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According to legend, some 300 years ago a group of strange men from unknown lands came ashore on this beach. The unexpected guests had dropped anchor without encountering any sort of welcome until a young woman, Aypi, who often gathered beautiful stones from the beach, came across the newcomers by chance. Not being particularly timid, she spoke with them, and it seems they were inquisitive folk, since their talk went on for some time. When they did at last part, the strangers gave the woman a stunning ruby necklace. The thing shone with such an arresting sanguine glow that Aypi was tempted to immediately put it on, and as soon as she re-entered the village, everyone took note of the remarkable trinket.

Indeed, the necklace from across the seas dazzled all who crossed her path. She strutted haughtily through the winding streets of ramshackle stilt-propped huts, until there wasn’t a woman or girl left in the village who didn’t envy her.

As she passed by one young wife’s door, the woman grabbed her arm. “Come on Aypi, tell me,” she asked suspiciously, “where’d you get that fine piece?”

“’Where’d you get it?’” smirked Aypi. “That’s what they say to a thief, girl! Some foreigners I saw down on the beach gave this to me.”

The other woman narrowed her eyes and asked insinuatingly: “They got enticed by your looks, did they?” spearing a meaningful look at the crowd of women gathered around.

“Oh no, girl,” cooed Aypi, who had always been proud of her beauty. “It’s not that at all, don’t be silly.”

“Strange... so why’d they give you that, huh? ‘Cuz a your Persian-like name?” she quipped, as the circle of women grew ever tighter around them.

“Speak up quick, girl, why’d they give ya that? Stop wasting our time, and spill the beans!”

Aypi gave them a sugary smile. “I told them about our life, our village and our chiefs, and when I showed ‘em how our men catch fish, they laughed and laughed.”

Now the women gaped even more.

“They gave you such a thing for that nonsense? Any of us could have told them the same, if they’d only asked!”

“I told them about the coast here, and listed all the villages. Not one of you know better’n me how many people are in each village!”

This made their stomachs knot: Look at that smug tramp, and see what luck she’d had! All the men’s eyes were on her, as it was, and now she had that ruby necklace!

Only one sighing wreck of a crone remained aloof from the crowd, puckering her leathery face.

She wiggled her chin, pursed her lips, then, muttering and grumbling, she made her way towards Aypi, even pushing aside some of the onlookers. “Stand back, it’s none of your business!” the young women scolded her, bewitched by the ruby. The grandmother was forced to wait until things calmed down, and her toothless but carefully weighed-out words would be heard by all.

“May yer eyes cloud over, hrmph,” said the crone, waving her petrified clot of a fist. “You’ll bring calamity down on us all! Draw a disaster! ‘Round your neck the outsiders didn’t hang that cursed necklace for nothing, no, they wouldn’t have! May your nipples crack, yes crack! You come back here and you’ve betrayed all we’ve got, you mug of mugs, hmmph... you told everything, there’ll be no plenty on these shores no more, you’ve snowed a blizzard on our happiness, a blizzard!”

The old woman wandered off, muttering, “Would that yer eyes cloud over, ye bitch! Likely you’ve gotten us all murdered, yes, murdered!”

She was of the same age as the Flood and had seen everything there was to see, so fear began creeping into the listeners’ hearts as they heard her curses. The women immediately dispersed, and left Aypi standing dumbfounded and alone in the middle of the street. The words from the crone’s mouth, “She’s snowed a blizzard on our happiness, a blizzard!” echoed in their ears as they fled.

In the evening the town’s whitebeards held a meeting. As he was leaving their council, Dadeli, the village’s best man and Aypi’s husband, dragged like an anchor the weight of the sentence dealt out to his darling wife. The elders’ words rang in his ears: “What she said to the strangers doesn’t concern us. What scares us is that she had dealings with them at all. She has no place among us.”

After the door had shut behind Dadeli, one of the old councilmen abruptly spoke out what had been in everyone’s hearts without even knowing it:

“Well let’s hope it’s for the best!” he lamented. “She tortured everybody with her beauty. Enough! Out of sight, out of mind!”

The next day, before the town had begun to stir, on the pretence of showing her a certain islet, her husband sailed out to sea with her.

“Wear your best clothes,” he had said, “and put on that ruby necklace too, look how it suits you!” They had left the village before sunrise. As they got on the boat, Aypi could already sense the tension, but only after they had arrived and climbed up the lonely peak did she take a look into her husband’s frozen eyes and know her fate. In the final moments, she broke away from him in an attempt to flee, but Dadeli’s burly arms encircled her. From the cliff’s very pinnacle he pushed her down into the frothing swell. The strange necklace’s weight gave her no chance to swim, but dragged her down, twisting, into the depths of the briny waters.

Ever since, the people on the coast were haunted by the fear that those uninvited guests would return someday, bearing not gifts, but weapons.