“Well, inasmuch as you won’t eat, my grandson,” said she, “why, I can’t conceive, for these are very good, it seems to me. You had better run along home now, or your mother will be killing herself thinking of you. Now, I have only one direction to give you. You don’t deserve any, but I will give you one. See that you pay attention to it. If not, the worst is your own. You have gathered a beautiful store of feathers. Now, be very careful. Those creatures who bore those feathers have gained their lives from the lives of living beings, and therefore their feathers differ from other feathers. Heed what I say, my grandson. When you come to any place where flowers are blooming,—where the sunflowers make the field yellow,—walk round those flowers if you want to get home with these feathers. And when you come to more flowers, walk round them. If you do not do that, just as you came you will go back to your home.”
“All right, my grandmother,” said the boy. So, after bidding her good-by, he trudged away with his bundle of feathers; and when he came to a great plain of sunflowers and other flowers he walked round them; and when he came to another large patch he walked round them, and then another, and so on; but finally he stopped, for it seemed to him that there were nothing but fields of flowers all the way home. He thought he had never seen so many before.
“I declare,” said he, “I will not walk round those flowers any more. I will hang on to these feathers, though.”
So he took a good hold of them and walked in amongst the flowers. But no sooner had he entered the field than flutter, flutter, flutter, little wings began to fly out from the bundle of feathers, and the bundle began to grow smaller and smaller, until it wholly disappeared. These wings which flew out were the wings of the Sacred Birds of Summerland, made living by the lives that had supported the birds which bore those feathers, and by coming into the environment which they had so loved, the atmosphere which flowers always bring of summer.
Thus it was, my children, in the days of the ancients, and for that reason we have little jay-birds, little sparrows, little finches, little willow-birds, and all the beautiful little birds that bring the summer, and they always hover over flowers.
“My friends” [said the story-teller], “that is the way we live. I am very glad, otherwise I would not have told the story, for it is not exactly right that I should,—I am very glad to demonstrate to you that we also have books; only they are not books with marks in them, but words in our hearts, which have been placed there by our ancients long ago, even so long ago as when the world was new and young, like unripe fruit. And I like you to know these things, because people say that the Zuñis are dark people.”[4]
[4] That is, people in the dark—having no knowledge. [Back]
Thus shortens my story.
