Between the Castilians in the pine below, and the Te-hua sentinels on the rock mesa of the ruins above, there stretched the line of cave dwellings high in the rock wall. These needed no guard––for there the Te-hua warriors slept, and Tahn-té read the fate of things in the crystal, and made prayers.
But to the east where he had forbidden wandering feet, a man and woman did crouch in a crevice, and watch while the shining ones overhead travelled to the center of the sky and then towards the mountains in the trail of the sun.
For Tahn-té they watched––and the watching was so long that the man slept at intervals in the arms of the woman––but the woman did not sleep! Victory was too near––and triumph beat in her blood, and like a panther of the hills waiting for prey did she listen for the steps of the man who had known her humiliation.
But when the steps did come, they came not from the Po-Ahtun-ho, nor were they the steps of a man.
A woman crept lightly as a mountain squirrel from one to another of the boulders on the eastern hill, and at last climbed to the dwellings of the Ancient Ones, and reached the portal of the sacred place of the star.
This was the place where the wise men of old watched the coming of the gods as they gazed upon earth through the mask of the glimmering stars. It was not a place for women, for no woman had been Reader of the Stars within known records of the Te-hua people. Yet it surely was a woman who crept upwards in the night to the place where women feared to go.
Yahn Tsyn-deh slipped like a snake from the crevice and watched from the shadow of a rock, and was richly repaid. It was the Woman of the Twilight who came to the place where Tahn-té had forbidden the Castilians and warriors to walk, and against the sky Yahn could see the outline of a water jar borne on her back by the head-band of woven hemp. She halted for breath, and leaned, a frail, breathless ghost of a woman, against the wall.
Then with a pebble she tapped on the portal of the star, four times she made the signal ere another met her in the dusk, and took from her the burden, and clung to her hand in dread.
In the dusk of the starlight they sat and whispered, for no fire dare be lit within, and the girl of the bluebird wing ate the bread and drank water, and breathed her gratitude while she strove to understand the words of the mother of Tahn-té.