Atondido Stories
"Do you hear that? It is the doll," said the woman, shaking
her husband till he awakened.
They got up at once and, making a light, saw that the Doll
had eaten the food and drunk the water, and that its eyes were
moving. The woman caught it up with delight and fondled and
played with it for a long time. When she became tired she put it
back on the bench and they went to bed again.
In the morning when they got up the Doll was gone. They
looked for it all around the house, but could not find it. Then
they went outside, and there were its tracks leading away from
the door. They followed the tracks to the creek and along the
bank to a place outside the village, where they ended; for from
this place the Doll had gone up the Milky Way on the path of
light upon which the man had gone to find the tree.
Doll traveled along the bright path till he came to the edge of
day, where the sky comes down to the earth and walls in the
light. Close beside him, in the east, he saw a skin cover fastened
over a hole in the sky wall. The skin was bulging inward as if
some strong force on the other side were pushing it.
"It is very quiet here. I think a little wind would make it live-
lier," said the Doll, drawing his knife and cutting the cover loose
on one side of the hole. At once a strong wind blew through, eve-
ry now and then bringing with it a live reindeer. Looking
through the hole, Doll saw beyond the wall another world like
the earth. He drew the cover over the hole again.
"Do not blow too hard," he said to the wind. "Sometimes
blow hard, sometimes light, and sometimes do not blow at all."
Then he got upon the sky wall and walked along till he came
to the southeast. Here another opening was covered like the first,
and the covering was bulging inward. When he cut this covering
loose a gale swept in bringing reindeer, trees, and bushes.
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