Like a flash came the memory of that other time at the edge of that other mesa in Hopi-land! He had said those words to his mother––and had forgotten them. He could never forget them again, for the god had sent them back to him to remember. And Tahn-té trembled at the wondrous signs given him this night, and sprinkled meal to the four ways, and held prayer thoughts of exaltation in his heart.
And this was the last day of the boy years of Tahn-té.
He began then the years of the work for which his Other Self told him he had been born on earth.
CHAPTER VI
TAHN-TÉ––THE RULER
Summers of the Sun, and winters when the stars danced for the snow, had passed over the valley of Povi-whah. New people had been born into the world, and old people had died, but the oldest man in the council, K[=a]-ye-fah––the Ruler of Things from the Beginning, had lived many years after the time when he thought the shadow life must come to him. And to the Woman of the Twilight he had said that it was her son who kept him living––her son to whom he taught the ancient things of his own youth. In the keen enthusiasms he had found such a son as he had longed for. The lost daughter, K[=a]-ye-povi, he had never found––and never forgotten. To Tahn-té he had talked of her until she almost lived in their lives. The face of the god-maid on the south mesa had for K[=a]-ye-fah the outline of chin and backward sweep of hair strangely akin to the face of the lost child. He liked to think the god-maid belonged more to his clan of Towa Toan––the High Mesa clan––than to another.
“If she had not gone into the shadow land, her face would have looked that way,” he said.
“And we could gather bright flowers for her hair,”––said the boy––“they would be sweeter than the cold, far brightness of the stars where the god-maid waits,” and he pointed to where Antares gleamed from the heart of the Scorpion above the dusk profile,––“I think of K[=a]-ye-povi as the dream maid. She 57 will be my always young sweetheart––my only one.”