“Not very well, I’m afraid,” she said. “The eggs seem to get cold, no matter how close I sit.”
“Let me take a turn while you go and stretch your wings,” said the Kulloo. But when he sat down on the empty eggs they all broke with a great crash.
The Kulloo flew off in a terrible rage to find the wretch who had eaten up the eggs, and very soon he spied Lox snoring on the grass.
“Now I’ve caught him,” said the Kulloo; “it’s Lox, the mischief-maker.”
He pounced down, and caught hold of Lox by the hair and carried him a mile up into the sky, and then let go. Of course, Lox was broken into pieces when he struck the earth, but he just had time as he fell to say his strongest magic:
“Backbone! Backbone!
Save my backbone!”
So as soon as the Kulloo was out of sight the arms and legs and head began to wriggle together round the backbone, and then in a twinkling Lox was whole again.
“I shouldn’t like that to happen very often,” he said, looking himself over to see if every piece had joined in the right place. “I think I’ll go home and take a rest.”
But he had traveled so far that he was six months’ journey from his home; and he had made so many enemies, and done so much mischief, that whenever he came into a village and asked food and shelter the people hooted and pelted him out again. The birds and the beasts got to know when he was coming, and kept so far out of his way that he couldn’t get enough to eat, not even by his magic. Besides, he had wasted his magic so much that scarcely any was left. The winter came on, and he was cold as well as hungry, when at last he reached a solitary wigwam by a frozen river. The master of the wigwam didn’t know him, so he treated him kindly, and said, when they parted next morning:
“You have only three days more to go; but the frost-wind is blowing colder and colder, and if you don’t do as I say you will never get home. When night comes, break seven twigs from a maple-tree and stand them up against each other, like the poles of a wigwam, and jump over them. Do the same the next night, and the night after that if you are not quite home; but you can only do it thrice.”