PART SIX: DUCKS AND RABBITS

This chapter presents a mythological text excerpted from a scholarly work on origin myths. It tells the legend of Ke, who remains singing to the great bird Ash-Abbé to protect his people, even as they call him down to join them in their new world.

The passage recounts a myth of origin in which Ke, a world-father figure, brought his people and all animals and plants to a new world on the back of Ash-Abbé, a great bird. After the people disembark, Ke remains behind, continuing to sing songs to the bird. For thirty-one days, his people—elders, young warriors, and infants—call out to him with various enticements and pleas, but Ke refuses to leave his post. On the thirty-first day, a weaver girl attempts to seduce him down by weaving grasses together, and though Ke desperately wishes to join them, he cannot. He explains that Ash-Abbé was deceived by his song; if Ke stops singing, the bird will grow angry and punish all the people. Unable to abandon his duty, Ke instead flies away with Ash-Abbé to the space between worlds, where he continues singing to protect his people, either still alive and singing or long dead but remembered through myth.