Free Zombies vs. Unicorns by Holly & Larbalestier Black Page B

until the last splashes down again.
Bulladóe,
she thinks, and closes her eyes, trying to remember what it felt like to fly.
    “Your father worries about the pirates,” Beihito tells Iza. “They’ve been coming closer, making threats. He wants you to be safe.”
    Iza smiles just a little. Her father has barely spoken to her in a month; she hears his words only through others. Iza wonders if she should make it a game: How long can she go without speaking to him?
    Beihito’s knees crack a little as he bends over, setting a machete on the dock next to Iza. She opens her eyes and stares at the way the sun sparks off the edge of the blade. “At least until your father’s men kill the pirates,” Beihito says.
“Permití.”
    Iza makes him stand here, a sigh building in him as he waits for her to promise. Beihito has many other things to do, and while he loves Iza like
un yiu muhé
, having no children of his own that survived the Return, she’s old enough now that his day no longer includes watching her like a tired old babysitter.
    Iza nods her head, deciding that it’s not lying if she doesn’t say the words.
    3. BEFORE
    She always heard when the pirate ships passed by the island at night. She could feel them in her bones, a shiver soft and sweet along her skin. The moans of the
mudo
slithered into her dreams, a tinge at the edge of her memory.
    She woke up one night and stared into the darkness, the spin of the ceiling fan cutting the air.
“Here,”
the whispers called. She slipped out of bed and shuffled through the dew-damp grass to the edge of the cliffs.
    It used to be that she could never see the pirate ships, only hear them as they slid through the darkness, the
mudo
lashed to their hulls. But ever since her father closed the port, they’d been inching closer, circling like
tribons
, teasing and toying, ready to bump the island in a warning, with their masts cutting the air like fins.
    Iza wrapped her arms around her body as if she were holding who she was safe inside. Below her the waves crashed and crashed and crashed against the limestone, cutting away at her island.
    In the distance, under the haze of the moon, the hulk of the pirate ship drifted by like a ghost in a skirt, tarps and sheets draped over the edge of the railings and covering the hull. Shapes huddled and strained beneath the tarps, sharp edges raking against the graceful arc of fabric that rippled in the breeze.
    The corner of the tarp at the bow lifted, and Iza saw the bend of a bare knee, the curve of a shoulder. But it was the gaping mouths and desperate faces that she couldn’t bear, the sound of the moans cutting over the waves and bounding against thecliffs. The
mudo
strained against the boat, reaching—always reaching and needing.
    The tarp fluttered back into place, hiding the bodies lashed to the hull, concealing them until the pirates bore down on their prey. Iza saw dark shapes gathered on the deck of the ship, crowding at the railing. They watched her as they glided by in the night, and Iza wondered what was worse—the
mudo
, or the moon gleaming off the teeth of the pirates.
    4. NOW
    Iza is lying on her back on the dock, letting the sun burn her body, when the hand wraps around her ankle. She is at the edge of sleep and she’s slow to react. Her fingers fumble as she grabs for the handle of the machete Beihito left, and by the time she pulls her foot away and scrambles to her knees, the man’s already halfway out of the water.
    Iza knows that a
mudo
could never be coordinated enough to climb onto the dock. Still her first thought is to strike at his head, to slice the blade through his spinal column.
    “Wait,” the man gasps as her muscles tense.
    5. BEFORE
    “Why don’t we call them zombies?” Iza asked Beihito one day. It wasn’t long after her father had taken over the island and hired Beihito to run the plantation and keep an eye on his only child.
    “It’s not respectful,” Beihito said. They were standing