Ts'eh Timeline and Summary

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• We don't know her name yet, but Ts'eh first appears under an apricot tree at the base of Mount Taylor, also called Tse-pi'na, where Tayo is looking for the lost cattle.
• We know immediately that there's something special about this lady, because she's wearing a yellow skirt and has ocher eyes (see our discussion of colors in the section "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory" for more on this.)
• The woman invites Tayo inside because the weather's getting bad. She has a blanket with storm patterns woven into it draped over her shoulders.
• Need another sign that this woman is special? From her house, Tayo looks out the window and sees the stars Betonie told him to watch out for.
• The woman and Tayo make love that night. Twice. She makes Tayo feel happier than he has in a long time.
• The woman gets up before dawn, and Tayo is inspired to sing a prayer to the sunrise.
• Before Tayo leaves, the woman makes sure he watches her work with some plants and rocks. It seems like she's doing something mystical with these supplies, maybe to help Tayo on his journey.
• When Tayo comes down from the mountain, he's invited back into the woman's house by the hunter. The woman and the hunter perform the ritual of the deer together.
• We get the impression that the woman's storm-patterned blanket has some sort of mystical power to control the weather. She goes to fold it up when she wants the snow to stop.
• The woman teases Tayo about his horse and the spotted cattle. She knows he's feeling awkward about the night they spent together, and she thinks it's funny that he thinks the hunter is her husband.
• The woman reveals that she has trapped the spotted cattle in the coral.
• She and Tayo go to examine the cattle, and she points out where the cattle have been injured by Texas roping.
• After some adorably awkward flirting, Tayo says goodbye to the woman. She tells him, "I'll be seeing you" (XXV.53).
• We can tell Tayo is super in love with this woman because he dreams about her all the time. Actually, the text says he dreams with her. And he doesn't even know her name yet!
• The woman next appears up near the ranch where Tayo is staying. She's camped near the spring that Josiah had once shown Tayo.
• The woman leads Tayo to the top of a mesa, where she finally tells him her name. She's "a Montaño," she says, and her nickname is Ts'eh. Huh. Her name looks kind of like the name of the mountain where Tayo met her, Tse-pi'na.
• Ts'eh explains that she's very close to her family.
• Ts'eh tells Tayo they don't needs to worry about things like clans and family names.
• Ts'eh is camping to gather roots and plants, and she teaches Tayo about her work. She takes plants that bring the rain and replants them in dry places.
• Ts'eh asks Tayo to gather a plant for her in case she has to go before it's ready. This is the first Tayo has heard of her leaving, and he's not happy about it.
• Ts'eh explains that "out there . . . things are always moving, always shifting. I hear them sometimes at night" (XXV.110). Sound familiar?
• Ts'eh and Tayo are deeply in love, and their days together have a "gravity" that lets us know that their relationship is part of Tayo's spiritual journey.
• Ts'eh explains a lot of important things to Tayo that help him on his spiritual journey. One of them is the fact that death isn't the end of the world. In fact, death "isn't very far away" (XXV.130).
• Ts'eh warns Tayo that the work of the destroyers is much, much worse than death. They try to get people while they're still alive and destroy all the feelings they have for one another.
• Ts'eh looks towards Pa'to'ch, which is a butte, or small mesa, near the spring where they are camped. When she looks at Pa'to'ch, Tayo can feel "where she had come from" and "where she would always be" (XXV.140).
• Ts'eh takes Tayo to see a painting of a she-elk, A'moo'ooh, painted in clay along the south face of a cliff. They fix up the enclosure that protects the painting because no one has been to repaint it since before the war. But Ts'eh tells Tayo that nothing is lost as long as he remembers what he's seen.
• That night Ts'eh cries, because she has a vision that the destroyers are coming to change the end of Tayo's story. She warns Tayo that Emo has convinced a lot of people to come looking for him, and she helps him to develop a plan of escape.
• The next morning Ts'eh tells Tayo they are coming to the end soon.
• That evening Ts'eh tells Tayo to "remember everything," and then she leaves. (XXV.168)