The Flute of the Gods

by Marah Ellis Ryan

She would have said more, but he caught her up and held her too close for speech, and she felt in triumph the trembling of his body.

“The man Gonzalvo,”––he muttered––“I was walking to find the way I could kill him alone because you wear his gifts.”

“Fool!” she whispered again. “Shall I then go to a woman at Shufinne and kill her because her gifts are with you? I let her live to see that the gifts she brings are little beside my own! I bring you victory over Tahn-té the sorcerer of Povi-whah! I bring you the trail to his witch maid of the hills. With her he comes to make prayers in the night time! For this he guards the dwellings of the star where she is hidden. Tahn-té the sorcerer shall be under your feet! Ka-yemo––I bring this to you!”

And while they clung to each other, scarce daring to think that union and triumph was again their own, Tahn-té the Ruler of magic sat within the ancient dwelling where the symbols of the Po-Ahtun are marked on the walls even in this day.

In a shadowed corner a tiny fire glimmered, and by its light he studied the clear crystal of the sacred fire-stone. With prayer he studied it long, and the things speaking in the milky depths held him close, and the breath stopped in his body many times while he looked, and the prayers said through the Flute of the Gods were prayers to the Trues to which he sent all his spirit.

Then from his medicine pouch he took the seeds 260 of the sacred by-otle into which the dreams of the gods have ever grown as the blossom grows.

Darklings were these, gathered when the moon was at rest, and no wandering stars swam high in the night sky. The dreams in these shut out day knowledge, and the knowledge of earth life. For medicine dreams they shut out all of a man but that which is Spirit, and the body becomes as a dead body knowing not anything but dreams––feeling neither heat nor cold.

Of all medicine left on earth by the gods who once walked here, not any medicine is so strong to lift the soul to the Giver of Life even while the feet walk here over trails of thorns, or the whipping thongs cut bare to the bone the dancing flesh of penitents.

When Tahn-té had listened to Padre Luis, and had read of the grievous pain of that one Roman crucifixion of the founder of the church of Padre Luis, the boy had not been impressed as the good priest had hoped. Even then he had heard of the medicine drugs of different tribes, and the Medicine Spirit granted to some, and as a man he knew that the man to whom the gods give medicine gifts can make for himself joy out of that which looks like pain. He knew well that the earth born who drew to themselves God-power, do not die, and the man on the Roman cross could not die if his medicine Power of the Spirit was strong. He knew that he had only gone away as all the god-men and god-women have gone away at times from earth places.

He knew that strong magic of the spirit could always do this for a man if his heart was pure and steady, but not to another could he give the spirit power, or the heart of knowledge.