In the beginning, there was no land, no sea and no sky.  Creatures went where they wanted, and there was no form to anything.

Then N’pau brought his three children to him, and divided the world amongst them. 

To N’sort, his son, he gave the land, for N’sort was a farmer, and he took the land and fashioned all manner of growing things.  He was a strong warrior, and to protect his growing things he built the land hard and strong, that it might resist the wind and the sea.

To Tsu-miang N’pau gave the sea, for Tsu-miang was hungry for all she could possess, and the sea was great and without end.  N’pau thought that surely the sea would be enough for her.

To her sister Tsu-chow he gave the sky, for she was wild and her spirit could not dwell on any one thing for long. 

And he separated the land from the sea, and the sea from the sky, that his children would be happy with all that he had given them.

Now in those days, the sky was full of all manner of birds, many more than today.  There were as many birds in the air as there were plants on the land and fish in the sea, lest N’pau’s children become filled with jealousy for one another.

Tsu-chow loved the sky, and she would race wherever she wanted as a great wind.  But she tired of carrying all the birds, for in those days birds neither dwelt in the trees nor sat on the water.  Tsu-miang heard her sister’s complaint, and in her heart she conspired to gain more possessions for herself.

“Sister,” she said, “how tiresome for you that you have so many birds to carry.  I know you love to race around the world, and yet you have so many burdens to carry.  Would that you had somewhere to rest them, that they did not burden you.”

Tsu-chow saw the many birds she had to carry, and entreated her sister to take some for her, just for the night-time.  But Tsu-miang pretended that she did not want them, until her sister pleaded for her to take just a few.  And so it was that Tsu-miang took many of the birds from the sky, and turned them into fish, that they might fly through the sea.  And this was the origin of the ray and the flat-fish.

Tsu-chow also entreated her brother to take some birds, that she might run free of her burden at night.  And this he did so, releasing them back to his sister whenever she wanted them.

But when Tsu-chow asked her sister for her birds back, Tsu-miang refused, saying, “You begged that they might fly through the sea, am I your servant that I should turn them back again?”

Nothing good comes from the west, they say.  The east gives us the sun, to light our day, and the moon to light the night.  The west swallows them, jealous of our love for them.    A man builds his hut with the door facing east, so that the rising sun wakes him early for fishing.  Couples marry in the dawn light, when it is pure. The west gives us the summer storms that destroy our homes and sink our boats.

I should have remembered:  Nothing good comes from the west.

I was fishing for squid.  You cannot find them during the day, they swim too deep.  But in the spring they rise up near the surface to worship the full moon.  If you know their sacred places, and if you don’t mind the hooks in your arm (you can be as careful as you like, but there will always be one squid that fights back), then you can fill your boat with squid.

The fishing was good.  I had plenty of squid to take back to the village.  Not the best night I had ever had, but good enough.  No-one cooks squid like my mother, and in the morning I would be her favourite son.  The other men had fished closer to the island, but I knew this secret spot.  No-one would have as much squid as me.

It is hard work, fishing for squid.  They fight every inch of the way as you drag them up.  If you pull too slowly, their brothers tear them apart before you can get them in the boat.  And when they are in the boat, they fight you with their hooked tentacles.  So you have to be strong, and you have to be fast, and most of all you have to be careful.

So I didn’t see the clouds until the moon disappeared.  It was dark, half the stars eaten by the storm coming from the west.  It wasn’t the time for rain.  It should have been clear for weeks.  But the west was angry, and she was going to vent it on us.

I turned my back to the clouds and struck out for home, where tomorrow’s sun was tingeing the horizon.  Even with the rising wind to my back, it was hard.  The sea became choppy, and the boat was sluggish with the catch.  The wind became cold, chilling me even as I sweated against the paddle.  Then the rain started.  It wasn’t spring rain, that washes you gently before summer’s harsh heat.  It wasn’t land rain, that comes from the skies and is absorbed by the earth.  This was sea rain, at one with its sister the ocean.  It was salty, and you could not see where the sea ended and the air began.  I was paddling through a world half submerged, neither sea nor air, but somewhere in the boundary of the two.

I knew then that I was lost.  I paddled as hard as I could, but I didn’t know where I was going.  The sunrise was lost behind the clouds.  The night was blind, and I paddled just to keep the boat upright, to keep my back to the waves, to keep my mind from drowning in despair.  I wondered how long my mother would mourn.  I wondered if I would meet my father’s spirit.  I wondered what marriage would have been like to Tsu-tsen, because everyone had agreed that we would marry when we were old enough.

Then the roar of the storm changed.  It was subtle at first, but then became louder.  There was a deeper note to it.  I saw the white water in front, standing out against the black sea and the black sky.  It was the reef.  Each wave cleared it easily, but each trough would expose the sharp coral, I knew.  I paddled on, helpless.  The reef meant that I was still home-bound, that beyond would be the island and safety.  But whether I would see it again depended on whether the wind allowed me over the reef safely.

I felt the boat tip forward as the next wave rushed on me.  The bow of the boat almost touched the black-on-black reef.  Then I struck out as hard as I could, urging the boat forward with the wave.  I thought I had made it, but as I slid down the trailing surface of the wave the stern hit the rocks and threw me forward.  My head struck the gunwale, and I knew no more.

I awoke on sand.  I was alive, but I almost prayed for death.  I had swallowed too much sea water, I was dizzy and my head hurt.  The storm had passed, though the clouds in the east still hid the sun.  Morning, then.

I pushed myself up to my knees, fighting the nausea.  My hair was matted down one side.  When I tried to push it back it left blood on my hand.  I studied the shore.  I didn’t recognise the beach.  I must be miles from home, near the north end of the island.

My boat!  The squid!  I snapped my head around, and little lights danced in front of me as my vision narrowed to a tunnel.  My stomach rebelled and I leant over, heaving great salty retches.

When I had finished I looked again.  She stood there, waist deep in the water, fixing me with a stare, her head cocked to one side.  Her hair was unbound, flowing over her bare shoulders.  She waded forward, each movement as graceful as a ripple on a pond.  As she rose from the sea I realised with shock that she was naked.  Had I interrupted her morning bathing?  I looked down at the sand in front of me.  Despite the chill of the morning I could feel my face burning. 

I studied the ground in front of me, anything rather than look at the woman approaching.  There was a shallow groove from the water’s edge, with deep footprints embedded in it.  I had been dragged from the water.

I saw her feet on the sand, the sea barely covering her toes, water running down her calves in little rivulets, and in my embarrassment I turned away.

“You’re hurt,” she said, and her voice was soft and husky, like the water brushing the sand in a sheltered bay.

I tried to stutter an apology, but she silenced me with her hand on mine. Her touch was cool, her palm wet.  She pulled me to my feet and I stumbled, dizziness and nausea rising once again.  She put her arm around my waist to steady me.  I wanted to appear strong for her, to act like a man, but my strength had flown out of me like water into the sand.

We walked towards the sea, and I was acutely aware of her body pressed close to mine.  She was strong, and her muscles flowed under her skin.  I felt the firm roundness of her hip against mine, the arm around my waist clinging as firm as kelp to rock.

In the shallows she knelt, pulling me down with her.  Gently she cupped the seawater to my temple and washed the wound.  Somehow her nakedness, masked by the water at her waist, seemed more acute.  I surreptitiously studied her in stolen sideways glances.  She was perhaps ten years my senior, no more, but she wore no man’s bangle on her arm.  Her skin was smooth and taut, her body firm.  But as beautiful as she looked, it was nothing to the way she moved.  I had never seen such grace.  Every movement was fluid, as though this were a dance she had rehearsed all her life.

She smiled, and guilt like a harpoon speared my stomach.  She had seen me looking.  I could feel my face flushing again as I looked away.

“My boat,” I stuttered, to mask my embarrassment.  “Have you seen it?”

“She took it,” she said in a voice that sang like a brook, and nodded towards the shore.

I looked, but could see no-one.

“She?” I asked, looking back at her.  The sun fought its way clear of the clouds and she smiled.  In truth, I could not say which was brighter, her smile or the sunlight.

“The storm.  She took your boat, and would have taken you too, but I would not let her.”  She gently pushed my hair back, then left her hand resting on my shoulder, her palm cool and wet against my hot skin.

“Thank you,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything to else to say.

She laughed, and it was like the sound of the waterfall on the south side of the mountain, raucous, free and inviting you to plunge into the pool.

“Don’t thank me yet, little land crab.  You may yet drown.  But at least you won’t bleed to death.  It’s not a bad wound.”

She flowed to her feet in one movement, like a wave hitting the rocks on the edge of the bay and reaching skyward.  I turned away again, ashamed of her nakedness and of my embarrassment.

She reached down and pulled me to my feet again.

“I’m fine.  I think I can walk now,” I murmured.

“Of course you can,” she said, but still she wound her arm, eel-like, around my waist.  Then she laughed again, and this time it was like the rain gently falling off of the thatch of a hut.  “But hold on to me, and you will be able to walk forward, not stagger sideways, little land crab.”

I placed my arm around her waist and we walked through the shallows.  I could sense the swing of her hips a hand’s breadth from where my hand rested on her side.  Her thigh brushed against mine.  I wasn’t sure whether it was an accident, or whether she was engineering it deliberately.

We were walking parallel to the shore, the water up to our knees.  I tried to walk towards the beach, but she guided us level with it.

“Are you thirsty?” she asked, and I nodded.  I could barely swallow, the sea and the vomit rank on my tongue.  “There’s a stream up ahead.  We’ll walk there and you can drink.”

I didn’t argue.  I didn’t want to break out of the moment.  I wanted to hold her, and feel her arm about me, for ever.

Within minutes I saw the stream cutting through the beach.  We walked up it in silence, until the beach was lost amongst the greenery.

We came to a widening of the stream, where the water hardly moved and the depth sank from calf-deep to waist-deep.  I cupped my hand to the water and held it to my mouth.  My first swallow went down the wrong way and I coughed and spluttered till the tears blinded me.  She held me and patted my back, murmuring platitudes that were empty of meaning, but comforting, like the lapping of gentle waves against a boat.  I drank again, but this time more carefully.

She released me and slid into the water, twisting and turning slowly, moving through the water with all the apparent lack of effort of a fish.  When she was some distance from me she dived, her athletic long legs rising into the air as she slipped below the surface.  I watched her image, distorted by the sunlight and ripples, as she weaved along the stream bed towards me.  Then she circled me, tickling the back of my knees, stroking my thighs, sliding her hand across my bottom.  She stayed under for ever, until I started to get concerned.  Then she surfaced a couple of feet in front of me, laughing, not even breathing hard.

I saw the water running down her body, channelling into her cleavage.  It dew-dropped from her nipples.  She waded slowly, easily, up so close to me we were almost touching.  I had never seen anyone so beautiful, and I knew at that moment that I would never again see anyone I wanted as much.

We kissed, and her mouth was as wet as a melon.  Our arms encircled each other and I surrendered myself to her completely.

Afterwards I floated on my back, contentment overflowing me, as she laughed and splashed around me, porpoising through the water, flicking water at me whenever I affected not to notice her.

Eventually my stomach complained.  I looked around.  A breadfruit tree grew in the brush.  As I made my way to the bank she called out to me.

“Stay with me, my little land crab.  Are you recovered?  We can play again.”

I laughed.  “I’m hungry.  Let me satisfy my hunger, then I’ll let you satisfy my other hunger.  Want some?”

She shook her head.  “It doesn’t belong to me.”

“It doesn’t belong to anyone.  It’s just growing here.  Have some.”

“I’m not hungry.”

I shrugged and climbed the tree.  With my meal secured, I sat against the trunk and ate the fruit.  She sulked in the water, swimming to and fro with a pout on her lips.

“Have you finished filling your belly?”

I nodded.  “You want to give me my dessert?”

“Come here,” she said.

I shook my head.  “No, it’ll be more comfortable here.  The ground is soft and dry.  Come here.”

She walked calf-deep to the edge and held out her hands.  “Not on the land, little crab.  Come into the water with me.  Come here, and you’ll never want to set foot on land again.  We’ll make love in the deep.  You’ll feast on squid for the rest of your days.  Join me, little crab.”

I got annoyed.  “No.  You come here, woman.  I’m not a little crab, come here, and I’ll show you how much of a man I am.”

She smiled, but there was no mirth in it.  Her mouth seemed altogether too full of teeth.

“You dare to command me, little crab?  I saved you from the storm when she tried to snatch you from me.  She would have killed you, and this is how you show your gratitude?  You could have been happy with me for ever, the sea has no bounds.  But instead the frightened little land crab prefers to be trapped on his tiny little island.  I should have let her keep you.”

With that she spun and dived forward into the water.  I saw her speeding under the surface towards the sea.  I leapt up and ran, tripping through the undergrowth.  By the time I reached the beach she was already in the sea, silhouetted by the setting sun.  I called out, but she never turned.  As the sun disappeared, so did she.

And from that day forth there was enmity between the two sisters.  The sky rages against the sea, snatching as much water as she can hold in order to take back her birds.  But when her spirit moves on, she drops the water back to the sea again, and there is no peace between the sky and the sea.

But even so, Tsu-miang still covets more, for the sea will never hold enough life for her.  And so it is that the beasts of the land and the birds of the sky rest on the land.  And men hold her in fear, for often she will covet their life for herself, and they anger her at their peril.