“No more or less than most,” he answered.
“They talk of sea pirates,” she said and paused, waiting for confirmation.
“The only pirates that took over my ship were the people from the metal islands.”
“Crews of ragged men and women storming boats for goods.”
“Sounds like you described yourself.”
“Right,” Ainsley said. She kicked a rock and it scattered. Kozo noticed a pile of bones near the side of an abandoned store. The windows were broken and a tree lay against the roof, and at the base of the broken trunk: bones. Skulls and femurs and scattered smaller pieces of fingers and toes and spines. Some bones were big, some little, the pile accepted everyone.
“The former occupants of this island?” Kozo asked, nodding to the carnage. He was almost immune to the sight of death—he’d been on cleanup for many of the ghost ships that crashed into the trash islands and became part of their home. He fed bodies to the water and cleaned bones off ships. Most corpses from the Old World were mummified, gone, scattered, lost. This collection of bones looked organized.
“I’d imagine, yes,” Ainsley said. “Whoever was around shortly after the release of the virus…an island of this size? Possible that only five or six survived. Or no one. There were secondary teams from the Islands, too. Waste cleanup.”
“How do you know it’s safe here?” Kozo asked. “If the Islands have been here, too.”
“It’s true the Islands are always out there. Watching. Hunting for people to take down and annihilate. People who stay in one place for a significant amount of time draw attention to their space.”
“But you’ve been here before?”
“Oh yes. We have a station here.”
“A station?” Kozo asked. She was pulling ahead and he jogged to catch up. Kozo realized he wasn’t used to the rigor of walking at such a pace.
“Places all over the former islands of the Caribbean that serve as respite or house rescues. The leaders in those locations stay hidden, not a lot of movement to and from. Each station is home to a full-time manager and a crew; they rehabilitate the recovered before they decide what to do next. But it helps to have us spread out and have access to many zones in a quick amount of time. I don’t think the next few years are going to be fun…”
“They destroyed my home,” he said. Saying it out seemed to make it real: all his life he’d floated through the Canary Current and floated in his trash island. It was still his home and now it was gone.
“Destruction is what they do best,” Ainsley said. “They want to be God but don’t have the power…and when that happens to people, they destroy.”
“Why?” Kozo asked. He liked that Ainsley didn’t make him feel bad or intruding when he asked questions. She smiled at his why as if she didn’t want to answer, but knew she would anyway.
“The status quo is changing. The power shifts. The architect of this earth is dying and there will no doubt be a battle for power. People battle for power when they’re scared. We’ve survived this long out here, rescuing who we could, because we stayed ghosts…”
“People like me?”
“Like you,” she confirmed. “The satellites, Huck’s, he picks up on things and so do the planes. Yearly scans and drones. Not a lot of places to hide anymore when they stepped up the tech. They started venturing out about fifteen years ago…” Ainsley let that number sink in and she looked at Kozo, assessing his age. “You know what?” she continued, “I just thought of this. My mom used to always tell me in the middle of a big cleaning project that it had to get worse before it got better.”
Kozo nodded. He’d heard some version of the same adage in his own life. After the biggest waves the storms calm.
“Did your mom die of the virus?” Kozo asked.
“No, actually,” Ainsley answered but she didn’t elaborate. “I guess what I meant was: In the timeline of the earth’s restoration process, I’m going to guess we’re in the getting worse before it gets better stage.”
“Earth’s restoration process?” Kozo asked. It was the first time he’d ever heard anyone say something about that.
“That’s what the genocide was about,” Ainsley said. She turned to him and stopped walking; he followed suit and stopped as well. “The whole virus, the whole thing. Someone’s idea of a reset button. Keep the best and brightest working for the future…his little Islands of wealth and intelligence, all adoring.”
“I get it. We’re not part of that restoration,” Kozo said. He sniffed and began to understand. It didn’t take much to slide the worldview into shape. It was just as that woman said: You weren’t supposed to be born.
“No, not their restoration,” Ainsley replied. “I think we have a different sort of restitution in mind.”
“One that keeps us alive?” Kozo asked with a slight smile.
Ainsley laughed. “I mean, most of my plans boil down to me just trying to save my own ass.” She let her head drift up and stare at the men ahead, trudging quickly without regard for the two of them. “Or their asses.”
“I don’t need saving,” Kozo tried to say with deep bravery. Except, as soon as he said the words, he knew they were only ego and not true at all. He’d needed saving from the Trash Islands, from his ship, and from the boat in the ocean. He needed saving from himself—not to charge forward headlong into death.
“We all do or will at some point,” Ainsley replied graciously.
Kozo saw the beginning of gray at her roots, spry hairs that defied the texture of the others. He wondered if she was about the same age as his mom—a teenager at the world’s end.
“Do you have kids?” Kozo asked, changing the subject, following his curiosity.
Ainsley shook her head and made a face. It wasn’t a face of disgust, but rather pointed exhaustion. “No,” she answered swiftly. “My kids are the people we save and hide. There’s no room in my world for tending to babies and teaching morals and enduring developmental stupidity.”
“Is that what parents do?”
“Good parents?” Ainsley asked and raised an eyebrow. “And more.”
Kozo nodded. He didn’t know why he said the next bit. “My mom didn’t want me.”
“Sure,” Ainsley replied with a sad smile, and his heart sank and how fast she responded with understanding. She paused, sensing his offense. “Your mom was from Japan?” He nodded. Ainsley pointed to the lush hills of rain forest surrounding them and held her hand over her heart as if awe. “Japan was a place of magic. The hub of technology and the future…and then only a few hours away, lush hills as green as this. Imagine waking up to autonomy and confidence. And the joy of community and the hope of peace. Then go back to the Trash Islands and imagine how that looked for her. How could she raise a child there when she knew Japan?
Kozo didn’t move.
He froze looking at the trees wave in the wind like they were speaking to him through song. He’d seen drawings of trees or pictures of trees. He’d never imagined they moved. But there they moved, dancing and waving and bending and floating. He didn’t feel lacking on the ocean until later, until what they lacked as all he could focus on.
“But let’s get something out of the way,” Ainsley said with a nod. She snapped and drew Kozo out of his trance. “Not wanting you is not the same as not loving you.”
She patted his back, away from the tenderness of his impromptu surgery, and began to walk through the dirt further into the trees and away from the houses and the bones. He knew she meant it to be comforting, but Kozo wasn’t so sure. He thought if he had to choose, he’d rather be wanted than loved.
They took shelter under the tree canopies to escape the pounding rains that started without warning. Kozo wasn’t a stranger to a storm, but the sound of the water hitting the ground and pooling into dirt, the whole smell of it all, was quite new. It wasn’t until they started to tear through the underbrush that Kozo even noticed or cared that he didn’t have anything on his feet. The others wore shoes—
and moved with ease—but as tough as his feet were, he found them tender as he scurried over rocks and thorns.
A friendly chirp drew his attention to the trees and Kozo stumbled with fright.
The trees above him were full of bright green birds. They yelled loudly upon him, laughing almost, in a carrying sing-song of squawking, and Kozo pointed—overwhelmed by the sheer number peering down.
“Parrots,” Malcolm called back. “You ever seen one before?”
“No,” Kozo admitted. A parrot. He studied the animal and it studied him back, shifting its neck and blinking its eyes. Gulls existed on the Trash Islands, but his mother said they were new additions. Most birds died with the virus after feasting on flesh.
“We’re heading to the center of the island,” Ethan said. He’d stopped and waited for everyone to catch up. “Desolation Valley. I set up a station there last time and I think ”
Kozo reached out and touched a plant near his face. The hanging flower and fruit looked tempting, covered in water and swaying. He plucked a green berry and held it in his hand, but before he could decide what to do next, Ainsley flicked the green ball out of his hand, a petrified look on her face.
“Poison,” she said. “Those are poison. If you ate it, you’d die.”
He sighed and thought about how close he’d come to placing the green berry in his mouth and tasting it—just to see and understand and learn. He shivered. A parrot called down to him and Kozo jumped.
Someone laughed and Ainsley scolded the person and came to his rescue. He supposed he should start to keep a tally of how often he’d need it.
“Vegetation on earth hasn’t been touched in some places in over twenty-five years…but we stay here,” Ainsley said and rotated to look at the group, “because the climate provides yearlong coverage if you’re flying overhead but keeps us close to the action. You keeping up, okay?”
Above them, the rain came down harder and louder.
As the weather worsened, Kozo moved slower, his feet leaden. He didn’t know how long they’d been walking, but the sky was darker and he was certain he could no longer hear any part of the ocean.
Ainsley called through the noise for them to stop and set up camp, an hour or so away from their station in Desolation Valley. Malcolm handed Kozo a small tent and pointed to a patch of flat earth near an old cement trail up the hill, overgrown.
As Kozo shook the tent into cooperation, following everyone’s lead, he saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. Startled, but worried it might only be another bird, he began to set the tent down into the mud and leaves, wondering how that would be preferable to his bed on the ship.
Except, he paused, and withheld a scream, staring down at the land.
With a diamond shaped head and its forked tongue, spotted with green and brown, its lower body full and sluggish, a snake made its way through his campsite. Parrots. Snakes. A world of make-believe animals now sharing his space, his land, his air.
“Boa!” Ainsley called and stepped to the side, avoiding the creature as it moved back into another patch of forest, out of sight. Kozo shivered.
“What else should I watch out for?” he asked, but they assured him that while the land was going to try to kill him, the animals, for the most part, were harmless.
The bare ground and the soft earth of the mud was more comfortable atop the vinyl bottom fabric of his tent than he thought it would be. Kozo looked at his bruised and gashed body. He picked a thorn out of his heel and massaged his ankle.
He was on land.
Sleeping with snakes.
A volcano forming under his body.
And the crazy pull of the water tugging him back out to the waves.
If he dreamed, he didn’t know what shape his dreams would take.
The rain stopped and Kozo woke to a drippy, silence. It was pre-dawn, not black but struggling with the light, casting dim shadows on the forest. On the Trash Islands, this was his favorite time of day. He’d have stayed still and meditated on the noises of the trees but he heard the rustling of someone’s tent and then the curt barks of someone arguing through a whisper.
He leaned forward into his tent’s opening, careful not to rustle any of the fabric, and strained to make out the words and voices.
“What if it’s something new,” he heard Ethan bark, louder than a whisper.
A female voice whispered back, unintelligible. Ainsley, he thought. No one explained the nature of the couple’s relationship, although they were clearly a couple: she’d kissed his head the night before and climbed into the same tent. People wandered on the Trash Islands—commitment was to the whole, children birthed and sent to wander between the boats, learn to navigate the slippery plastic waterways on their own.
Kozo grew cold and still.
Perhaps, he’d been too weak and shaken to recognize danger. He’d simply, naively, believed them. And now he was stuck on land without escape. Here, he knew nothing. A monkey was a name but could he recognize one in the trees? How was it the same or different from the Sea Demons his jiji talked about.
Still, in the early morning, no sun yet on the horizon, he listened as best he could as Ethan and Ainsley engaged in a debate. They cut each other off and grew more intense as the conversation lingered.
“You see one plane and you’re going to abandon a whole network?”
“Stop it. I’m going to work on my singular mission. I will not expose ourselves for the sake of one stranger—”
“They couldn’t know we’re here.”
“What if they do, Ainsley? What if they knew we figured out about the chips and they had a backup plan? Two planes. That’s enough.”
“Are you sure you saw planes?” Ainsley asked in a smaller voice, barely heard about a whisper of wind. “You dream sometimes—”
“Stay here if you want.”
“Stop. And what about the kid?” Ainsley whispered kid softer than any other word. There was a brief pause and stillness before Ethan cleared his throat.
Kozo resisted the urge to tear open the tent and demand an explanation. He was the kid; what were they doing with him?
But that was all there was. The argument was over. He strained and put his ear closer, but he heard nothing else—not the sound of footsteps or whispered instructions or a rustle of a tent. So, Kozo leaned back and started to count in Japanese in a small whisper. He’d leave his tent on twenty, but before he had time, he realized the island was waking up.
Although the sun was still making its journey to the horizon, the birds knew morning was coming soon, and all around him, making it too hard to hear anything else, the parrots and the other birds chirped him awake.
The cacophony was unlike anything he’d ever heard and while he was a little terrified, he also wanted to watch the glory of a morning on land.
Kozo stumbled from his tent at the moment cool amber filled the forest with an eerie haze. It was foggy and warm and the entirety of the island sprang to life. But the tents from the night before were empty and abandoned.
The people who pulled him from the ocean had left him and their things, in a hurry.
Chapter Twelve
Kymberlin Island
THEA
The burning and itching on her neck reached an apex a few days after the incident. The doctor saw her a few times, lathering up her wounded skin and telling her she would be fine. Of course, she would be fine, but it still hurt and Thea was intolerant to pain of any kind.
Her afternoon siesta was interrupted by a sudden burst of tears and vicious tirades on the other side of her wall. She heard her mother attempting to calm some wounded soul, but the creature was having a full-on meltdown.
Never one to shy away from drama, Thea checked her bandage in the mirror, put a weary look on her face, and walked out into the main room of the Truman family suite. The scene unfolding in front of her looked delightfully histrionic.
Her cousin Amira, tear-streaked and in shambles, sobbed on their couch while Blair m
ade a lazy circle around the room, exuding everything but warmth.
“You promised,” Amira said in a loop.
“I did not,” Blair replied and acknowledged her daughter’s presence with a nod and a sigh. “You’ve woken Thea. And I’m at a loss Amira, I am. But this was not an arrangement—and to treat it as such would devalue the whole situation. Do what every courting couple does. Give it the year and then pull your contract. But really, aren’t you being judgmental? If the algorithm says you’re suited…”
“But why do you want me to a waste a year when I know we are not suited?” Amira pleaded.
“You can’t cry when you chose this path. You knew the risks.”
Thea and Amira exchanged a quick look of understanding—Blair was never moved by tears.
“Oh no,” Amira said and she sat up and wiped off her tears. She’d regained some moxie. “No, no. My dad told me that my future was designed…”
“Within the scope of our world and for the preservation of future—”
“Then I rescind. I pull my courtship.”
“Oh please,” Blair rolled her eyes, no longer trying to hide her obvious disdain. Thea moved forward and put her hands on the back of the couch; her cousin gave her a dismissive wave, disinterested in her presence.
Blair cleared her throat and continued, pushing the subject.
“I happen to find Maverick James delightful and handsome…”
“Then you marry him,” Amira said and Blair’s eyes grew stormy at the insubordination and sass. She was one of the few who’d survive speaking that way to her mother, the queen.
“You will do as you are instructed.” That was all Blair said, but the bite in the retort gave the room an immediate chill.
“I see. You did this,” her cousin said and her voice quivered. She made a move to leave, but Thea didn’t want to be left alone with the aftermath of her mother’s disrupted mood.
“Actually,” Thea interjected, knowing this would stop her, “you know what? Grandpa was kinda with-it during that part and he said that he did it. I mean…I don’t even know if he knew what he was watching—”
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