Island's End Read Free Page B

left.
    “So what is it?” Natalang asks when we are inside the jungle.
    I want to tell her about Lah-ame’s offer to take me on as his apprentice. But now that we are alone, I feel too worried to speak of it directly. Natalang and I have been friends since we were children. Now we are both ra-gumul girls—our blood has come but we are not yet married. Although her chatter still lightens my spirit, these days she thinks of boys far more often than I like. Natalang finds it strange that I am not as interested in men or babies, and I do not want her to think me even stranger.
    Cautiously, I ask, “Natalang, have you ever wondered how the oko-jumu train?”
    She stops walking. “What?”
    “Do you ever wonder about Lah-ame’s life?”
    “Lah-ame’s life.” She rolls my words slowly in her mouth as if they are berries she is tasting for the first time. ‟No.”
    Her simple denial upsets me, because it forces me to see that my interests are drifting even further away from hers. “Why not?” I ask, hoping her answer will somehow make me feel better.
    “Probably because he has no wife and no children. I might think of him more often if he had a ra-gumul son.”
    “But Lah-ame does so much for the tribe, Natalang. He starts our fires, he warns us about bad weather, he heals us and keeps us safe.”
    “I never said I do not respect him, but even in the dry season when he is in our village nearly every day, his own spirit seems to be in another world.”
    “Do you ever think about the spirits?” I ask.
    “Why would I? Do you?”
    “Sometimes.” I dig a hole into the ground with my big toe.
    “Oh look!” Natalang points by my feet at a tasty konmo-ta root. “Help me dig it out.”
    With my digging stick, I loosen the ground around the fleshy root, and Natalang pulls at it until we work it free. Then she sits back on her haunches and wipes the sweat from her forehead. “So, what was the exciting thing that happened this morning?”
    “Strangers came to our island,” I say.
    “Is that why everyone was shouting? My sisters tried to get me up but I would not open my eyes.”
    “Only you could sleep through something like that,” I tease.
    “Did anyone see them up close?” she asks.
    “Only Tawai and I. We chased them off the beach. They are much taller than our men, like in Lah-ame’s stories.”
    She giggles. “So are they fatter and handsomer than our men, too? I would like to see these men!”
    “Do you think of nothing but men and boys, Natalang?”
    “Do you never think of them, Uido?”
    I sigh and poke at the ground with my digging stick. The earth feels harder than usual. “Pulug-ame has forgotten to send the rains,” I say. “The earth mother is so dry—I am sure Tarai-mimi is ready to quench her thirst.”
    “You worry too much, Uido,” Natalang says. “It is Lah-ame’s work to remind Pulug-ame that Tarai-mimi needs a good rain.”
    One day that might be my work, I think.
    Natalang is always happiest in the rainy season, when we move deep into the jungle to the south. There, except for Lah-ame, the whole tribe stays in one communal hut, until the moon has grown into a perfect circle six times and Pulug-ame tires of sending the rain. I enjoy it, but I also miss seeing Lah-ame, who spends most of the rainy season alone, somewhere else.
    The rest of the morning we keep busy gathering food. Natalang tells me funny stories, and listening to her cheerful voice, I keep from worrying about the oko-jumu life and the strangers.
    A little after midday, we make our way to the pool near the village to fill Natalang’s bucket. She dips her finger into the water.
    “It is cold!” she shrieks, but she jumps in, startling a nearby frog that leaps away croaking rrrrrgup, rrrrrgup . I wade in after her.
    “A crocodile!” she whispers, pointing at something behind me.
    I whirl around. “What? Where?”
    “You believed me.” She laughs. “I never thought you would.”
    I shake my head at my own