oon after the world was made, God created a beautiful maiden and gave
her charge of all the birds beneath the heavens. Her name was Lindu. Her
father's name was Uko. She knew all the birds of passage, and where they
should go in autumn, and she sent each flock on its way.

Lindu cared for the birds tenderly, like a mother for her children, and
gave them help whenever it was possible. She sent the stormy wind to
blow dust into the eyes of the fierce hunters when they were seeking to
slay her pets. It was not surprising that all the world loved her, and
those who dwelt in the sky most of all.

The North Star wished to make her his wife. He drove up to Uko's palace
with a dusky coach drawn by six black horses, and in the coach were ten
fine presents. But Lindu did not love him.

"You always stay in one place, and cannot stir from it," said she. "Go
back to your watch-tower."

Then came the Moon drawn in a silver coach by ten gray horses, and the
Moon brought twenty presents. But Lindu did not love the Moon.

"You change your face too often and not your path, and that will never
suit me," she said.

So the Moon drove away wearing his saddest face. Scarcely had the Moon
gone before the Sun drove up. He rode in a golden coach drawn by twenty
gold-red horses, and he brought thirty presents with him. But all his
grandeur went for nothing with Lindu, for she said:

"I do not love you. You follow the same track day by day, just like
the Moon. I love the changing seasons, the changing winds, anything
that changes."

At that the gold-red horses leaped away and Lindu was alone with
her birds.

At length the Northern Light came from his home in the midnight land in
a diamond coach drawn by a thousand white horses. He was so grand that
Lindu went to the door to meet him. His servants carried a whole
coach-load of gold and silver, pearls and jewels into her house. She
loved this bright suitor at once.