and darkened before his eyes. He ground his teeth. ‘I’ll kill him, I’ll kill him, I’ll kill him,’ he kept saying. And suddenly there were more words.

When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed …

The magic was on his side, the magic explained and gave orders. He stepped back into the outer room. ‘When he is drunk asleep …’ The knife for the meat was lying on the floor near the fireplace. He picked it up and tiptoed to the door again. ‘When he is drunk asleep, drunk asleep …’ He ran across the room and stabbed—oh, the blood!—stabbed again, as Popé heaved out of his sleep, lifted his hand to stab once more, but found his wrist caught, held and—oh, oh!—twisted. He couldn’t move, he was trapped, and there were Popé’s small black eyes, very close, staring into his own. He looked away. There were two cuts on Popé’s left shoulder. ‘Oh, look at the blood!’ Linda was crying. ‘Look at the blood!’ She had never been able to bear the sight of blood. Popé lifted his other hand—to strike him, he thought. He stiffened to receive the blow. But the hand only took him under the chin and turned his face, so that he had to look again into Popé’s eyes. For a long time, for hours and hours. And suddenly—he couldn’t help it—he began to cry. Popé burst out laughing. ‘Go,’ he said, in the other Indian words. ‘Go, my brave Ahaiyuta.’ He ran out into the other room to hide his tears.

‘You are fifteen,’ said old Mitsima, in the Indian words. ‘Now I may teach you to work the clay.’

Squatting by the river, they worked together.

‘First of all,’ said Mitsima, taking a lump of the wetted clay between his hands, ‘we make a little moon.’ The old man squeezed the lump into a disk, then bent up the edges; the moon became a shallow cup.

Slowly and unskilfully he imitated the old man’s delicate gestures.

‘A moon, a cup, and now a snake.’ Mitsima rolled out another piece of clay into a long flexible cylinder, hooped it into a circle and pressed it on to the rim of the cup. ‘Then another snake. And another. And another.’ Round by round, Mitsima built up the sides of the pot; it was narrow, it bulged, it narrowed again towards the neck. Mitsima squeezed and patted, stroked and scraped; and there at last it stood, in shape the familiar water-pot of Malpais, but creamy white instead of black, and still soft to the touch. The crooked parody of Mitsima’s, his own stood beside it. Looking at the two pots, he had to laugh.

‘But the next one will be better,’ he said, and began to moisten another piece of clay.

To fashion, to give form, to feel his fingers gaining in skill and power—this gave him an extraordinary pleasure. ‘A, B, C, Vitamin D,’ he sang to himself as he worked, ‘The fat’s in the liver, the cod’s in the sea.’ And Mitsima also sang—a song about killing a bear. They worked all day, and all day he was filled with an intense, absorbing happiness.

‘Next winter,’ said old Mitsima, ‘I will teach you to make the bow.’

He stood for a long time outside the house; and at last the ceremonies within were finished. The door opened; they came out. Kothlu came first, his right hand outstretched and tightly closed, as though over some precious jewel. Her clenched hand similarly outstretched, Kiakimé followed. They walked in silence, and in silence, behind them, came the brothers and sisters and cousins and all the troop of old people.

They walked out of the pueblo, across the mesa. At the edge of the cliff they halted, facing the early morning sun. Kothlu opened his hand. A pinch of corn meal lay white on the palm; he breathed on it, murmured a few words, then threw it, a handful of white dust, towards the sun. Kiakimé did the same. Then Kiakimé’s father stepped forward, and holding up a feathered prayer stick, made a long prayer, then threw the stick after the corn meal.

‘It is finished,’ said old Mitsima in a loud voice. ‘They are married.’