The Maid of Dreams Page 130
Not once did she turn her eyes towards him as she stood, dripping with the water of the bath. Her slender figure was in shadow, and her movements were shy and alert and quick.
To the dry sand she stepped, and lifted thence a white deerskin robe. Two bluebird wings were in the white banda about her loosened hair, very blue was the color of the wings as the light touched them, and he thought of the wonderful Navahu Goddess Estsan-atlehi who was created from an earth jewel––the turquoise, and who is the belovéd of the Sun. If a maid could be moulded from any jewel of earth, Tahn-té thought she would look like this spirit of the forest stream. Even while held by the wonder and the beauty of the vision, he thought of this, and recalled the bluebird feathers in the prayer plumes of Tusayan:––next to the eagle they were sacred feathers:––the gods were sending him strong thoughts for magic!
Suddenly the maid stood tense and erect as though listening––or was it only the nearness of a mortal by which she was thrilled to movement?––for she clasped the trailing white skin to her breast, and stepped into the deeper shadow where grew the fragrant thickets of the young pine under the arms of the great pine mothers.
Without sound she moved. His eyes watched in strained eagerness for the one turn of the head, or one look of the eyes towards him, but that was not to be. To mortal all the joys cannot be given at one time––else all would be as gods!
He stared at the shadows into which she had blended herself, and he stared at the pool from which 133 she had arisen. It was again a mirror reflecting only the coming day. Yet his heart leaped as he saw a sign left there for him!
Drifting idly there in a circle was a bit of blue too vivid for the echo of the sky of dawn––it was the wing of a bluebird, and even as he looked, it was caught in an eddy more swift, and moved on the surface of the water straight to the edge of the bank nearest his place of rest.
Staggering to his feet, he went to meet it. It was not an empty vision as the maid had been, and it did not fade as he grasped it. The visions of the night had been strong visions, but with the dawn had come to Tahn-té the added medicine of the second gift of the Spirits of the Air. Above the clouds must his thoughts be in their height. The medicine of the eagle had made that plain to him, and the feathers of prayer lay in his hand as a sign such as had come to no other man!
The Brothers of the Air were plainly to be his kindred!