Free IGMS Issue 44 by IGMS Page B

that had just become unblocked. My hand nearly slipped from her grasp.
    The press of people eased as the street opened into the square. My mother cleared her throat. " I suppose we may never know."
    I wanted to rail at her. Not knowing was one thing, but how could she not care? Why didn't she want to know? But then she found the stall with the tea eggs and bought me three of them, and I forgot my troubles, savoring the salty-sweet taste as they slid past my teeth.

    A few months later, Pehlu became an eagle. In the early morning hours, before my people came to the beach, I tossed pebbles into the air and laughed as Pehlu caught them. We played near a half-built ship, its ribs rising into the sky like the bones of a giant whale.
    He landed on the sand. "This is quite the boat your people are building."
    "We're looking for another island," I said. I fingered another stone, turning it over and over in my palm.
    "What if there are no
kailun
there?"
    "There will be. Just like there will be crabs and sandpipers and eagles."
    "Ulaa . . ." He hesitated. "What will you do when I become a deer?"
    I chewed the side of my cheek as I thought. "Do you know what you'll grow into next?"
    "No."
    "I'm not sure. I'll do something, I just don't know what yet," I said.
    "Will you eat a
kailun
when you become a grandparent?"
    "No!" I dropped the pebble to the sand. "Why would you ask me that?"
    He ruffled his wings and looked to the sea. "I don't know. I know we are friends, but the bigger I grow, the more I think about the things beyond myself. "
    "Don't."
    "Sometimes I hate your people. Sometimes I even hate you."
    I scooped up the stone and threw it, hard as I could, high into the air.
    Pehlu flew for it, as if he couldn't help himself. This time, when he caught it, I did not laugh.
    "I'm sorry," he said as he landed again, the stone clutched in his talons. "I didn't mean it."
    All the anger drained out of me, like water from a leaky jar. I knelt so he didn't have to crane his neck to look at me. "I know what you meant. I'm sorry too." I thought of first-grandmother and her ageless face. "I will try to help you when you become a deer. I promise."

    The boat left the day after I turned fifteen. Pehlu was a wild boar then, his coat still spotted and his tusks small. He watched from the trees and I watched from the beach as the boat sailed toward the horizon. It carried forty-eight grandmothers and grandfathers, of varying rank. By the time the sun had fully risen, the huge ship was merely a speck on the horizon.
    By noon, it was out of sight.
    Throughout the next year we all leaned a little to the east, as if hope had magnetized our bodies. More people came to the beach in the morning, and earlier, so I often had to cut my meetings with Pehlu short.
    But yearning could not bring that boat back to shore.
    The day after I turned sixteen, as I crept down the ladder, I heard third-grandmother talking in her sleep. She rolled over in bed, her hands curled beneath her chin.
    "There are no other islands," she said with a sigh. "They're all dead." She repeated the words a second time, and then a third, and each time the hollow feeling in my chest expanded.
    As soon as my foot touched the cold stone floor, I ran.

    I helped my mother knead dough in the city's center. We stood in a stall at the east end of the square, in the shadow of a twenty-level sleeper.
    A line of children formed by first-grandmother's house, sticks in their hands. Once twenty or so of them had joined their ranks, they ran across the square together, laughing, poking at any who got in their way. Two days until the hunt. The thought made my stomach churn.
    "Hopefully we'll get more
kailun
than last year," my mother said. She brushed a strand of hair from her eyes with the back of a floured hand.
    I doubted that we ever missed any. There were so many people. "What happens if we run out?"
    She gave me a tired smile. "When I was your age, I didn't worry so much. We will make things work.