From the far end of the long curve of beach the call of the conch beckoned across the water. The sun had nearly reached the sea. The newly-tattooed shoulders of some of the boys still oozed blood as they made their way along the sand toward where the roasting fires already burned. There, in a night full of song and revelry, the elders of the village would betroth them to the girls who were to be their wives, and welcome them as adults.

If they dared to break taboo and look behind them, the boys to become men could see against the reddened sky the distant silhouette of the old man who sat on the big black rocks to watch the waves every evening. None dared. Tonight, according to rumor, they would learn about him, too.

As children they had been forbidden to talk about the old man, but they told one another in secret that he was older than the world, and had one leg that did not bend, and a back that bent too much, and could make fire come out of his eyes. If they heard that story, parents did nothing to deny it. Perhaps some of them believed it might be true. An unruly child could be threatened with a night visit from the Man Older than the World, and behavior always improved.

This much everyone knew: The old man was called Pa’auna. He lived alone beside a small cove on the far side of a promontory of lava boulders thrown down by a giant sea wave long before anyone else now living could remember. Surf that would pound a canoe to pieces surged into Pa’auna’s cove through narrow channels between broken knives of rock. Only by a precarious trek along the side of a cliff, and a hand-scraping climb down, could his dwelling be reached.

Someone from the village made that climb each morning to take Pa’auna food. The elders decided who should provide for him every day, duty dreaded, but never resisted. With no greeting, the day’s envoy exchanged the full food basket for the empty one by the door of the hut, then escaped from Pa’auna’s cove as rapidly as possible, hoping to avoid even seeing him. Those who had by misfortune gazed into his eyes said they saw distant things there that men should not see, and for days afterward they were afflicted with dreams none would describe.

Only Fana’ala, chief elder of the village, claimed knowledge of Pa’auna as a younger man. Even then, Fana’ala had been a small child, and already Pa’auna watched from his high place on the rocks at the end of each day. Fana’ala, now very old himself and blind, knew that Pa’auna still sat on the rocks even as the new adults gathered beside the fire. When all had settled, and Fana’ala was certain of silence, he told them this story, which his father had given to him:

* * *

Pa’auna was the son of Tafau, then chief elder. As he approached manhood he grew tall and straight and strong and handsome. He could run faster, swim farther, dive deeper than any other boy on the island. The girls nearing betrothal took far more notice of Pa’auna than of other eligible boys. Indeed, some village adults grumbled among themselves that no one had the right to be so much better in all things, that it was an offense to the spirits. But Pa’auna was the son of Tafau, and the grumbling never went far.

Other boys received their tattoos with the sharp spines of the flat ray called Amu as you have done today, with bravery, staring at the sea, showing nothing on your faces, proving yourselves worthy to be men. In those days, as now, grimaces were acts of shame, tears even worse. Pa’auna took his first tattoo laughing and telling jokes, with a great display of his perfect white teeth. Then, while the blood still ran, he went swimming and diving, ignoring the sting of the sea.

Many girls vied for the attentions of Pa’auna. He smiled and joked and laughed with all, but one among them, Manalu, caught his eye. Everyone regarded Manalu as the most comely of the young women in the village, very tall and slender with hair that gleamed when sunlight struck it, like the scales of Tuata, the fast fish that flashes among the corals. She was the daughter of another elder, whose name is now forgotten, and somewhere farther back, as great-grandparents of both Manalu and Pa’auna, or perhaps great-great-grandparents, were sisters. When Tafau and the father of Manalu reached agreement that the betrothal of son and daughter should take place, again there were murmurs in the village. The kinship was too close, it would offend especially the Mistress of Waters, who oversaw such things. Today, this would not be permitted. But Pa’auna was the son of Tafau, the revered chief elder, and no one objected openly.

Everyone wondered when Pa’auna would present his canoe, his formal request for the hand of his intended bride. Other boys now paired up with those to become their wives carved canoes from the trees that grew near the beach, painted them, decorated them with shell, as you will do. But no one saw Pa’auna among them. Days passed, and people began to question. Then one morning the sun rose to shine on a magnificent canoe that rested on the sand between the village and the sea.

Word passed quickly and villagers gathered around the creation. The morning work of weaving, of cooking, of preparing to fish, could wait while everyone marveled. Nearly twice the length and girth of any wedding canoe ever presented, it displayed such intricacy of decoration and color that to look at it almost hurt the eyes. Children laughed and danced around it as if at a festival. No one had seen Pa’auna bring it, nor was he around in the morning, but everyone knew who had made the canoe. Of all the young men, he alone would have had the strength to drag it by himself up the beach.

Then, someone observed aloud that no trees along the beach were near as broad as the one that had given itself to become this glorious canoe. A tree of such dimensions could be found only at the grove of the Mistress of Waters, where no tree was ever to be felled. But in the instant that was said, Pa’auna himself strode through the village center toward the canoe.

The small children saw him first, and dashed across the sand to meet him. A joyous shout arose from the crowd around the canoe, and people moved apart to make room for him. All smiles and pride, yes, he told them, it was the canoe for Manalu, she who stood embarrassed near the toothed face of Savai, the Great Shark, which decorated the prow. Her father, as custom dictated, stepped forth to acknowledge and embrace his new son. Any question of the canoe’s origin faded with merriment, as preparations began for that night’s feasting, which would be great, for the acceptance of the glorious canoe made this the wedding-night of Pa’auna, son of Tafau.

Now the other young men could inspect the craft in detail, and they pored over it, searching for the flaw. As yours will be, all betrothal canoes are made with one deliberate error, so as not to offend the Mistress of Waters by being perfect. The Mistress of Waters is a generous provider, giving the bounty of her sea and of her rain, but she is jealous, too, and a perfect canoe risks her wrath. If she grows angry enough, she can punish the whole village with terrible storms or drought. Once within the memory of Elder Tafau she had sent savage raiders from the sea in long canoes, and they had killed men and children and stolen women and burned the village.

Still, it is a matter of the canoe-carver’s pride to mask the flaw in some clever way, so it cannot be detected easily, and when finally found, will be as much a marvel as the canoe itself.

Pa’auna’s friends examined the canoe until the sun sank into the sea, and the roasting fires were ready. No detail of scroll-carving or painting seemed amiss, Savai had the same number of teeth on both sides, the circles of clam shells hammered into the wood around his eyes were identical. Two great pearls of the kind found only in the belly of the shell Anuai, which lives where it can be reached only by the strongest diver, formed the pupils of Savai’s eyes. Pa’auna stood by as his friends searched, laughed at their missed guesses, showed where they had been wrong, but did not reveal the hidden blemish that had to be there. Never before had a canoe failed to divulge its secret, never before the canoe of Pa’auna, son of Tafau.

The wedding night of Pa’auna and Manalu is remembered for the greatest feast the island had ever seen. In the morning, while the village still slept, Pa’auna slipped down to the beach, used his sinewy strength to haul the canoe back to the water, and put to sea. He was nowhere in sight when the rest of the people stirred from their huts and returned to the normal activities of the day.

No one thought much about the canoe being gone, for it is custom after such a night that the new husband put to sea and return with fresh food for his bride. At mid-afternoon, although the season was wrong, a dark storm arose, bringing much wind and thunder and flashes of lightning and rain that worked through even the tightest thatch of roofs. Waves rolled far up the beach, nearly reaching the place where the canoe had been.

When the storm passed, Pa’auna did not return. More than one person wondered, had he been foolish enough to put to sea in a flawless canoe? Had the Mistress of Waters become angry, and sent the storm? Manalu waited with her old family and wept silently, awake until sunrise.

But as the first rays of morning slanted across the sand, Pa’auna beached his canoe and dragged it with its cargo of fish and fruit up beyond the reach of the waves. He greeted Manalu with embraces and smiles, and told her he had found a safe haven on the other side of the island to wait out the storm.

* * *

No one said anything more about the flaw in the canoe. People wondered, and on occasion looked at the canoe more closely, but Pa’auna only smiled and left it on the sand where anyone could examine it.

Months became years, and Pa’auna maintained the canoe with new paint, new shells, even replaced one of the pearls when a wave washed it away. He used it for all his fishing and travel, and raced it for sport against others, always winning. Any talk there once might have been about the perfect canoe and the Mistress of Waters silenced. It was, after all, the canoe of Pa’auna, son of Tafau.

As years passed, a new concern arose in the village to replace the mystery of the canoe without flaw. Tafau grew very old and talked of things that made no sense. Everyone knew he was not long to be among them. When an elder dies, the remaining council chooses a new elder. Everyone assumed that would be Pa’auna, but the elders cannot select one who is childless, and Manalu bore no children. All Pa’auna’s young friends had grown into full adulthood and were surrounded by children. Some of the children of these friends themselves married and had babies of their own.

Pa’auna and Manalu were desperate for a child, even one. For Manalu, not to have a child was the greatest of disgraces. But no child came. As she aged into the middle part of life, Manalu remained beautiful, and Pa’auna remained handsome and strong, but everyone knew the time for children was growing short. Could what was said before they were wed, about the kinship of grandparents, now be coming back on them? Could the Mistress of Waters be taking revenge upon Pa’auna for his perfect canoe?
* * *

One night the Mistress of Waters appeared to Pa’auna in a dream. She walked from the sea in the morning sun to greet him as he prepared to sail his canoe for fishing, so beautiful he had to look away from her, and she laughed a light and musical laugh that reminded him of the sound of water running in the freshet through the grove of big trees that belonged to her on the other side of the island.

“You have made a fine canoe, Pa’auna,” she mocked with a titter, “but you and your cousin-wife have no children.” He stared, unable to move, and she turned and walked slowly, laughing, back into the sea.

He woke, covered in sweat. It was still dark, Manalu slept undisturbed beside him, and he knew what he must do. Without waking her he slipped from their hut carrying the big shell adze he had used years ago to carve the canoe, and went to where it sat in the sand. He could hear the lapping of peaceful waves, and for just a moment he thought he could hear something else, at not quite the same rhythm, hiding beneath it. He listened, but the second sound must have been just a memory from his dream, for it was gone. Using all his strength, he swung the adze so hard against the face of Savai that the shell tool shattered. Even in the dark he could see the white gash of exposed fresh wood across Savai’s grinning teeth. It had cut across the eye, too, and when Pa’auna felt it with his finger, the pearl was missing.

Pa’auna stood for a moment, listening to the waves. Then he gathered what he could find of the pieces of the adze blade, walked to the shore, and flung them into the sea.

He sailed at dawn, but not to fish. Instead, he beached at the north end of the island and walked inland along the stream that flowed out of the grove of the Mistress of Waters. He found the place, now overgrown, where he had cut the large tree to make his canoe. He knelt on the bank of the stream and asked her to forgive his youthful offense, and to grant him his wish for a child.

When he returned in the evening people saw the scar on the face of Savai. They murmured in wonder, but assumed that Pa’auna had met with some accident, and would fix the canoe in the way he had maintained it over the years. Of such a thing, one did not question Pa’auna, the son of Tafau.

That night the Mistress of Waters returned in Pa’auna’s dreams.

“Your canoe has a flaw,” she said, and again followed with that trill of strange laughter. She traced the ragged slash on Savai’s face with her fingers. “It is good,” she said. Pa’auna stood transfixed, as he had the night before.

“Your cousin-wife will be with child,” the Mistress of Waters told him. “You will have a daughter. She will be very beautiful, almost as beautiful as me. I give her to you, and for seven years you shall enjoy her. Then you must bring her back to me, for she is mine.”

The Mistress of Waters laughed loudly now, and began to walk toward the sea. She looked back over her shoulder, smiling at Pa’auna, and said, “Seven years. Seven years, Pa’auna.” With an echoing peal of laughter she vanished into the waves.

Within weeks, the women of the island began to wonder aloud among themselves, and not long after, were sure. Manalu would have a baby. The gash on the face of Savai remained, but the joy in the village was too great for anyone to worry over such a trifle. Small gifts of congratulation appeared each morning at the door of Manalu and Pa’auna. As time grew short, men and women wagered as to the day and to whether it would be son or daughter.

Manalu’s time came late at night, after a day of unsettled weather, with small intense squalls of rain, and fitful, shifting winds. Pa’auna summoned midwives. They banished him from the house, and the night passed. At morning there was yet no child. More rain followed during the day, and on into the next night. Pa’auna did not sleep and did not eat, but wandered in the rain on the beach, watching the restless waves roll up on the sand, always remaining close enough to see his home.

Before dawn the second morning, from inside the house came the cry of a newborn. Pa’auna rushed there, to be stopped at the door by a fat midwife carrying a bundle wrapped in a shawl.

“Naia,” Pa’auna said, “we have chosen to call her Naia. We knew it would be a girl.”

The midwife looked at him with her eyes brimming. She started to say something, but Pa’auna held up a hand to stop her.

“The baby?” he asked.

She shook her head, with great tears beginning to flow, and unwrapped the shawl to reveal a red-faced infant twisting its face for a healthy cry. At the sound of the first angry wail, Pa’auna understood.

* * *

Alone in the great canoe, Pa’auna gave Manalu to the sea that afternoon, in a place only he knew, out of sight from the village. When he came back after dark, he dragged the canoe up the beach as he always had, refusing offers of help from friends. In its customary place on the sand, he burned it.

The time of mourning in the village lasted longer than usual, but all things pass, and life returned to its intended ways. A man needs a canoe. Pa’auna took down a tree from near the beach and carved a seaworthy canoe of moderate size and surpassing ugliness. Scrapes and nicks from tools scarred its sides, and he neither smoothed nor painted over them. He carved no face, no eyes to guide it. For fishing and carrying cargo, it would suffice. No more did Pa’auna race against other canoes. Using the ugly canoe, he returned to providing for his daughter and himself.

At first perhaps from the sadness that came with her birth, but later due to her beauty and liveliness, Naia grew to become the village’s child. The women doted on her, argued over who would take her in each day as Pa’auna went to sea. He no longer smiled often, except in Naia’s presence, for he loved her as deeply as he had loved her mother. She had Manalu’s eyes and skin and hair, but was more talkative and outgoing, like her father. And people marveled at her laugh, quick and bubbly, full of life, as it so often rang through the island air like the music of a new bird.

As Naia grew, gray came into Pa’auna’s hair, and wrinkles deepened around his mouth and eyes. Still, he remained a handsome man. More than one village widow looked at him with hope, but he made no effort to signal consideration of a new wife. His life seemed to be lived only for Naia.

When she was four, old Tafau, who hadn’t spoken a word in the council of elders for more than two years, died. As expected, Pa’auna became the youngest of the elders, and soon after a leader of the council. His decisions proved wise and just and fair, and the village prospered.

After Naia’s sixth birthday, some in the village noticed that Pa’auna spoke and participated less in the leadership of elders, contributing little to discussion or ceremony. He arose in the morning, fished, gathered fruit, returned at night to retrieve his daughter from whatever household had claimed her that day, and went home, saying little to anyone. Perhaps these changes came from age and from being too long without a wife. Still, Naia seemed to carry happiness into Pa’auna’s house. Even at night as the village settled into sleep, her lilting laughter often sounded from within it.

No one knew that Mistress of Waters had begun to appear every night in Pa’auna’s dreams. At first he would find himself awake, Naia still beside him, with a sound he could not recognize echoing away in his head, not knowing why. Then one night after a difficult, exhausting day at sea, a dream found him walking on the beach and the sound came, and he knew it as the laughter of the Mistress of Waters. She walked up glistening from the sea and fixed him with her mocking gaze.

“Your canoe has many flaws, Pa’auna,” she said. “It is uglier than Luva, the poison stonefish, who squats unseen on the reef. Can not Pa’auna, the son of Tafau, make a canoe better than that?” The very air rang with the peal of laughter he knew so well. The Mistress of Waters tossed her head back so that her hair flowed shimmering about her body like a cloth made of the web of Inu’uma, the black spider. “What kind of canoe would you carve for me, I wonder? You have been long without a woman, Pa’auna. You and I are not cousins. Perhaps you should go to my grove on the other side of the island, and cut a big tree, and make for me a fine, perfect canoe.” The laughter seemed to ripple like the waves when the west wind blows.

“Seven years,” said the Mistress of Waters, “seven years is a long time. Our daughter has become very beautiful, almost as beautiful as me. She has my eyes, my hair, I think. And my voice. Perhaps my laugh, too. Ah, seven years of such beauty. Bring her to me, Pa’auna. She is mine.”

For the first time in his dream-meetings with the Mistress of Waters, he could respond.

“Never. You have Manalu. You shall not have Naia.”

Now the laughter sounded louder and harsher than ever. “Sail with her in your horrid canoe, Pa’auna. Bring her to me.”

“Never!” Pa’auna shouted.

“Father?” Naia’s voice sounded next to his ear as her hand tugged at his shoulder to drag him to wakefulness. Even as he came awake, he still saw the back of the Mistress of Waters as she walked into the sea, laughing, and calling, “Live long, Pa’auna, live long.”

Naia’s seventh birthday neared, and the Mistress of Waters laughed her way into Pa’auna’s dreams night after night.

“Bring her to me in your ugly canoe, Pa’auna,” she smirked. “It is a good canoe, to have so many blemishes.”

“Seven years is a long time to endure such beauty. Seven years. Bring her to me.”

“You have been long without a woman, Pa’auna. It is not good for a man to be without a woman. Perhaps you can make me your woman. Bring her to me.”

“Live long, Pa’auna. Bring her to me and you will live long and be revered. Bring to me what is mine.”

For two full days before Naia’s birthday, Pa’auna did not sleep. The village celebrated the day of her birth with much gaiety, and Naia’s melodious laughter pierced the overall clamor of adults and other children the way a signal fire pierces a dark night. Eating and drinking went on into evening, until people began to drag off happily to bed. Pa’auna rescued Naia from the clutches of several possessive women, and took her home, protesting but still laughing. Once home, he managed to get her in bed, and lay down himself, exhausted.

The Mistress of Waters walked out of the sea, gleaming in the light of the full dream moon. Her hair shimmered down over her body and her eyes flashed with the cold blue night-fire of Natua, the stinging ghost jelly.

“Tonight, Pa’auna,” she said. “She comes to me tonight.”

“Never!” Pa’auna heard his own voice shout into the dream-night.

“Bring her to me, Pa’auna. Bring her to me now. If not, I must come and take what is mine. Why not sail your dreadful canoe and come to me now, you and our daughter, and let us all be together?”

“No!” Pa’auna shouted.

“Ah, Pa’auna, you are a proud man. I keep my bargains. You shall live for a very long time. As long as you live, the people in your village will be safe, and for that, they will take care of you. But you shall be alone. No children will speak to you. No one will seek your council. Yet you shall hear us, myself and my daughter. Every evening if you listen well, we will come to you, and you shall hear us and remember.”

The Mistress of Waters parted her hair and laughed and revealed herself to Pa’auna. Even in the cool moonlight, her beauty burned at his eyes, felt like hot afternoon sun on his flesh.

“Come to me, Pa’auna. You have been long without a woman. Be with me tonight. Bring her and we will all be together tonight.”

One of the elders, whose name is no longer remembered, awoke to a rumble in the ground and sat up. Then came a gentle, almost peaceful jittering that rustled the thatch on the roof, but little else. He tugged at his wife’s shoulder to awaken her.

“The ground shakes,” he said. “Come. We must leave.”

He went from house to house, waking people and sending them out to wake others.

“Hurry! Leave now. Go up the hill path, as high as you can. Leave things behind, there is little time. Now!”

People found their way to the hill path and filed upward in the dark, respectful of the elder’s orders, but confused.

If anyone went to Pa’auna’s house, they failed to rouse him. In the confusion, his house may have been missed. Or maybe, because he was an elder and because he was Pa’auna, son of Tafau, everyone assumed he was out waking the others.

Lost in the embraces of the Mistress of Waters, drowning in the music of her laughter, Pa’auna heard no noise from others leaving the village. Only when Naia shook him, hard, did he struggle awake.

“What? What is it?”

“There is a sound, father.”

Pa’auna listened. From the beach came a soft rustling, not the familiar rhythmic lapping of waves on the sand that he should hear, but more like the sound of wind in palm fronds when a big storm is coming. But the air did not move. “Stay in the house,” he said.

Outside the sound was clearer, but still he did not recognize it. It seemed to be growing more distant. He trotted across the sand toward the shore. The hissing retreated with every step. He stopped at the strand line, where the sand was wet and firm and the gentle waves should be cooling his feet. But the water was gone. Then, from somewhere out beyond where the waves should be breaking, came another sound. The whispered grumble of retreating water carried with it a hint of the musical mocking laughter he remembered from his dreams.

“Naia!” he screamed, stumbling through the dry loose sand in front of the house. “Naia! Run!”

She came to the door and he wrenched at her arm, dragging her like a toy as he ran for the hill path, even as the roar gathered behind him.

A villager found Pa’auna in the morning, clinging to a tree that by a miracle still stood on the lower slope of the hill, where all others had been swept away. He was unconscious, broken, but alive.

The mighty sea wave had first smashed the village, then dislodged a great pile of lava boulders that slid down to bury what remained. All the villagers escaped to safety high on the hill, all except Pa’auna and his daughter.

We rebuilt the village where it now stands, Fana’ala told his audience, at the far end of the beach. There it is safe, and the Mistress of Waters takes care of us and we prosper. Whenever a child comes, we offer it to the Mistress of Waters, as you in your time will do. She thanks us by sending the rain and the food we need, and letting us keep our children. Perhaps she has all the children she needs.

There, on the black rocks that cover where the village used to be, the Man Older than the World, the bent and twisted man who made the perfect canoe, sits every evening listening to the waves, hoping to hear within them the laughter of water.