“Go off now! Maybe you will be a big chief and have many wives!”
The boy was naked and cold, but he got up and started off to see if he could find his sister’s house. He cried all the way. When he got to the flat, he saw a woman coming with a great pack of old ragged mats on her back. The boy was scared; he trembled all over. He could see the woman’s head and pack, but he couldn’t see below her waist. He thought: “That isn’t a living person,” and he grew as cold as ice.
When he thought: “That isn’t a living person,” the woman screamed out, and right away the boy changed. He could see the woman, and he said: “I am not afraid of you now. My grandmother has thrown me out; I will give myself to anybody I meet.”
The woman was a Skoks, and she came in a whirlwind. As the boy looked, she grew taller and taller. At last her head reached the sky. She screamed a second time. The boy’s eyes were big from looking at her. The third time she screamed, she was there by him. She tried to pass him on the right side, but he pushed hard to the other side. As she passed him, he [[371]]fell on his back; blood came out of his mouth and he lost his mind. Skoks had pulled his heart out and carried it off. (If she had passed on the left side she would have taken his spirit and carried it to Skoksun Kalo.)
Skoks went off in the air till she came to where the sun goes down; she stopped there just above the earth. Her hand was shut tight, and she held the boy’s heart in it; she talked to the heart, and laughed.
She said: “Heart, I am trying you to see if you will be like me,” and she laughed again.
The boy lay on the ground as if dead, but his spirit heard the Skoks talk to his heart, as she sat on the air and held the heart in her hand. After a while she opened her hand and let go of the heart. Then the little boy thought he saw a bird coming from the west. It came to him and lighted on his breast. That moment he jumped up and went toward his sister’s house. He had changed; he wasn’t a little boy; he was a young man.
His sister didn’t know him. When he called her “sister,” she asked: “What has changed you so?” She was scared. He didn’t answer; he only laughed.
“Why don’t you speak?” she asked.
Then he said: “Out on the flat I saw a tall woman with a big pack of old ragged mats on her back.”