In ancient times, the mountains were so high that the moon seemed small when it rose above them. In the rays of the sun, some mountains turned golden and red, while others always remained dark and terrible.
Evil people lived in the dark mountains, but in the golden mountains there were good people.
At one camp in the golden mountains lived two brothers. Both of them were called Bayama, and both of them were married. Each brother had a child, and both children were named Viruimbrall.
One day the brothers went hunting with their wives, and the children were left alone.
The children splashed in the stream, played and had fun.
One evil man from the dark mountains, named Turkuk, kept a pack of ferocious dogs, and with them he pursued the people he hated and hunted the animals on which he ate.
He saw that the brothers and their wives were getting ready to go on a hike, waited until they moved away from the camp, called his dogs, went down the mountain and, approaching the camp where the children were playing, set the dogs on them. And the dogs killed the children.
And Turkuk fled to his mountain - he believed that he was safe there.
When the brothers and their wives returned and saw what had happened, they were distraught with grief. The brothers swore to avenge their children, and the next morning they turned into kangaroos and rushed in the footsteps of Turkuk and his dogs into the dark mountains.
They ran to the Turkuk camp and entered from the windward side, so that the wind would carry their scent into the camp.
Sensing the kangaroo, the dogs began to bark. Turkuk jumped to his feet, grabbed spears and a wommer leaning against a tree, called the dogs and sent them against the wind - in the direction where, according to his calculations, the kangaroos were hiding. The pack of dogs rushed along the mountain, and Turkuk set off after them, jumping from stone to stone and urging the dogs on with shouts. The brothers waited until the evil dogs saw them, and then they rushed away, with the dogs hot on their heels.
The brothers lured the dogs down into the valley, and rushed further along the valley, to the place where a huge cliff rose behind the trees. The brothers ran to a clearing at the foot of the cliff and stopped, leaning their backs against the rock. Here they began to wait for the dogs. The leaders of the dog pack jumped out onto the lawn from the bushes and rushed at the kangaroo.
But the brothers were strong warriors, they met the dogs without any fear.
The dogs jumped at them growling, and the kangaroo brothers threw them back with their powerful hind legs. The whole pack had already attacked them, but the brothers fought until they had defeated all the dogs.
Then the brothers returned to the forest and followed the dog's tracks until they met Turkuk, who was running as fast as he could so that he could be there in time when the dogs began to torment the kangaroo.
And the brothers killed him, and then turned into people again and returned to their camp.
The next day they went hunting, and one of the brothers, noticing the marks of an opossum's claws on the bark of a tree, took a stone ax and began to chop notches on the trunk so that it would be easier for him to climb the tree.
When he had already climbed high up the tree, a sliver of wood bounced off the tree and flew down with a ringing buzz, and the sound was reminiscent of the voice of a child.
Hearing this sound, Bayama hastily descended from the tree: it seemed to him that it was his son speaking to him.
And his brother also heard a child’s voice. The brothers picked up the sliver and began to look at it in surprise. They decided to keep it so that it would always remind them of the dead babies.
The brother who was climbing the tree drilled a hole in the sliver and threaded a strip of bast through it in order to throw the sliver over his shoulder.
But first he twirled it over his head, and a voice was heard again - it was the voice of their children.
Then the brothers went with this sliver from tribe to tribe and told everyone about the miracle that had happened, and from then on people began to call the tribes with the buzz of this sliver. And they called her a buzzer.
Every holiday begins like this: painted people walk through the forest and wave horns over their heads. And, hearing the buzz, people of all tribes converge, because this is the voice of the spirit from the Dream and everyone obeys its call.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru