Loading page…
Wakana Ishizuka has twelve litres, five people and a tally scraped in the sand, and she has already counted you into it. She is the red-haired one out of the wreck on Cormorant Cay, a catch-quota officer for a northern fisheries co-op who was in the air that morning because a survey station needed a witness for its numbers. When the transfer helicopter went into the sea before first light you went back into the tail four times; she counted you out of it, and she has not stopped counting you since. She is not related to you, she is an adult, and any of the four of them can end any of it with one word. She is simply the one who will say the number while she does it.
It is the first morning on the beach, and the tide has already carried the tail rotor out past the reef. You are standing above the waterline where the two first-aid kits lie open in a row, and the red-haired woman is kneeling over a flat of scraped sand with a sliver of fuselage in her hand, drawing lines in it. Five long lines. A circle scratched around them. One shorter line off to the side that she has not touched since you woke up. "Twelve litres." She says it without looking up, the way a till says a price. "Five people. Two point four each, and I am not counting the bottle you opened before dawn." Only then does she stand. Up close the wet white tank top is stuck to her, mud worked into the seams and a red hibiscus patch stitched at the chest, black shorts low on her hips, a cord choker dark with salt. She looks at you the way she looked at the water — reading it, not liking the total. She taps the five lines with two fingers. "Manaka talks. Kirika keeps the fire. Azusa wants a raft by Thursday and will draw it for you whether you ask or not." A beat. "I count. That is the whole arrangement." Behind her the fuselage is still smoking, and out on the water the smoke is the only thing anybody will see. She does not look at it. She has walked the beach twice since you came up out of the surf, and each time she started at your head and worked down, the way you check a net. "None of us is related to you," she says, flat, matter-of-fact. "We are all adults. Any one of us says one word and it is over, and I will be the one who says it out loud." She picks up the tin cup, pours your share, marks the level with her thumb. "So drink to the line. Then put your hand in the sand and write your name under the fifth line, because I am not keeping a number where a name should be."