“No,” said the daughter, “my spirit will go west without touching the ground as it goes. How could you go with me?”
“I know what to do,” said Kumush. “I know all things above, below, and in the world of ghosts; whatever is, I know.”
She put on the dress, Kumush took her hand, and they started, leaving their bodies behind. Kumush was not dead but his spirit left the body.
As soon as the daughter died, she knew all about the spirit world. When they started she said to her father: “Keep your eyes closed; if you open them you will not be able to follow me, you will have to go back and leave me alone.”
The road they were traveling led west to where the sun sets. Along that road were three nice things to eat: goose eggs, wild cherries and crawfish. If a spirit ate of the wild cherries it would be sent back to this world, a spirit without a body, to wander about homeless, eating wild cherries and other kinds of wild fruit. If it ate of the goose eggs, it would wander around the world, digging goose eggs out of the ground, like roots. It would have to carry the eggs in a basket without a bottom, and would always be trying to mend the basket with plaited grass. If it ate of the crawfish it would have to dig crawfish in the same way.
A Skoks offered Kumush’s daughter these three harmful things, but she did not look at them; she went straight on toward the west, very fast.
After a time Kumush asked: “How far have we gone now?”
“We are almost there,” said the girl. “Far away I see beautiful roses. Spirits that have been good in life take one of those roses with the leaves, those that have been bad do not see the roses.”
Again Kumush asked: “How far are we now?”
“We are passing the place of roses.”