The Challenge of Yũng Bia

Dawn broke in hues of pale pink and gold over the Cham coast, but the day’s beginning was anything but ordinary. As the first roosters crowed from the village, the tide had already begun to ebb much faster and farther than usual. Má Hala sensed it even before the sky grew light: the water around her receded with uncommon haste, leaving her in the open shallows. The comforting blanket of night was lifting, and the full moon now drifted low in the western sky, a ghostly pearl dissolving into daylight. In the east, the sun’s rim peeked above the horizon, and its early rays stretched long shadows across the moist sand.

On a normal morning, the crabs and other shoreline creatures would retreat to cool refuge as the tide pulled back. By sunrise, most would have buried themselves in damp sand or followed the water’s edge outward to stay within its protective embrace. Today, however, the sea’s withdrawal was so sudden and extreme that it caught many flat-dwellers by surprise. Tiny fish found themselves stranded in shrinking puddles, flickering their tails in panic. Ribbons of seaweed that usually swayed gently underwater were left exposed, draping over rocks like limp green flags. A flock of sandpipers, those early scavengers of the dawn, raced along the newly revealed mudflats pecking eagerly at marooned shellfish. Even a few villagers stirring from sleep noticed something unusual: where the waves should have been lapping, there was now a vast stretch of gleaming sand extending much farther out than any had seen. A fisher’s wife fetching water paused to rub her eyes at the sight of boats that had been anchored offshore now resting oddly on bare ground, the sea nowhere near them.

Má Hala emerged from a shallow pool where she had sheltered during the last hours of night. She felt the familiar tug of the receding tide urging her to follow or to burrow down. Around her stirred a skittering flight, as panic moved from left to right. Some chased the waves in frantic race, their legs a blur, their minds displaced. Others, wiser in their fear, dug downward fast to disappear. They sank in mud, in hush, in dread, to flee the fire the sun would shed.

A younger crab, one of Má Hala’s kin with a speckled shell of his own, paused and waved a claw anxiously at her.

“Má Hala!” he clicked, “Hurry, or you’ll be left dry!” The younger crab’s eyes darted between her and the vanishing shimmer of the tide far ahead. In his voice was an edge of fear; all knew the perils of being caught under the open sky once the tropical sun climbed high.

On eight worn limbs Má Hala held her ground, though water waned and heat unbound. The puddle shrank with every breath, a shrinking ring, a nearing death. Yet still she stood, with voice serene, amid all the scampering and haste. “Go on,” she said, “Find hollow earth, escape the harm.” No tremor shook her steady tone, though soon she’d face the sun alone. For hers was not the way of flight, but silent watch beneath the light.

“Aren’t you coming?” he implored, hesitant to leave her behind. By now, most of their crab clan had hurried off, leaving little bubbling trails in the wet sand.

Má Hala glanced upward. The moon was a mere pale disk now, fading as day brightened, yet still she felt its presence. Her carapace still held the memory of night’s cool silver. She remembered the gentle illumination that had filled her with courage just hours ago. Drawing that courage up now, she shook her claws decisively. “I will not scuttle after the tide like a frightened hatchling,” she declared. “The Moon is my guide, and I bow to none other.”

The younger crab tilted his stalked eyes at her in disbelief. “But the sun will scorch-”

“Go,” Má Hala repeated with a reassuring wave of a claw. “Seek shade. I’ll manage here.” Though worry tugged at the edges of her mind, her voice did not waver. She had made her choice.

After a reluctant moment, her kin gave a final imploring look, then turned and sped off sideways, disappearing into a damp burrow under a rock. Má Hala was left nearly alone on the glistening flat. All around, the landscape was transforming by the second. The sea had pulled far back, revealing an otherworldly expanse of sandbars and pools. What was moments ago the shallow seabed was now air and light. A myriad of small creatures flopped and writhed, adjusting to the sudden emptiness where water had been.

Má Hala felt the last of the puddle around her claws seep away. The tide’s edge was now a distant, dark ribbon far out toward the horizon. Never had she seen it withdraw so far. Tiny grains of sand crackled softly as they dried in the growing sunlight.

Suddenly, a low rumble vibrated through the ground, a sound beyond human hearing but clear to the denizens of the shore. It was a growl of displeasure, ancient and resonant. Má Hala braced herself, claws raised slightly. She recognized the voice behind that rumble: Yũng Bia, the Tide Spirit, was aware of her defiance. The waters pooling in distant channels began to swirl of their own accord, and a long, sinuous wave rolled backward along a mudflat, racing not toward the shore as waves ought, but further out to sea. As it passed, it drew up a line of wet foam, like the train of a flowing robe.

From foam that coiled like serpent’s thread, two currents climbed from ocean’s bed. They met, they merged, they broke the line, and took the shape of face and sign. No still-born mask, no carven stone, but visage vast and not its own. Seaweed dangled like tangled mane, oysters glared with a glassy strain. Its eyes were salt. Its breath was spray; its mouth a whirl where memories play. The voice it loosed was thick with tide, it rolled and broke and would not hide:

“O little crab, with silent claw,

Why flee the pull of ocean’s law?

My waters call, they surge, they race,

Why do you shun your kindred place?”

Má Hala’s black eyes flicked toward the manifestation. Though her heart pounded, she stood her ground. The face towered above her from a distance of a few crab scuttles away, looming perhaps as tall as a man if a man were made of water and wrath. The foam that outlined its mouth churned with irritation.

“Each creature of the shore knows to pay me homage,” the Tide Spirit intoned. The voice was both liquid and harsh, like a surge sucking at shingle mixed with the scrape of coral on rock. “They bow or flee as I command. Why do you linger, Má Hala? Do you think yourself beyond the reach of my power?” The spirit’s use of her name startled her - it was said among the Cham fisherfolk that the spirits know all names of those in their domain, and it seemed true. The watery face drifted closer on a bed of slick sand, its shell-eyes unblinking and cold.

Má Hala felt the heat of the sun beginning to prickle on her shell as it rose steadily, but she did not flinch from Yũng Bia’s gaze. “Great Yũng Bia,” she replied, raising her voice to be heard above the subtle roar of the distant surf. “I owe you no bow. Your tides come and go, but I remain loyal to a higher light.” She swept one claw toward the west, where the faint outline of the setting moon lingered in the morning sky. “The Moon who guides you, and who guides me. Her I honor.”

At that plain word, the sea-face curled, its foamy brow in torment swirled. The smile it wore grew sharp, then died, replaced by wrath. The earth began to quake, the shells began to shift, and the dunes did wake. For Yũng Bia stirred, deep down, unseen, in chambers dark and tight. Then came a hiss, a warning, low. A puddle fled the moon’s faint glow. It vanished fast, as though afraid, dragged down by hands no eye had made.

“Impudent creature!” thundered the Tide Spirit, and a thin sheet of leftover water on the flats rose up in a splash, pelting Má Hala’s carapace with salty droplets. “Do you forget it is I who brings the nourishing sea over these sands? Without my grace, you and all your kind would shrivel under the sun!” Yũng Bia’s voice boomed, and his foamy countenance loomed nearer, tilting as if to look down directly upon the tiny crab.

Má Hala’s legs trembled for an instant at the might in that voice, but she steadied herself. Drawing upon every ounce of courage bestowed by the Moon’s memory, she planted herself even more firmly. Then she did something bold: she turned sideways to the approaching wave-form of Yũng Bia, presenting not her back in surrender nor her front in supplication, but her side - the natural stance of her kind, and a posture of independence. With this subtle gesture, Má Hala made clear she would neither run away nor bow down; she would stand in her own way.

In a voice clear and surprisingly resonant for such a small creature, Má Hala spoke: “Proud tide, your power I will not obey; the Moon alone I serve, come what may.”

These defiant lines rang out across the exposed beach. The very air seemed to hold its breath. A pair of gulls flying overhead veered away, sensing the tension below. Má Hala’s declaration hung between earth, sea, and sky - an oath of loyalty and an act of open rebellion in one.

Consider the surf that would master our knees,

Yet you stride sideways, shell bright with resolve;

Shall brine command the heart it cannot seize?

We feel the tide-lord thunder through the sand,

But we, like you, refuse his iron pull;

What moonlit covenant outshines his brand?

Lift your claw, that mute trumpet of the night,

Proclaim allegiance past the shifting foam;

Who sways the waters bows to higher light.

Let his retreat devour its own roar;

We watch unbowed beneath the silver eye

Till pearled horizons mirror faith once more.

Yũng Bia recoiled in shock and rage. No mortal creature of the shore had ever addressed him so brazenly, certainly not in the elegant cadence of a couplet. For a heartbeat, the watery apparition lost coherence, splashing downward before rearing up anew in a cresting wave of anger. “So be it!” the tide spirit roared, voice gurgling with spite. “If the Moon is your master, let her save you now!”

With that, Yũng Bia unleashed his wrath. The already distant tide bolted even further out to sea. The wave-form face collapsed into a surge racing away from the shore, carrying with it the remaining threads of foam and any lingering moisture underfoot. Má Hala felt a sudden pull around her limbs as the very puddle she stood in was yanked into the retreating current, nearly taking her balance with it. She dug her claws into the sand to steady herself, and when she looked again, the spectral face of Yũng Bia was gone. Only his thunderous laughter echoed from the direction of the sea, a fading rumble that mingled with the low sigh of the wind.

Now an eerie stillness fell. The tide had vanished beyond the farthest sandbar, far past the normal low-tide mark. In its wake lay an expanse of seafloor laid bare: rippled sand stretching out almost flat, adorned here and there with stranded sea stars, exposed clumps of coral, and flopping fish. The sun, now a golden disc clear of the horizon, began to pour its warmth onto this unprotected tableau. Wisps of vapor rose where pools of water rapidly evaporated. The air smelled sharply of salt and seaweed baking in the heat.

Now stood Má Hala lone beneath the sun

Where once the waters kissed her legs with grace,

There lay dry silence, all caresses done.

No breath of wave to cool the aching space,

No hush of tide to sing along her shell,

Only the sun’s command, a searing face.

The sands stretched wide, a golden-burdened hell,

Where even shadow dared not linger long,

And winds grew mute where once they used to dwell.

Far off, the sea, a line both thin and wrong,

Faint light too distant to bestow

Its balm, withdrawn like half-forgotten song.

Yũng Bia, lord of tides, had ceased to flow,

Withdrew his hand, and left the shore to burn,

His throne now set where Má Hala could not go.

Abandoned thus, no voice, no tide’s return,

She stood, unclaimed beneath that ruthless sky.

High turned the Earth, aloof in stately spin,

And moon withdrew beneath the waking brim,

Its silver grace eclipsed by rising sun.

Má Hala watched the vault grow pale and dim,

Where once her celestial guide traced a faithful way,

Now blankness loomed.

A thought formed where challenge held its sway,

“I stand by words once given to the night,

I shall not bow, though all should fall away.”

Yet as she spoke, the world revealed her plight:

The sand grew parched beneath her limbs;

Those legs once sleek now cracked with salted white.

No tide arose the parching heat to meet,

No veil of foam to cool her sunward dread,

Only the breathless hush of day’s defeat.

Her claws, once swift, were clogged with dust instead-

And still she stood, though all around her bled.

In such an hour, the weak might plead or flee,

Pursue the sea with cries or humbled knees,

To summon back a vanished deity.

But she, proud-hearted, bent to none of these,

No tear she loosed, no backward glance she gave,

Nor bartered pride for momentary ease.

Her shell, still marked with blossoms none could shave,

She raised aloft upon her slender height,

As though defying both the sun and grave.

Though fire bit deep and shadow fled the light,

She held her form with silent, blazing grace,

Prepared to meet her fate in open sight.

Whatever trial would seek to strike her face,

Would find her standing, regal in her place.

The Challenge made, and met by will alone,

Yũng Bia’s test now flared in full day’s might,

The sun rose high, a tyrant on its throne.

Its sharpened rays carved shadows into light,

The very air began to quake and bend,

Each droplet fled the sand’s ascending blight.

Yet she stood firm, her form refused to bend,

A sentinel upon that gleaming stage,

Where heat and silence met without an end.

Around her stretched the field of sun-scorched age,

The wetness drawn to sky or hidden deep,

Yet still she stayed, the last line held with rage.

No refuge found, no cave, no tide to keep,

She bore it all, that small yet steadfast frame,

With claws now set where sea had learned to sleep.

Her fate would rest with her own perseverance and, she prayed, with the distant, unseen grace of the Moon above.