Near the sister’s house there was a sick man who was only skin and bones. He sent for Ktilisúnak. The young man told his sister to sing for Skoks. Skoks came, but nobody could see her. When the three got to the house, the man was dying. Ktilisúnak put a hand each side of him, front and back, and caught his life, didn’t let it get out of his body. In half a day the man was well.
When the sister got home, the medicines heard her say: [[373]]“Oh, I am tired!” In the night they said to the young man: “We didn’t think she would get tired of us so soon.”
The next morning Ktilisúnak asked his sister if she was tired of his medicines. She said: “I am tired of singing so much.”
“I am tired, too,” said the young man, “but I wouldn’t live long if I didn’t work for my medicines.”
The next night Ktilisúnak sang for himself. Skoks was angry because the brother and sister were tired. The other medicines said to him: “We didn’t know you felt so. We thought you would be glad to have us for servants. Hereafter you will be a common man; you will have no power to cure people.”
The medicines left him. As soon as they were gone, he began to feel sick; he cried and sang for his medicines, but they didn’t hear him, they had gone far away. The old men came, and sang and called to them, but they didn’t come. When Ktilisúnak told the old men how he and his sister had got tired of singing, they said: “We will try once more.”
“It’s no use,” said Ktilisúnak. “Skoks has got my life.” He grew thin and died. People brought nice beads and mats and burned them with his body.
Blaiwas said to the sister: “It is as if you had killed your own brother. Haven’t old people told you that medicines listen to what we say and that they can hear, even when they are a long way off?”
The sister felt badly. She burned up her house and went to another place. As soon as Ktilisúnak died, his old grandmother knew it. She was sorry that she had thrown him out, and three times each night she walked around the sister’s house crying. Her voice sounded Like the voice of a spirit. The sister wrapped herself up tight when she heard her grandmother around. Once, when she saw her, there were red tears on one side of the old woman’s face and black tears on the other. At last she called out: “My granddaughter, I am going to the mountains. I don’t want to be a person any longer, and hereafter you will not be a person; you will be a bird, and appear to doctors.” They both became birds. [[374]]