The Stone Axe of Burkamukk

by Mary Grant Bruce

"That is true enough," said Chukeroo gloomily. "What are we to do?"

"I will make you armour," said Wonga. "Then we will go back, and when the demon throws the spears at you they will stick in the armour, and I will rush in and secure them."

"I do not know that it is much of a plan, but at least I have no better," said Chukeroo. "Be quick, or the demon may come and find us unarmed."

So Wonga broke off young saplings, and lashed them round his friend with strips of twisted stringy bark fibre, until nothing of him could be seen, and he had great difficulty in moving. Then, slowly and cautiously, they made their way back to the open space where they had fought.

Yillin was standing wearily by a tree with the spears in her hand. She jumped round as they came, and while she flung spear after spear at Chukeroo, Wonga ran through the trees and came behind her. His foot struck against her own digging-stick, and he picked it up and rushed at her. The point caught in her shining scales, and ripped them up as though they were paper. They fell in tatters about her.

"Do not kill me!" she cried. "I am a chief's daughter!"

"A chief's daughter, are you?" said Wonga. Suddenly his angry face grew soft with pity. "Why, I thought you a demon," he said—"and lo! you are only a poor, frightened little girl!"

*****

So the wanderings of Yillin came to an end, and though she missed happiness with Arawotya in the sky, yet, as Wonkawala had said in her vision, she found it elsewhere. For Wonga took her home and married her, and his tribe treated her with honour because she was the daughter of a mighty chief; and later on, Wonga became the chief of his own tribe, and she helped him to rule it in wisdom. Very often she was lonely for her four sisters, especially for little Peeka, whom she had loved best of all: but she comforted herself by thinking that they were happy with Arawotya in the sky, and that some day she would find them again. Then, together, they would go at the last to Pund-jel, Maker of Men, and join their father Wonkawala. There were five stars in the southern sky that she liked to watch, for she grew to believe that they were her sisters, and that the tiniest of the five was her little dog Dulderana. They are the stars of the Southern Cross. And it seemed to Yillin that they looked down at her and smiled.

Otherwise, Yillin was never lonely, for many children came to her and Wonga, and her wurley always seemed full of jolly black babies and wee lasses and lads. Yillin did not mind however many there were, especially as she did not have to worry about clothes for them. They grew into strong, merry boys and girls, who loved dancing and songs and laughter just as she had always loved them. She used to tell them the story of her wanderings, and when she came to the part about the silver scales that had once covered her, they would pretend to hunt for them on her black skin, and would laugh very much because they could never find any. And Wonga would laugh too, and say, "Ah, well, many men find their wives demons after they have married them, so I was lucky in only thinking that of mine beforehand—and then finding I had made a mistake!"