It thrashes around so much that I put it down on the pier and pull out my knife.
“Sorry. It’s you or me, little guy.” I raise the blunt end of my knife above its head. But I hesitate. Its glassy eye stares coldly back at me. After an eternity, I bring down the hilt of my knife and hit it hard on the top of the head. It flops a few more times, then goes still.
I start gutting the fish and scale it like I remember seeing on some TV show once. I don’t remember it being such a disgusting mess, though. A whole lot of blood for a small fish. I seriously wish I’d caught a bag of Oreos instead, or a giant ham sandwich. I’m not a huge fish fan, and the prospect of stepping into the new role of fish serial killer isn’t helping at all.
When I was a little kid, back in Korea, Mom used to make fish in the only way I liked it, with a hot bowl of steaming rice and plenty of banchan. I’m almost homesick for it, except that I don’t really know what homesickness is. Maybe I’m just sick. I try to blur my thoughts and refocus them on my mom’s face, but I can’t see it. I can feel her arms around me, above the heated floor of our room. But I can’t see her face.
I look down and there’s a dead animal in my hands. For a moment, I wonder how it got there.
Pay attention, Hector.
My hands are bloodied and slippery, and now I reek like pond scum. The scales fly everywhere when I scrape the body with my knife. I must have at least four or five on my face. But soon, I’m done. I’ve got food.
I rinse my hands and the headless, gutted fish with bottled water. As I head back to my camp, the thin curl of white smoke appears above the tree line about a mile away again. It’s on the way back, so I head toward it, hoping it’s what I think it is.
Taking the path back to the camp, I find the source of the smoke. It’s a tiny little cottage, hidden from shore by a layer of maple trees devoid of leaves. The cottage seems dilapidated until I realize it’s only weathered, not abandoned. Thin pines grow close, hugging the walls. A curlicue of smoke rises from a stone chimney, and the windows are all closed up with some battered-looking metal shutters. There’s no peeking inside this house. Still, it’s small, and she must have broken in. No one on the island would have stayed here, and I doubt anyone would stock it with food to waste over the winter.
I take out my knife and saw the tiny fish in half, then leave part of it on the stone step of the back door. I walk away quickly. Hopefully a fox won’t get it before she does.
There’s always more fish to catch. Anyway, I owe her for the water-boiling comment, and for something else. It was nice to not think about myself for a while.
At the thought, I jog back and leave the other half of the fish on the step, too.
Chapter Eight
ANDA
It begins with the fish.
I find it on the back step of the cottage, a small corpse of an offering. At first, my nose flares at the scent. It’s beheaded, chopped in two, and smeared with blood. Scales stick to it here and there, violently displaced from that unnaturally smooth skin. The belly has been inexpertly torn open in the tenderest of places, anus to gills, leaving a jagged maw with fascia and silken skin hanging in ribbons.
There is only one person who could have left such a thing. The boy.
Is he trying to scare me? Is it a warning, a herald of what he might do to me? The air pressure around me drops like a stone, and I draw the clouds about me. Mist dampens my forehead with comfort as I stare at the carcass. And then my father’s good sense enters my brain.
Anda, it said. It’s food. He’s trying to feed you. He worries for your body.
It is kindness.
“Oh.” I stand there dumbly for a full five minutes, until I finally pick up the pieces with my hands and bring them inside. I rinse them out with cooled, boiled water and place them, small and lonely, on a plate. I stare at them for at least an hour before deciding what to do. I dig into the small trove of cookbooks that Father kept in the kitchen cupboard and study the “sea delights” section. Every word is a bit of prayer.
Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper.
Dip gently in an egg wash.
Dredge thoroughly in cornmeal, well-seasoned.
Fry in butter until golden brown.
Serve with a wedge of lemon.
I only have a few eggs. Father left me with enough food to last a month. But the eggs will go bad anyway, so I use one and follow the recipe instructions as if they were sacred law. The skillet soon hisses with browning butter, and I lay the pieces in. Droplets of hot fat skip out of the pan and hit my skin, making me dance and dodge, squealing. My face near the stove feels scorched, and I burn my left fourth finger.
I laugh the entire time.
Finally, they are done. I burned half of the fish, but the cottage smells of good, cooked food, and the walls smile at me. Father has tried to do this for me. He’d create dishes to tempt me to eat. Berries like jewels, so pretty that they made me cry. Or cubes of cheese that I wouldn’t touch, because they smelled of their true origins—of rotted, curdled, glandular secretions. His care was only suitable for a normal human girl, because it’s all his mind can imagine. He tries, so hard. But his attempts are slippers that don’t fit, that chafe at my edges constantly.
But this one viciously murdered fish feels just right for someone like me.
Too fitting.
I find a piece of nice clean newspaper from the stack by the fire and wrap half of the fish in the paper, watching the oil stain the newsprint with dots of dark gray. I study the gift I’ve made, cradling it in my hands. A strange sensation tickles my fingertips.
I believe it’s called pride.
And then I leave the cottage. It is easy to find him, though it’s dusk. I go to the last place we’d seen each other and follow his footprints to the camping shelter where he’s made his new home. From a distance, his footsteps shuffle a quiet rhythm. His blurred form moves about inside.
I watch him enter a patch of light where the tired sun carelessly appears for a second. He runs his hand through his dark hair and touches his stubbly cheeks with wonder, as if time had sneaked up on him and surprised him with the truth that he is, in fact, a young man now. He stands inside his shelter and looks out, but I can tell that his eyes are focused inward. He is thinking, seeing something I cannot.
I feel left behind.
I don’t like it.
But I am here, Anda. I will never leave you alone.
I dismiss her voice, trying to concentrate.
Usually when campers come to the island, they busy themselves with hiking. They point at the mergansers and grebes that alight on the waters. They swat at the thirsty mosquitoes and pore over trail maps. They never see me. But this boy has seen me. Something, inexplicably, has changed. I can smell it in the air.