“Have you killed, broken any more of our law, our custom?” The old man shouted, the pearls on his neck shaking.

  No one answered; the only sound was the screaming of the wind in the summer storm. And the master of the house’s wife, who was screaming just as loudly.

  The old man shook, his finger flying wildly around the room, pointing at anything he had a grievance with. Cups of wine, jars of grain, and fruit he had never seen before wrapped in netting. The only thing he didn’t point at was the mud they stood in and the cracked planks that leaked water and soaked them.

  “How Dare You!” The old man shouldn’t have pointed his finger, even if he was an Elder by title and right of age. “You bring a landwoman here, to this Island. Claim she is your wife. Say she bears your child. You, why did you leave the Island? Why have you destroyed your father’s name? No longer is this Island ruled under the name Ni.”

  “You are right.”

  Shock filled the face of everyone in the room, the Elder leading, three men at his back, and the one sick drunk, leaning on the table in the room’s center. How was their once chief so calm after hearing such words? Perhaps he lost his hearing while on land. Or he had gone mad. The only thing on him that said Islander was his hair. As golden as the sun, not like the woman he brought back, who had hair as black as Sea-Raven feathers.

  “The name Ni, I have left behind. Together, she and I took the name Yang, as it was beneath the poplar tree we married.” The man stood tall, unyielding in his response, and that was all he would say. Nothing more.

  “Ni Gongfeng! You defile your name, your father’s, and your grandfather’s name. You defile this Island.” Pearls swung as the old man led the charge. Other men as old as him or older chanted with him. “Defiled this land!” though they were noticeably quieter.

  “You bring a curse with you in the form of storms. A child born in summer is a cursed child.” They chanted again, the three with the one leading, “cursed, cursed.” One relented in saying such frightful words, Gongfeng was their chief in blood by action. The child would be his, no matter their words.

  Their voices overlapped the screaming of the woman in the back, giving birth, and the murmured instructions of the female elders. Their cragged voices were far from friendly, but they would not sabotage the birth of new life.

  “You bring an outsider here, with an abomination in her belly, spit on our faces as elders, spit on your father’s grave, spit on your ancestry because you couldn’t ignore a land-bi—” The chant didn’t come this time. Instead, they back away as the one who led them hit the ground, his back sunk into the mud. Red rivers flowed from his face.

  It was just a punch, but it split the Elder’s nose in two, and his lips into more pieces than worth counting. “Violence…” he said, spluttering blood.

  “It is Yang now, and I have forgotten nothing, and I won’t forget your words. I have avenged my father and uncles for the wrongs they faced, and on land, I found purpose, which none of you have! Elders. Now leave this place. You are no longer welcome in my home; only those who carry the name Yang and Ni will enter this building until the Ocean swallows it!”

  Yang Gongfeng was a tower compared to them, with a beard and soft clothing, his hair long and loose, shining gold in the torchlight that spluttered in the drips of rain water. All things of land, no Islander would wear.

  The old men in pearls, the Male elders, held each other as they walked towards the door. But they did not turn to leave. They looked at the drunk in his old blue monk’s robes, tattered and stained.

  The one who wore them lifted a jar in his hand, counted silver on the table, drank, and counted. When he finished, he looked up at his nephew, whom he had not seen in years, now he had a scar on his neck and a woman with black hair he called his wife. Then he repeated, taking a drink, counting, looking at his nephew like he had never seen him before.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Ni Fengchao, force some sense into your nephew.”

  Another joined in, one far calmer and more reasonable in tone, “You know it will be hard for them. Perhaps some of the women will take to the woman and child, but…”

  The drunk, Ni Fengchao, stuck out his hand, holding his wine jar by the lip. Catching rainwater dripping from the roof. “My patriarch has changed his family name, I follow his example. Yang Fengchao does not sound bad, eh?” He caught another droplet, smiling before pulling the jar to his lips. His head went back as his gulps filled the room. Purple wine was going down his cheeks and chin.

  “Elder Turang,” the drunk in blue turned, spilling a small puddle of wine, which he stopped to look at. “Ah,” he looked at the bleeding Elder, “Elder Turang… You are not the only one who cares so much about this, that young monk has ensured so, but you are the only one eager to curse when the Island’s leader returns, strange, huh?” He words were spat out in what seemed a blunder, but each was easy to understand.

  “I will take my nephew’s side today. Perhaps we could talk more… when the storm passes.” Yang Fengchao hiccuped as he walked up and by them, opening the door, and pushing one, two, and the third one out, but he held onto the pearl necklace of the one he called Turang. “You have no right to make a judgment, let alone wear the Elder pearls. You are worse than I. We have both crossed the Ocean. I went to the Water Temple to learn about peace. You did so for food, to kill.”

  Fengchao pushed Turang out the door into the rain, lightning streaking across the sky. “Don’t overstep your bounds. Praise the Water. Let the storm be kind to you.”

  Yang Fengchao closed the door with the four old men standing in the rain. Now, just the screams of childbirth remained in the house. Fengchao saw his nephew wipe blood from his nose when he turned.

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “I think it’s poison, uncle…”

  Fengchao drank deep, the last drops of his jar. “So, did you really avenge them? And then someone wanted revenge on you? No, it is not important now, no one will follow you to the Islands.”

  “It was my duty. I had to do it. Once I was Chief, I was the one to light the way, to protect our people so don’t have to…” Yang Gongfeng touched his neck as he spoke.

  “I understand, but not everyone believes in the oldest of laws. We know peace now. The Elders will sacrifice anything to keep it that way. They fear and burn history books.”

  The room sank into silence until Fengchao pulled the lid from another jar, and screaming filled the room. “What will you name the child?”

  “Boy, it will be a boy, a dancing witch in a red veil told me.” Gongfeng laughed at himself for saying so, but his eyes turned resolute. “His name will be Hao.”

  Fengchao choked on his wine once he heard the name clearly and worked it out in his head. He wiped his nose, as the burning of alcohol flowing up his sinuses made his voice more hoarse. “It’s a little ironic, isn’t it? For a name to give your child after all this…”

  Gongfeng smiled, pulling his back straighter. Ignoring the lightning striking the land and sky. “A man has to rise above his name. Think of it as a challenge. I’ll name him after the water of the Ocean therefore, he will have to walk above every ocean and sea to live above his name.”

  A silence took the room for a breath. Enough time for Fengchao to drink one-third of his jar.

  Gongfeng broke the silence and screams, “... If something happens to me, don’t let them treat her cruelly. If you must send them away… If my son does not earn my name, give him his mother, find a way…”

  Fengchao watched his nephew wipe streams of blood from his nephew’s nose, his sleeve used to wipe it away, gathering stripes.

  The building went silent again. There was no shout or scream, only the drip of rain and a laughing voice to be heard. From the back room, a woman called. “Gongfeng, come, come see, our boy.” The young man, Gongfeng, ran to see his child; if the door did not open, he would burst through it.

  Alone in the room, blood and rain on the floor, Fengchao leaned back in his chair, his feet resting on the tabletop. Since he was a boy, when the world quaked, he had always felt the constant tremor from the earth and water. But today it didn’t tremor, not since his nephew arrived this morning. No, it did not tremor. It shivered with fear or longing. He wasn’t sure which.

  He took a last sip from his jar as a few of the female Elders, his peers, he once called sisters. Wrinkled, sun-beaten like fish on the drying rake, walked by. Some went straight for the door, others watched him.

  “Praise the Sun, Praised the Moons, Praise the Water.” Fengchao began pouring what was left of the wine over his head, soaking his old Water Temple monk robes and the chair he sat in. Shivering with the World. “Praise life and its cycle.”