, but varied as his moods; for then, as now, what the mother looked most on while withholding them, thus wise were they formed as clay by the thought of the potter; wherefore we cherish our matrons and reveal not to them the evil dramas neither the slaughtered nor hamstrung game lest their children be weakly or go maimed. Thus they were strapping louts, but dun-colored and marked with the welts of their father. Silly were they, yet wise as the gods and high priests; for as simpletons and the crazed speak from the things seen of the instant, uttering belike wise words and prophecy, so spake they, and became the attendants and fosterers, yet the sages and interpreters, of the ancient of dance-dramas or the Kâ´kâ.
Named are they, not with the names of men, but with names of mis-meaning, for there is Pékwina, Priest-speaker of the Sun. Meditative is he, even in the quick of day, after the fashion of his father when shamed, saying little save rarely, and then as irrelevantly as the veriest child or dotard.
Then there is Pí‘hlan Shíwani (Bow Priest-warrior). So cowardly he that he dodges behind ladders, thinking them trees no doubt, and lags after all the others, whenever frightened, even at a fluttering leaf or a crippled spider, and looks in every direction but the straight one, whenever danger threatens!
There is Éshotsi (the Bat) who can see better in the sunlight than any of them, but would maim himself in a shadow, and will avoid a hole in the ground as a woman would a dark place, even were it no bigger than a beetle burrow.
Also there is Muíyapona (Wearer of the Eyelets of Invisibility). He has horns like the catfish, and is knobbed like a bludgeon-squash. But he never by any chance disappears, even when he hides his head behind a ladder rung or turkey quill, yet thinks himself quite out of sight. And he sports with his countenance as though it were as smooth as a damsel's.
There is Pótsoki (the Pouter), who does little but laugh and look bland, for grin he can not; and his younger brother, Ná‘hläshi (Aged Buck), who is the biggest of them all, and what with having grieved and nearly rubbed his eyes out (when his younger brother was captured and carried off by the K‘yámak‘ya-kwe or Snail Kâ´kâ of the South), looks as ancient as a horned toad; yet he is as frisky as a fawn, and giggles like a girl; yea, and bawls as lustily as a small boy playing games.
The next brother, Ítseposa (the Glum or Aggrieved), mourned also for his nearest brother, who was stolen by the Kâ´kâ, too, until his eyes were dry utterly and his chin chapped to protrusion; but nathless he is lively and cheerful and ever as ready indeed as the most complaisant of beings.
K‘yä´lutsi (the Suckling) and Tsa‘hläshi (Old-youth), the youngest, are the most wilfully important of the nine, always advising others and strutting like a young priest in his first dance, or like unto the youthful warrior made too aged-thinking and self-notioned with early honoring.
And while the father stands dazed, with his head bowed and his hands clasped before him or like to broken bows hanging by his sides, these children romp and play (as he and his sister did when turned childish), and verily are like to idiots, or to dotards and crones turned young again, inconstant as laughter, startled to new thought by every flitting thing around them; but, in the presence of the Kâ´kâ of old, they are grave what though so uncouth. And they are the oracles of all olden sayings of deep meanings; wherefore they are called the Kâ´yemashi (Husbandmen of the Kâ´kâ or sacred drama-dance); and they are spoken of, even by the Fathers of the People, as the Á‘hläshi Tséwashi (Sages of the Ancients). And most precious in the sight of the beings and of men are they! But for their birth and the manner thereof, it is said that all had been different; for from it many things came to be as they are, alike for men and gods and even the souls of the dead!