From Sky and Sea to Earth

"The fools," the old crone mused. "Can't they see the signs? But useless; rotten to the core all. I'll say nothing. They wouldn't listen if I did. What do they know of the rhythms and anger of Rongomailohe?"

She stood there, on the verge of the white sand and the scrub grass, under the strangely silent palm trees, and watched as the gangly little group of men, old and gnarled before their time, wrestled the wooded dugout boats into the Ebon island surf. So far gone, so useless, she thought, so anxious for their night of carousing on Namorik, months now since it had been stripped of its call to them and deserted, that they could neither hear, see, or smell the impending wrath of Rongomailohe. Long overdue, as far as she was concerned.

Could they not hear the rumbling in the sky; did they think they had seen the sun rise this day and the last? Did they not see the palms standing at attention or smell the stench of salty and rotten death on the air? Did they at least not marvel at how far down to the sea they had to drag their boats on the sand to set off for Namorik? Of course they had not seen, just as they had not seen how slowly they had brought this on themselves—with each day they had paddled off to help the pale devils on Namorik kill the earth and the sea and the sky, with each shiny can of food they had accepted and each stalk of rice on Ebon they had let wither, with each flaming mouth stick and belly-burning brew the pale devils had provided and they had come to worship. Did they think Rongomailohe, the earth mother, would smile on them and their families for their sacrilege?

Did they even notice when their young wives stopped bearing, when their seed no longer had value, and when they themselves began to wither and hunch over in a pain that only the pale devil's fiery liquids could mask?

No, good riddance to them. The old crone could only hope that Rongomailohe's wrath would not extend to the sad and listless—and, for these three cycles, barren—women of Ebon.

Enough of the lost men, though. What is done is already past. The crone turned from the sea and cried out, "Ahu, Tama, Huihana! Quick. To the highest point and to the Palm nests. Moana, child of the sea, cry your loudest laments. Hina of the sunshine, beg Rongomailohe for forgiveness. Quick. All of you to the highest point you can find!"

* * *

Though the few woman of Ebon who had survived the tidal wave stared out to sea for weeks watching for the return of their men from Namorik, the old crone knew they watched in vain. She said nothing, though, as they needed the keening time for their lost sisters and all of the island's children in the wake Rongomailohe's cleansing.

The crone knew the cleaning had just begun. She knew that somewhere an angry earth had raised a fire-belching mountain and sent the sea crashing across their island and obliterated the sun with a foul-smelling cloud. And she knew that they were not innocent. The men of Ebon had gladly gone to Namorik to help the pale devils raise their own billowing cloud of evil-smelling smoke time and time again. Experiments for peace they had called them. The old crone knew better. Any fool would know better, she thought. And the men had brought back the enticements and unnatural things of the pale devil's world. Not just the burning mouth sticks and the fire liquid, but cloth so fine that the women had stopped making their own and could scarcely remember how to do so now. But, most insidious of all, they had brought back those boxes and shiny tins of pale devil food that caused the islanders to stop growing their own and that caused their stomachs to bulge and ache.

Ironically, the crone was so afraid now that what was left of these cans and boxes would be gone before they ever saw the sun again and could begin to learn how to work with the earth once more. Now they needed those evil vessels of unnatural food. There were so few of them left, and the knowledge of working with the island had fled so quickly.

Ahu, Hina, Moana, Taumamua, Hina, Tama, and herself. All women, all that Rongomailohe had smiled on, all that remained to return Ebon to balance. But had Rongomailohe really smiled on them? Would they slowly but painfully pass away too? And did they really deserve to be a part of the balance of Ebon after they so easily had been wooed by the pale devils and the evils of what they had done on Namorik and the things of their world?

Long after the surviving women of Ebon had turned back from the pitiless sea to the indolence and lethargy of their makeshift huts and the remainder of their boxes and shiny cans, the old crone sat on the beach, her eyes turned to the sea, praying to, negotiating with Rongomailohe.

* * *

She saw him from far off, emerging from the orb of the sun where it met the sea. The rise of the sun, at long last, was itself enough to cause the old crone to rise off her haunches, lift her arms and face to the sky, and sing the praises of Rongomailohe.

But the man, just one man in a dugout boat, but what a man. Tall, broad of shoulders, and deep of chest, and propelling the boat toward shore with the power of all of the men of Ebon. A man of the earth and sky and sea. Nut brown, his only clothing a skirt of sea grass, and eyes of blue that the crone had only heard of in legends of the Polynesian archipelagoes.

He stood there before the old crone, on the beach, towering over her in his muscular magnificence and beauty. The six young women of Ebon had been drawn to the fringe between scrub and sand by the chanting of the old crone, and they too just stood there, silent and awestruck.

"Iam." It wasn't a question. It was a statement. The old crone was acknowledging and honoring the magnificent man's presence and authoritative with a simple statement of the secret name that had been woven in the legends of the south seas for generations.

The man simply nodded, and the old crone turned and he followed her to the fringe of the sand, where the young women awaited.

The old crone watched the man as he cast his eyes on each of the six women in turn. Seeing that he had made his choice, of the comeliest of the young women, Tama, the jewel, the old crone placed one hand in his and the other in Tama's and led them to the sturdiest of the palm leave huts in the clearing at the lee of highest hill on the island.

The old crone and the five young woman sat around the fire outside the hut, dreaming their dreams and dredging up long-ago memories as Tama, lying on her back in the center of the hut on palm leaves, writhed and moaned in ecstasy when Iam's thick lips and strong tongue parted her nether lips and uncovered and polished the jewel at the very center of her.

Soon the women began to hum and chant quietly in harmony with the groans and cries of taking as Iam crouched between Tama's spread legs and split her open and plowed up inside her with a throbbing member that put the vanished men of Ebon in their most virile days to shame.

The woman had prepared food from the boxes and shiny cans when Iam and Tama emerged from the hut, hungry and with arms entwined. The old crone smiled to herself with approval, though, when Iam turned away the food provided by the pale devils and strode into the palm grove and returned with coconuts, which he split open and passed around for the women to share in drinking the milk and eating the flesh of the natural bounty of the island.

After eating their fill, Tama and Iam's eyes met, and they smiled a shared, languid smile and returned to the hut and to the deep moans and groans of Tama's deep breeding. Later that evening, Tama crawled out of the hut, sweating and smiling and humming to herself, to be replaced by Ahu, the caregiver, who quietly knelt between the out-thrust legs of a slitted-eyed, slightly panting, well-satisfied life giver and opened her lips over his nearly tumescent manhood and coaxed him back to life and lust. Ahu straddled his hips and kneaded the bullet-pointed nipples of his broad, nut-brown chest as she rode him to a deep seeding inside her womb. It was Ahu, then, who stayed with and cared for Iam, sharing him in the darkest hours with her sister, Tama. During the days, she and Tama returned to relearning how to weave and lovingly wove beautiful cloth to honor the broad chest and narrow hips of their master of the nights.

The days, however, belonged to Huihana, Hina, Moana, and Taumamua.

Iam came upon Huihana, the lily, swimming in the weed-clogged pond that had formed below the falls cascading off the side of the hill from the spring above. The water had once tumbled down to a marshland where the men of Ebon had grown the island's rice. But when the men had been mesmerized by the workless magic of the food boxes and tins from the pale devils, they had let weeds clog the pond and the marshlands dry out and the rice wither nearly to death so that only a few stalks remained.

Huihana was floating on her back, her breasts pointed at the sky and the curly hairs of the thatch at her V waving gently at the surface of the water. She was singing softly and happily to herself, dreaming of what she had heard from the hut in Tama's taking, sounds of pleasure that none of the women of Ebon had heard for years. Her hand drifted down and she was pleasuring herself with a searching finger.

She heard the rustle of palm fronds slipping down to the ground and opened her eyes to a view of the tall and handsome Iam in full arousal. Very soon Huihana wasn't alone in the pond, and she was living her dream, as her finger was pushed aside by a much larger and thicker and more insistent appendage. Iam pulled her hips into his pelvis and slowly entered her and then pulled her back and forth on his life-giving tool until he had deeply sowed his seed at her center.

Afterward, Iam showed Huihana how to pull the weeds from the pond to allow the water to revive the marshland below. As they were weeding, he slipped in behind her in the water. He pulled her into him with one hand on a breast and the other on her belly, and then he slowly entered her and took her once more in long, sighing strokes.

He found Hina, the daughter of sunshine, lying out on the sand, sunning herself in the renewed appearance of the life-warming orb. She giggled when she saw the magnificent man striding toward her and rose and ran off toward the marshland. Iam laughed and broke into a run, bringing her down on the sand just short of the marsh. He picked her up, and she hugged his hips with her legs and he pulled her down onto his manhood and took her in long, rough, deep-thrusting strokes, the two of them laughing and kissing and biting.

When they were satiated, Iam carried Hina off into the marsh and gently set her down beside one of the few surviving stalks of rice. He showed her how to strip the stalk down for grains of rice to replant and rejuvenate the raising of rice in the marshland, after which Hina knelt in front of his beefy thighs and peeled back the foreskin of his proud cock and covered the purple head of his stalk with her lips and tongue until Iam cried out in arousal and lifted her up thrust her down on his manhood again and again and mastered her into quivering sighs and groans.

The old crone watched with approval as Iam took Moana, the gift of the sea, out in his dugout boat and showed her how to use the net to fish the prolific sea around Ebon. The crone turned and walked back to the huts with a satisfied sigh when she could only see Moana's legs draped over the sides of the boat and Iam's naked buttocks thrusting rhythmically between them. She could hear Moana's cries of ecstasy on the breeze flowing in from the sea.

Iam found Taumamua, the giver of food, in the palm tree groove, throwing rocks at birds, but not being able to bring them down. Iam deftly made a crude but effective bow, and after he was comfortable that Taumamua could hunt on her own, he had her facing away from him, back arched in a bow, and his arrow striking home deep inside the tight channel to her womb.

* * *

On a morning with a gentle breeze and an orange, purple, red, and yellow sunrise far out on the horizon of the sea, the old crone stood on the beach, watching Iam preparing his dugout boat for launch into the low-surging surf. Behind her on the fringe of the sand turning to scrub, fanned out along the verge, stood six smiling young women of Ebon, hands spread out over their bulging bellies.

Iam raise his eyes to the sea, his attention caught by the same speck of movement out there that the old crone had already seen. He smiled broadly and turned and nodded to the old crone, who nodded back in mutual understanding.

As the speck turned into a discernible object, the six finely formed figures of strong young men, stroking their paddles hard against the offshore current, took form. They were chanting. In answer, the gaily twittering women of Ebon began to hum and then to break out into a chant of welcome of their own.

The old crone was satisfied. All of the woman were draped in new cloth. The rice was growing in the marshlands. They now had the flesh of all of the birds and fish they could store. The boxes and the shiny tins of the pale devils were buried deep and far, far, away on the other side of the island. The "experimenting for peace" world of the pale devils as far away as possible.

As the six chanting young men drew closer in their dugout boat, Iam raised his hand to the old crone and she walked down the sand and entered and settled down in the boat, her face to the sun rise. Iam pushed the dugout into the surf as the boat of the six young men passed them and beached itself on the sand.

The old crone didn't look back as Iam paddled her into the rising sun. She knew what was happening on the beach. And she had been happy. The deal with Rongomailohe had been a tough one for her, but one she was proud to have been granted. The natural balance to Ebon was restored. All praise to Rongomailohe.