A man and his wife went off hunting and left their little boy at home.
The mother said: “Stay here and watch things; don’t go away anywhere.”
The boy was afraid; he didn’t want to stay alone. The father and mother
had not been gone long when the boy heard a noise like a whirlwind in
tall grass. A Skoks had come for him, but he didn’t know that. He
looked out, looked over his left shoulder, and saw a kind of grayish
white fog. In that fog was a woman; one side of her face was painted in
black streaks, the other side was the color of ashes. She called out to
the boy: “Come here, little fellow!” The child didn’t go; he screamed
and fell dead.
The mother heard him scream and she ran home. When she found the boy
dead and cold as ice, she cried, and called for somebody to come.
Old Koé heard her and came; she took off the child’s clothes and rubbed
his body with ashes, then she put black coal on one side of his face
and white ashes on the other, and called for her Skoks. (Skoks was old
Koé’s medicine.)
Koé said to the mother: “A Skoks came for your child, but the little
fellow turned his left shoulder. If he had turned his right shoulder,
the Skoks would have taken his spirit away; but she didn’t get hold of
it; she called and it followed her. My Skoks will go for it.”
The boy’s spirit hadn’t gone far. Koé’s Skoks went right in front of it
and brought it back, and the child came to life. When the mother asked
how the Skoks looked, the boy said: “She had finger-nails longer than
her hand. I couldn’t see her plainly, but I heard her call me.”
The mother wanted to give Koé nice things, beads and porcupine quills,
but Koé said: “I don’t want any of those things; I only want to bring
back as many spirits as I can.”
The little boy grew fast; he was a great kiúks. When men asked how his
Skoks looked when she awakened him out of dreams, he said: “She has red
eyes, like fire in the night, and her nails are longer than her
fingers. She has hot ashes for her paint. One side of her face is
white; on that side are black tears, on the other side are red tears,
like blood.”