The Guiding Duck and the Lake of Death
Zuni (New Mexico)

Now K-yak-lu, the all-hearing and wise of speech, all alone had been
journeying afar in the North Land of cold and white loneliness. He was
lost, for the world in which he wandered was buried in the snow which
lies spread there forever. So cold he was that his face became wan and
white from the frozen mists of his own breath, white as become all
creatures who dwell there. So cold at night and dreary of heart, so lost
by day and blinded by the light was he that he wept, and died of heart
and became transformed as are the gods. Yet his lips called continually
and his voice grew shrill and dry-sounding, like the voice of far-flying
water-fowl. As he cried, wandering blindly, the water birds flocking
around him peered curiously at him, calling meanwhile to their comrades.
But wise though he was of all speeches, and their meanings plain to him,
yet none told him the way to his country and people.

Now the Duck heard his cry and it was like her own. She was of all
regions the traveller and searcher, knowing all the ways, whether above
or below the waters, whether in the north, the west, the south, or the
east, and was the most knowing of all creatures. Thus the wisdom of the
one understood the knowledge of the other.

And the All-wise cried to her, "The mountains are white and the valleys;
all plains are like others in whiteness, and even the light of our
Father the Sun, makes all ways more hidden of whiteness! In brightness
my eyes see but darkness."

The Duck answered: