Shalako

She is, still, loved by all children.

In eighteen ninety-six, her family is chosen to host one of the great houses of Shalako, the winter ceremony in which towering masked beings come into the village at dusk and dance all night in the houses prepared for them.

It is an enormous honor and an enormous labor.

We-Wha works for weeks.

She lays the stone floor with her own hands, the floor where the bird god will dance.

The ceremony comes, the drums begin, and while the dancing goes on in the next room, We-Wha lies down, and her heart, which has carried so much, grows tired.

She dies quietly at home around the age of forty-seven with the sound of Shalako in the walls.

Matilda is there.