“You saw her? Where?”
“Outside the house.”
“Is she home, then?”
“I do not know.”
“Who else saw her?”
“I don’t know that.”
“Hwettez—Hwette?”
“I could not tell.”
“Whom have you told?”
“No one but you.”
“You’re crazy, Sahelm,” the doctor said. “What have you been doing? Moongazing?”
Sahelm said again, “I saw Hwette,” but the doctor was angry at him. She said, “Everybody’s seen her, and each in a different place! If she’s here, she’ll be in her house, not outside it. This is all crazy. I’m going to Hardcinder House and talk to the women there. Come if you want to.”
Sahelm said nothing, and Duhe went on through the narrow gardens. He watched her go around the oleander bushes towards Hardcinder House. Somebody up on a balcony of that house was shaking out blankets and hanging them over the railing to air. The day was already getting hot. Squash blossoms and tomato blossoms were yellow all around in the narrow gardens, and the eggplant flowers were beautiful. Sahelm had eaten nothing but lettuce and lemon the day before. He felt dizzy, and began to separate and be in two times at one time. In one time he was standing among squash blossoms alone, in one time he was on a hillside talking to a woman wearing white clothes. She said, “I am Hwette.”
“You’re not Hwette.”
“Who am I, then?”
“I do not know.”
The woman laughed and whirled around. His head whirled around inside itself. He came back together on his hands and knees on the path between tomato vines. A woman was standing there saying something to him. He said, “You are Hwette!”
She said, “What’s the matter? Can you stand up? Come on out of the sun. Maybe you’ve been fasting?” She pulled his arm and helped him up, and held his arm till they came into the shade of the drying-racks at the end of the narrow gardens by the first row of Pedoduks vines. She pushed him a little till he sat down on the ground in the shade. “Are you feeling better at all?” she asked him. “I came to pick tomatoes and saw you there, talking, and then you fell down. Who was it you were talking to?”
He asked, “Did you see someone?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see well through the tomato vines. Maybe some woman was there.”
“Was she wearing white, or undyed?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know the people here,” she said. She was a slender, strong, young woman with very long hair braided nine times, wearing a white shift belted with a many-colored woven sash, carrying a gathering basket.
Sahelm said, “I’ve been fasting and going into trance. I think I should go home and rest a while.”
“Eat something before you walk,” the young woman said. She went and took some plums off the racks and picked some yellow pear-tomatoes from a vine. She brought these to Sahelm, gave them to him, and watched him eat them. He ate very slowly. “The flavors are strong,” he said.
“You’re weak,” she said. “Go on. Eat it all, the food of your gardens given you by the stranger.” When he was done, she asked, “Which house do you live in?”
“Between the Orchards,” he answered. “But you live in Hardcinder House. With Kamedan.”
“Not any more,” she said. “Come on now, stand up. Show me where your house is between the orchards, and I’ll go with you.” She went with him to his house and up the stairs to the first floor; she went with him into the room he used, laid out his mattress, and said to him, “Now lie down.” While he turned away to lie down, she turned away and left.
Coming away from that house she saw a man coming down into Telina between the Telory Hills, following the creek path from the hunting side, carrying a dead deer. She greeted them: “Heya, guest from the Right Hand coming, my word and thanks to you! And you, Hunter of Telina, so you’re here.”
He said, “So you’re here, Dancer of Wakwaha!”
She walked along beside them. “Very beautiful, that Blue Clay person who gave himself to you. You must be a strong singer.”
“And a strong crossbowman.”
“Tell me all about your hunt.”
Modona laughed. “I see you know that the best of the hunting is the telling. Well, I went up on Spring Mountain in the middle of the day, and spent the night at a camp I know up there, a well-hidden place. The next day I watched the deer. I saw which doe went with two fawns and which with one and which with a fawn and a yearling. I saw where they met and gathered, and what bucks were about alone. I chose this spike-horned buck to sing to, and began singing in my mind. In the twilight of evening he came, and died on my arrow. I slept by the death, and in the twilight of morning the coyote came by singing too. Now I’m bringing the death to the heyimas; they need deer hooves for the Water Dance, and the hide will go to the Tanners, and the meat to the old women in my household, to jerk; and the horns—maybe you’d like the horns to dance with?”
“I don’t need the horns. Give them to your wife.”
“Such a being there is not,” said Modona.
The smell of the blood and meat and hair of the death was pungent and sweet. The deer’s head was near the dancer’s shoulder, moving up and down as Modona walked. Grass seeds and chaff lay on the open eye of the deer. Seeing this, the dancer blinked and rubbed her eyes. She said, “How do you know I’m from Wakwaha?”
“I’ve seen you dance.”
“Not here in Telina.”
“Maybe not.”
“In Chukulmas?”
“Maybe so.”
She laughed. She said, “And maybe in Kastoha-na, and maybe in Wakwaha-na, and maybe in Ababa-badaba-na! You can see me dance in Telina this evening, anyhow. What strange men there are in this town!”
“What have they done that you think so?”
“One of them sees me dancing where I’m not, another doesn’t see me dancing where I am.”
“What man is that—Kamedan?”
“No,” she answered. “Kamedan lives there,” pointing to Hardcinder House, “though the man says I do. He lives there,” pointing along the arm to Between the Orchards House, “and has visions in the tomato patch.”
Modona said nothing. He kept looking at her across the death, turning his eyes but not his head. They came to the narrow gardens, and Isitut stopped there, saying, “I was sent to pick tomatoes for our troupe to eat.”
“If your players would like venison as well, here it is. Will you be here several days? It has to be hung.”
“The old women in your household need the meat for jerky.”
“What they need, I’ll give them.”
“A true hunter! Always giving himself!” said the dancer, laughing and showing her teeth. “We’ll be here four days or five days at least.”
“If you want enough to go around, I’ll kill a kid to roast with this meat. How many are you?”
“Nine and myself,” said Isitut, “but only seven of us eat meat. The deer is enough; we will be filled full with meat and gratitude. Tell me what to play for the feast you bring us.”
“Play Tobbe, if you will,” Modona said.
“We’ll play Tobbe, on the fourth evening.”
She was picking tomatoes now, filling her basket with yellow pear and small red tomatoes. The day was hot and bright, all smells very powerful, the cicadas shrilling loud near and far continuously. Flies swarmed to the blood on the hair of the deer’s death.
Modona said, “That man you met here, the visionary, he came here from Kastoha. He’s always acting crazy. He doesn’t go across into the Four Houses, he just walks around here staring and jabbering, making accusations, making up the world.”