Island's End by Padma Venkatraman Page B

while keeping the fire stick in place. By then the hollow in the trunk is as black as my hair and my palms are rough as bark. On the evening of the eighth day, I finally see a burst of gray smoke. But that is just the first step.
    I learn that I must keep going after the smoke appears, until sparks finally fly, then blow on the sparks to keep them alive and feed them quickly with bark strips before the sparks go out. Next, I must use the strips to light a pile of twigs and leaves. Only when this pile is alight can I feed the blaze with large branches.
    After four more days of trying and failing, Lah-ame says, “Remember, everything has a spirit. To create fire, you must bring together the power of the trees’ spirits and use this along with the strength of your own spirit and body.”
    Before trying again, I pray softly to the trees from which the firewood came. Then I churn the fire stick in the hollow with my vine rope. When I see the first sparks, I reach for a handful of bark strips as usual. But this time, instead of worrying about whether they will catch, I imagine my spirit as a steady light, pulling the sparks toward the bark strips.
    The Otherworld is within everything; as much inside this fire as outside it.
    As soon as the strips are alight, I use them to set fire to a pile of twigs nearby. While I stoke the blaze with more twigs and branches, Lah-ame puts the hollowed-out trunk, vine rope and fire stick away. Soon my fire is not just crackling but roaring.
    As I watch my fire grow larger, my spirit swells with a feeling of triumph. Although my back and arms ache from days of hunching over the fire tools, I wish my tribe were here to dance with me around the flames I built.
    “Have you not forgotten something?” Lah-ame says.
    “Have I?” I ask.
    Lah-ame rises and says a prayer of thanks to Pulug-ame, who gave the gift of fire to our ancestors. Ashamed that I forgot to thank him myself, I bow my head and repeat the words after Lah-ame. We sit on the warm earth, close to the fire.
    “Uido, I, too, was overjoyed the first time I made fire,” Lah-ame says. “I made the same mistake you did. It is only natural. But the more dangerous mistake even an older oko-jumu may repeat is to enjoy one’s power too much.”
    “Sorry,” I mumble.
    For a long time, Lah-ame squeezes my temples, until my heady pride at making the fire drains out of me. “A fire like the one you just made has the power to warm us, light up our nights and cook our food. But if left unguarded, it can leap into a rage and burn down a village. And just as you learn to control the fire’s power by tending to it with skill and respect, so must you watch yourself, Uido. Spirits may use their powers to punish and destroy; we must not. If you become oko-jumu someday, your every act and decision must be for the tribe’s good.”
    “I will remember, Lah-ame.” I stare into the flames and hug my knees to my chest. After days of churning the fire stick with a vine rope, my arm muscles bulge out like a young man’s.
    “Your training is nearly complete,” Lah-ame says.
    “Not already?” I say.
    Lah-ame smiles at my surprise.
    “Tomorrow we will start making a canoe, to help you with the final test that awaits.”
    “A canoe?” This confuses me. “Is it not far too stormy to go out on the ocean for another two moons at least?”
    Lah-ame points to the west. “You will need to canoe up the stream and search the swamp until you find your insect-eating plant.”
    “It grows in the swamp?” I try to keep my voice from shaking. I cannot believe Lah-ame will send me there. I was about ten seasons old when Kara and three of his best hunters left to see what was in the western part of our island. Only one of his hunters returned with him.
    They told of walking west until they came to a place where the mud stank of dead leaves. There they found crocodiles: creatures three times as long as a grown man, with teeth sharper than a shark’s. These