Oban's Myths & Legends
Pelican Girl (continued)
All day Pelican Girl did as she was told. She carried her pack basket but did not pick any berries.
Late in the afternoon, the girls headed back to the village. Pelican Girl was tired and walked slowly behind the Snipe sisters. Too busy talking to notice, the Snipe sisters got further ahead until they disappeared out of site around a bend in the trail.
Just then, Pelican Girl saw in the middle of the trail, a big goose that looked like it had fallen from the sky.
“Wow, look at that,” shouted Pelican Girl. She gently touched the goose with her foot.
“Maybe it had a heart attack or something?” she said. “Its feathers are so beautiful. My uncles could really use them.”
Forgetting her promise not to pick up anything, Pelican Girl bent over, picked up the goose and put it in her pack basket.
As she walked along the trail Pelican Girl thought to herself “This basket is becoming really, really heavy.”
Finally it became so heavy she had to put it down.
Just then she heard a strange noise and a man appeared in front of her basket.
“Little girl,” he whispered. “I want those beads around your neck and your wrists and ankles.”
Pelican Girl knew who it was.
It was Shoko, a powerful shaman from the North World where the fire-eaters lived. He had disguised himself as the goose so Pelican Girl would pick him up.
By breaking the custom of her people she had given him the power to carry her away to his land.
And that is what he did.
After Pelican Girl had removed her beads and thrown them to him, Shoko did a dance and spirited her off to the land of the North People where he hid her in a pit underneath a dance drum.
When the Snipe sisters returned to the village the people wanted to know what had happened to Pelican Girl.
The Snipe Girls were frightened. “We don’t know,” they said.
“We heard her say something about feathers, but when we went back to look, we couldn’t find her,” they cried.
So Coyote, the wise one, with some of the best trackers from the village and Pelican Girls mother, went to find her.
Coyote soon worked out what had happened.
“The people of the North World have taken her,” he said. “We must go there and rescue her.”
continue >> Pelican Girl Part 3
