“It is so elusive that it can only be found in Lapaha, a particular, forbidden part of the island. I had gotten into trouble for venturing that far. After catching me there, my grandmother had dragged me by the ear back home with a stern warning to respect this sacred ground. My ears have never evened out since.” // HEADER PHOTO: 白发魔女传 © Mandarin Film, 1993

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fiction, nov 24

He is late.

I do not actually care that he’s late, but I do care about the risk that it creates for me. Any time the boy is late with his delivery, the botanist strides across his estate to the greenhouse to fume and pace, and this makes it that much easier for the botanist to catch me making fresh poultice from the plant clippings for the boy’s sister. If the botanist ever catches me, he will surely dock my pay and we’ll never get our new home rebuilt.

It does feel better to hum a tune while I pound away with my grandmother’s mortar and pestle, looking out on the serene bay below from within the greenhouse. It has always been a mystery to us, as to how the sea could be so mirror-flat around our tiny island. This placidity is a blessing to our fisherman but I confess, it has also been an annoyance to me. Perhaps if our shores had been the even slightest bit surly, they might have never let the foreign botanist and his ilk approach our shores. But what can I do? I am neither the sea nor am I the wind. I am just Kit.

In the greenhouse glass, I can see the reflection of wooden crates behind me, my work station covered in stacks of thick cards, adhesive and pins, all neatly arranged. My cot peeks out from behind the ferns. I prefer to forget that the greenhouse has become my home since the fire, so I refocus on the sea and soar into a full-throated song. The glass fogs up immediately, and I see nothing, neither inside nor outside. I can accept this trade-off for now.

The sound of crunching gravel alerts me that the boy is finally here, but this also means that the botanist will be coming out from his manor shortly. I quickly bundle the poultice into a twist of muslin cloth and rush to my work table, resuming my weekly, daily, hourly task of pinning and taping leaves, other flora, and sometimes even butterflies onto the thick card or glass plates. The botanist says it is for his herbarium in London, whatever that is. It is easy and mundane work, yet I wind up with an aching body every night. I try to not say anything as admitting to weakness seems like another way that I might get my pay docked. Moreover, the botanist is impervious to feeling, let alone compassion, which seems instrumental to his accrual of vast wealth.

Although I pretend to focus on my work, I sneak a quick glance up. The botanist is scanning over the collected flora in the boy’s wheelbarrow and now satisfied, hands over a thick wad of paper money before waving him over to the greenhouse. The botanist turns on his heel and stalks back to his stone manor, a building that is so wildly out of place on our island, as is this greenhouse.

The boy trundlers over and swings the doors open, letting in the salty ocean air. Ever the insolent charmer, he flips through his stack of money right in my face. I cannot be bothered to entertain his behavior, so I simply hand over the poultice and hold out my hand. He peels off some money and motions as though he’s going to place it in my hand. I know better, that he will yank it back if I try to close my fist around the notes, so I stare him down with my palm open. He huffs before tossing my fee on the table. I snatch it up and stuff it in my pocket. I wish he would just leave, but he doesn’t.

“How much more do you need to save, Kit? Guitars don’t come cheap,” he says. As if I didn’t already know. The Ikaika family and our guitars were inseparable until the fire took them, and everything else, away. We know they are worth more than their price tag, they were our joyful subsistence and identity.

“What’s it to you?”

We may have grown up in the same village, on an island where everybody knows everybody and their business, but I have never taken a shine to him. He has always been out for number one, jumping onto any hustle he could find, including this. It takes him far too long to realize that he will never find a sparring partner in me. I am relieved when he finally rolls his eyes and leaves.

Buoyed by this extra money, I get a burst of energy to curate more herbarium specimens, but this rush only lasts seconds. My arms start to feel heavier and heavier, each time I tape a cutting onto a card.  Glancing down at the pinned-down butterflies completed earlier in the day, gastric pains flare up and I rub my stomach. I see the keloids on my arm and my mind’s eye sees my father on his knees as our family home burns to the ground.

Since I cannot afford the botanist’s doctor and since my grandmother taught me faito’o fakatonga, I pluck four leaves from a manonu sapling, grind them into a paste and turn it into a broth with a swish of hot water from my kettle. My stomach eases as I sip this, wisps rising from the surface just as the mist rises within the greenhouse. I never understand why this mist materializes only on the inside and never on the grounds outside, yet it has happened like clockwork every night since I prepared my first herbarium sample.

Not understanding why something happens does not necessarily mean I am too helpless to do something about it.

I potter around placing burlap sacks on the ground, given to me by the botanist’s kitchen staff. They took pity on me when they discovered I work and sleep and live in the greenhouse. The sacks help stifle the mist. Then, I head over to my cot surrounded by its horseshoe of ferns, allowing me privacy from any peering eyes outside, and double-check its distance from the door. Ever since the fire, I must have no more than three paces to an escape.

Settling on the cot causes the far end to lift up as my weight goes down in the middle. I set my empty cup down on the floor, beside an old photo of my family. There is my father in the middle, holding his guitar. I can practically hear him singing. My sister and I are next to him, sharing an ear of corn as a microphone. Two weeks after this was taken, she began to learn the guitar and quickly outstripped me in natural ability. Three months after that, lightning struck and soon after, the botanist found me begging. I peek under my cot to check on something special, a shiny new guitar with a ribbon bow. Maybe with a few more poultice sales, I can splurge on a fancy strap.

I go to sleep smiling, confident that this will be my last week working for the botanist. The plan is to deliver the guitar to my father tomorrow, give my notice to the botanist, and go back to performing with my father and sister at the tavern. I fall asleep humming. For the first time in ages, I do not dread the morning.

There is a crunching sound again. Is the boy back? Is it a fire? I bolt upright, looking for flames but only seeing… the plants. Vines, writhing towards me. This could be a typical waking dream for anyone raised beside a jungle, but then I hear a snap and a twang. No!

Checking beneath the cot, I see my father’s new guitar reduced to nothing more than a pile of splintered wood and curled broken strings. The very real vines slither away and my swats are futile.

Once again, I’m left without means and without a choice. When the boy brings his next collection to the greenhouse, I pull him to a corner and ask to be let in on the deal. He does not agree, of course he wouldn’t. I am not sure that I would either, if I had the market cornered as he does.

When he leaves, I hum to ease my frustration but it does not work. I first press, then butt my head against the greenhouse glass like a hopeless jumping shore beetle I had once trapped under a jar. It is so elusive that it can only be found in Lapaha, a particular, forbidden part of the island. I had gotten into trouble for venturing that far. After catching me there, my grandmother had dragged me by the ear back home with a stern warning to respect this sacred ground. My ears have never evened out since.

I lift my head off the  glass.

That’s it. The beetle. The boy would not know where to find them himself, as his family and many others on the island would rely on my grandmother for their medicines. I know places he does not, so this is my opening. I bypass the boy and expand the market with my own samples, selling directly to the botanist.

I set out that very night, getting cuts and scrapes along the way but relying on my innate sense of direction and creatures to avoid. I find the hallowed part of the island, collect my samples, and present them to the botanist. He is impressed, shockingly and thankfully, and I am paid quite handsomely on top of my regular salary.

I carry on this way for a month, with my fortunes growing faster than ever before though admittedly, I am more tired than I have ever been. How is it that my muscles atrophy despite the increased physical labor? I notice a few white hairs that I attribute to stress, stark against my black curls. Each time I return from the jungle, I am almost about to faint.

I notice my gums bleeding more often too, but I do not want to waste even a cent of my earnings on more fruits, so I get used to the taste of metal in my mouth. Still, I push through and before I know it, I save enough to buy guitars for not only my father, but for my sister too.

While leaving the store with my two guitars—each with irresistibly fancy embroidered straps—I run into the boy at the sugarcane juice stand. He has had to take a second job as a result of the competition I bring. He shoots me a bitter look, his gaze blazing over the guitars. His eyes move up to my face, to my hairline, and they widen.

“Now I know how you do it. Taula tevolo fefine! You are a witch, aren’t you?”

My jaw drops. “What are you talking about?”

“Only a witch would dare ignore the curse and steal from Lapaha. Look what has become of you. There is always a price to pay.” The boy merely smirks at my forehead before returning to grinding the canes. His back to me, I am effectively dismissed.

I chalk this bizarre interaction down to jealousy, but when I set the guitars down on my cot in the greenhouse, I see my reflection in a small mirror. Meinga meinga, oh no, how did I not notice its severity before? I loosen the ribbon from my hair and shake it out. Large sections of my hair have turned white and the rest of my head has bald patches. I run my hands through my curls and find clumps in my palm. When I throw the clumps to the ground in shock, nothing lands. In fact, the hair just disappears from sight.

I drop to my knees and inspect the floor. Normally, I would find heaps of long black strands from my vigorous hair-brushing, but now, nothing. Neither black nor white hair anywhere. I search the mirror again and witness my eyebrows fading to white.

I stagger over to my desk and shove the samples, as though that will bring up an answer. As soon as I touch the rare beetles and plant clippings, it is as though a scorching spit rod skewers my skull and the boy’s words ring in my ears.

He cannot be right. But I know he is.

The sun is already setting over the horizon, but I force myself back to the jungle, to the sacred ground where I have been collecting all the rare specimens for the botanist. By the time I get there, the moon is high and its beams make the moss-covered ground look like the bottom of the ocean. I see it almost immediately. Mounds of my hair—white hair—lie matted where I had unearthed the beetles and stripped the plants of their leaves, or so brutishly ripped them from the ground whole. There are even slick, sinewy cords coiled around the branches, and I realize it is all the muscle mass I have lost.

There is always a price to pay, and I have been paying with my life.

It takes me a few minutes to gather my strength and hoist myself up from the ground, but I do and I know what I must do. I head back to the greenhouse, fill a satchel with as many live samples as possible and head back to the place where elements of my very being lie. This time around, my exhaustion is immense. There is a blinding pain behind my eyes and bile continually surges into my mouth, to the point that it overflows down my chin. My lungs squeeze and burn, as though I have dived leagues below the ocean’s surface. I trip and struggle to get up. I trip again, and instead try to crawl. Spots fill my vision and I do not even realize when I have fallen unconscious.

︎

When I wake up, I am back in the greenhouse. I flutter my eyes open at the sound of muted, concerned voices and see my father in a hazy light, and he gasps.

“She’s awake! Sir, she’s awake!”

The botanist comes into view. He barely gives me a look before he reaches toward an amber-colored medicine bottle beside me and waves it at my father.

“This saved her life. You made a good decision to purchase it.” He walks off almost immediately, and I hear the greenhouse door shut.

I force myself to sit up and the cot jiggles. My father sits on the far end to keep it down, and he holds my hand. I strain to read the label on the bottle, with an incomprehensible scientific name written above and “Hunter House” written below in fancy calligraphy. I have a bad feeling. My father sees where my eyes land.

“The boy found you and brought you back here, then came to find me. Your botanist waited to ask if I would agree to pay for the treatment, the only thing that would save your life. He is very smart, ‘ofeina. He said he developed the cure himself.”

My mouth is so dry that I can only croak. My father hands me some water.

“Try not to speak. I know, you are worried about the money. I will find a way to pay him back, don’t worry. It will simply take time. Here. It should be time for another dose.”

It is like all the trees of Lapaha have fallen on my chest. Knowing the botanist, the price is surely exorbitant and would take at least three years of my entire family’s earnings to pay off this debt. Yet again, I am trapped. We will always be trapped for as long as the botanist feels that he may fashion a shackle. Despite all this, my next thought is that of relief at having already purchased the guitars.

My father pours out the medicine into a spoon, it oozes like the molten lava that formed our island centuries ago. I taste the medicine and swirl it around in my mouth, in between my teeth. I pick up specific hints of nonu and laukaupo’uli for fever and wounds. A sniff tells me that there was an extract of kihikihi, given my inflamed gums. It reminds me of the traditional medicine my grandmother would give me, when I needed to regain my strength after a bout of pneumonia. This is fast-acting, powerful, and of my people.

I could have made this myself. I am horrified and incensed, but remain silent to not distress my father. I feign needing to rest so he will return home sooner. He promises to be back the next evening.

The botanist, he is no different from a thief entering my home and presenting me with an invoice for all he has stolen. His herbaria enterprise finally makes sense to me. This has nothing to do with scientific pursuits, at least not as the ultimate objective. No, this is a means to a very lucrative end. I feel so naive. Seeing my pitiful reflection in the greenhouse glass, I see what the botanist sees. Not a young woman trying to build a life for herself and restore her family’s security, but a little fool. An uneducated, unworthy, unaware little fool whose only value is in sparing him from the tedium of labor and effort prior to profiteering.

But now that I know the game, I know exactly what to say when I go see the botanist the next morning.

“In my brown hands, the plant is worth a pittance. In yours, millions. Yet you need my hands to get them into yours and our knowledge to reveal its secrets.”

The meeting lasts fifteen minutes and ends with a terse nod and a sheaf of signed papers. I have promised to concoct an even bigger range of medicine for the botanist, thanks to my grandmother’s faito’o fakatonga, and in return, he will cancel my debt and give me a sizeable advance to set up a laboratory at Hunter House where I will work surrounded by the most advanced equipment that the botanist could never bring to the island.

Delivering the advance money and guitars to my family at their shack is more delightful than I could have imagined. My father loves the one I selected for him, as does my sister for hers, and soon everyone is debating as to whether they should rebuild our home or find a brand new one. In a different area. Maybe closer to the beach! No, higher on the mountain with the waterfalls and parakeets! We decide to vote and the family gives me two votes, since I have secured the money. My young cousin proposes that we should live on the lake with inter-connected canoes for rooms and giant lily pads as pathways. I use my second vote for her brilliant idea as the tie-breaker.

I do not have the heart to tell my family the deal I have made with the botanist, but my father reads my face. He pulls me aside to ask, and I tell him everything. I will be on a ship to London first thing in the morning, but he should not cry. As soon as I have made enough money, as soon as I have created a few remedies and elixirs to build the botanist’s wealth, I will purchase my passage back home.

“Unless the family wants to come to London?”

“But no, Kit ʻofeina, our home is here. Everything is here.”

“Alright, then I will return. I will be here.”

It is settled. My father and I return to the family who have begun setting off fireworks. They explode in the night sky, forming the largest dandelions of fire I have ever seen. I keep three such crackers in my bag, sleep snuggled with my siblings, and slip out to the docks before the sunrise.

The ship is quite grand from a distance, but up close, it seems like a sorry place to call home for the next few weeks. As I am escorted to my room aboard the ship, I spot where the plant samples are securely stored, worth their weight in gold a million times over. The purser keeps dragging me lower and lower into the bowels of the ship, until we reach a windowless compartment. He leaves me here without a word. If I had known I was not going to watch my island home shrink over the horizon, I would have stood longer on the gangway. It is too late for that now.

So, I start singing. Songs that our elders sing for us children, as lullabies. Instead of unpacking my bag, I take it with me as I follow my nose to the galley. I feel the ship lurch, signaling the journey had begun. The sounds of the dock fade and within a few minutes, I know we are safely beyond the radius of the local fishermen on their boats, well out of harm’s way. A chill comes over me, and I study the fire in the galley, half expecting my grandmother’s face to appear. The fire is small, given the sailors have already eaten on land and the weather is balmy. Still, it is big enough for me. I toss in my firecrackers.

︎

The fishermen out on the sea that morning, all unharmed, said that the largest remaining piece of the ship was no bigger than a child’s cot. Still, the tragedy had been enough to cause the botanist and his ilk to return home, for the time being at least. The islanders dreaded what their return might be like, but now was not the time to think about that. Instead, everyone thought about how the surrounding sea was no longer as still as it had been during the days of Kit Ikaika. From that day forward, waves were tipped with white foam, trailing like hair after touching the shore. And there was talk among the islanders and sailors alike, of a guardian siren whose song caused ships to run aground, but only ever the foreign ones.

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