The medicine man peered at them with his hollow eyes. They glinted like pools of water in the near-darkness of his hut. 'Why have you come to bother me?' he demanded gruffly.

'Our race is in trouble, Wise One,' Melame replied. 'Our wild pigs have disappeared, turtles have become as scarce as the dugong, and our tribe members are dying like flies. Talai was the third one to go. Why are the spirits angry with us?'

'All this is happening because you lost the ingetayi,' Nokai said sternly. 'The sea-rock was a gift from our greatest ancestor Tomiti. It was engraved by Tawamoda, the first man. As long as we had the sacred rock, we were protected. Even the deadly tsunami caused no damage to our tribe. On the contrary, we were blessed by a girl child. It is only since the ingetayi disappeared that our tribe has fallen on hard times. How could you allow our most sacred relic to be stolen?'

'I really don't know, Wise One,' Melame replied sheepishly. 'We kept the sea-rock hidden deep inside the Black Cave at the far edge of the creek. None of the inene ever ventures that far. It is a mystery who could have taken it.'

Nokai gave another burp, groped about amongst the bones, rattles, charms and sea shells scattered across the tiger-skin rug, and came up with a large pearl oyster shell. 'Look at this,' he said. 'Once this was a living body, but today it is just a dead, empty shell. How? Because the spirit which resided in this shell has gone. Puluga resided in the ingetayi. When the ingetayi left Gaubolambe, Puluga left the island too. Now we are without his protection. The friendly spirits are angry with us for letting our God go. They are the ones causing all this havoc, these deaths. It is the curse of the onkobowkwe. Naturally, the person who stole the sacred rock will also be cursed. The spirits will not spare him, but they will not spare us either, for allowing the ingetayi to be stolen.'

'So what do we do? How do we save ourselves?' Pemba asked.

'There is only one way. Someone will have to go and recover the sacred rock,' Nokai replied.

'But for that we must first find out who has taken the ingetayi, and where it is residing now,' Melame said. 'Only you can help us locate it.'

'Yes, Nokai will help you locate it.' The medicine man nodded. 'But in return I want enough turtle meat to last me the rainy season, a big pot of honey and at least five nice pig skulls.'

'Granted, Wise One. Now just tell us who has the sacred stone.'

Nokai dragged the earthen vessel containing the fire closer to him. He rummaged through the items on the rug again and extracted a large lump of red clay and some brown seeds. He threw the seeds into the fire, where they burst with a bang. He smeared the red clay all over his face and body. He then went to the sleeping platform, raised the thin mattress and brought out four large bones from underneath it. 'These are my most prized possession. The bones of the great Tomiti himself.'

Melame and Pemba kneeled in deference to the great ancestor. Nokai sat down on the rug once again, spreading the four bones around him. Then he put his head between his knees and appeared to go to sleep. Melame and Pemba settled down to wait. They were familiar with the medicine man's routine. He was preparing to visit the spirit world. The brown seeds and the red clay would repel malevolent spirits, the bones of the ancestor would attract benevolent spirits. They would enter the hut, bringing a cold draft in their wake. Being blind, they would feel the torale's body all over, making him shiver with cold. They would then truss him up like a pig, load him on their back, and fly into the sky.

For close to eight hours, Melame and Pemba watched over Nokai's body, as inert as a stationary turtle, while shadows lengthened outside the hut. It was late evening when the torale finally woke up with a start. He seemed groggy and disoriented. His eyes were bleary and there were numerous small cuts and bruises all over his body.

'Water, quick, get me some water,' he cried. Pemba had a jug of water handy. The torale drank greedily, half the water cascading down his chin. Catching his breath, he announced dramatically, 'Ingetayi a-ti-iebe. Nokai has seen the sea-rock!'

Weary from his ordeal, Nokai narrated his journey in fragments, with Pemba and Melame having to tease out the details from him. This, he told them, was the longest trip he had ever undertaken. One that took him across the four oceans to the land of the inene. Soaring high in the sky, he had passed over snowcovered peaks and long, winding rivers. He had crossed barren sandy deserts and lush green valleys. He had seen metal birds flying in the sky and long iron snakes moving on the ground, smoke billowing from their hoods. The spirit of Tomiti himself had then led him on the trail of the ingetayi, crossing dense mangrove swamps, honing in on a vast bustling city teeming with people, where concrete buildings stood taller than the tallest mountains and where the night was lit up by the light of a thousand suns. He had swooped down to a small green-roofed house next to a small pond and that is where the ingetayi was, sitting atop a pedestal in a small room, surrounded with images of the inene's gods.

'Tell us who lives in the house, Wise One. He must be the one who stole the sea-rock,' Melame urged.

'I saw only two people in the house. An old woman, wearing a white dress, and a short, bald man, with bushy eyebrows, thin lips and a bulbous nose,' Nokai replied, adding, 'He also wore glasses.'

'Banerjee!' Melame and Pemba exclaimed simultaneously, recognizing the description of the senior welfare officer who had left the island two months ago in an unseemly hurry.

'Puluga be praised. All our troubles will now be over,' Nokai declared. 'As soon as the sea-rock is returned, the spirits will be propitiated. We will have enough honey and pigs and cicadas and turtles. No one will die and become an eeka.'

All three men stepped out of the hut and Melame broke the news to the other members of the Council of Elders, who had been waiting patiently since morning.

'The only issue now is who will undertake this mission? Who will go to the land of the inene and recover the sea-rock?' Pemba tossed the question.

The elders looked at each other's faces and looked away. A profound silence fell over the assembly. The wind dropped. Even the children running around with their toy bows and arrows ceased their sport and stood still, nervous and confused. The only sound was that of the distant waves breaking against the reefs. The air became heavy and dark with tension.

Suddenly, an empty bottle of Kingfisher beer dropped from the sky and crashed at Melame's feet, narrowly missing Tumi, who was breastfeeding her baby. Everyone looked up in alarm, wondering what new punishments the spirits sitting up in the heavens were doling out for them. They frowned when they spotted Eketi relaxing up in the garjan tree. He waved at them.

'You leg of a chicken. Come down immediately,' Pemba bawled. 'Otherwise I will become the first father to ask Nokai to turn his own son into a dog.'

Reluctantly, Eketi shinned down the tall tree. His movements were quick and nimble, like a monkey's. He jumped to the ground and stood before his father, a sheepish grin on his face. He was tall by the standards of his tribe – a good five feet – and muscularly built. He wore red shorts which were torn in a number of places and a dirty white T-shirt bearing the logo of the Dallas Cowboys. A small plastic bottle containing chewing tobacco dangled from his neck.

'None of you have answered the most important question our tribe has been asked,' Melame addressed the elders again. 'Who will volunteer to recover the sacred rock?'

The question was met again by a wall of silence.

'What has happened to your people, Chief?' Nokai berated Melame. 'Is there no one prepared to defend the tribe's honour?'