Then she stretched and peered about as if to make sure she had not forgotten something. Satisfied that she had not, she parted her hair and exposed the mouth in the center of her head.
Goro made a circle of his thumbs and forefingers, trying to calculate the size of the thing and nearly fell off his perch. It was fairly large.
Into this crater, his wife pushed dumplings by ones and twos and they disappeared. To make certain, she washed them down with all the bean soup, ladles of bean soup.
When she had disposed of everything she waited a moment, expectantly. A cheery, satisfied rumble came from the top of her head.
"Burps, too," thought Goro. "A regular volcano. Wonder if there'll be smoke." He was too interested to be frightened.
But nothing further happened. She bound her hair back neatly, smiled, and left the house on some errand like any good, wifely wife.
Goro slipped down and out of the house, picking up his tools on the way. He went back into the forest, found a comfortable tree and sat down against its trunk to smoke his tiny pipe and think.
"I must have married one of the monsters the priests and old men talk about, a yamam'ba. A 'mountain-mother'. Hmm," he nodded, bit his lip, and squinted his eyes.
"Now why do you suppose they call them that?" he asked a squirrel that sat upright near his left foot, like an attentive, furry little doctor. "They come from the mountains—fine. But what's motherly about them, I do not understand.
"Squeerp!" said the squirrel, and ran halfway up the tree. From there it peered down and examined Goro's head.