“The goddess of Love, who was listening to Thangi-Thangi, said: ‘Look here, you are not wanted down there. I know well enough that if you had anything to do with the making of the folk of another world, they would never be really happy folk.’ As the beautiful goddess said this, her daughter came forward. She had eyes like unto fire, and a serpent was nestling at her breast. Gazing up into the face of the goddess of Love, she said: ‘I am Jealousy, your sinful child; but may I help you to make the new folk for that lovely country, those silent isles so far away, down there?’
“For a long time the goddess of Love gazed across the terraced mountains of Mbau. As she reflected, her hands were arched over her eyes that shone like two lovely moons that had a bright star in their centre. Slowly turning, she gazed sadly into her daughter’s dark, fiery eyes, and said:
“‘I suppose you must come and help me when I am making handsome men and beautiful women. Of course, I shall have to make a few ugly mortals, so that the favoured ones may see that they are handsome.’ Then the goddess sighed and said: ‘So you must be there to kiss their lips, that they may have the spirit to look after the one they love.’
“After the gods and goddesses of Mbau had assembled in solemn council, they decided that it would be best to make living people who could be happy on the isles situated away down beneath the sun. ‘So shall it be,’ they all muttered, as they stalked across the magic mountains of Mburoto, where they at once began to gather wonderful flowers and weeds, stones, bits of fire, and cloudy skeins of moonlight and starlight. For it was from the essential materials of Paradise that they must make the children of the world that was beneath the sun.
“It was then that the aged goddess of Sorrow, who had stood silently behind, said: ‘I also must come to help you.’
“‘Must you come?’ said the goddess of Love. And the goddess of Sorrow replied: ‘It must be I alone who shall gather the compassionate cry of the winds in the forest, the bundles of old sunsets, the long-ago wail of blue sea-waves, and the songs of melancholy, small-throated birds.’
“‘But must we have such things? Cannot we make children without your help, O goddess of Sorrow?’
“And Sorrow answered: ‘However beautiful you made the children, even though their eyes were like unto the beauty of thine own, still they would not be happy without being fashioned of those things that I must gather from the graves of a million dead moons.’
“‘So shall it be,’ said the goddess of Love, as she sighed and kissed Sorrow’s tender, trembling hand.
“‘Now then!’ said Atuaa, the chief vassal of Ndengi. ‘Come along! Come along!’ Then, lo! on the beams of threaded moonlight that were falling down the heavens of shadowland into the dark regions of the other world, the gods and goddesses slid softly away, monstrous, shadowy figures as they passed down, down through the deep skies! For a long time their cloudy figures seemed to be falling. At last they stood, mighty shadows in the silent forest of the isles far to the westward. They were all much taller than the trees, their huge heads rising far above the forest height, as their images moved across the sky. It was the god of Hate who first spoke after they had stepped into the forest of Time. He said: ‘I say, we must be very careful not to make these new children as big and as strong as we ourselves are.’ For a long time the hands of the gods and goddesses were busy, as they toiled silently, mixing up the materials in the bundles they had brought with them. Before sunrise appeared on the sea’s horizon, the gods had hurried back to the skies, and were watching to see what would happen. Now the gods and goddesses had not long left the lonely forest when old Silence trembled in his cave at hearing the jabbering and scampering about of unusual things amongst his solemn trees. An extraordinary thing had happened, for, as the light of the sun stared down through the branches of the coco-palms, six newly-created men yawned, jumped to their new, soft, brown clay feet, and gazed on each other in mute astonishment. ‘Who am I? Who are you?’ It sounded like echoes answering each other in a cave, as each one gabbled forth, ‘Who am I? Who are you?’ For a long time they babbled thus. Then they all stepped forward and said to each other: ‘Let us all be happy, and care not at all who we may be.’