PoraBora

Chapter Two

Pe yawned.

She had both eyes tucked shut, one hand holding a copper cup of cool water while the other relaxed against the koa wood. One leg had the tiller. The other stretched across the deck. And to top it all off, the sun washed her face.

She was, in a word, content.

It didn't come easily for her. Fourteen, dead parents, one leg replaced by cocowood, her storage empty of fish—the moments were rare.

But a beautiful day, surrounded by turquoise seas, a morning aside dolphins, and the spotting of a gull that meant she was near land left nothing to be desired.

Pe brushed a curling lock of dark hair to join the rest, and then let the arm drop back to the gunnel. It wasn't much to count, fourteen. She took pride in it. What other fourteen-year-old had their own boat? Lived their own life on the sea? Had their own home?

Small comfort, inheritance.

She peeked an eye open, to make sure the horizon was as she'd pictured it last. She didn't need to make sure she was going the right way. She knew she was. She had her foot on the tiller, holding it steady, and she could feel the rocking of the boat and where the sun was on her face. Nothing to suggest she was off course. She'd have whistled if she could make a sound more melodious than a gasping fish.

She couldn't have everything.

The horizon was indeed where she'd left it, so she let herself close her eye again.

But with that moment of sight came a reminder she had hoped to avoid for another few hours. She would have to eat. Which meant she would have to catch something. Which meant she would have to drop a line into the ocean and, worst of all, pay attention.

Pe sighed. She opened both eyes.

Her father had used to be the one to hold the line. He'd always put it in his mouth, where he said he could feel the faintest tug on his lips. Her mother would have been at the tiller, and Pe would have lounged at the bow, where she might have been draped, hands splashing in the water.

Pe didn't put it in her mouth. She needed that for thinking about food, to lick her lips in anticipation. It didn't make the waiting easier, but it reminded her why she had to put up with it.

The blue sky wasn't conducive to a rush, but when Pe did something, she was hard-pressed to do it slowly. She rose to her peg leg and flipped a ring from below the knee to hold her cup. She balanced herself on the point of the wood, leaving the other leg on the tiller as she dragged her line—made of olona fiber—from where it was coiled beside the motor well. She found the end where she'd tied a loop and hooked it around a brass cleat on the underside of her peg leg. She tied a foot more around the whole thing and hooked it again. Another knot and she felt pretty good about it. Even pulling it with a fierce tug left it secure, so she guided the line up the rest of her leg, leaning her chin to the cup, thinking she could do it without spilling, and, failing that, spilling everything before she managed to set the line in a groove at the toe of her leg. She fastened a metal clip there and then grabbed her cup from where it'd rolled into the hull.

Then she decided she still needed both hands to set the bait and lure and dropped it back. It was empty now, anyway. She pulled through the coil until she had the fishbone hook, pale off-white in her hand. Her other hand was on the tiller, until she realized she would have to let go to reach the bait box.

She did, successfully keeping herself from getting tangled in her chasing line, grabbed the bait box (heavy steel with a fishbone hook of its own to fasten it shut), and opened it.