Daughter Unmoored
by Ly Ann
part 1
I cast my fishing branch, waves lapping at my waist. Even though six rainy seasons had passed since the last intruder, I still scanned the horizon for boats like Mom taught me. There was no need. I was safe and free here. Free to do whatever I wanted.
I had no boss to force me to clean rooms all day like Mom had to before the war. It didn’t matter that I never got to see the red geraniums on the resort’s balconies. The main building still stood, and I could imagine how everything looked when guests were there.
And I had so many friends: the insects, the birds, the critters, the sea. My island was enough. Not just enough. I was happy here. My patched-up dress rippled as the waves swished on the sand. Over... and over. I wiped tears with my pruny fingers and forced a smile.
The sky had turned the color of a ripe mango, and my worm still danced on my hook.
It will be dark soon, I could barely hear Mom say in my mind. The imprint of her voice kept drifting like a once-red fabric dulling to orange. If only I could paint it with berry juice so it never discolored completely.
“Don’t worry, Mom. I’m no kid. I know how to get to our hideout in the dark. Maybe I’ll meet new friends when they sneak out of hiding.”
A magpie squawked, the call fluty and melodic.
“Not friends who speak with words like us, but friends all the same.”
I searched the horizon, eager to salute the moon in full bloom. A form loomed on the water’s surface.
I gasped. That couldn’t be a boat. I squinted, squeezing my fishing branch. Definitely a boat.
“No.” I strained against the tide to reach the shore as fast as I could. If they spotted me, I’d get sold. Like Mom.
I crouched, smoothing out my footprints with trembling hands. At the forest’s edge, I snatched my shoes and sprinted into the woods, rocks and branches biting into my bare feet.
I reached my pond, dove headfirst, swam into the crevice. I burst out on the other side, breathless. I hauled myself onto the cave floor and paced barefoot on the cold, wet stone and saw my fire was dying.
I doubled over, hands on my thighs, taking shallow breaths. I pushed the boat out of my mind and focused on the sketches of Mom on the walls, needing her presence. They blurred as a vision of the forest... on that day... took... took over.
Mom’s screams pierce through the overgrown trees. I dash to her, vines slapping me, my feet crushing branches and dead leaves.
I stop. An intruder lies on top of her, her skirt up.
Mom punches its furry cheek. It snatches her wrist.
It will kill her. I grab a heavy rock and approach slowly, trembling. I lift the rock overhead and smash it on its skull. Again and again and again.
Blood splatters. In its hair. On the leaves. On my hands. In my mouth. Thick, salty blood.
I had to kill that intruder or Mom would have died. Mongooses fight rival clans to the death. Killing was what we did to protect our own. I’ve killed an intruder once. I could do it again.
I waited for the night, grinding my teeth, sharpening my knives. Once the pond in my cave grew dark, I plunged into the cold water with my plastic bag and emerged naked in the moonlit clearing. Mosquitoes swarmed me as I dried off and dressed.
I slipped into the forest, moonlight thinning with each careful, silent step. When the treetops grew so dense I couldn’t see my own hands, I tapped the ground with a stick, checking for cliffs or snakes. Everything in me screamed to turn back. But I couldn’t. I had to know what I was up against.
I sidled along the forest line, my path flanked by vines crawling over the rubble of the resort. I peeked at the silver ocean. No boat. Maybe it had left.
Then I saw it. A rusty motorboat. It was real. Here, on my island. I scanned for lookouts. Nothing.
I crept forward, then stopped. Footprints. Three sets traced a path in the sand. Adults, from the size of them. To leave tracks like that, they had to be ready to shoot anything in sight. I should head back... but I itched to see what the intruders looked like.
A piercing cry erupted. The wailing rose and fell as if the creature was in pain. No creature had ever cried like that. What kind of torture were the intruders putting my friend through?
I couldn’t save the poor creature. If I didn’t leave now, I was next.
* * *
For five days, I remained a prisoner of my cave. Five days of mending clothes, reading novels, braiding my hair, painting every free inch of cave space, anything to distract myself from the fact that I was no longer alone on my island. I never forgot. Not for a second.
I ate all the dried fruit, coconuts and fish, and was left with a few bitter Brazil nuts and a day’s worth of kindling. Staying longer meant fasting in complete darkness. But was it even safe to stay here waiting to be found? I had to get rid of the intruders before they sold me.
A direct attack was out of the question; there were at least three of them. Poison? I could fill wine bottles with poisonous berry juice. But they would taste it and spit it out. My gaze landed on the old anti-venom kit. A venomous snake could be the answer. Catching one shouldn’t be too hard.
* * *
I perched in a tree overlooking my snake trap. Over the previous eleven nights, I had caught three snakes inside a bucket filled with minnows, only to let go harmless grass snakes each time.
I missed the sun’s warmth back when I fished and hunted mangoes during the day. Missed my old life. Missed Mom. I used to wish for something new. For one of those big noisy drones that scare birds to drop something on my island. Maybe a kind of nut that didn’t grow here. Or new clothes free of mending. Or yogurt containers with yogurt inside. Mom described it as a dessert, sweet like a fruit and silky like clay.
Now, all I wanted was for my life to return to the way it was. Exhausted, I fastened my satchel strap around my waist and the tree trunk before allowing my eyelids to close.
A sudden rustle snapped me awake. A snake tail dangled from the bucket. A yellow-bellied sea snake!
I slid down the tree and rushed to the pail. I eased his tail inside and slammed the lid shut before he had a chance to bite me. Knife in one hand and the bucket in the other, I scurried along a path of crunchy palm leaves, the crescent moon barely lighting my path.
The stench of rotting fish wafted from the two stagnant pools flanking the entrance. Mosquitoes swarmed me, and I swatted them with my knife.
In the open-air lobby, I swerved between a puddle and a moldy-smelling sofa and stepped over chunks of concrete columns. Farther inside, there was no longer any moonlight to guide my path. I filled in the darkness with my memory of the space and reached the staircase leading to the rooms upstairs. I climbed slowly with no sounds other than my enraged snake bashing against the bucket and the planks groaning under my weight.
I was about to reach the second floor when the same piercing cry rattled me. The mysterious creature they were torturing.
I bolted back down the stairs, my snake bucket flailing. I leaped across the debris-strewn lobby and sprinted into the forest.
The creature’s cries grew louder as I scaled a large banyan tree. Hidden in the leaves, I hung my snake bucket on one of the gnarled tree boughs and peeked at the main building.
I spotted my footprints in the mud. I hadn’t erased them and had left a direct path to my cave. Home was no longer safe. I had to kill them all tonight.
A silhouette ran down the beach, a cap obscuring its face. Then a second came out, holding a bundle to its chest. The wailing grew louder, then stopped, and something familiar and melodic took its place. Mom used to sing that song to me: “Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky. Twinkle, twinkle, little star.”
Mom returned? I squinted, a flutter in my belly. The singer’s hair was the color of hay. Not black like ours.
It wasn’t Mom... I shut my eyes and reached for a memory of her face, the comfort of her hugs, her voice calling me “Bunny.” Everything was gone.
I couldn’t break down. I wiped my tears, shook my head and refocused on the ground.
A third intruder, tall and with fur on its cheeks, approached the singer and said in a deep voice, “I’ll go find Leo.”
“I should go with you,” the singer said.
The tall, furry one kissed the singer’s forehead. “And fall with the baby in your arms?”
A human baby? But it was the size of a mongoose.
All three had left the resort: this was my shot. I slithered down the banyan tree. As I skulked to the main building, snake bucket in my trembling hand, I imagined the singer getting bitten, retching, writhing in pain and slowly dying.
I gagged. But that singer with its baby wasn’t Mom. I knew that.
They’ll act nice at first, Mom had said. That was right. That was how they got Mom.
“Leo?” the intruder with a deep voice shouted.
I dropped the bucket on the muddy ground and ran into the woods. As I scanned the trees, looking for one to hide in, a scream boomed.
The intruder! It must have opened the bucket and gotten bitten by my snake. It wouldn’t survive the night. I should be overjoyed, like catching a fish. Instead, my throat clamped.
Clenching my knife, I searched for the footprints of the cap-wearing intruder they called Leo.
There they were. New prints in the mud. And right around the pond above my cave. Had this Leo found the crevice leading to my hideout? I climbed a monkey pod tree and watched the pond. My ragged breathing joined the chorus of cicadas and mosquitoes.
The furry intruder’s low, cracked scream replayed in my mind again and again. I knew how much it was hurting. I could almost feel its pain. Same as when I got bitten myself: the trembling, the muscle aches everywhere.
“Mom,” I whispered, “should I kill the intruders?”
I feel Mom’s hands on my shoulders as she kneels before me, her eyes wild. “Promise me you’ll go back to the cave, Bunny. Promise me.”
“Not if you don’t come with me,” I shout.
“They never stop looking until they find who killed their friend. I’ll shoot them before they find us.”
“But there are no bullets.”
She smiles, looking at me in silence. Tears run down her cheeks.
“Please, Mom. We can just hide in the cave together.”
She squeezes me tight and kisses my forehead. “I love you, Bunny. Promise me.”
I wasn’t going to hide this time. If I got caught now, Mom’s sacrifice would mean nothing.
I had to kill them. Killing was what creatures did. I waited for this Leo to come out, ready to jump on it and slash its throat.
Daylight would come soon, and there was still no sign of the intruder. No way it stayed in there all night. It must not have found the underwater crevice. My cave remained the safest place to hide during the day.
I climbed down the tree and swam into my pond reluctantly, feeling like it was a mistake. My head emerged from the water, and I froze.
The intruder was here. Wrapped in my bathrobe. Lying on my bed nest.
It didn’t move, though. Its eyes were closed, lips parted. Asleep? An easy kill.
I lifted myself onto the stone floor soundlessly and tiptoed toward it, my trembling hand clutching the blade.
Its cheeks were fur-free like Mom’s, but its jaw was wider, lips fuller and nose stronger. Its skin and hair were as pale as sand. Watching it sleep sparked a fever below my stomach that itched like a mosquito bite. I aimed my knife at its throat, desperate to kill it before it woke, but my arm didn’t budge.
My wet hair dripped onto its forehead.
Its eyelids opened, and it shielded its face with its arms.
I jerked back, bit down on the knife handle to free my arms and swam away. I wove between the trees in the dark, my soaked satchel at my side, knife in hand, branches snapping under my feet, pushing through despite my tired legs and lungs. I reached a tall koa tree and climbed it. I held my breath and checked for the snap of twigs or shuffle of leaves. Nothing but cicadas.
Why didn’t I kill it when I had the chance?
* * *
Copyright © 2026 by Ly Ann
