Hohokimal

Hohokimal is the book’s origin story of the butterflies, a tale in which I’itoi transforms autumn’s leaves, shade, sunlight, flowers, and pieces of blue sky into bright, dancing life. Its decisive idea is not simply that butterflies are beautiful, but that they answer I’itoi’s wish for something that can remain beautiful even as everything around it changes. Repeated within a novel marked by missing girls, death, and maternal grief, the story gives change and loss a different imaginative shape: creation can gather fragments into something that moves onward.

The Setting and I’itoi’s Wish

The tale begins with I’itoi, also called Elder Brother, arriving at a village to see whether his Desert People have enough water after the long summer heat. As he walks, he hears children playing and pauses to watch them. Their voices and laughter distinguish their carefree play from the tiredness of age. An old woman carries a heavy load of wood and has no energy to sing or play; beside I’itoi, an old Coyote watches the children, his ribs showing beneath his ragged coat and his paws stiff and sore from walking in the desert. Their contrasting conditions make I’itoi sad.

Under cottonwood trees, he considers the transformations that time brings. The children will grow old; young calves will become older animals; a colt kicking up its heels will become an old horse. Flowers, too, lose their color as their leaves wither. The sequence moves across human, animal, and plant life, making aging a shared condition rather than an isolated misfortune. I’itoi wishes for something that will not become heavy, bent, wrinkled, dry, or colorless: something that can stay as happy and beautiful as the children appear at play.

The landscape offers the materials for his answer. Above him are yellow leaves against blue sky; beneath them lie shadows, while streaks and spots of sunlight dance on the ground. The pattern recalls the children’s own movement. I’itoi laughs when he recognizes that what he wants is already present in the scene around him. The story’s solution begins not with an object imported from elsewhere, but with attentive looking: leaf, shadow, light, and sky become materials for making something new.

The Bag and the Making of Butterflies

I’itoi carries a bag with which he can make things. He fills it by gathering a great handful of yellow leaves, then collecting dark shadows from beneath the trees and sunbeams from the ground. Brown leaves and tiny white flowers join the mixture. When he reaches high into the branches for more yellow leaves, he catches pieces of blue sky as well. The contents are varied and particular; the butterflies’ brightness comes from their combination, not from a single substance.

The children notice I’itoi beneath the cottonwoods and come over to see what he is doing and whether he wants to play. Tired from his work, he throws down the bag, lies down, and rests his head on it. In the cool shade, he and the children fall asleep. This pause places the making of the butterflies within a scene of shared rest. The children who first supplied the image of untroubled, joyful movement are present again as witnesses, though they do not yet know what the bag holds.

After waking, I’itoi looks at the sleeping children and remembers what is hidden in the bag. He calls them to watch, opens it, and shakes it. Yellow leaves, spots of sunshine, brown leaves, shadows, tiny white flowers, and small pieces of bright blue sky flutter out alive. They float briefly and then dance away into the sunlight, with the children dancing after them. The sequence answers the story’s opening wish through action: what had seemed like separate, vulnerable elements becomes living beauty in motion. I’itoi remains beneath the tree, glad that at last something beautiful and gay will not change or grow ugly as it grows old. The tale names this creation Hohokimal—the butterflies.

Recurrence and Meaning in the Novel

The story’s images return outside the embedded tale. A household dog spends its time chasing the shadows left on the ground by planes and butterflies rather than pursuing the moving objects themselves. She plays this solitary game to the point of exhaustion. That detail echoes the origin story’s attention to the difference between a thing and the shadow it casts: the tale makes shadows part of creative material, while the dog’s peculiar pursuit makes them an independent focus of attention. The recurrence keeps the story’s imagery active in the novel’s contemporary scenes without turning the dog’s behavior into a direct retelling.

Elsewhere, Fat Crack calls Roseanne, Delia, and Lani lost girls. That description belongs to the novel’s painful modern world, where women’s vulnerability and disappearance weigh on the characters. Against it, Hohokimal offers a contrasting movement: the elements gathered into the bag do not remain scattered or vanish separately, but emerge together and dance into the sunlight. The contrast does not erase the losses or claim that the story repairs them. Instead, it sets an account of making and continuance alongside the novel’s accounts of harm and absence, allowing the old tale to carry its own imaginative force.

The placement of Hohokimal among other embedded stories also matters. Its oral framing—beginning with the account that it happened long ago and addressing a friend as nawoj—presents the tale as something told to a listener, not merely as background information. The novel returns to I’itoi’s story after stretches of contemporary action, then ends with another scene in which a woman hears I’itoi speaking softly about babies who have left their mothers. That later account likewise turns toward consolation through a traditional story, but it is distinct from the butterfly origin. Together, these appearances give oral storytelling a recurring place beside the novel’s modern crises: a way of imagining grief and change that does not depend on denying either. Hohokimal’s lasting image is therefore both specific and structural—the many-colored contents of the bag released into motion, and a story itself carried forward by being told again.