n who was a great worker in
brass,--the Malaki Tuangun; [79] and the Moglung gave him directions
for the journey, saying, "You will come to a place where a hundred
roads meet. Take the road that is marked with the prints of many
horses and carabao. Do not stop at the place of the crossroads,
for if you stop, the Bia [80] who makes men giddy will hurt you."
Then the Malaki went away, and reached the place where a hundred
roads crossed, as Moglung had said. But he stopped there to rest and
chew betel-nut. Soon he began to feel queer and dizzy, and he fell
asleep, not knowing anything. When he woke up, he wandered along up
the mountain until he reached a house at the border of a big meadow,
and thought he would stop and ask his way. From under the house he
called up, "Which is the road to the Malaki Tuangun?"
It was the Bia's voice that answered, "First come up here, and then
I'll tell you the road."
So the Malaki jumped up on the steps and went in. But when he was
inside of her house, the Bia confessed that she did not know the way
to the Malaki Tuangun's house.
"I am the woman," she said, "who made you dizzy, because I wanted to
have you for my own."
"Oh! that's the game," said the Malaki. "But the Moglung is my wife,
and she is the best woman in the world."
"Never mind that," smiled the Bia. "Just let me comb your hair." Then
the Bia gave him some betel-nut, and combed his hair until he grew
sleepy. But as he was dropping off, he remembered a certain promise
he had made his wife, and he said to the Bia, "If the Moglung comes
and finds me here, you be sure to waken me."
After eight days had passed from the time her husband left home,
the Moglung started out to find him, for he had said, "Eight days
from now I will return."
By and by the Moglung came to the Bia's house, and found the Malaki
there fast asleep; but the Bia did not waken him. Then the Moglung
took from the Malaki's toes his toe-rings (paniod [81]), and went away,
leaving a message with the Bia:--
"Tell the Malaki that I am going back home to find some other malaki:
tell him that I'll have no more to do with him."
But the Moglung did not go to her own home: she at once started for
her brother's house that was up in the sky-country.
Presently the Malaki woke up, and when he looked at his toes, he
found that his brass toe-rings were gone.
"The Moglung has been here!" he cried in a frenzy. "Why didn't you
waken me, as I told you?" The
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