In the shadow of the towering ridge face, I unzip my pack, remove the coil of nylon rope, and drape it around U-me’s neck. “You know what to do.”
“Strongly agree.” She rolls over the ridge’s crumbling base and up, shrinking to a speck. At the top, she sends the now-fastened rope back to me. All one hundred meters tumble down.
I catch the end and yank, checking that it’s secure before knotting it around my waist. I get as good a grip as I can around the slick nylon, breathe in, and push off the ground.
Foothold. Handhold. Repeat. The rising sun warms my shoulders as I hit the final stretch. I heave myself onto the narrow ridgetop, drenched beneath M.M.’s sweater, and catch my breath while surveying the land on the other side. Meadow-side. Grayscale like the rest of the island, trees growing in scraggly bunches. Brick mounds swell through the waist-high grass like tumors. I have yet to figure out what they are. Shrines, maybe. Very mossy, neglected shrines.
Shaking out my arms, I start the descent. U-me rolls beside me, occasionally beeping out a “Strongly disagree” in response to my foothold choices. But I’ve memorized most of the soft spots in the ridge, and I order her back up top when I’m halfway down.
The untied rope drops just as my feet hit the ground. I stuff it into my pack and pat U-me’s head when she rejoins me. “Good work, love.”
Aside from us, the mist is the only moving thing in the meadow this morning. I try my best to ignore the shrines and attribute my goose bumps to the sweat cooling on my back. Hunger stabs my stomach, but I don’t stop for a taro biscuit. Not here. Doesn’t feel right to eat here.
The meadow ends with a sparse forest of pines. Several are fused along the trunk like conjoined twins. Infiltrating the pines are eight-point-leaf trees. They dominate the forest deeper in. Branches clasp above our heads, leaves strewing the path with rotting mulch. A beetle darts in front of us—and ends up under U-me’s wheels.
Crunch.
I flinch. The taking of a life—however small—seems bigger when there’s so little of it on this island already. “Heartless.”
“Heartless: without feeling, adjective; cruel, adjective.”
“Or literally without a heart.”
“Neutral.”
“Okay, what do you even mean by that? Neutral to the definition? Or to the idea of not having a heart?”
U-me’s fans whir.
I duck under a low-hanging branch. “Right. Sorry, love. Forgot you don’t do direct questions.” Along with a bajillion other things.
When I first found U-me in the cupboard under M.M.’s sink, in need of some sun juice, I’d danced around the house. A bot could help me build the boat. Or map out the waters in my vicinity. Or simply provide me critical intel, like where I’m from and how to find my sister.
Except U-me isn’t your average bot. She’s a mash-up of a dictionary and a questionnaire rating scale, about as useful to me as … well, a dictionary or questionnaire rating scale. It helps that she can tie ropes, dig holes, and follow my lead, like roll over in the general direction of the junk piles when we finally arrive at the Shipyard, my name for the clearing in the forest, where there’s another little shrine and something that looks a lot like a swimming pool. The rim is overgrown with moss and surrounded by heaps of scrap metal. Most of the scraps are oxidized, deformed, and unsalvageable, especially now that I’ve used what was salvageable on Hubert.
Still, I crouch and go through the piles, methodically at first, then less so. The odds of finding a propeller are slim. But so were the odds of finding any boat parts and yet, here we are: hull, rudder, tiller, motor, bolt, all accounted for. Just when I think, That’s it, my luck’s run out, I find another piece. What’s more, each piece seems to come from the same boat. It’s kind of magical. Everything about Hubert is. He came to me at a time when I needed him most. Don’t give up, the universe seemed to be saying on the day I met him. And I haven’t. I’m so close to finding Kay. My breath shortens as I think of her. A flash of sequins. A shriek of a laugh. A cherry-ice pop stained smile, the color red fleeting. Two hands joined, mine and hers. An impossibly white ladder, connecting sky to sea. We splash in and float for days.
When I linger in the memory, though, the water around us trembles. I see a boat, carried away by the waves. I hear a whisper—I’m sorry—laced with the sorrow of a goodbye.
Positive thoughts. It’s better to focus on the present. To break things down into manageable tasks. Build Hubert. Find Kay.