“I can tell from your accent you are from the Rālik string. Which island?”
“My grandfathers raised me on Namorik. My parents disappeared in a storm when I was young.”
“So you lost your parents to a storm and then saved the lives of my children from one. What a strange symmetry between your story and mine. Were they caught up with Tarmālu when her fleet was lost?”
“Yes.”
“And these men who raised you, they taught you to navigate?
“Yes.”
The tide was now out, and the irooj looked over the expanse of puddled reef flat. He motioned with his hand to show Ḷainjin a large swath of the shore to their right, which was dedicated to defecation and off-limits for fishing. At this point, Ḷainjin judged the reef flat before them to be some two hundred ñeñe wide, or perhaps a fourth the distance of the path they just walked. The breeze, unobstructed by the island foliage, began to cool the sweat covering his body as the irooj led him down the rocky shore onto the island’s foundation.
“In this direction” — he indicated west — "the island gets more and more narrow. But in this direction,” he said, heading east, “the island gets very thick, especially at the cape there.” He pointed ahead. “This is the direction men go to fish.”
The cape was a considerable distance away. He realized why the irooj was leading them across the reef flat. It was because the shoreline was not parallel to their line of sight to the cape, but receded away from them as the reef widened before jutting back out toward the point. In addition, the shore was slanted and rocky while the reef was flat except for the occasional coral boulder and, now that the tide was out, much easier to traverse.
“Think of Lae as shaped like an adze,” said the irooj as they walked. “The long, skinny part there to the west is the shank part of the island. Think of this part to the north as the blade of the adze, with the cutting edge touching the lagoon where we can’t see and the butt of the blade forming that peninsula, where the reef juts out into the sea.”
The irooj headed across the reef toward the point at such a clip that Ḷainjin had trouble keeping up with him. The tiny sea snails and sharp edges here and there on the reef flat hurt his soft feet, and some of his leg muscles began to pain him due to their long period of limited use at sea. The irooj looked back, periodically catching him in his struggle and indicating each time that they would rest at the point, but he kept the pace of their stride nevertheless. The sun, which had long ago reached the apex of its blinding glare, was now beating down on their backs and illuminating the whitecapped swells as they slowly curled and flashed transparent blue before bellowing down with a progressive thunder upon the reef’s edge to their right.
The reef flat began to narrow as they approached the reef’s point off the peninsula, and Ḷainjin began to realize that swells were converging on the point ahead from three quadrants, undoubtedly flushing it at full tide with a variety of currents and likely making it ripe with sea life. He noticed that the coloration of the sea beyond the point was lighter than expected. That meant there was an undersea shoal beyond the reef’s edge where live corals would attract all manner of fish about the cape. As they approached still closer, he could see that the live coral barrier on the reef’s edge was unusually higher than the dead reef foundation before it. He surmised that the brine cast up by the undulating swells kept the coral alive and growing even though it was exposed directly to the sun during low tides such as this.
Finally, after walking to the tip of the island’s southern shore, they reached the exact point on the reef where the eastern shore of the island appeared. From there, they could look back along the westward-pointing shank of the adze and ahead to the northwest-pointing blade and view both shores of the island from the fringing reef protecting and bending sharply around them. Pedpedin stood there with his left arm pointing westward down the shore on their left and his right arm pointing down the other shore on their right. He declared, “The islets of Kuwajleen are like a basket to catch us as we sail one day in any eastern direction off my back. Wōtto is one day’s sail a little west of north to my right.” He pointed in that direction with his right index figure and with absolute authority. “And of course, Ujae” — he pointed shoreward with his nose — “is over there, a little north of west, sailing from dawn to late afternoon under strong breeze.”
He turned around to face the ocean that had been behind him and pointed west of north at the easternmost islet visible along the reef to his left. Then, on an even line from left to right, he pointed with his right index finger and said, in a commanding voice, “Namorik, four days south of east.”
“How many days’ paddle?” Ḷainjin asked.
“That, I never thought to ask! You must be a better judge of that, but rest assured you stand at the center of what our ancestors called kapin meto.
“This is where my forefathers fished,” he continued, “and their ancestors before them. This is the cape of life for my people. Here, we can never exhaust the supply of fish. Look out there, off the point. The reef does not drop straight but slants down into light blue water that teems with every type of fish imaginable. As soon as the tide turns and begins to flood, every manner of ocean creature will come to feed where we now stand.”
Finally, the irooj led Ḷainjin over to the rocky shore, where they sat down on boulders to rest. “So how many days were you out there paddling?”
“From the day the wind ceased. Certainly, from the first sign of Jebrọ. Too many to keep count!” he replied.
“Sometimes I like to come here with a pole at high tide and kōbwābwe, using the bellies of hermit crabs for bait. At high tide during the day, I can fill up a small basket, but on a night like tonight, I would fill up a large one, and I would have to bring along a boy to help me carry it back to the village.”
“What about kappej?”
“Wōjej! There is nothing better during these moons of calm water! You will fill your basket in no time, and you can fill another one with lobsters you catch as the tide comes in on your way back!”
“So there is no path that cuts directly back to the village?”
“Yes, there are several, but they are not well worn. We use them only when fishing. Our groves of coconut and pandanus and breadfruit are well inland from this point. As you can imagine, during the añōneañ season, waves cover these rocks during high tide. The salt haze over this part of the island is thick, and there is no reason even to come here because the currents are too strong to catch fish. Allow me to go back to what I mentioned earlier because I am sure you are asking yourself why I brought you here to talk about my daughter. I have a story to tell you about the women of this island, why they are so independent and why they perceive us men as weak.
“Liṃanṃan and the other women of this island are of the clan Aorak.”
“I saw the likeness of the aorak shell carved into a couple of trees along the path this morning. The boys said it was a bwebwenato and suggested I ask you about it.”
“Those were first carved many seasons after the trees were planted, by the women who planted them. Then each generation of their clan has traced over the carvings, making them deeper. They shined the carvings with the oil of their fingers — from the time they were young girls — with their hopes and dreams for their future, and they rubbed their tears into those carvings when they became women and grieved over a death or lost love. They are bound by their clan and taught by their granddaughters to do this, generation after generation, so to never forget to be ready should they ever come back. Every generation will hear this story to scare them, but also to teach them to be strong and to bind them together as one. You saw an example of that last evening. Men cannot control them, and for good reason.
“It all started perhaps a hundred seasons or more before I was born… My grandfather had fought them himself many times but was unable to turn them away empty-handed.”
“The women?” asked Ḷainjin, confused about who he was
referring to.
“No, the men!” he responded. “He had a battle scar that ran from here to here” — with his finger, he drew a diagonal line across his face — “through one bad eye and deep across his nose and cheek. He had other scars all over his body. They were from many battles, and whenever I asked him about them, he said the men were from Pit. They had come every generation. They would cross the ocean reef and beach their canoes on the ocean side at the west tip of the island, to hide their intentions. From there, they would spread themselves along the ocean shore’s ‘shank of the adze’ and then march lagoonward to surprise the young girls and take them captive. Each man would choose a girl — not for himself, but for the man’s nephew back in Pit. They treated the girls well as they desired their light skin. Our girls knew they would treat them well because, on occasion, one would return and tell stories of her adventures to the others. Therefore, some girls secretly wished to go, but those were few. Most were frightened of their battle shells and were unwilling to leave their families and familiar surroundings and way of life.
“Then would come their champion, dressed like the others, in his battle shell. Have you ever heard of the ri-Pit battle shells made from fibers of coconut husk?” the irooj asked.
“No.”
“Well, that’s because they never took girls from the more-populated southern atolls. They would come up here because we were fewer and because there were few coconut trees.”
“What did coconut trees have to do with it?”
“I’ll get to that. Right now, I am telling you they were dressed like hermit crabs inside shells made of rope! That is true. I’m not sure how they made those things, but they had their legs, their arms, and their torsos completely covered in this rope shell as thick as the first digit of your finger,” he insisted, holding up his forefinger and thumb to illustrate. “They must have been terribly heavy and uncomfortable, but they were impervious to small-toothed rajraj. Unless a man threw a very sharp spear at very close range, it was unlikely to stop one of these men. Their champion would start at the western end and walk down the shore, and the uncle would be holding onto the girl he had chosen. Unless a man there was ready to fight on her behalf, their champion would proceed down the beach to the next house and the next until all the uncles and the girls they selected were in single file behind him.”
“Didn’t any of the girls’ fathers fight for their daughters?”
“Yes, some would, but they were never successful against such men in such shells. And their champions were big men who were chosen for their fighting ability. They say the ri-Pit had a custom of one-punch fighting for sport. The men who were most successful at this game would become champions for them.
“However, there would always be at least one man from Lae to fight for the girls. In each generation, one man would stand out from youth and would make himself and his family proud by being the one who would stand up — but he would always come away from the fight with deep scars and broken bones. Therefore, they always took the girls. No one knows what would have happened if our champion had won because no one ever did.”
“In all my travels, I never heard this story,” Ḷainjin said.
“Well, it is not a story we like to tell, not a story we wanted to hear, and not a story we tell to others. It is one we pass on in private, only among ourselves, like a dekein nin from mother to granddaughter.”
“So what does the aorak have to do with all this?”
“Well, you know we have lots of those things here. Sometimes we gather them and hang them upside down in the sun until the shell gets hot, until the muscle of the creature inside loosens its grip on the shell and it drips out. If you cook a mess of them in an earth oven, heat them with coconut milk, and then eat them with breadfruit, they make quite a meal! Sometimes we throw in an octopus among them for flavor.
“Anyway, the mothers and the grandmothers mourned for the girls who were taken away. First they grew despondent, and then, after how many seasons, they grew angry and defiant. One day my grandmother had cooked a mess of them. While she was sitting there among the shells, she had this epiphany. Do you know what creature is the mortal enemy of the wōr?” he asked.
“I would say the kweet.”
“And you would be correct because the octopus, with its sharp beak, seems to have the perfect design to creep among the corals, grip onto its enemy, and crunch into its shell. My grandmother planned such a strategy to defeat these big-boned men from Pit.
“She set off with a fleet of boats to Aelōñḷapḷap, where she had land rights, and filled the boats to the brim with coconuts. They came back here and carefully planted them in the interior of the island. We had always had coconut trees, but we would eat the nuts and rarely planted more. They know us for our pandanus forest, not our coconuts. That tree you saw today with the aorak carved into the trunk was very tall and very old and may not have even have had any nuts left, but it was surely one of those trees. Now it takes a generation for a coconut tree to start bearing fruit, and the irooj, at my grandmother’s insistence, forbade any more drinking of the nuts. They made oil from every single nut. They stored the oil in coconut shells by the hundreds — they were hanging in every cookhouse and every home — and that is not all they stored. They stored pāle everywhere. You know a pāle makes a great torch, but it flares quickly. It is not very hot and you can easily snuff it out. But as you know, if you pour oil on it, the flame becomes hotter and more persistent. Have you noticed how the aorak shell fits perfectly into your palm, with a series of spines that protrude only slightly between each digit when clenched? And the single longer spine — the lip of the thing — protrudes from the base of your fist. Well, every woman slept with an aorak exactly the size of her fist under her sleeping mat. That is how they prepared. They had aorak shells all around the village, and for many seasons, on days when the tide was high, a group of girls would guard the spot where the ri-Pit liked to land their canoes.
“Well, one day they came. This was before I was born, and my mother was one of the young girls at the island’s end, watching for them to come ashore with the tide. Out they bravely ran to them while others ran in the opposite direction to warn the rest. Mother and the others flirted with the men, telling them they wanted to embark for Pit with them to wrap legs with their nephews but also saying that, to save face before their fathers, they would have to pretend to run away. Mother said the girls wanted to make the ri-Pit think this would be even easier than before, but really, they wanted to get them running before the men thoroughly soaked their shells in the ocean water. The uncles from Pit took the bait and immediately chased after them, and things progressed much like the generation before — the girls in the hands of the uncles, and their champion marching confidently down the shore to the village, and the islanders making it clear to them that my grandfather was ready in the village to fight him. The ri-Pit expected the women to beat their war drums, and scream at them, and run up taunting them as they always did. However, each woman also had a shell of oil hanging from her waist beneath her skirts this time, to spill all over the fiber clothing covering the warriors’ legs.
“There was Grandfather, standing on the strand waiting for their champion, whose eyes focused upon him as he muddled his way through the women taunting him. Once the fighting began, all eyes were so concentrated on the fight that none noticed the oil-soaked pāle being brought down the shore and lit behind them — until the uncles turned from the heat on their feet as the women surrounded them and held the pāle to the bottom of their oil-soaked rope shells. As they caught fire, they did not turn their rajraj on the women but dropped them to roll in the sand. Those who took off toward the water quickly learned that they were just fanning the flames and dropped to the sand as well, and that’s when the girls and the women dropped to their knees and punched that single digit-long spike at the base of the aorak shell into the men’s skulls.
“True, their champion got the best of my grandfather in their fight, but he
eventually died by the same fate at the hands of the women. When he sat to cover his flaming legs with sand, my mother and her sister claim to have run at him and stuck theirs — from seasons of premeditated planning — into each of his eyes. He stood again and swung his massive rajraj wildly, but eventually he fell victim to the oil, the long pāle that lit him from a safe distance, and the fire that consumed him as it did the others. Mother still has nightmares of the fires and the stench of flesh boiling off their bones. They decided to let a few get away — to what fate, no one knows — but they have never come back. Not to say one day they won’t, but these women stand ready to this day to fight for their daughters and their sisters, and they have counted on us men for very little since.”
“Well, I understand now why your women are so bold.”
“They are taught to be! Like the other women of Rālik, they hold and pass the land to their daughters, but they are also sworn to kill for them, which makes them more like warriors than women. In truth, they are the irooj and we are their workers. That is the true order of things here.”
Ḷainjin said, “Then I promise to be a good worker for your daughter and hold her high above all others. My only problem will be adjusting to island life. As you know, I am a seafarer. I have crossed the ocean from east to west and back again. I have nightmares from memories I can never forget and stories I can never tell. I must confess I tried and failed to settle down with women among the islands I visited. I found I could not cope with the simple tasks of daily life, or take interest in the affairs of the villagers about me.”
“I, too, have been there. Your ear is always turned to the wind — as was mine — and that is why I brought you here. This is our seamark, to stay or to sail away. It is from this point that we set our course through the waves and follow it unwaveringly to our destinations. My daughter Liṃanṃan has chosen you to navigate her voyage. All I am asking you now is to promise me that if, for any reason, you decide you cannot bear whatever burdens she places on you that you will return her here, where you started.”
Man Shark Page 14
