Ocean's Breath Plateau ⩸ ukigiyummiktuk ⩸

THE THIRD SONG

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fall has come

the time of morning frost

the time of changing leaf

do you hear them?

do you hear the deer running in the forest?

their hooves make a song to lead you into the night

it had only been kukutux and sialuk before.

now it was moonwoman and returned daughter, ariadne, soft voice soaking the angry scab of pain which threatened to close oozing edges around mother's heart.

here she wept; here she cried aloud until voice heaving sorrows broke back into chant, arms holding herself; aya!

lynx, there with her now as she wept, these words only in her mind now.

you gave a son. he returned. now you give a daughter. she cannot.

tooteega; old one; and she looked soberly down upon the unmoving child turned toward the silent breast of its mother. again moonwoman heard the firm voice in the tones of her own thought.

i will take her spirit.

i will set her back among the stars. she will wait to be born again.

once kukutux had been a child. she had mingled mother's-words with plucked forbidden tones from the shaman's throat.

but now she knew them true to herself.

in the second singing, her chants were stark and confident.

what had she told sialuk?

"kivliktuk," she said to ariadne aloud now in remembered heaviness, her aching eyes fixed upon the ulaq wherein her gone-child lay. "if a spirit returns after three days, they are not who they say, and they may wear the face of one who is loved. we sing on for the rest of the days. your sister walks between moon and star now. it is not so long before sedna has embraced her."

the third day, the first of spirit-secrets handed now to a second daughter.

kukutux returned to the sonorous twining of chant and weeping.