The Fishermen’s Tale of Pulau Aman

Long before the mainland learned the island’s name, before GPS blinked its cold lights and tourists came with cameras and silence in their hearts, there was Pulau Aman—the Island of Peace.

It sat like a jade button fastened to the sea, ringed by coral fingers and swaying palms, where the wind carried salt and song in equal measure. The people of Pulau Aman lived by the rhythm of tides and the wisdom of elders, their lives woven into the net of tradition, just like the fishing lines their grandfathers taught them to knot by touch alone.

And among the tales that rippled through the village like monsoon rain, one was sung most often at dusk, when the sky turned the color of ripe mango and the old fishermen gathered on the jetty:

“When the moon is full and the sea breathes deep, the Singing Fish rise. Not to feed, not to flee—but to remember. They hum the songs of those who came before, and if you listen with your soul, not your ears, you’ll hear the island’s true voice.”

But lately, no one had heard them. Not in ten years. Not since the storms grew fiercer, the nets came up lighter, and the young began leaving for the city, chasing wages and Wi-Fi like fireflies in a jar.

Only the old fishermen still spoke of the Singing Fish. The rest called it angin lama—old wind, useless breath.

All except Eddy.

Eddy was twelve, with sun-bleached hair that stuck up like coconut husk and eyes the color of shallow reef—clear, bright, always searching. He wasn’t the strongest swimmer, nor the cleverest at school, but he had a gift: he listened.

While others rushed to charge phones or post selfies, Eddy sat on the edge of the pier at night, legs dangling over the water, ears tuned to the hush between waves. He listened to the creak of boats, the whisper of crabs in the mangroves, the way the wind changed when a storm was coming. And he listened—really listened—to the old men’s stories.

One evening, Old Man Karim, his face carved by sun and sorrow, said, “The fish don’t sing no more because the island forgot how to sing back.”

Eddy frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Karim said, lighting his pipe with a match that flared like a tiny star, “when no one sings the old songs, when no one remembers the names of the winds and the tides… the sea stops answering.”

That night, Eddy dreamed of fish made of moonlight, gliding beneath the waves, their bodies pulsing with soft, golden sound—like a thousand conch shells breathing harmony. When he woke, his heart was full of a single thought:

I have to find them.

He began quietly. He asked questions. He dug through his late grandmother’s trunk and found a brittle notebook filled with songs in her looping script—Lagu untuk Laut, she called them: Songs for the Sea. He learned them by heart, humming them as he rowed his little wooden sampan beyond the reef, where the water turned deep and dark.

The villagers shook their heads.

“Chasing ghosts,” said the shopkeeper.

“Wasting time,” said the schoolteacher.

Even his mother worried. “Eddy, dreams don’t fill bellies.”

But Old Man Karim only smiled and said, “The island chose you. Now you must choose it back.”

Then came the night of the bulan penuh raya—the Great Full Moon. The kind the elders said made the sea soft and the world thin, when things lost could be found again.

Eddy took his sampan out alone.

No lights. No motor. Just the paddle, the notebook, and the songs in his chest.

He rowed past the buoys, past the last crab trap, until the shore was a smudge of shadow and the stars leaned down to kiss the water.

He stopped. Took a breath. And began to sing.

His voice was small at first, trembling like a leaf. But he sang Lagu Ombak, the Song of Waves, just as his grandmother had written. Then Lagu Nenek Moyang, the Song of Ancestors, low and steady like a heartbeat.

And then—silence.

The sea stilled. Not a ripple. Not a cry of bird or splash of fish.

Then, from deep below, a sound rose.

Not loud. Not sharp. But clear—like glass bells ringing under water.

Eddy froze.

A shimmer began beneath the surface. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Silver bodies, long as forearms, glowing with a pale blue light, rising in slow spirals, forming a great ring around his boat.

And they sang.

Not with voices, but with their bodies—vibrating, pulsing, weaving a harmony that wasn’t sound, but feeling. It thrummed in Eddy’s bones, in his blood, in the wood of the boat. It was joy. It was memory. It was home.

He wept.

And then, from the shore, another sound joined in.

A voice. Then another. Then many.

The villagers had come.

Drawn by the silence, by the strange glow on the water, by something they couldn’t name but remembered.

They stood on the beach, some with instruments—an old rebana, a bamboo flute, a pair of coconut shells clapped in rhythm. Others simply sang—fragments of lullabies, fishing chants, the songs their mothers once hummed.

The sea answered.

The Singing Fish circled once more, their light flaring like stars returning to the sky, and then, gently, they sank back into the deep.

But the silence that followed wasn’t empty.

It was full.

The next morning, the nets were heavy.

Not just Eddy’s. Everyone’s.

And though no one saw the fish again that season, the singing didn’t stop.

Children learned the old songs in school. The elders taught them the names of the winds. The jetty became a place of stories again, not just fish auctions.

And every full moon, without fail, Eddy would row out with a song in his throat and the island’s voice behind him.

They say the sea doesn’t forget.

And they say that on the quietest nights, if you sit very still and listen not with your ears but with your heart, you can still hear the echo of the Singing Fish—answering a boy who dared to believe in a story.

And in doing so, brought his people back to the sea.

The End.