Baluan-Pam

(map)

Long ago, there was a small island called Lep Island behind Baluan Island. Nobody lived there except a ten-headed masalai and his two wives.

The people of Baluan Island, though, heard stories of plentiful food on this island, and one day an old man and his boy went to look for it. They reached the island near dusk, slept in their canoe that night, and began exploring the island the next morning. They did not know anybody lived there.

They indeed found lots of good fruit and soon had gorged themselves on it. Later in their exploration, they saw some smoke in the forest and traced it to a house. Taking care to stay hidden, they saw the two wives tending a garden there. The man crept inside when the women left to go to the beach. He heard snoring, but had to leave quickly when he heard the two women returning. He and the boy slept in the home's shed that night.

The next morning, while his wives were out gathering food, the masalai awoke and said, "Ah, I smell something different." He began looking around. When the man and boy saw the ten-headed masalai, they were so frightened that their trembling dislodged the firewood they were hiding under, and the masalai found them.

"What are you doing here?" the masalai demanded.

"We were fishing, and the wind blew us to this island," the man answered.

The masalai felt sorry for them, so he let them stay. He gave them food and kept them hidden from his wives.

The women noticed that the food they prepared was disappearing much more quickly, and they began to worry that the masalai was getting hungrier and might eat them. Deciding to kill him first, they put juice from a poisonous vine in his food.

The masalai ate the poisoned food. He also gave some to the father and son. The poison killed those two quickly after they went to sleep. The next morning, the masalai felt a terrible pain in his stomach. He cried and thrashed about, and the whole island trembled with him. The wind blew fiercely, a heavy rain fell, and the clouds thundered. The women wanted to leave, but they had no place to go. The masalai died, and water washed over the island, killing them too. Today you can see a small reef where Lep Island used to be. On Balaun Island, there are many good fruits which birds carried over from there.

Slone, 2001, 284.