One morning Djákalips went fishing. At midday he had a basketful of nice fish. The elder wife cooked some of the fish in the coals and gave them to her husband to eat; she spoke to him, but he didn’t answer. He kept his arm over his eyes. The two sisters sat down in front of their straw house to dress fish and watch Djákalips. They were mad at him. They didn’t like him any longer. The younger sister thought: “I will make him look up!” She broke the gall of a fish and screamed: “Oh! I’ve broken a gall!” Djákalips looked up. His eyes were balls of fire, and his face was as red as blood. The sisters were terribly frightened; they wanted to get away. The elder sister said: “We have no wood, you must come and help me get some.” They ran off to the river and began to twist reeds to make a rope long enough to reach from the ground to the sky. They worked fast. When the rope was finished, they made it into a ball and threw the ball up till it caught in the sky; then they climbed on the rope that hung from the ball. As they climbed, they said: “We will leave the rope, and if Djákalips follows us, we will come down again.” They left a little animal sitting on the ground near the end of the rope, and told him not to tell where they had gone. Djákalips wondered why his wives didn’t come. At last he tracked them to the place where they had made the ball; he saw the little animal, and asked: “Where are my wives?” It wouldn’t tell. Djákalips pulled its hair, took out a handful; still it wouldn’t tell. He looked everywhere for tracks; then he came back to the same place and asked again: “Where are my wives?” He got no answer. He pulled out another handful of the little animal’s hair, then he went to hunt for tracks again. The tracks always led him back to the animal. When he had pulled all of the animal’s hair out, it said: “They have gone to the sky.” “How did they go?” asked Djákalips. “On a rope made of reeds. Here is the end of it. Look up and you will see where they are.” Djákalips climbed the rope. The sisters went far west, but he tracked them. They ran north and south, then they ran back to the rope and came down. As they touched the ground, the elder sister called to Djákalips: “You will never come back to this earth; you will always stay there in the sky. You will stay where the sun goes down, and in later times, when you look up and people see your red eyes, they will say: ‘Djákalips is going to make water freeze.’” Djákalips followed his wives north and south, but couldn’t find them; then he went back to where the sun sets and stayed there. He turned into the red clouds which we see in the fall of the year. When Djákalips is seen in the west, water freezes. MOASÄM BEPS, THE DAUGHTER OF SOUTH WIND CHARACTERS Moasäm Beps South Wind’s Daughter Tsákiak A Bird (English name unknown)