The whole place began to burn. The people were terribly scared. Gäk turned to a crow and flew up to the sky; Blaiwas became an eagle; Witkátkis turned himself to a hawk and flew away. Tskel and Wámanik and Kéis and their kin went deep under the ground and were saved. All the other people, and the girl’s own family, except her little sister, were burned up.
The little girl was like her sister; she was powerful, could do anything she wanted to, and she got outside the ring of fire.
The elder sister took her brothers’ hearts, put them on a string and tied the string around her neck; then she swam back to the island. She was glad now.
The little sister wandered around and cried, she felt so lonesome. At last she stopped crying and began to watch her sister when she swam in the lake. The sister would call in different ways, sometimes like a duck or a water bird, sometimes like an animal, but she always looked like a woman. Once, when she had been all day swimming and dancing in the [[271]]water, she went to the island and right away fell asleep. The little sister made her sleep.
Then the girl took a spear of tula grass, changed it into a canoe, and went to the island; she cut the string of hearts from her sister’s neck and put it in her bosom: then she cut her sister’s head off and went back to land.
The head went back to the body, and the young woman was alive again. She made a mournful noise, like an animal crying.
The little sister heard her, and said: “Cry all you want to; you can’t kill me!” She took up a handful of ashes, threw them toward the island, and said: “You can never burn people up again. You will always live in the water. When the coming people taste of you, they will say: ‘This meat doesn’t taste good,’ and they will spit it out.”
The young woman heard what her sister said. She was mad; she made a motion up and down with her hands; they were turning to wings. Right away she became a large, spotted sea bird and swam off on the lake.
The little sister got dry grass from the mountain and spread it down on the ground where each house had been. In one day there were as many houses as there had been before the fire. She gathered all the bones she could find and put them in a basket of boiling water; then she said to herself: “I mustn’t get up when they call me. No matter what they say, I must lie still and not answer.” She rolled herself up tight in a mat and lay down.
At sunset the people began to come out of the basket. Each person went to his own house and soon the houses were full again. The five brothers came back to life. Their father was the last one to get out of the basket; he stepped on the little girl’s feet, and then she got up. Her brothers and father and mother were lying by the fire. She saw smoke coming out of all the houses and knew that everybody was alive. Then she was glad, and all the people were glad. [[272]]