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“It’s in complete disrepair. There’s a hole in the roof and part of the wall has rotted away.”
“Better airflow?”
“There are others to look at, come on.”
“Aww.”
The next two houses were not much better—one had become home to what seemed like every kind of animal on the island, and the other was on the verge of completely rotting away. The jungle moved fast, and T’Wanu weather was unkind to anything left unattended for too long.
I started to think that all the empty houses were uninhabitable until we came to the fifth, nestled at the base of a massive boulder and overgrown by a fortress of thick bamboo. The house was constructed on an elevated platform that’d prevented flooding, and everything seemed to be mostly intact.
Istil cut a path through the bamboo to the front door, which broke out of its frame when I tried to pull it open.
It was musty and dark inside, but as we cleared the bamboo away from the windows, light poured in and filled the space. The walls, made from rot-resistant lamo’o wood, were in good condition. A thick layer of grit covered everything, and insects had taken up residence, but those were things that could be handled. There were two rooms separated by a rolling reed screen that could be removed to open it up into one big common space, traditional T’Wanu style. The cooking area was in a small nook similar to the main house, another traditional design, and the bathroom was in a separate small hut outside.
“What do you think?” I asked Istil.
He walked through the house and ducked past the screen into the smaller of the two rooms.
“I could grow a nest here,” he said. “A bed of ferns, or maybe iahu vines. And a veckwood tree. Open up the floor there… Yes, this will do. This is wonderful.” He turned to me. “I’ll be able to do whatever I want, right?”
“That’s why we’re here,” I said. “Just try to keep a roof over our heads.”
Istil radiated with happiness and went back to his daydreaming over the space. I loved seeing him so excited.
“She’ll be so happy here,” he said.
“She?”
He placed his hand on his bump. “I’ve decided our baby is a girl.”
“That’s not something you can just decide,” I said with a smile.
“I feel she’s a girl,” he said decisively. “I’ve been having dreams about her.”
“What kind of dreams?”
“I’m deep inside the caves at Silver Mountain. It’s dark, and I can feel this light with me. I can’t see her, but I can feel her. Warm, happy.”
I’d also been having dreams about the baby, but they weren’t anything I was going to share. Especially not now, while he was so happy.
“And she,” he went on, “is going to sleep right here. The nest will be here, right by these windows. See? You can see the jungle that way and the ocean that way. It’s perfect. So, when can we start?”
“I’ll ask around and see who can help us get this place cleaned up. Some of these beams will need to be replaced, not to mention the front door.”
“Let’s not waste any time, then,” he said with an eager grin.
Chapter13
Istil
It felt like the entire Blue Fin clan had shown up to help—or at least the ones with nothing better to do. Makoa was there, along with a handful of uncles who’d peeled themselves off their porches and filed in to give a hand. And there was much work to be done. Ari was adamant that I not lift a single heavy thing, so I went around the house and cleaned.
This nesting impulse was one of the oddest things I’d ever experienced. It was deeply instinctual and made very little sense, and I had no control over it. Ineededthings to be a certain way. I had to rid the place of all its dirt and dust and get it sparkling—despite knowing I was going to bring the forest inside to build the nest. It wouldn’t be right for a nest to be built up on the grime left by the previous residents. A proper cleaning meant starting our baby girl with good, stable roots.
The others worked around me, ripping pieces out of the house at Makoa’s instruction. His expert eye could see the wood which needed to be replaced.
“We’re not gonna have any house left,” Ari said to him.
