The Flute of the Gods Part 2

"When I am Ruler, the witches must live in the old dead cities if you do not like them."

Mo-wa-the smiled at that.

"Yes, when you are Ruler. How will you make that happen?"

"All these days I have been thinking the thoughts how. If the moon brought me to you, that means that my father was not like others;--not like mesa men."

"No--not like mesa men!" she breathed softly.

Mo-wa-the was very pretty and very slender. Tahn-te was always sure no other mother was so pretty,--and as she spoke now her dark eyes were beautified by some memory,--and the boy saw that he was momentarily forgotten in some dream of her own.

"No one but me shall gather the wood for the night fire to light Po-se-yemo back from the south lands," he said as he rose to his feet and stood straight and decided before his mother. "The moon will help me, and your white G.o.d will help me, and when he sees the blaze and comes back, you will tell him it was his son who kept the fire!"

He took from his girdle the downy feather of an eagle, stepped outside to the edge of the mesa and with a breath sent it beyond him into s.p.a.ce. A current of air caught it and whirled it upwards in token that the prayer was accepted by Those Above.

And inside the doorway, Mo-wa-the, watching, let fall the medicine bowl at this added evidence that an enchanted day had come to the life of her son. Not anything he wanted to see could be hidden from him this day! Powerless, she knelt with bent head over the fragments of the sacred vessel--powerless against the G.o.ds who veil things--and who unveil things!

It was the next morning that Mo-wa-the stood at the door of Ho-tiwa the Ancient one;--the spiritual head of the village.

"Come within," he said, and she pa.s.sed his daughters who were grinding corn between the stones, and singing the grinding song of the sunrise hour. They smiled at her as she pa.s.sed, but with the smile was a deference they did not show the ordinary neighbor of the mesas in Hopi land.

The old man motioned her to a seat, and in silence they were in the prayer which belongs to Those Above when human things need counsel.

Through the prayer thoughts echoed the last thrilling notes of the grinding songs at the triumph of the sun over the clouds of the dusk and the night.

Mo-wa-the smiled at the meaning of it. It was well that the prayer had the music of gladness.

"Yes, I come early," she said. "I come to see you. The time is here."

"The time?"

"The time when I go. Always we have known it would be some day. The day is near. I take my son and go to his people."

"My daughter:--his people he does not know."

"My father:--no one but the winds have told him--yet he knows much! He has said to me the things by which I feel that he knows unseen things.

I told him long ago that the stars as they touch the far mesa in the night are like the fires our people build to light our G.o.d back from the south. Yesterday he tells me he wants to be the builder of that fire and serve that G.o.d. My father in this strange land:--my son belongs to the clan whose duty it is to guard that fire! I never told him. Those Above have told him. I have waited for a sign. The G.o.ds have sent it to me through my son--we are to go across the desert and find our people."

"It is a thing for council," decided her host. "The way is far to the big river,--it is not good that you go alone. Men of Ah-ko will come when they hear us stamp the foot for the time of the gathering of the snakes. When they come, we will make a talk. If it is good that you go, you will find brothers who will show the trail."

"That is well;" and Mo-wa-the arose, and stood before him. "You have been my brother, and you have been my father, and my son shall stay and see once more the rain ceremony of the Blue Flute people, and of the Snake people, and when he goes to his own land, he can tell them of the great rain magic of the Hopi Priests."

"He can do more than that," said the Ancient. "In council it has been spoken. Your son can be one of us, and the men of the Snake Order will be as brothers to him if ever he comes back to the mesa where the Sun Father and the Moon Mother first looked on his face. In the days of the Lost Others, all the people had Snake Power, as they had power of silent speech with all the birds, and the four-foot brothers of the forests. Only a few have not lost it, and the Trues send all their Spirit People to work with that few. Your son may take back to your people the faith they knew in the ancient days."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PRAYER TOKEN _Page 13_]

So it was that the boy watched the drama of the Flute people from the mesa edge for the last time. The circle of praying priests at the sacred well; virgins in white garments facing the path of the cloud symbols that the rain might come;--weird notes of the flute as the chanters knelt facing the medicine bowl and the sacred corn; then the coming of the racers from the far fields with the great green stalks of corn on their shoulders, and the gold of the sunflowers in the twist of reeds circling their brows. He did not know what the new land of his mother's tribe would bring him, but he thought not any prayer could be more beautiful than this glad prayer to the G.o.ds. Of that prayer he talked to Mo-wa-the.

Then eight suns from that day, he went from his mother's home to the kiva of the Snake Priests, and he heard other prayers, and different prayers, and when the sun was at the right height, for four days they left the kiva in silence, and went to the desert for the creeping brothers of the sands. To the four ways they went, with prayers, and with digging-sticks. He had wondered in the other days why the men never spoke as they left the kiva, and as they came back with their serpent messengers for the G.o.ds. After the first snake was caught, and held aloft for the blessing of the sun, he did not wonder.

He had shrunk, and thought it great magic when the brief public ceremony of the Snake Order was given before the awe-struck people:--It had been a matter of amaze when he saw the men he knew as gentle, kind men, holding the coiling snake of the rattles to their hearts and dance with the flat heads pressed against their painted cheeks.

But the eight days and nights in the kiva with these nude, fasting, praying men, had taught him much, and he learned that the most wonderful thing in the taming of the serpents was not the thing to which the people of the dance circle in the open were witness. He was only a boy, yet he comprehended enough to be awed by the strong magic of it.

And of that prayer of the serpents he talked not at all to Mo-wa-the.

And the Ancient knew it, and said. "It is well! May he be a great man--and strong!"

From a sheath of painted serpent skin the Ruler drew a flute brown and smooth with age.

"Le-lang-uh, the G.o.d of the Flute sent me the vision of this when I was a youth in prayer," he said gently. "I found it as you see it long after I had become a man. On an ancient shrine uncovered by the Four Winds in a wilderness I found it. I have no son and I am old. I give it to you. Strange white G.o.ds are coming to the earth in these days, and in the south they have grown strong to master the people. I will be with the Lost Others when you are a man, but my words here you will not forget;--the magic of the sacred flute has been for ages the music of the growing things in the Desert. The G.o.d of the Flute is a G.o.d old as the planting of fields, and a strong G.o.d of the desert places. It may be that he is strong to lead you here once more to your brothers on some day or some night--and we will be glad that you come again.

For this I give the flute of the vision to you. I have spoken.

Lo-lo-mi!"

CHAPTER III

OF THE JOURNEY OF TAHN-Te

The journey of Tahn-te to his mother's land of the East was the wonder journey of the world! There were medicine-men of Ah-ko for their guides, and the people were many who went along, so no one was afraid of the Navahu of the hill land.

And a new name was given to his mother. Ho-tiwa gave her the name, and put on her head the water of the pagan baptism to wash away that which had been. The new name was S[=aa]-hanh-que-ah and it meant the "Woman who has come out from the mists of a Shadow or Twilight Land." And they all called her by that name, and the men of Ah-ko regarded her with awe and with respect, and listened in silence when she spoke.

For the first time the boy saw beyond the sands of the desert, and in the high lands touched the running water of living springs, and scattered meal on it with his prayers, and bathed in the stream where green stems of rushes grew, and braided for himself a wreath of the ta.s.selled pine.

"_Ai-ai!_" said his mother softly,--"to the people of my land the pine is known as the first tree to come from the Mother Earth at the edge of the ice robe on her bosom. So say the ancients, and for that reason is it sacred to the G.o.ds--and to the sacrifices of G.o.ds. Have you, my son, woven a crown of sacrifice?"

But Tahn-te laughed, and thrust in it the scarlet star blossom growing in the timber lands of the Navahu.

"If I am made sacrifice I will have a blood strong, living reason," he said, with the gay insolence of a young G.o.d walking on the earth.

But the older men did not smile at the bright picture he made with the blood-red stars in the green of his crown. They knew that even untried youth may speak prophet words, and they made prayers that the wise woman of the twilight land might not see the day when her son became that which he had spoken.

He carried with him a strange burden:--an urn or jar of ancient days dug from one of the buried cities of the Hopi deserts. On it was the circle of the plumed serpent, and the cross of red and of white. It was borne on his back by a netted band of the yucca fibre around his brow, and in it were young peach trees, and pear trees--the growing things of the mystic seeds given to the medicine-men of the Hopi the day of the boy's birth.

Seeds also were being carried, but it was the wish of the mother that her son carry the growing things into the great valley of the river P[=o]-s[=o]n-ge.

Even into the great rift of the earth called Tze-ye did he carry it, where the cliff homes of the Ancient Others lined the sides of the canon and the medicine-men of Ah-ko spoke in hushed tones because of the echoing walls, and of the strong G.o.ds who had dwelt there in the days before men lived and died.

"The dead of the Ancient ones are hidden in many hollow places of the stone," explained one of the men who spoke the language of Te-hua people. "And it is good medicine for the man who can walk between these walls where the Divine Ones of old made themselves strong. You do not fear?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: BLOOD-RED STARS IN THE GREEN OF HIS CROWN _Page 18_]

"I do not fear," said S[=aa]-hanh-que-ah, the woman of the twilight, "and my son does not fear. Before he was born to the light of the Sun Father, I made the trail from the level land of the west where the snow is, to the deep heart of the world where the plants have blossoms in winter time, and the birds sing for summer. Beside it this deep step down from the world above is like the thickness of your finger against the height of a tall man."

The men stared at her in wonder, and Tahn-te listened, but could not speak when the older men were silent.