55. Bumps’ Island

Somewhere in the middle of an ocean, that was where swimming down the pool’s drain took us. And who should we find there but Michael, playing water polo with dolphins!

    

Of course, we ruined his holiday. Alpin gobbled up a birthday cake Michael meant to share with the dolphins and demanded more food. Michael  advised us to go back the way we had come if we wanted anything tastier than seaweeds. We tried, but there was no finding the hole we’d come through.

Alpin began to faint or pretend to faint from hunger and we had to swim to the nearest island dragging him along with us. Once ashore, Alpin, lying on his back in the sand, revived enough to order his new bodyguard to gather food for him.

                

Mr. Finn is extraordinarily athletic for his age or any age and he scooted up the coconut trees quite effortlessly. He swung from one to the other knocking down coconuts with a skill that would surely have been the envy of the natives had they seen. And speaking of the natives...

When Mr. Finn jumped down from the trees he cut his foot landing on a piece of shattered glass. We looked about and saw that the ground was full of slivers of broken mirrors. Before Michael cried out that we had to get out of there before sundown, I remembered a story my dad had told me about a stubborn and narrow-minded people who were bent on becoming more foolish every day.

“Is this Bumps’ Island?” I asked.

“You could bet your boots if you were wearing them,” said Michael. “And be careful where you step, since you’re not! Alpin, I’m sorry, but we have to leave while the going is good, so get off yout back.”

"Ohhhh noooooo!"

The Bumps’ trip downhill started on an ill day when they decided to quarrel with the Sun. Up till then they had lived happily on their island, visited by many tourists. The place was rife with tropical fruit and exotic flowers. The natives adored the Sun, who shone on all this lush vegetation and helped the island flourish. They held festivals of cultural interest during which they danced flashing pretty mirrors that reflected the sun’s rays.

            

But one day an insecure and vain man who had great influence over the rest became jealous of the Sun. He was very envious and suspicious of everyone and always needed to be the center of attention. When he saw the Sun multiplying itself on the mirrors during the festivals and heard the natives express their admiration and gratitude with songs of praise he went green with envy and thought that he, and only he, should be reflected in those mirrors and be praised with those songs. He knew he had no power to make that happen. But he could estrange his people from the Sun.

A week before the last of these festivals he invited the Sun to come down from heaven and participate in a ceremonial luncheon in its honour.

“I can’t,” answered the Sun. “I’m afraid that is impossible.”

The man pretended to be most offended. He told his people the Sun was proud and believed himself too good to mingle with the islanders.

“It’s not that,” said the Sun. “It’s just that I am a ball of fire and if I drop down I will burn the whole island.”

The man convinced the islanders that the Sun was threatening them, He

harangued the islanders saying the Sun was arrogant and mean and too big for the sky he shone in.

“Now that we know he thinks he is better than we are, he wants to destroy us,” said the jealous man. “But it is we who will destroy him.”

                      

The islanders shattered all the mirrors on the island so that they could never reflect the Sun’s rays again, thus provoking years and years of bad luck.

They also began to cast stones up at the Sun, but these never reached it. Grasped by gravity, they returned to the ground, sometimes wounding the natives on their way back. That was how the Bumps got the first of the many lumps and bumps that were to give the islanders their new name.

The jealous man was secretly delighted with what was happening but he pretended to be angrier than ever and he persuaded the natives to ask the  Wind to blow out the Sun. “I can’t do that,”answered the Wind. “I’m not strong enough. The best I can do is cover it up with clouds for a while.”

“Do it,” said the evil man. “If he can’t shine, perhaps he will become depressed and become dimmer and dimmer until he extinguishes himself.”

The Wind was game for a while, but he had better things to do and was not willing to dedicate his life to extinguishing the Sun, whom he really had nothing against. So the Sun shone once more on Bumps’ Island.

   

The Bumps issued an edict declaring that the Sun had ceased to exist. Everyone was to ignore it and to worship the Moon instead.

So now the Islanders danced in the moonlight and chanted to the Moon, “Oh, brilliant Majesty! There is no light like yours. Nobody shines like you do! Only we are your equals in brilliance.” It was no use for the modest Moon to tell them humbly that her light was only a reflection of the Sun’s.They refused to know because they already knew.

The Bumps hatred of light grew stronger every day and they began to live by night and never lit fires because these reminded them of their enemy. They would rarely go out in daylight and then only blindfolded. This resulted in their bumping into lots of things and getting even more lumps and bumps and losing a lot of neurons and becoming dumber and dumber. But since they refused to admit they were being silly and would not take measures like people who are really blind are wise enough to take, they had sores and wounds all over their bodies and became sickly pale white where they were not black and blue and red and purple.They didn’t care about that. They insisted that their skin was exactly like that of the silvery moon, who was prima inter pares, but their equal in all things. The fact that she never came down to have a meal with them didn’t seem to bother them at all.

Alpin was quick about eating the coconuts and bananas and other fruits Curmudgeon gathered for him on the island of the Bumps, but since it was late afternoon when we got there, the sun soon began to set. As soon as the sky was a glorious red, the natives were heard to stir. Once it got really dark they were all over the beach, their eyes still blindfolded because they wanted to be very sure the Sun was totally gone before uncovering them.

                            

Michael quietly made a sign for us to leap into a little boat there was on the beach. And we escaped just in the nick of time for some of the Bumps had removed their blindfolds and faintly discerning a dark shape moving away from their island began to cast stones at it, which is how the Bumps now treat visitors. And they still didn’t know that there was no edible fruit left on their island thanks to Alpin!