She told it to me for the first time that night, in the pits of Phundahl, sitting in darkness amid mildewed bones and the stale smell of death, awaiting the judgement of Tur.

The eyes of hungry ulsios glared from the shadows as she spoke. At first, I listened with half my attention diverted, lest the vermin attack.

Soon, however, the ulsios were forgotten.

A mother knows when her daughter is about to become White Painted Woman. Thus, Light-in-Eyes knew when it was time to call their family's women together to plan the Nah-ih-es of Shoz- Litzogue's only child.

Shis-Inday, whose real name cannot be spoken aloud, made the journey to womanhood during the Summer of Cool Rains, which was appropriate because of the special standing she had among the Be-don-ko-he.

The Power of Water had called to the girl when she was but five rains. Her ability as an izze-nantan was unusual for one so young, and a female at that -- but it was not unheard of.

"You are an extraordinary girl, my daughter," Yellow Bear said to her on the eve of the Nah-ih-es. "No doubt you will become an exceptional woman, the mother of many proud Be-don-ko-he warriors. Your strength will be our strength. White Painted Woman will glow within you. And us."

The Nah-ih-es of Shis-Inday promised to be one of the grandest in the memory of any Be-don-ko-he then living. Tribes from across The World would gather for the feast. Yellow Bear was a great chief, and so Shis-Inday was a princess among her people.

More than a celebration of Shis-Inday's transformation into White Painted Woman, the Nah-ih-es would signify the deep appreciation among the Men of the Woods for the blessings that Usen the Life-Giver had provided. The fruitfulness of a single woman is a symbol of the Shis-Inday's prosperity.

By all the means the Men of the Woods measured wealth, the Be-don-ko-he tribe was a wealthy one indeed. For they had clothes to wear, and food to eat; they knew where to find water in the barren wastes that encompassed their world -- often at the guidance of Shis-Inday. Some said she could conjure forth the precious liquid from rock.

They were brave hunters -- and mighty fighters, for even a peaceful people must defend themselves from enemies if they would remain free.

Most importantly, the Shis-Inday were at peace with themselves and their deity. Would that a similar relationship held between all men and whatever gods they hold dear. Or fear.

The beasts and the trees and air and the sun were put in The World to help the Human Beings survive in a place that was, in many respects, utterly inhospitable. They were brothers with the Directions and knew the twinkling lights in the night sky by name. Barsoom, I would one day learn, was called Gora-ban-Hinsu: "The Weeping Lover."

They were wary of the tricks played by Coyote; gave a respectfully wide berth to Snake; and avoided Raven completely.

All of these things made Usen happy, and He allowed the Men of the Woods to survive.

The Shis-Inday did more than survive. They thrived. They loved, they dreamed, they hunted, they prayed and they prospered.

Until the Men With the Metal Heads came.

Their leader was called Coronado, and he appeared from nowhere to destroy The World with the Evil men who followed him. They had heads of metal, and hair growing from their faces. They were horrible; murdering Be-don-ko-he warriors and ravaging Be-don-ko-he maidens. The Cho-kon-en and Ned-ni tribes suffered similar treatment.

The Men With Metal Heads hunted pesh-litzogue, the yellow stone that is buried underground. They believed it could be found in a place called Cibola, of which the Shis-Inday knew nothing. While searching for the fabled lost city, they burned the camps, the kunh-gan-hays, of the Human Beings and slaughtered their game.

It was on the second day of Shis-Inday's Nah-ih-es that the outsiders roared into The World and changed it forever.

"Here, child," she whispered. "Your grandmother is dying."

Shis-Inday found her behind a bush, crumpled and still. Redness covered Old Woman's chest. By the mooonlight, the girl could see blood pump forth with every beat of a tired heart.

"You have the Power of White Painted Woman, child," whispered the whithered one. "You are White Painted Woman, for the Nah-ih-es had not ended before the outsiders came. Her Chidin entered you, girl. And there it still resides."

Shis-Inday felt fear, not Power. The things she'd witnessed haunted and sickened her. The strange men riding strange beasts had sticks that bellowed with the Power of Thunder. Whenever the Men With Metal Heads called to the heavens, many Be-don-ko-he warriors were killed. Sometimes, women and children were killed, too. Lightning and Thunder are greatly feared by the Shis-Inday, so this Power held by the Men With Metal Heads made them all the more terrible.

The daughter of Shoz-Litzogue had lain in tall grasses, hiding; her Nah-ih-es dress tattered and torn, the ceremonial make-up mussed and streaking. She watched Yellow Bear, brandishing a war club, chase three of the attackers into the hills and disappear.

It was the last Shis-Inday would ever see of her father.

Where was Light-in-Eyes? Did she, too, lie behind some bush in the dark, dying?

Shis-Inday looked at her grandmother.

"I do not know what you mean, Old Woman," said the trembling child. "I have no Power. The Sprit of White Painted Woman is not here. She has fled, with all the rest."

"Shhhhh!" Old Woman hissed, extending a bony finger toward Shis-Inday's quivering lip. "Call upon Killer of Enemies, and Child of the Water! The sons of Usen will slay the Men With Metal Heads, just as they slew the Monsters when The World was young. They will hear you, and come, White Painted Woman!"

Old Woman's spasm of coughing frightened Shis-Inday. The girl ran away, into the arms of Night, tears streaming down her painted face.

"The outsiders have slain the children of Usen!" she screamed at Night. "And they have slain Usen, too -- else why would He have allowed them into The World?"

All around, she heard the sobs and shrieks of Be-don-ko-he women. The Be-don-ko-he warriors, though, were silent.

Shis-Inday ran until she could run no more.

She made friends with Buu, the Owl, which was odd for a daughter of the Shis-Inday. The Men of the Woods believed Owl to be an incarnation of the Black Mountain Spirit, whose Medicine came from places best left undisturbed. Only her father had ever sung to the Black Mountain Spirit. But he was chief, and could do such things.

It was her spirit guide, Kliji-Litzogue, that Shis-Inday depended upon most during those days and nights.

The Yellow Lizard urged Shis-Inday to adopt the ways of the warrior: to see all, but remain unseen; to strike when there was little chance of being struck; to become feared among her enemies. He showed her the future, and she knew that these methods would become the only hope the Men of the Woods had to survive in a world that had changed into something terrible.

During vision quests, Kliji-Litzogue had shown her how the White Eyes, or Pindah-Lickoyee, would come into The World after the way had been cleared by the Men With Metal Heads. Shis-Inday knew that they were to be shunned more than the Men With Metal Heads, who wanted only what lay buried beneath The World: pesh-litzogue.

The Pindah-Lickoyee, when they came, would take The World itself from the Men of the Woods.

So it was a matter of great concern to the girl that there was a Pindah-Lickoyee among the outsiders.

The Yellow Lizard could not explain it. At least, his explanation made no sense to Shis-Inday. That is the way of Spirit Guides, sometimes.

"A wanderer," the Yellow Lizard surmised. "An adventurer, perhaps."

"He is one of them," Shis-Inday said.

"Yes," the Spirit Guide answered. "And no. He is alone among them."

Shis-Inday often came to this place during her exile. Kliji- Litzogue counseled against it. But the girl felt safe here with her friends, Buu, the Owl, and Ka-Chu, the Jack Rabbit. Sometimes Coyote joined them.

On this day, she sat stroking the head of timid Ka-Chu, and wistfully listening to the hooting of Owl. Coyote wandered in and out of the clearing, probably up to mischief. Shis-Inday shook her head at the wiley creature. He was usually harmless. It was best to keep an eye on him, though.

Kliji-Litzogue sunned himself upon a rock, near the water. He grumbled, sometimes, about the danger of this open place. Mostly, he just picked mosquitos out of the air with his darting tongue. Once, he told Coyote to go play with Snake -- a formidable insult. Coyote growled, and Shis-Inday laughed.

The attack came without warning.

Three of the Men With Metal Heads charged into the little glade and were on top of Shis-Inday before she knew they were within ten marches of her.

In later years, when she thought about the strange circumstances of her advent upon Barsoom, it was her failure to heed the advice of Kliji-Litzogue that pained her most. She would come to realize that the presence of Coyote had been an omen.

She struggled in vain against the marauders. But they were too large; the attack too sudden.

They wrestled with the girl, and then pulled her to her feet. One clutched her arms behind her back, while another, the apparent leader of the trio, disarmed her and stood back to look her over from head to foot. She could not understand the words he grunted, but his leering expression told her all that she needed to know.

She was afraid.

A brief argument ensued among the Men With Metal Heads. Eventually, she was dragged from the glade and marched in the direction the girl knew their main camp to be.

When they arrived, it was late afternoon. The camp was occupied by hundreds of the Men With Metal Heads. Fires were lit for the evening meal. Hunters drifted into camp with the day's kill. It was a loud place of shouts and gruff laughter. Here and there, a fight over some insult or perceived injustice broke out. Others circled around it, to watch and cheer, hurling insults and incentives.

The odors of the camp sickened Shis-Inday: leather and oil; spoiled meat and rotting vegetables; the musk of the strange beasts that the strangers rode into battle, and the pungent smell of the Men With Metal Heads themselves.

As her three captors paraded Shis-Inday through the camp, they gathered quite a following. The girl could not have known how beautiful she'd grown in her two years of solitude. She was sixteen rains old, by now -- a flowering maiden of the Be-don-ko- he, and the object of much attention in this camp of enemy soldiers.

Soon, it became nearly impossible to proceed, so closely were they pressed upon all sides by leering men. They jostled and clawed at Shis-Inday. One attempted to get a hand around her waist. When pulled roughly away, he tore her leather tunic. Another clutched at her flowing hair, jerking her head painfully backward. She stumbled and went down on her back in the dirt.

It seemed nothing could stop the inevitable now. One of the hairy-faced men fell on top of the struggling girl, tearing at what remained of her tattered tunic, while fumbling with his own clothing. Shis-Inday spat in his face, and was slapped visciously across the cheek. She kicked and screamed and scratched, to no avail.

Then she ceased her struggles, and prayed silently to Usen for deliverance.

It came in the form of the Pindah-Lickoyee.

He strode into the center of the jostling group, and roughly pulled the would-be rapist from Shis-Inday. He tossed the attacker back a half-dozen feet, and turned on the others who'd been waiting their turn with the frightened Be-don-ko-he girl. A sword flashed from his scabbard, and he spoke curtly in the alien tongue that Shis-Inday could not understand.

Grey eyes met the angry stares of the Men With Heads. When one reached for his own weapon, the Pindah-Lickoyee deftly disarmed him.

But it would not prove so easy as that.

Others pressed the warrior and maiden. Hands now free, the girl could assist in her own defense with all the ferocity that she'd brought to countless raids upon the outsiders during her two years of exile. She wrested a knife from one of her attackers, and cleanly gutted him with it. Then she turned on another, silently and efficiently slashing to left and right, leaving blood and screams in the wake of her blade.

With a grim smile upon his lips, the Pindah-Lickoyee wove a net of steel about them. His sword darted, tasting blood, as they retreated.

"El caballo," the warrior said.

Shis-Inday shook her head, unable to understand. The Pindah-Lickoyee gestured to one of the nearby riding beasts, and the girl knew that he meant for her to mount it.

She'd been fascinated by the animals since the arrival of the Men With Metal Heads. Now, Shis-Inday did not hesitate to leap to the back of the creature, grasping the lengths of leather as she'd seen her enemies do. She maneuvered the animal instinctively, speaking to it in the low but firm tones she'd often used with the woodland creatures that had been her friends since childhood.

"El Caballo," as the Pindah-Lickoyee had called the beast, moved through the swarming marauders at a fast trot.

It had been Shis-Inday's intent to ride close to the warrior who'd come to her rescue, and pull him to her side so that they could escape together. But as she approached, the Pindah- Lickoyee spun and slapped the animal's rump with the flat of his sword, sending it into a frenzied gallop toward the hills.

Try as she might to turn the animal, it was beyond Shis- Inday's power to do ought else than cling to its flowing mane and hope not to fall off. She caught glimpses of the white man's sword flashing beneath the eyes of Kleego-na-ay, the Moon, who had risen from his abode to parade majestically over Night.

For hours she rode, finally crossing a strange field filled with flowers that were thick with green pollen. The pounding hooves of El Caballo spit up the powdery substance until it covered her tattered clothing. Face and arms were also spattered green. By the time she'd reached the other side of the field, a drowsiness overcame Shis-Inday, and the animal.

The beast slowed, and eventually stopped, weaving back and forth in a daze. Shis-Inday slipped from its back, ready to fall to the ground herself from exhaustion.

The figure of a boy, silhouetted in the moonlight, roused her from the lethargy. Standing halfway up the slope of a mountain, he motioned for her to follow him.

"Child of the Water," Shis-Inday said aloud.

The Be-don-ko-he maiden looked for Kliji-Litzogue, her Spirit Guide, who should be near if this was truly a vision of the son of Usen. But the Yellow Lizard was not there. Calling upon a strength she did not know she possessed, Shis-Inday followed the boy upward, high into the mountains.

Child of the Water had always been an icon to Shis-Inday, whose Power among her people was drawn from his totem. She trusted this son of Usen more implicitly than she would her own father -- and Shis-Inday would have followed Yellow Bear into fire.

The way led to a dark cave. Before entering, Shis-Inday turned to look upon The World far below. It was bathed in moonlight, and the tears of countless bright stars. One among them stood out from the rest.

"Gora-ban-Hinsu," Shis-Inday said.

When she turned toward the cave, Child of the Water had disappeared.

In his place stood the Black Mountain Spirit.