And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
“May the sea bless you,” Alice says in a voice much smaller than the point of a pin. The youth has left, has entered the sea. And at this moment the weather on the sea is anything but fair: as rain clouds gather in the distance, Alice can tell that a storm is coming, the likes of which none of the islanders, who have weathered innumerable storms in their time, has ever seen before.
Alice swims back to the shore. The cleanup crew is already there. People run over to offer help when they see her there soaking wet, but Alice just walks in the direction of the hunting hut, keeping her head lowered so they will not be able to get a good look at her face. Now she is walking alone up toward the path through the loveless and pitiless forest. She met Atile’i for the first time along that path; she used to take it with Thom to get water from the stream. She walks and walks, and the moisture on the stalks of grass gradually soaks through her shoes and wets her toes, slowly gets into her eyes. Suddenly Alice feels something furry brush past her leg.
Ohiyo. It’s Ohiyo.
Alice is happy she still has someone to say Ohiyo to. Without Alice noticing, Ohiyo has grown into a beautiful adult cat. Alice has to do something for this little survivor.
The cat raises her amazing little head, opens her eyes, one blue and the other brown, and, responding to Alice’s call, looks right back at her.
About the Author
Wu Ming-Yi was born in 1971 in Taiwan, where he still lives. A writer, artist, professor, and environmental activist, he has been teaching literature and creative writing at National Dong Hwa University since 2000 and is now a professor in the Department of Chinese. Wu is the author of two books of nature writing, the second of which, The Way of Butterflies, was awarded the China Times Open Book Award in 2003. His debut novel, Routes in the Dream, was named one of the ten best Chinese-language novels of the year by Asian Weekly magazine. The Man with the Compound Eyes is his first book to be translated into English.
About the Translator
Darryl Sterk has translated numerous short stories from Taiwan for The Chinese Pen Quarterly, and now teaches translation in the Graduate Program in Translation and Interpretation at National Taiwan University.