The Legend Is Born

Ḷainjin hadn’t stopped crying, so she lifted his face to hers and baby-talked to him in as carefree a voice as possible. He wasn’t amused and wanted his mother, but she had long since gathered her fleet, crossed the lagoon, sailed through the broad passageway, and got her craft safely to sea. Suddenly, it turned dark again as clouds covered the sky. She remembered that first day well. Ḷainjin’s mother, Tarmālu, fat with child, had brought hundreds of bundles of wire to trade for Wōtto logs of jāānkun and Jaki. She had asked for a midwife, and everybody pointed to Helkena’s mother’s house.

So, that’s how it started. She gave birth, and as the moons passed, the Jaki and the jāānkun piled up as she distributed the wire bundles. The jāānkun would supply nourishment during the trade winds season when food was scarce, and the women of Wōtto made excellent Jaki, and their men dried fine jāānkun as well—sunlight they had in abundance. So, the island women gathered more pandanus leaves and made more mats. As Ḷainjin had grown, things slowed down. Helena had helped her mother pick various leaves, which they heated with water in a jāpe for Tarmālu’s baths.

Yesterday had been the second day of the storm, and then that evening, she decided to leave, and off they went. And here in Helkena’s arms was Ḷainjin, the infant left behind. She held him between the tree and herself to brace him in her arms against the trunk. She smiled at his little face and said, “You’re a heavy boy! Too much mother’s milk.” The storm, it seemed, was restarting, or at least clouding over again, and she was already tired of holding him. She looked at her sister, who acknowledged her by raising her arm.