My mother tells me to never go down to the river’s edge. For she lurks there, deep beneath the waves, and so long as I remain ashore She will not take me.
She is Tsagaglalal, who became “She Who Watches.” A river devil, a monster, and the greatest chieftain my tribe had ever known.
She sleeps beneath the soft sand of the riverbed, her lissome fox’s face pointed up, black nose shining. Calculating, golden eyes are always watching, waiting, watching. Watching for children to sate her hunger. Tiny morsels she can pluck from the earth and crush beneath her teeth. Or she will make a slave of you – river marked, her own – a thrall to her desires until your family drowns beneath the waves and she has devoured her pound of flesh.
She is my father’s eternal antagonist, and this is the story of how my father, Coyote, was her salvation.
