“So!” said Vana. “Give me a magic, Kamilil, that shall make all this tribe see that!”
Kamilil leaned back from her spinning. “That is a greater thing than I thought you came about.... That means to think of many children and many years and many men and women!”
“Yes,” said Vana. “How can it hurt children to have fathers as well as mothers leave to them?”
Kamilil fingered the red strands. “Change spreads.... When a river is in its bounds you know what you have to do with. You say, ‘It waters this field—it flows by these trees.’ Flood comes—that is, change—and you say, ‘Where are its banks?’ Throw a stone into a great pool. A little ring—a wider ring—a wider yet! As great as is the pool, so far the rings widen. That is change.... There is something in this that you talk about that I do not see clearly. To-night I will gather plants, and to-morrow I will brew from them, and in the smoke I shall see—I shall see—I shall see....”
Her distaff twirled faster. “Come to me three days hence,” she said, and called to her daughters to bring Vana honey cakes and wine.
Vana went home and brooded over what Kadoumin and Kamilil had said. A day and night passed and she determined to go to see Uduma, who lived by herself. That was to leave the town and follow the brook until it narrowed and you reached a cypress wood. Vana tied a measure of wheat in a square of fine cloth, and taking a staff in her hand set forth.
Uduma was one that was held in awe. Vana, as she went up the brook, thought first of her own fishing and the nets she was flinging over the future, then, the wood growing deep and the air darkly pure, her mood changed. She seemed to remember many things, only they were all blended, merged, fused. What came from it seemed to be a light-touched sadness, a chained and bound longing. Vana sighed, and used energy to overcome that mood.
The trees grew thickly, the gliding water talked to itself. Vana thought of offences against gods and goddesses, sprites and ministers. She made in the air Kamilil’s sign to banish evil and beckon good, and pursued her journey with a quickened step.
Before her broke a sunny space and here, in the midst, was the hut, round and low, of Uduma the seer, and Uduma herself seated on a stone, and near her an ewe and her lamb.
Vana stood still. “Hail, Uduma!”