STAR GIRL
By
No star here. Bannock Indian Star Girl chases a porcupine up a tree, and the poplar grows into the sky where Norkuk of the Cheyenne of the Sky greets her, and takes her to Wind Woman. Star Girl remembers no past, finds pleasure in the new customs, and becomes ""assistant to respected Grass-root Woman."" When she digs the forbidden black turnip root, the hole in the ground (of the sky) reveals her cousin mourning for her, and her memory returns. Norkuk, now her ""promised one,"" explains that her expressed desire to ""marry that star up there"" was responsible for her coming: she asks that he let her return to earth, but realizes she is needed when, after Wind Woman dies, a friend falls ill and Star Girl alone can cure her. As a heroine Star Girl has tired blood, and the post-primer prose could use a tonic too. Arbitrary as the extension of a legend-fragment, awkward in the earth-to-sky transition, and without roots--grass or otherwise--as mythology.