A Not-So-Deserted Island

     The thunder and lightning subside, and the rain slows down to light drips.  The boat still rocks, but not as tenaciously as it did last night.

     I wake up around eight o`clock and sit up.  I stretch my sore body and limber up.  The first thing that I notice is that someone pulled my boat ashore.  It couldn`t have docked on its own, because I would have felt the impact, but…who did it?  I thought this place was uninhabited.

This island is just like the one in my dream.  A forest stretches for half a mile, and mountains stand like sentinels in the distance.  One mountain is taller and closer than the rest.  Is that mountain Gang Pen?

     “Oh I get it, I must be dreaming again,” I convince myself. This dream is much more real than the last.  In my last dream, I didn`t hear the waves crashing on the beach.

     I walk over to the door and turn the doorknob.  To my surprise, it feels like cool brass.  I open the door, letting the island`s spirit sweep over me.  It calls me to its untainted beach.  When my foot sinks into the scorching sand, I am fully convinced that this is the real deal. 

     The place seems to be dead.  There is no breeze rustling the leaves, and no birds hop from tree to tree.  I look up and down the beach, searching for some form of life.  As I turn my head to the right again, I catch a glimpse of a small person running away from my boat, and jumping into the bushes.

     “Who`s there?”  I call out, running in that direction.  I open the canopy of leaves and stare down into a little girl`s deep blue eyes.  The poor girl is so skinny that she could weigh no more than fifty pounds when she is sopping wet.  Her whole body shakes in fear of me.  She turns to run, but stops when I start talking to her in the calmest, sweetest voice that I own.  “I`m not going to hurt you, please stay.”

     “You aren`t bad, you`re just like me?”  She answers after a moment of silence.

     “Yes, I`m like you.  I came here to climb up the Gang Pen Mountain.”  I tell her.  I hold out my hand to her, and she warily takes it.  I help her out of the bushes and onto the beach.  When I look at her, I see Tieson.  She is around three and a half feet tall, which is Tie`s height; and they are probably the same age.  When I look at her muddy, knotted hair, I think of how Tieson loves playing in the mud.  The sun reveals some blonde streaks that have not been caked with mud entirely.

     When we get closer to the boat, the little girl freezes.  I think she`s afraid that I will pull her away from her island, so I tell her, “I`m just going on board to get my backpack.  You can stay here, and I`ll be right out.”

  I hurry on board, grab the backpack, and run back to the little girl.  I take a coconut out of my backpack, and hand it to her.  She just stares at it, and looks back at me as if to say, “Congratulations!  You carry round objects in your backpack.”

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     “It`s a coconut.” I explain, “You eat it.”                                         

     “Food?”  she asks me, still a little confused.

     “Yes, it`s food,” I say, smiling.

     She then grabs the fruit, and is about to shatter her teeth on the shell.

     “No, no, no.  You don`t eat the shell,” I say with a tint of laughter in my voice.  “You crack the shell, and eat the insides.”

     She stares at it with her head cocked slightly to the left side, and then hands it to me.  She waits patiently as I take out my knife and bring it down squarely upon my victim.  I hand her one part, and keep the other for her.  She first sits down and pinches off a tiny bit of the white strand.  She tastes it, shrugs her shoulders, and buries her face in the fruit.

     I just sit there watching her.  The poor girl must have been starving.  Doesn`t her mother feed her?  The only time that her face emerges from the fruit is when there is not a trace of it left.

     “Would you like the other half?”  I ask, preparing to be pounced upon.

     “You have more!”  she asks surprised.

     “There`s another half to the coconut,” I explain.

     “But if I eat it, then you won`t have anything for later.”

     “I have plenty, trust me.”  I hand her the coconut, and this time she eats it slower, and more human like, using her hands instead of her face.

     “My name is Blade.”

     “Catara,” she says as she shoves a fist full of coconut into her mouth, and then she adds, still chewing her food, “Swift.”

     “Catara, what a pretty name,” I say smiling.  “It reminds me of a cat.  Say, do you mind if I call you Cat, or would you prefer Catara?”

     “Cat!” she answers immediately.

     “Cat, do you know which mountain is Gang Pen?”

     “Yeah, it`s that one,” she points to the mountain that is casting it`s shadow over us.  “You landed on the right side of the island.  If that storm hadn`t pushed you past the other shore line, you would have had to travel for three days, just to go through the mountain pass, and it would have taken you even longer to walk across the forest.”

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     “Then I thank the Lord for the storm.”

     The hours pass quickly, as I find out more about who this girl is.  “It`s getting dark.” I say at last, “Won`t your mom and dad be looking for you?”

     “I don`t got a Mom or Dad,” is her only reply.  Before I can ask what happened, she continues, “You need a place to sleep tonight.  Come home with me.  I won`t mind not sleeping alone tonight.”

     “Okay, thanks.”

     As we are walking through the bushes to her house, I am trying to think of a way to ask her what happened to her parents.  Not that it`s any of my business, I`m just curious.  I can`t just come out and say, “Hey, Cat, dig into your painful past and tell me what happened to your parents.”  Now that`s just plain rude!        

     Catara pulls some vines away, and asks, “Do you like it?”  She stands there in pride, me in horror.  No one should ever have to live in something like that, especially not a little girl!   

     It`s nothing like I had expected.  For one thing, it`s made of straw.  Blankets lay on the grass, so that there is some place to sleep.  Pots and pans aren`t in a drawer or hanging on the wall, because she doesn`t own any walls.  The only thing that I could even compare with a wall is the tall grass, and I`m sure it does an awful job at blocking out the rain and wind.  Since there is no other place to keep the pots and pans, they are in a small pile in the far right hand corner, right next to a pile of clothes for a man and woman.

     “It`s very…” I fish for something positive to say about it, “nice.”

      We walk on a small pathway that clothes are laying on, to kill the grass.  Then Cat sits down next to the pans, and starts digging in the dirt.

     “What are you doing?”  I ask, confused.   

      She doesn`t answer me, but digs a little deeper, until she pulls out a small bundle.  She opens it to reveal a few handfuls of nuts.

     “You keep your food in an old dress?”  I ask bewildered.  So not sanitary!

     “Oh, I don`t do that to all of my food; only the food that I keep for special occasions.”

     “Nuts!  Plain old nuts are special!”

     “Oh yes, they`re rare here.”

She picks up her frying pan, and grabs two pieces of flint rocks that are in the other pan.  She walks out of her back entrance, to a homemade fire pit that is currently in shambles.  I follow her, and watch        

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as she starts the fire with ease.  In just a few minutes, no more than five, this little girl is roasting the nuts! I thought that this North Carolinian could take care of herself!  I`ll never know what it`s like to live completely alone, depending fully on myself to live!   

     “How old are you?”

     “Who knows?  I think I might be six, though.”

     “That`s what I was guessing.”

     “Really, why`s that?”  she asks me, turning her head to look at me.  As she turns her head, her arm brushes against the metal handle, and she whips her arm away, seething in pain.  I rush towards her, and hold her arm in my hand.  She winces in pain.  Then I take some green grass, and press it to her skin.

     “Hold this right here, and don`t move it,” I instruct.  Then I race back to my backpack, grab it, and run back to Cat to treat her burn.

     “It`s okay, I`ve gotten burned thousands of times,” she says using the grass to hide the burn.

     “Cat, come on, I need to see it.”

     “No,” she says firmly.

     I feel like yelling What are you hiding?  I grab her arm, and unwind the grass.  Oh, how I hate burns!  This one especially!  How could she hide this from me?  This has got to be killing her!  

     I take one in many deep breaths, and try to concentrate on past first aid techniques concerning third degree burns.  It is a matter of life and death, health or infection!  I say a quick prayer, and then apply the only thing possible: water. 

     “It`s okay, really!” she growls between her teeth.

     “One thing you`re going to learn about me, is that I am as stubborn as an ox.”  I laugh trying to lighten the mood.

     When the water runs out, I am forced to stop giving treatment, but I do insist on taking over the cooking.  In half an hour, I carry the pan back to the hut.

     “When you cook, cover your arms with the green grass to protect you from burning.”  I tell her sympathetically.  I kick a large pot, turning it upside down on the ground, and use it as a table onto which I set the pan. 

     Cat unearths some plates, “I only use these for special occasions too.  My dad made these out of a coffin for my mom.”

     “You mean like what dead people are put in?”

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     “Yeah, apparently some pirate looking guy was buried here, and Dad used that.

     “And it never bothered you?”  Eating off a coffin?  That a pirate was buried in?  NO WAY!!!

     “Let`s eat.”  Cat sits down, and we both eat in peace for a few minutes.

     I figure If Cat is willing to share with me that she eats off a coffin, I thing I can ask about her dear parents.  “So…uh…what happened to your parents?”

    “My mom died of a fever when I was three, and my father followed her a few days later,” she relates to me, without hesitation, as she looks off into the distance.

     “Didn`t you get sick too?”  I ask.

     “Oh yes,” she answers looking back at me. “I had lived here all my life, though, so I guess I was immune to the disease.”

     “How do you get food?”

     Cat shrugs at this.  “I would gather food from trees and the earth.  I had watched my mom cook when she was alive, so I try to copy what she did.  I haven`t had a properly cooked meal since I was three.”

     “Really?”  I ask, utterly surprised.

     “Yeah, I eat roasted nuts and cooked berries, but usually I either burn them or undercook them.  My only relief is when I would eat fruit, but I can only get it in the spring and early summer.”

     “Fruit only grows here until the beginning of summer?”  I ask, perplexed.    

       “There aren`t many fruit trees, and I can get really hungry in the heat,” she says.  We sit in silence.  I wonder what hardships Cat has already faced.  She probably has faced more than I ever will in my entire life! 

     “Well, thank you for making supper.”  Cat gets up and starts making two beds out of the clothes.  I just sit there lost in my thoughts.

     “Cat,” I say, making sure I have her attention before I continue, “would you like to come with me on my adventure?  You could identify the poisonous berries, and I could cook for you.”

     “Food…not burnt or under cooked.”

     “Well, I`ll try not to burn it,” I reply.

     “Real food,” she says, obviously lost in thought.

     “So is that a ‘yes’?”  I ask.

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    She nods her head and turns her attention back to me. “Yes, yes, I`d love to.”

     “Good,” I nod my head in approval.  Then we both lay down on the clothing beds.  Surprisingly it is comfortable.  It`s not like my soft mattress at home, but it is much better than the ship`s wooden floor.  At least the skirts and shirts pad the hard ground. 

I drift off to sleep.  The warm air covers me like a blanket, keeping me from getting cold, but it isn`t so hot that I am uncomfortable.  As soon as I lay down, my heavy eyelids begin to shut tightly.