When Atile’i saw the woman appear before him, he remembered the Roaring Rite the Earth Sage had taught him. The Earth Sage said, if you encounter anything you are unable to understand, then roar with the strength that lies beside your beating heart and you will speak with the voice of your true self and even evil spirits will flee. Atile’i tried roaring now, but as soon as he opened his mouth and yelled his heart and leg began to ache, as if someone had taken a stone knife and minced his spirit into fish paste. That’s how painful it was! So after yelling a few times Atile’i started to cry.
The Earth Sage said, “To let a single tear fall is to submit, to plead for help, to render all rituals inefficacious.”
At first the woman seemed frightened by Atile’i’s Roaring Rite, for she screamed and fell off the earthen mound. Then she scrambled back up again and embraced the animal that seemed so strange to Atile’i’s eyes. Soon, maybe because she discovered Atile’i could not hurt her, the woman started examining him; and when she realized his leg was confined, a look of concern appeared on her face. After a while, she forced a smile, as if to offer him reassurance, and then she started helping him move the rocky earth off his leg. Maybe because of the pain, or maybe for some other mysterious reason, Atile’i’s tears kept falling. He was like a sea turtle that has been stopped from going back where it belongs.
The woman was not the same as the white people Atile’i had imagined or seen in books. She had another kind of translucent skin, sort of like a jellyfish. The woman was not tall, and might even be a bit shorter than Atile’i. After freeing him, she kept talking and gesturing, but he could not understand a thing. The only thing he could be certain of was that the woman probably did not bear him ill. Her movements and tone of voice told him that. Atile’i tried to say a few words to her in reply, but she did not understand, either. Then, out of gratitude, he started to imitate the birdcall he had learned while lying there just now to take his mind off the pain. Atile’i pursed his lips and let air through his lips and throat to produce a sound that was at times resonant, at times warbling. This was the sound of thanksgiving. The woman looked at Atile’i with surprise, as if she had seen a bird that could speak a human tongue.
“A sound can fly over any land, like a wave on any sea,” Atile’i remembered the Sea Sage saying. Without a doubt, the Sea Sage was truly wise.
Atile’i, too, remembered what happened after he dove into the ocean, afraid someone would discover him. His body was abnormally warm, the water relatively cold, so when he dove in the frigid seawater it initially felt scalding hot. He swam for his life, like a wounded barracuda spotted by a shark. He swam for he did not know how long, until his chest ached terribly and his spirit was ready to leap out of his throat. Then a great force flooded in from behind. Sensing the approach of a huge wave, he went promptly limp and let himself get tossed about. Atile’i clearly saw that the wave was pushing him toward land, and all around him were the strange things from the island. Underfoot and underarm, behind his back and before his eyes, Atile’i was wrapped up in a mixture of shore and sea, as if he was just another piece of the island.
Atile’i thought his spirit would depart when he hit land, but fortunately it remained in his body when the wave retreated. He hid inside a big rock. That rock was very strange: it was hollow, and around it were similar rocks, as if rocks also had the gift of imitating one another, just like people. He was shivering now, maybe because he had been soaking in the water too long. He had an instinctive desire to run toward dry land, assuming this was his only hope of survival. There was a group of people in the distance wearing strange clothes and carrying strange tools. Atile’i was careful to avoid them, doing his best to imitate the grass as he moved.
Inside a clump of grass, Atile’i had his first opportunity to size the place up. It was really peculiar: the land on one side was extremely high, and the land beyond the high land higher still, as if it led all the way up to the sky. The Earth Sage would never believe me if I told him. But was this Earth Sage’s turf, too? Did he even know about the existence of such a large expanse of land?
Atile’i started to run toward the highland. He ran and ran, until he felt his body was not listening to him anymore. In the time it takes for a fish to get caught on the hook, he felt something press down upon his leg. Before he knew it he could no longer move.
“I’m caught! I am caught by many stones. Oh venerable Kabang, please save me,” Atile’i muttered.
Atile’i could only lie helpless on his side, immobile. He remembered the way to dispel pain that the elders had taught him: imagine that you are a fish. Elders often said that of all the creatures the fish was the least afraid of pain, for a hooked fish can still strive mightily with a fisherman for a long time before its life passes away. If a person got hooked, he would likely submit in the blink of an eye.
“A man of Wayo Wayo only gives up when his blood stops flowing, just like a fish, for we are people of the sea,” the Sea Sage had said.
Lying on the ground, Atile’i carefully observed this new world. In every respect, in its colors, scents and sounds, it was different from Wayo Wayo. Of course it was also different from the island on the sea. So this was what the world was like: you pass through something and come out the other side, and the world there is somewhat similar but not quite the same. Atile’i was pleased with himself for coming to this realization.
Then he heard the sound of the woman’s footsteps. Then he saw the woman.
After releasing Atile’i from his earthly bondage, the woman kept repeating the same things over and over again to him. From her gestures, Atile’i guessed that she wanted him to stay put. Atile’i did not remain there in order to wait for her. In fact, he had no choice in the matter, because his leg was broken, and a person with a broken leg cannot go anywhere. Worse, a man with a broken leg could never become a good fisherman, and his diving would suffer as well.
“Never again will I have the chance to become a real Wayo Wayoan man,” Atile’i thought, despairing like a gull caught in a gawana.