“TheAndiamo,” my father answered, raising a brow as his own eyes darted to the young man.
TheAndiamowas one of Leihani’s frequent visitors, buying the bulk of tuna in the dry season.
I shook my head, ignoring the question buried under my father’s wandering gaze.
He gave a subtle nod in Kye’s direction. “He’s an eager learner,” he said, plucking the smoked fish out of the oven. “Willing to jump in with a knife to free a net caught on the rocks or to retrieve a speared fish. Decent swimmer too. Maybe not as fast as an island boy, but he has good lungs for diving.”
“No clues where the missing Andiamo sailor went?” I asked, unwilling to let him drive the subject elsewhere. I snapped a corner from my filet and popped it into my mouth.
Ano pursed his lips, drumming his fingertips on his knee.
I faced him, exaggerating the slow rotation of my jaw as I chewed.
“I don’t know why you won't spend time with people your own age. You and Nola used to be inseparable.”
Digging out a fragile bone, I snorted. My cousin and I had been close when we were very young. But that had been years ago, before Irah and the other sailors disappeared.
Ano would likely never understand. He was a popular man among the locals. A friend to everyone, my father was a blade of grass in the thatched roof of Leihani. Accepted. Flexible. Woven into the band of the island village.
I was a wooden plank trying to squeeze into the trusses. I wasn’t the right size or shape or color.
I didn’t fit.
Lifting my gaze, I stole a glance at the man I’d pulled from the water, then almost choked.
Mihaunaalive, he was standing in the pathway with his arms crossed, blatantly staring at me.
Go away, you simple-minded fool.
Everyone was out this time of day. All my neighbors; every islander on the west side of Leihani. And there the man stood, gawking at me like a witless napkin for all of them to see.
“Are they all watching,Makua?” I whispered, the bottom of my stomach somewhere under the floorboards of the veranda.
My father shrugged. “A few. They’re only curious.” He cocked his head, waiting for me to address the man who obviously wanted to talk to me. But my father was wrong. The islanders weren't curious. They watched with something deeper than mere curiosity. Something rooted in wary glances and guarded stares. Suspicion. My father would never understand because no one would ever be suspicious of anything he’d ever done, except falling under a witch’s spell and marrying her.
I dusted my hands and turned away from Kye, impatient for my father to answer my question about the sailor.
Even though I knew the answer. There were no clues. There never were.
“No idea.” He heaved a sigh, leveling me with obsidian eyes.
They'd been my Nani’s eyes, too, when she was still alive. The same I’d inherited. As a child, I used to love gazing into them as my father told stories. His irises were black as volcanic glass, and just as reflective, stealing the sun’s rays and shining back with twinkling intensity. And like volcanic glass, they were sharp enough to cut when he wanted them to be.
At his words, I nodded, ignoring my father’s weighted gaze as he watched the Calderian give up and wander off. I swallowed the stupid impulse to stretch my neck and count how many islanders had witnessed Kye standing in front of my house like his head had detached from his body.
Next time, I’ll let the fool drown.
I took a small bite of fish, letting my mind roam back to the missing sailor.
It had happened before. Twenty-three years ago, my mother had drifted into island waters clutching a broken wine barrel. Leihani had embraced her as their own—until sailors began to go missing. Then, when I was not quite two years old, Alana died, and the disappearances stopped.
But they’d started again six years ago, when acelerite,a small speedy ship, moored in the Leihani harbor. I remembered the captain, so clearly a pirate. Pirates stopped often enough in Leihani, usually to hide from Calderian authorities after plundering some other ship or mainland. They never attacked; the island itself had little wealth to steal.
But the cabin boy—Irah. The captain’s son. I still remembered his kind green eyes, the way he’d watched me wander across the pier, his hands full with his father’s iron tinderbox as the captain puffed his tobacco pipe, the boy’s own face a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. Not the sort of apprehension islanders looked at me with, as though I were a toxic cloud that floated across the island without their permission. A kindof nervousness that made my own belly twist and squirm with something new and thrilling I couldn’t explain.
He’d befriended me. Young and naïve, I’d let him. Had let him walk me around the beaches, immune to the stares as we passed through the markets and ignored the fisherman’s wives who dipped their heads together and gossiped about the witch’s daughter and her new friend. Had shown him how to dig for clams, how to mend a net with dandelion roots. Had snuck out of my house after my father fell asleep to meet him at the base of the mountain and watch the stars, swapping constellation stories.
Had helped him get to Akamai’s house when a coughing fit had left him gasping for air.Salt Sickness, he’d explained. An ailment of the lungs he’d been born with. I remembered the words, thinking it an apt name for an affliction a pirate boy might have.
