Then Weeping-Face and Scowl-Face pulled off the blankets they were wearing. They sank to the floor and rolled about, after which they got up, calmly picked up the blankets and threw them over Mary’s head. And they began drumming a very light drumming. In the course of this drumming, the blankets shook: Mary sneezed; then she sneezed again.

“A good sign,” Slight-Wind said to her sister.

The drumming stopped, and Weeping-Face and Scowl-Face began to sigh and then to wail. After a time, with a flourish they plucked the blankets off Mary and observed her. What they observed did not seem to satisfy them, and they once again covered her with the blankets, only to pull them off, look again, and cover her again.

Finally Scowl-Face said, “A waste of our medicine.” But Weeping-Face said, “She may not be ready.”

Half an hour later, Slight-Wind said in a low voice, “It isn’t working. The guardian spirits’ image-masks aren’t working.”

Branch was chewing on her lip.

“Branch? It’s not working.”

“I heard you.”

“You don’t think,” Slight-Wind whispered, “that she’s some evil spirit, do you?”

“Of course not. Why do you say a foolish thing like that? She may be resisting us, but she is not evil. She is our sister.”

“What will we do next in order to help her?”

“I do not know.”

TWO MONTHS passed. One day Mary and her sisters worked cutting thin strips from deer hides. Mary went about her work with her face down. Her sisters watched her and exchanged looks.

Mary continued to cut. The deerskin resisted the knife she had been given, and as she pressed the blade its handle rubbed the skin between her thumb and forefinger. She had no calluses in that place. A small amount of blood first gathered and sat in the raw space and then, as she paid it no mind, spilled down the inside of her small hand.

When the blood began to drip onto the deerskin her younger sister looked up and then touched Mary’s arm. She said, “You bleed.”

Mary first looked down at her sister’s hand and then held up her own hand almost to eye level and looked at it as if she could not imagine how it had come to be there.

Her curiosity led her dangerously close to a thought.

Her hand hurt. It was strange.

To whom did the hand and arm belong? A narrow carmine ribbon wound its way down past her wrist.

“A small wound,” she said in English.

And then in English she said, “Blood.”

No one spoke until Slight-Wind said, “Blood?” in English.

Mary touched the blood with her left forefinger, which she then rubbed against her left thumb.

Branch said to Slight-Wind, “I forbid this. We speak Seneca here.” She rose and left the hut.

Slight-Wind also rose, and took Mary’s hand firmly in hers. “Blood,” Slight-Wind said in English.