“One day,” Stone Girl went on, “Kwal, the blue jay, flew into the face of Long Tail, the panther. A terrible quarrel followed that could be heard all through the forest. Long Tail screamed at the blue jay and the blue jay at Long Tail and when they had called each other all the bad names they could think of, they called bad names for their mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers. The animals gathered around and shook their heads. This was unbrotherly. Something had to be done. Memakockus, the red-headed woodpecker, told how he could roll up a ball of the inner bark of Wipunquok, the white oak, fastened together with pitch from the Tree That the Lightning Likes to Strike. Woapink, the possum, who is very wise, showed them how to strike flint to get a spark to light it. Then all the animals blew on it and Achto, the deer, who is very fast, ran with it through the forest till it was a ball of fire. When he got back, Waapalane, the eagle, was waiting to take it up in the sky higher than any other could go, and it has been up there giving us light ever since and now we call it the father of us Indians.”

Generally when she finished the story, Otter Boy would run to the window to look out and try to see the ball of fire. Since it was night he would come back disappointed and ask Simone for her story of the thunders.

“A long time ago there was a white man,” Simone began. “Now most white men are foolish but this one most of all, for he wanted to find the place where the thunders lived. He went westward and westward till he passed the place of the setting sun. Here he saw a high mountain. The top was covered with clouds. The trees on the side of the mountain were split in pieces and stripped of bark, so he knew he had come to the dwelling place of the thunders. He climbed on through the clouds till he found a nest as big as a house and in it a brood of young thunders not yet ready to fly. Around the nest were the skeletons of serpents the old thunders brought the young to eat. The foolish white man thought he would take one of the young thunders back to show to his people. He reached in with his spear but the young thunders gave a loud clap of alarm. Fire flashed from their mouths. The spear was shattered in pieces and the white man’s arm broken so that it hung like the neck of a slain snipe. Far away he heard the old thunders answer. They had heard the call of their young and were coming back to the nest. The white man tried to run down off the mountain but the old thunders were too fast for him. They struck him to the ground with their fire and there he lies, burned black as pitch, to this day.”