By Danielle Batalion Ola

Featured Art by Ashura Lewis

Do you remember, Pa, our summer mornings? I woke when you did, most days. No matter how many times I did it, you were always shocked to see me standing in the kitchen, draped in one of your old shirts and an ebbing sleep. You thought it was unnatural to be up so early, for someone so young. “Up already? You get work or what? Go sleep some more, Baby Girl.” But you liked when I stayed. I could tell.

I stuck by you, watching you make breakfast, a ghost at your hip. You reheated old rice, cracked eggs into pans. Such was the rhythm of our mornings— cook, watch, eat. You never asked me to help and I never offered. For all your talk, you enjoyed that. It made you feel a better man that way.

We became uncomplicated in those hours, just a fisherman and his daughter. Maybe that’s all you ever wanted with me—these fleeting scenes that distilled us to our simple parts.

Now that I’ve begun this story, I’m not sure why I’m telling it. It has no grand lesson, no human secret unlocked in its end. It would be enough for you to know that, each morning, I hoped to keep you home just a little bit longer. Each morning, you rushed to set out to sea.

*

Early in my ninth summer, you asked me to poke my hand through the window. “Feel that?” The air was weighty, sitting fat on the sill. A storm was coming.

“No,” you replied. “Just rain. For a storm, the sky gotta be red red. Red all over.” The sunrise was orange at best, brilliant and furious, but not furious enough to keep you home. Disappointment coated my tongue, sticking it fast to the roof of my mouth. I hurried to feed Ipo, hoping the chore would hide my upset, but

you’d already moved on, striding halfway across the room.

Outside, Ipo had pressed herself flat across the sand, pathetic as she whined. In daylight, she was even darker than the shore of our strange black beach. The earth a swath of charcoal, her fur a wet blot of ink. At the sight of me, carrying the previous day’s leftovers in a small pail, she shot upright and pulled against

her leash. She ran circles, paws kicking up flurries of sand.

Her hunger had taken on a feverish quality since a stray (so you said) planted puppies in her belly. Despite the love between us, I was repulsed by how her swollen breasts swung, and the snorts and slurps she made as she dove muz- zle-first into the pail.

When you stepped outside, Ipo was already nibbling at her paws, searching for lingering morsels in the crooks of her toes. Your torso was bare, already cloaked with a sheen of sweat. Your gut was not so swollen as Ipo’s, but nevertheless round. Though young yet, your habitual frowns had dug trenches across your brow. I watched them deepen as you stared out toward the water, a fisherman gauging future weather according to the apparent wind, water, clouds.

You were a man who weighed his chances. I knew, even then, that you liked to fool yourself into believing you could beat the odds.

I hated your silence, always rushing to break it. “Do you know what I learned from Ms. Rose?” I waited for your eyes to travel to me, lazy and slow. “It’s not a color, it’s a shade. It looks so dark because it’s eaten all the light.” With a finger nested below my eye, against the curve of my cheek, I explained, “That’s why our eyes are black in the middle. Ms. Rose says it’s called a pupil, and it’s more like a window or a door. It’s open, but it looks solid black because it takes all light and color in and never lets it back out. It’s all absorbed so we can see.” You looked at me as one looks at a gift they’d never choose for themselves. Politely pleased, more patently confused. With a chuckle, you said, “And?

Color, shade. To us, it’s all the same.”

I lowered my eyes. A breeze passed between us before you bent over me, your weathered hand rustling my hair. “Keep studying,” you bade me, kinder than before.

Before school let out for the year, I’d asked Ms. Rose whether the light our eyes captured meant we, too, were color, were light, as much as we were flesh and bone. She’d stammered, “That’s not what I meant by absorbed,” but she never gave me an answer, not really.

Our shore, secluded, lonely, curled softly around us. Beneath me, a billion pupils, a billion open doors. I wondered, if I dug deep enough, what light I might find. I pushed my fingers through the grains and watched them disappear.

*

I used to bring Ipo to town when you were out, back before she became host to little lives. We’d spend our days in the market, toying with the fruits on display. If the stall was selling pineapples, I’d press my fingers against the spikes until they

grew sore. I’d hide rambutans in the lychee bins after plucking them bald.

Aunty Lina sold the best fruits. She cubed her pineapples and doled them out as samples, so tart they sizzled on the tongue. She did the same with her Asian pears, which had the crunch of dried leaves. I visited Aunty’s stall three times, each time squirreling more than my fair share of samples away, before she beckoned me behind her register and offered me a squat plastic seat.

“I knew your daddy when he was a baby. He was one humbug boy.” She spoke while splitting a dragonfruit open with a dull knife. Each time, she pulled the halves apart to display the heart of the fruit to me, all black seeds and purple meat. I feasted while she talked story with her customers, carving into the dragonfruit with a spoon. It was what I imagined flower petals to taste like, barely crisp and lightly sweet.

When there weren’t any other ears to hear her, Aunty would lounge with me by the register, cooling herself with a paper fan as she told stories about you.

“Your mom saw him dancing for May Day and thought he was kanaka. And you know, she was so pretty, your daddy lied. When she found out, she was so mad, she chase him up one coconut tree. She never like talk to him after that. He went around making everyone so sad—” her face crumpled, mocking you “—She no love me no more, Aunty—” and snapped back again “—Your grandma get fed up already. You one girl or what? Go get um, already! Call!” If not stories, then Aunty imparted lessons: only accept cooked meals from those you trust; keep photos of yourself away from those you don’t; don’t whistle at night, you’ll call the ghosts; be kind to strangers who ask for help—they

could be gods and goddesses in disguise.

I liked the stories of gods and goddesses most. I was fascinated by the brutality in them, like young girls tend to be. The spiteful Pele separating lovers for eternity. The demigod Maui tearing limbs off the sun.

We never spoke of who you prayed to. There were no idols in our house. Our stunted conversation—you, too clumsy in it and I, too young—gave me no sense of your beliefs. But when Aunty told me of a mother in the sky, one who passed unto her children a gourd that held the clouds, rain, and winds, I decided she must be your God. There was no hesitation in Aunty’s smile, no second guess. “No worry, then. She going keep him safe.”

*

Another day, I asked if there are demigoddesses, too. Aunty’s brow hopped in place. She said, “Why not?” I don’t know if you can understand what I felt in that moment: the promise sleeping in my bones, the sharp relief.

*

It wasn’t long before Uncle Charlie found me at Aunty’s stall. I used to like Uncle and his shiny bolo head. He looked like the twins from Wonderland— broad-shouldered, teetering, round. He cast a look about, his eyes rolling like marbles until they rested on me. A grin spread between his cheeks, an Ipo smile. “Hey, Baby Girl!” He gave me a hug, one-armed and loose. “Where your daddy stay?” “Fishing,” I said.

“Always fishing, ha?” He gave a hard pat on my shoulders before pushing away. “Tell him we stay meeting up on Friday, yeah?”

I nodded, knowing I wouldn’t need to. You already knew.

He browsed the boxes Aunty Lina had laid out, but my presence dampened his interest in her wares, turned the colorful skins of the fruits gray. As he walked off, Aunty asked, “They still playing together?”

I nodded. I didn’t know what sort of games you played with Uncle, only that you’d been playing them for as long as I could remember. As much as I could trust in our early mornings, I could trust that on Friday nights, you’d tuck me in and leave. You always stumbled back in past midnight reeking of beer, feathers, blood.

You’d taken something in those games, and Uncle wanted it back. Only a year before, Uncle’s son told me as much. It was a bad debt, Noa said, but Uncle would take fifty dollars off for a kiss.

I’d always liked Noa. He wasn’t round like his father, but skinny as a noodle with two silver teeth. I told him sure, yes, I can do that. I’d do anything to help you, so I let Noa kiss me on my cheeks and mouth. But when Noa’s kisses kept coming, his hands grabbing, I realized how big your debt really was.

I punched where I could reach. When he fell back, I ran to tell his mother what he’d done. She sent me home before setting out to search for him, her friendly face flushed dark. I pretended to obey but curiosity got the better of me. Rounding back, I crouched beneath their windows and listened as she whipped a wire hanger at Noa’s hip, his sobs, his cries. Even then, I wondered if I was just one kiss away from saving you. Doubt pulsed in me to the hanger’s beat.

Before I left the market, Aunty Lina placed a hand on my shoulder, right where Uncle had rested his. “You tell me if you need help, okay? Aunty’s here.” Ipo hadn’t yet begun to swell. Still, I’d already decided that I wouldn’t be coming back.

*

Uncle paid visits to the hut when it rained. Like me, he always hoped the bad weather would force you to stay home. After Ipo fell pregnant, we took measures to avoid him, spending our afternoons at the rocks that marked the end of our beach. There, the sand was hard as clay, finely ground by turbulent tides. We took care with the time we spent there, keeping an eye on the ocean’s mood and leaving well before the last hours of the day.

All those stories about demigods that I loved—I wanted to join them. As Ipo grew large and round, I sat cross-legged before the ocean, eyes closed. Body still, I reached with unseen fingers for the threads that pulled the winds. They slipped from my grasp. I tried again, struggling to wrap them about my fingers. I drew the sea breeze closer to cool my sweat. I toyed with the effects of giving them a shake, tossing them high.

The day of the not-quite red sky, you came home carrying your catch and the stench of salt. The heat had lifted by the time you returned to shore. The air moved about in soft sighs. You called for me, the pride in your voice suggesting it had been a good day on the water. You announced that we’d grill dinner outside. I cracked your cooler open to admire the menu. You always said that a fish that still has a touch of life in it is the sweetest, and so a small twitch drew my eyes to an aku. I counted its stripes as you pulled it from the cooler. One, two, four, and you sliced a fifth across its belly, revealing the sticky black-red inside. I sat beside you as you slid a knife across its skin, the edge uprooting scales.

I liked to talk as you worked, though I could never tell whether you listened. I told you I spent the day at Aunty Carol’s. Such lies comforted you. You enjoyed the thought of my friendships, of my keeping company while you were gone. So I told you her daughter Dana got a new set of felt-tip markers, nice ones, and I went to their place to draw.

You taught me how to stick the fish on a skewer and place it on the flames. “Not too high, not too low,” you said. “You want a nice, even char.”

“Char.” The word sounded different on my tongue. Fuller, somehow. You attributed my accent to my schooling, a product of my being a smart girl that reads.

As proud as you were, it pricked at you, this difference. Your eyes crinkled as your voice swung into a growl, “Charrrrrgh.” We laughed before it could burrow too deep.

It didn’t take long for the last of my aku’s life to leave him. His eyes turned opaque; he crisped into a meal. I retrieved paper plates and old rice from the shack. We dug in, plunging our fingers through the charred skin, parting shards of white, flaked flesh.

I kept telling stories because I’m better at talking than you are, and that night, I was on a roll. Aunty Carol cut apples for us so we could snack as we played. Dana drew a princess with one of the pinks in the pack and we argued about whether the princess should be blonde. I didn’t want her to be, because I was using the yellow Dana wanted to draw the mahi-mahi you caught last week, so in the end, the princess had hair Dana called doodoo brown. She thought it made her princess ugly, but said my drawing was even uglier because my fish had a Frankenstein forehead. She wouldn’t believe me when I told her that no, that’s just how they look.

Ipo stared at me from across the fire. She always hated when I lied to you. I didn’t feel so guilty. I knew you’d never verify my stories with Aunty Carol. I felt sorry for Dana, that she didn’t actually have the 48-pack of markers. Beyond that, I hardly cared.

You nodded, half-listening. In the long silence after, Ipo heaved a sigh. Your attention pivoted toward the sound. “She going give birth soon.”

“How can you tell?”

“Look at her.” You gestured as the fire flared, oil flashing across your fingers. “She’s about to pop.” Your lips smacked lushly around the Ps. It sounded deadly to me. Pop, like a bubble. Pop, like a balloon. Perhaps, I thought then, popping would be fine if Ipo was meant to, instead of how people popped pimples or you popped the aku.

“Don’t worry,” you said, knowing my fear before I could name it. “She’s a strong girl, like you.”

You ate the last of your meal with a swipe of the fingers, leaving the bones. In the distance, a shadow watched over us, teeter-tottering amongst the trees. I reached for your arm, giving it a small shake. Silently, I guided your eyes with mine so that you might see.

You flicked your fingers, shucking off the stickiest grains of rice. Placing the plate down and weighting it with a handful of sand, you said, “Stay here.”

As you went to meet Uncle Charlie, I picked at the little I had on my plate. I’d already hollowed the aku’s sweet, tender cheeks, but its eye stared back at me, even whiter than the spidery bones. You always said fish eyes tasted like candy, made for the best dessert. As you sauntered up to Uncle, I cracked the staring thing from its socket and into my mouth.

Your figures sharpened in my vision. I saw your lips moving, the narrowing of Uncle’s eyes. I beckoned the winds to me, asking them to carry back your words. But they were surly and still suspicious of me. They brought me one of Uncle’s whispers, and only one: when?

I turned over the bones on my plate and dug up the second eye. Pinched between my dirty nails, I noticed this time the jelly on the sphere. As I bit down, I saw the figure behind Uncle, hidden between the palms. He’d never come to us with friends.

They didn’t follow you when you turned back. Without a word, you reached for your abandoned plate, signaling that our dinner was done.

I found Ipo’s bucket, filling it in the wash of a wave. Its weight sent me waddling back. I heaved it up and doused the fire with both hands. In the hiss of the flame, you tipped my plate up for me, showing me the aku’s skull as if I hadn’t emptied it myself. “You tried the eyes! Watchu think?”

I said you were right all along—it was the best part of the meal. Ipo heaved another sigh. She could always tell when I was lying. But it wasn’t that I didn’t like them, Pa. I just couldn’t remember the taste.

*

One night, we went to bed and Ipo was only Ipo. But in the morning, there was crying—a high-pitched, spiny sound—and I woke to her, popped. You sat with her in the corner of the kitchen, carefully examining four small wrinkled creatures as they squirmed on the floor.

“They’re ugly,” I said.

“Babies are ugly in the beginning.” “I was ugly?”

“The ugliest.” You pinched my nose. “And look at you now.”

Ipo slept in the house in the days after, to heal. The puppies, too. Better, you said, to keep them dry and warm. You said Ipo had actually given birth to five puppies, but the last died before you managed to take them inside. Or, you guessed, it was simply born dead. When I asked why, you said, “It just works like that, sometimes. One goes so the rest survive.”

Ipo was a good mom. A classmate once told me that mama dogs ate their own puppies, but Ipo just licked at them as they fed. She scolded them with a bark when they got too rough, gave them space when they behaved. Whether in their shack or on the beach, she sat nearby, keeping them safe.

It made me think of Ma. What it could have been like if she’d stayed.

Aunty Lina said demigods didn’t always know that one of their parents was divine until they got older. It made me think that Ma really was the goddess you prayed to. You thought I couldn’t hear you, but I did. All those late nights you spent kneeling at your bedside. The catch in your breath before you began to cry.

You miss her. I know.

More and more, I believed it. Aunty Lina once said that some people believed the goddess of wind was also the goddess of safe journeys, and Ma left because she couldn’t stand it at home. She hated how you’d leave her, just as I did then. But it must have been so much worse for her, to be the goddess of a thing she couldn’t have.

You thought I didn’t remember her, but I do. I remember how she couldn’t sing—how her voice could only reach the first ten notes of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” so she’d row, row, row for hours just to lull me asleep. I remember her hair, a cloud of curls, and how it tickled my hands when I reached in and clutched at the strands.

You once told me you didn’t want me to hate Ma for leaving us. Said it wasn’t right for me to hold it against her; she was still my mother. I told you I didn’t hate her at all. In fact, I loved you both the same.

You were quiet for the rest of the night. Later, I’d wonder whether I loved you too little—only as much as a woman I remembered, but had never met.

*

When the puppies were old enough, you drove four stakes into the ground around Ipo’s and told me you had to start tying them up at night. Puka was the hardest to part with. He was the ugliest when he was born, but he’d become the cutest since. He grew slick black fur in the weeks past, soft as his mama’s, but one of his front paws was white, white, white.

Out of all the puppies, he loved me most. He batted me awake in the mornings. He climbed into my bed at night. He’d rest his head atop my leg, napping while I tugged at the tethers to the wind. Most mornings, I woke with his body nestled in the crook of my shoulder, my left ear warmed by his small snores.

Sometimes, I thought I might grow to love him more than Ipo.

You knew this, I think. It’s why you were so intent on separating us. “They’re guard dogs,” you reminded me. “They can’t get used to staying inside.”

Their crying was the worst thing I’d ever heard. It kept us up at night. You woke grumpier than usual. I learned how to yell back. I berated you for being cruel, especially to Puka, who I thought cried the loudest. I said we could have three guard dogs instead of four, but you wouldn’t budge, and I knew why. I’d seen Uncle Charlie drifting at the edges of our beach. I knew you still went to him on Friday nights.

The next Friday, I woke to you hobbling through my bedroom door. Your breath was yeasty, its rhythm rough. You bent over me at my bedside, mattress sinking under the weight of your hand. Moonlight revealed the mess of your cheeks, wet with sweat and tears. “I’m sorry, Baby Girl. I’m sorry, Baby. I’m sorry. Daddy will be better next time. Daddy will be better for you.”

For the rest of the night and into next morning, the world was silent. I stepped from the shack and found only Ipo, lethargic on the sand. There were no happy scrabbles for breakfast, no pink dangling tongues. Stakes were left in place of puppies, stacked neatly beside the house. I asked you, “Where did you take them?”

Your face was more familiar to me now—all feeling pared back after the fog of drink had passed. “They’re still here.” You took your foot and teased at the sand. “You don’t see them?”

They were beneath us, you said. They’d sunk. They loved me so much they had to leave. They gave up their bodies to become something that could cling to us for ages, dusting our home, our shins, my knobby knees. They’re still here, Baby Girl. Don’t you see?

As you went on, I realized you could tell stories, too.

I should have asked what I was meant to forgive you for.

*

Our dinner was interrupted by a knock at the door. Uncle appeared as it swung open. A man with a pale white spot on his forehead stood at his shoulder, face meaner than I’d ever seen. I’d always thought of you as a strong man, but your shoulders caved in before Uncle could speak. You offered to speak outside. “Not in front of my daughter.” But they pushed past you, stepping into our shack.

Uncle said you owed him more money, and you needed to pay up. You insisted you’d given him plenty—you knew how much they’d sold those puppies for, what they cost. But Uncle wanted more.

He was a hungry man. We’d seen him push knives through a goat’s throat for dinner. He’d made an entire life of stringing up rooster’s feet with blades. When he asked if you weren’t ashamed of yourself, for falling so low when you had a daughter to take care of, I decided I hated him. I remembered how you taught me to gut a fish before roasting it over a fire. I imagined scooping into Uncle and bleeding him dry.

I waited for Uncle to look my way, his eyes landing on mine as I said, “Get out of our house.”

All went still. You stared at me as if you didn’t recognize me as yours. Finally, Uncle laughed. “Look—even your daughter stay tougher than you!”

Outside the shack, a yowling.

We found the man with the white spot outside, yanking at Ipo’s lead. I screamed, wanting, needing to keep her. I flung myself against his arm and dug my nails into his skin. When he winced in lieu of releasing her, I wailed and cried.

Rough hands fell onto my waist. Uncle pulled me a short distance away. I shrieked as White Spot fought against Ipo, smacking at her to find a tighter grip on the lead. And you—I looked for you. It was only when I spotted you, still and gaping at the scene, that you shouted at them to stop.

“I’ll kill you,” I promised them, ignoring you as you tried to hush me in your arms. “I’ll kill you if you don’t let her go!”

The man laughed. “Eh, how’s this girl?”

I wanted to bury them. I wanted a storm strong enough to blow those awful men away.

White Spot looked over his shoulder as a gust rattled the far-off leaves. In his distracted state, Ipo pulled—desperate, kicking feet. The lead slipped from his hands. She tore away, freed.

“Hey!” Uncle yelled. “Pay attention!”

The wind grew stronger, grit buffeting the soft tops of our feet. Uncle Charlie and White Spot fumbled to follow her, but their movements were clumsy and human against the force of it. Ipo speared across the beach.

You and I watched the chase until all that was left of them was the faint sound of their yells and Ipo’s barks. Eventually, even that was swallowed by the night. “Hurry,” you said, the shack groaning behind us as another gale swept the beach. “Come inside.”

You pulled me to your chest as the door closed. We rocked together, our home shuddering in the squall. Again and again, you murmured into the tangles of my hair, “Oh, Baby Girl. What did you do?”

*

The next morning, the sky was red all over. After Ipo fled, the waves had surged and thrashed all night. You looked out the window and said, “It’s gonna be rough.” You waited for me to respond, but all I could think about was how our leftovers would rot because we had no dogs left to eat them. “You think I should risk it, Baby Girl? Think I can get back before it gets real bad?”

My answer was useless. We both knew you would. You would will all to be as it always was. But I’d waited all night for Ipo to come home. It was too much for me to simply tuck the previous night into the past.

Your hands shook as you prepared to leave. There was regret in the whites of your eyes. That morning, you prayed and let me hear you. You asked for safety. For forgiveness. You asked Ma to grant you a safe journey home.

At the door, you paused and asked, “Do you hate me, Baby Girl?”

I could have lied. I could have told you I didn’t want to be your strong girl, or play pretend. But I was so very tired, Pa. So very young. I didn’t have the words.

“Sometimes,” I said, drawing my knees to my chest. “Sometimes, I do.”

I couldn’t look at you in the long minute after. You didn’t ask me to. “Be safe today,” you said instead, your fingers brushing the tops of my shoulder. “Don’t go outside. And lock the doors.”

*

Do you remember, Pa? There was a time when I was too young to be left. In those days, you’d stay with me to wait out the storm. We built forts together, constructing a shelter within shelter as it poured. I would lie between chairs as you cast our sheets overhead like one of your nets. I liked how they snapped as they caught the air. I liked the vague panic in me as they fell, my world and body disappearing in a plane of white.

After you left, I knew it wouldn’t start raining for a long while. I was angry, but I still loved you so. I kept a tight hold on the winds, staying the burgeoning storm. The sea grew restless in reply, surging toward me as if to blame me for the delay. The water crashed hard against my ankles, folding sand over my feet as it fell back. “Not yet,” I scolded, partly buried. “Just wait.”

I waded across the beach and called for Ipo. I put my entire body into my cry, every ounce of breath. I called until it was emptied of meaning. Eeeeee po, eeeeeee po. More siren than name.

Then, my own name on the wind. A man’s voice, nothing like yours. Uncle Charlie came to me from the border between sand and trees, worried. What was I doing there, he wanted to know. What was I thinking? The weather . . .

Behind him, a man was making a mound of the sand. I knew the shape of it. I recognized the softer, once glossier black that peeked out between the grit. That spot of white bobbed up, down, as he pushed into the earth with cupped hands.

A storm was coming, Uncle reminded me. I shouldn’t be out.

For him or otherwise, there was rage in me. I threw myself at him as the skies were rent by lightning, a branching crack. I became a wild, mourning beast, my teeth finding his arm. He yelled in his shock, tasted like pennies, and so that’s what it’s like, I thought, the taste of a man gone spoiled.

He knocked me back and I fell hard onto the sand, packed tight by the wash of waves. The shock of the impact rang in me, traveling my arm to the cap of my shoulder, where it burst. When the pain dulled and my vision cleared, White Spot was already with us, scowling at me as Uncle examined his wound.

“You killed her,” I accused them, sobbing.

“Baby Girl, listen to me,” Uncle said. “Go home.”

But there was that man, watching me. I hated the twitch in his cheek, the whisper of a chuckle on an exhaled breath. Only a monster could smile as he was in that moment. Only a devil could grin after digging a grave.

The wind’s whistle became a roar. An ancient despair rushed through my veins. My head ached beneath the weight of it, throbbed with the effort to contain it. Nowhere else for it to go, I parted my lips and began to cry.

I hardly heard them beneath my shameful sounds. What I remember: White Spot groaning. Uncle telling him to shut up. Then, a turn in the conversation, a burst of optimism in the other man. Something about you, Pa, and my being yours. He’d seized my arm, yanking me toward him, my shoulder popping as he pulled me to his feet.

Uncle stepped toward him, his scolding lost in a gust. “I’m just gonna show you something,” White Spot said, paying no mind to me as pain, hot and viscous, dripped down my arm.

Light flashed as he dragged me. Thunder, a sound like gnashing teeth, clawed its way through the clouds. “Stop,” I begged, my plea catching in the wild rattling of trees.

He kept on, no matter how I tried to root myself into the sand. Wrestling against him, my toes and soles carved a path across the beach. After a particularly helpless shriek, he hissed at me. “Cry and I’ll give you something to cry about. Cry, then. Cry.”

“Enough!” Uncle snapped. I couldn’t be sure whether he meant White Spot or me.

White Spot answered. “Better we take her.” Better than the dogs. He thought that even you, Pa, would finally do something if it meant getting your daughter back.

But it wasn’t you I thought of then, with fear pumping through my veins. I wanted Aunty Lina, Aunty Carol. I wanted Ipo, wanted Ma. I wanted a knife to press at their throats, or a hanger to whip at their thighs. I wanted, I wanted, so I did what I could with what I had. I looked to the sky at the next roll of thunder and felt potential in it—a storm strong enough to shift the earth.

White Spot stumbled as a hard wind blew. His grip loosened for a moment, only regaining some strength when I pulled. It was enough to hope. The threads wound about my fingers hummed ready. Eager. I took a breath and closed my eyes. Drew the sky closer. Twisted and squeezed. The ocean sighed at my ear. The rain came down in sheets.

White Spot threw an arm up above his brow with a shout. In that moment, I wrenched myself free. I raced away, euphoric for the few moments before the men followed after me, their feet thudding with the chase.

Help, I begged, sending the prayer skyward. Please help.

Like an answer, the gusts kept coming. The air grew thick with mist, sand, debris. Driftwood skittered toward our feet. Leaves whipped past our heads, torn clean from the trees. The men tripped and stumbled, but pressed on.

It was then, with their hands grasping at the ends of my hair, that I heard it—a barking. Growing louder with each frantic step, there was a chorus of barks. Faster, they urged me. Just a bit more.

I surged forward. I lost myself. My racing limbs became one with the gale. My head grew heavy with rain and churning waves. Still, I stirred the storm faster, a dog kicking circles. As the shouts behind me turned to bellows, I felt myself rising, pulling away.

I could see you, Pa. I saw it all. I saw that as angry as they sounded, within Uncle and White Spot’s shouts, there was fear. I heard their heartbeats drowning in the song of the storm. Your boat getting tossed in the waves—you’re just a man. You all are.

The barks grew closer, close enough to draw my eye to the source. Ipo emerged from the mist ahead of me, a blurry streak of black tearing past the shack. Beyond her and above: a woman peered down from the sky. A bosom revealed in a flash of lightning. Eyes, two pinpricks of sun. She beckoned me closer, and I understood that by finding my way into her arms, finally, this wretched knot of my helplessness, your failures would end. And so, I went.

The barking was so loud then, Pa. But would you believe that what I felt was the opposite of fear? Is it possible for men to cherish what lies within reach? In that moment, everything I’d ever wanted for myself was waiting for me at the rocks.

*

There’s a story of a fisherman who had a family: one daughter, five dogs. One day, a storm set upon his island while he was out at sea. He, a skilled sailor, made his way into the eye of it. He and his boat sat within the vortex, waiting out the storm atop choppy waves. It was there that he began to doubt. Had he locked the door? Had he tied up the dogs? When he returned there were no dogs at his doorstep, and no life in his rooms. His daughter was gone.

He searched for her wherever he could. He checked the closets. Ran calling for her all through the town. He went to the home he visited on Friday nights, fearing the worst, only to find the family in similar distress—the man who lived there was missing, too.

The town grew larger and came to know the story of the lonely old fisherman on the black sand beach, searching for something he’d lost. Teenagers came from across the island to surf and to mock him. They jeered at his rav- ings, laughed as he crawled across the shore and put his ear to the ground. He claimed to hear voices in the barking sands. He’d beckon them to join, hoping that someone, anyone, might hear it too: that something beneath.

Do you hear me, Pa? This is my bark, my ten notes of song. Do you know how I love you? How I miss you? Listen for me, and I’ll tell you all you’ve ever wanted to hear.

I’m not gone, I’m sunk. I’m the light when the sand glitters, the shore that finds its way into the crags of your knees. There is no grand lesson here, beyond the ones you gave me. I loved you enough to tell the stories you wanted to hear. I loved you enough to leave.

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Danielle Batalion Ola is a Filipina storyteller, born and raised on the island of Kaua’i. Her work has received the support of Tin House and Kundiman, appearing in Epiphany, The Common, and Carve. When not writing, she refines the stories of others as creative nonfiction editor at No Tokens Journal.