Free IGMS Issue 44 by IGMS Page A

me.

    He stayed a sandpiper for an entire year. I should have known it wouldn't last forever. When I was fourteen, I went to the beach and called for him. I walked up and down our usual stretch of sand twice.
    At last, when I'd begun to cry, he emerged from the sea grass. He held his pincers in the air, in a gesture of surrender.
    "It's me, Ulaa." He was a crab at least twice the size of a sandpiper. "I tried to hold off the change as long as I could. I don't like this form at all." His mandibles trembled as he spoke, like the moustache on an old man.
    I wiped the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand and spoke without thinking. "I think you're very pretty."
    Pehlu lowered his claws. "Pretty? Me?"
    I blinked until my vision cleared. Now that I examined him closer, I found that he
was
pretty. His carapace was a dusky violet, faded at the edges, his legs orange and white, and his claws green. "Yes. You have all the colors of a blooming flower."
    The crab held his pincers in front of his eyes, turning them this way and that.
    I laughed. "Are all the
kailun
so vain?"
    "I . . ." He clutched his claws close, his mandibles clicking. "I shouldn't be. Mother says that all life on an island has its purpose. It's something I'm supposed to learn before I'm grown."
    And the
kailun
's purpose was to feed the grandparents. I shook off the morose thought, seized a twig, and tapped it on Pehlu's shell until he grabbed it. "See? We can't run races across the sand anymore, but you can pick things up now."
    He thrust the twig in the air, like a boy playing at spear-fishing. "Thank you. You've made me feel much better."
    In the distance, the sound of someone sawing through bamboo echoed. The city was awakening.
    "Your people are always building," Pehlu said.
    I cradled my cheeks in my palms. "First-grandmother says we cannot spread the city out any further, or we'll have no land to grow food. So we keep building up, taller and taller. I'm lucky to have a fourth-level bed."
    "Someday you won't be able to keep building up."
    Someday you will become a deer and I won't be able to protect you.
But I didn't say it. I focused on the spot where my mother would appear at any moment. "Then we'll have to find another island."

    My mother ran her fingers through my hair, lingering on the tangles. We stood outside, in the shadow of our sleeper. Sunlight peeked through the tiny gaps between buildings, hazed with dust and pollen. I kept my gaze up, because when I lowered it I had to look at all the people around us, and though their shouts filled my ears and rattled my bones, I could pretend they weren't there.
    "Ulaa." My mother bent a little, her face blocking my line of sight. "Why do you keep running to the shore in the morning? I've told you so many times not to. There isn't anyone there except the fishermen. You could be washed out to sea and I'd never know."
    "I want to be alone." It was only a half-truth, but I could lie when I didn't have to look her straight in the eye.
    She tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. "You should play with your cousins."
    I twisted from her grip. "They only want to play at hunting
kailun
."
    Her lips pursed. "What's wrong with that?"
    A thousand angry retorts boiled in my throat and I swallowed them. My cousins would never want to play the games Pehlu and I did; they couldn't tell me what life was like as a crab or a sandpiper. "If the
kailun
talk, why don't we talk back to them?"
    My mother took my hand, and led me into the crush of people. We pushed toward the city square, where she'd buy me breakfast and start her work making bread. "Why would we talk to them?" she called back to me. "We eat them. If we spoke to them, it would make hunting them harder, wouldn't it?"
    "But we eat them when they become deer. What do the
kailun
become after deer?"
    She was silent for a long time. The crowd around us smelled of fish and sweat. This close to the square, the flow of people began to move more swiftly, like a stream