“Children of the forest, I am the goddess Kasawayo, and have come from shadowland to watch over you all!”
The children gazed in surprise as they looked up and saw a wonderful bird with a human face speaking to them from the topmost bough of the coco-nut palm. Then they all shouted back to the goddess:
“Are you Kasawayo, she of whom the great chiefs of our village so often talk and pray about?”
Then a fierce-looking boy looked up and said:
“You’ve caused a lot of sorrow in our hut, you have. Why didn’t you hear my mother’s prayers?”
But Kasawayo only flapped her wings, and gazed down on the children in sorrow. At this moment a serpent crawled out of the thick bamboo bush hard by the swampy lagoon. It had a long, crimson-hued neck that soared upwards and fell as it crawled, like the neck of a lika-bird (swan). On seeing the children it at once stood erect on its twisted tail, and hissed forth:
“Children, what are you talking to up in that tree?”
“We are talking to a bird, O god of the shore caves,” said the children, as they all pointed up into the coco-palm.
The serpent, who was a disguised god, looked curiously up into the coco-palm, and then said in a soft, insinuating way:
“Why, Kasawayo!—it’s you!” Then it added: “Why, I never thought to see you down here after all these thousands of years!”