This Strange Island

Kuhuma is a strange island.

Even in the blue dawn, a hot wind kept blowing over the Kuhuma Island that lay about a five-hour ferry ride from the mainland, Mejico. Here the earliest men and women of the earth lived surrounded by big white clouds and the huge blue Sea of Pasifika. The island had five mountains and on one the humans lived — the Kuhumans.

On the sea, when they went to fish at dusk, Kuhumans spoke to the lightning gods and laughed with them. But when they didn’t leave behind enough f...