Others decided to form strange alliances to exploit the unique skills of each creature of Dara. The mighty cruben, sovereign of the seas, allied itself with the glowing sea cucumber—half animal, half plant—so that the illumination from the latter might reveal any gods hiding in the dark recesses of deep undersea trenches and enable the former to catch them; the winter plum, the bamboo, and the pine, the three hardiest plants of winter, allied with the heat-loving desert toad so that while the bamboo groves, pine forests, and winter plum copses whispered to each other across snow-capped peaks, the toads could scour the volcanic calderas; the wolf, fiercest predator on land, made a pact with the clinging vine so that as the wolf packs searched the deep woods and howled, the gods running and dodging might be ensnared by soft vine-webs.
From morning till noon, and from noon till evening, the gods were found one by one.
First, the pine forests, bamboo groves, and winter plum copses, surveying every spot touched by ice in the islands, discovered Lady Rapa in the Wisoti Mountains as a delicate face carved into the glasslike surface of a frozen waterfall. Shortly after this discovery, the toads found Lady Kana as a jagged crack in a vitreous screen of obsidian.
The alliance of fire and ice had paid off.
But not all alliances had such happy endings. The arrogant cruben dove straight for the heart of a swirling patch of turbulence in one of the deepest trenches of the sea, whose inky gloom was illuminated by hundreds of glowing sea cucumbers attached to the head of the cruben like jewels encrusting the tip of a ceremonial staff of power. But at the last minute, right before the cruben closed its jaws gently about the laughing form of shape-shifting Tazu, the sovereign of the seas shook its head and discarded the sea cucumbers from its adamantine scales like a water buffalo shaking loose the gnats clinging to its head. While the cruben shot for the surface in a triumphant surge, the poor, soft, glowing tubes drifted helplessly into the bottomless void like falling stars cast out of heaven.
Such was the risk of serving at the pleasure of the mighty and powerful.
“Mama, why are those with the most power always so bad?”
“Mimi-tika, is the fisherman evil who harvests the fruits of the sea? Is the farmer evil who cuts off ears of sorghum? Is the weaver evil who boils the cocoon of the silkworm and unravels its debut dress—now a shroud?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Great lords—whether mortal or immortal—do what they do because their concerns are not ours. We suffer because we are the grass upon which giants tread.”
In a secluded cove on the northwestern coast of the Big Island, the whales plying the shores of the Islands of Dara discovered an ancient sea turtle whose shell was as cracked as the coral reefs peeking out of the sea.
The whales surrounded the turtle and splashed it playfully with sprays from their blowholes, painting a fine rainbow with the mist.
“Lord Lutho,” said the leader of the whales, a massive dome-headed cow whose gray eyes had seen hundreds of springs, “you are hiding exactly the way we predicted you would.”
The ancient turtle laughed and transformed into the dark-skinned divine seer, the fisherman of dreams and omens. “How do you know that you have not found me exactly the way I predicted you would?”
The whales were confused by this.
“If you had foreseen that we would look for you here,” asked the whale, “why did you not hide somewhere else?”
Lutho smiled and pointed at the rainbow, now fading as the whale-mist gradually dissipated.
“Was it because though you could foresee the future, you could not change it?” The whale asked a different question.
Lutho smiled and pointed to the rainbow.
“Was it because you had foreseen the future but decided that the vision was what you wanted after all?” The whale tried yet a third time.
Lutho smiled and pointed to the rainbow, now barely a hint in the air.
“Was it because—” But this time, the whale couldn’t complete the question. Lutho had disappeared along with the rainbow.
“Mama, why did Lord Lutho point to the rainbow instead of answering?”
“Nobody knows, my baby. The whales didn’t, and neither did your father, our parents, grandparents, or their grandparents before them. That’s why it’s called a mystery. I suppose sometimes the gods have lessons for us we can’t understand through words alone.”
“I think Lord Lutho is not a very good teacher.”
“Good teachers are as rare as the cruben among whales, or the dyran among fish.”
It was no surprise that Lady Tututika, last born of the gods and the one who took the most pleasure in beauty, was ensnared by the symphony of coconuts rhythmically pounding the sea and the golden veil dance of the carp—she manifested herself at the mouth of the Sonaru River, and it is said that one can still get a glimpse of that heavenly dance in the motions of the veil dancers of Faça as musicians tap out beats on their coconut drums.
Neither was it a surprise when Lord Rufizo manifested himself when a yearling fawn tripped and injured himself in the rocky highlands near fog-shrouded Boama. How could the god of healing stand idly by when living creatures injured themselves in pursuit of the gods?
“At least Dara will enjoy a year mild as the deer every cycle of twelve years,” said the green-caped divine healer, and the deer leapt around him in joy at being elevated among the Calendrical Dozen.
And finally, as the sun set in the west, Lord Kiji, the patron of ambitious flight and soaring fancy and wide-open skies, surveyed the Islands of Dara in the form of a Mingén falcon gliding over Dara. The bird, dizzied by a pungent pillar of floral aroma emanating from a garden of blooming chrysanthemums near the meeting place of the Damu and Shinané Mountains, fell out of the sky in a spiraling descent, and as he landed, a pack of wolves pounced on him, holding him down.
“I am caught by the king of flowers and the king of beasts!” said the god of all those who yearned to be above others. “I would call this not a bad way to end the day.”
And there was much celebration in Dara, for the gods sometimes behaved as their natures dictated.
The wolf, however, was not quite as joyous as the others among the Calendrical Dozen; this was because the wolf was the pawi of Lord Fithowéo, and Fithowéo was missing.
“The god of warfare and strife?”