Wus said: “Why do you have them stay outside? The spirits of the men will be out there talking. If the women answer, your work will be spoiled, and my brothers will never come to life.”
The old woman put the hearts in a basket of water and put hot stones around the basket. Then she tied blankets around the women and made them lie down in one corner of the house. She said: “When your brothers begin to come back, they will [[349]]talk to you; they will ask: ‘Are you glad to see us?’ ‘Have we been gone long?’ ‘What are you lying there for?’ ‘Get up and give us something to eat; we are hungry;’ but don’t answer, don’t say a word. If you do, there won’t be anything but hearts in the basket.”
When the water began to boil, the spirits of the men whose hearts were in the basket began to talk in the brush outside the house; then they went into the house and talked to the women. When the women didn’t answer, they pushed them and scolded. But the women didn’t look up, didn’t speak. After a while, there was a great noise, laughing and talking, then each man took his place by the fire.
The old woman said to them: “You should keep still; you have made me feel lonesome. You have been dead; I put ashes on my head and mourned for you.”
The eldest Wus said: “Why did you feel lonesome? You knew our brother had power, that nobody could kill him and that he could save us.”
They were glad when they saw their sister. She said: “Those men treated me badly; they wouldn’t give me anything to eat, and they threw me back and forth across the fire.”
“I am glad they didn’t make you eat our hearts,” said the eldest brother. “Those people sometimes make their captives eat the hearts of their own brothers and kin.” [[350]]