The bone comb scraped against Kina’s scalp with a satisfying, rhythmic rasp. She drew it from crown to shoulder, working a knot near the nape of her neck with the grim patience of someone who had learned long ago that fighting only made tangles tighter.

  She didn’t rush. Rushing was for the young — for people who still believed speed could outrun consequences.

  As she worked, she hummed a low, looping melody. It was a song her mother had taught her before the woman’s mind had cracked and spilled itself into the dark places between the trees. It wasn’t a song for waking. It was a song for keeping things down.

  Stay where you are. Stay quiet. Stay buried.

  Kina didn’t truly believe the song could hold anything with teeth or hunger, but she believed in the walls habits built. Small walls. Quiet ones. The kind you didn’t notice until something tried to climb them.

  When she tied her hair back, she sat for a moment in the dimness, listening to the village stretch awake like an old man with bad joints.

  The cooking fires came first — uneven crackles, stubborn sparks. Then the smell followed: coconut husks burning sharp and bitter, tangling with salt-heavy mist. Through the slats of her hut, she saw women cutting yams and splitting yesterday’s fish, their voices low as they nudged children who dragged their feet like the world would wait.

  It wouldn’t.

  Kina stepped into the light and felt the mask settle into place.

  Soft shoulders. Gentle spine. A face that invited conversation while promising absolutely nothing.

  The Village Princess, assembled and open for business.

  No refunds.

  She moved through the clearing without hurry. To the neighbors, she was just Kina — helpful, serene, dependable. They didn’t see the way her eyes snagged on everything that was coming apart.

  A gutting knife abandoned in the dirt went back to its owner’s porch. A sagging coil of rope was nudged aside before someone could trip and complain loudly about fate.

  “Morning, Kina,” Tane called, wrestling a basket of tubers that looked determined to spill across the sand.

  “Morning, Tane,” she said sweetly. “The latch is loose on that side.”

  Fix your own damn basket, she thought, smiling.

  You’re forty years old and tying knots like a toddler.

  She walked on.

  I’ll fix it later, she added, annoyed. I always do.

  Her gaze flicked to the grain bins — thatch thinning faster than anyone admitted. Salt gnawing at the pier’s base. A hairline crack in one of the canoe racks.

  The village was rotting in slow motion.

  Today, the air felt thin. Like cloth pulled too tight.

  Kina didn’t like thin things. Thin things tore.

  She tore.

  The change hit her as laughter — light, careless, wrong. Morning work was usually grim endurance, shoulders set, mouths tight. Today the younger men moved with strange buoyancy. Arguments that should have ended in clenched silence dissolved into grins and shoves.

  Something had shifted.

  The source was impossible to miss.

  Saron stood near the storehouse, tall and broad-shouldered, skin the color of river mud. His hair hung loose and unbound, catching the light in a way that felt like a personal insult to the village’s sense of order. He laughed with his whole body, hands moving as he spoke, posture dangerously open.

  Behind him, the younger men mirrored him like shadows. Weight shifted. Voices softened. His jokes reshaped themselves as they were passed along, losing their sharp edges.

  Saron stood there grinning, loose and friendly, like a man who hadn’t learned what a village did to people who assumed the ground was solid.

  People like him never notice when the earth starts moving, Kina thought.

  Which was unfair. He hadn’t moved it.

  Probably.

  A few paces away, Anaru watched.

  Close enough to hear. Far enough to stay uninvited.

  He was looser than she remembered. Not careless — Anaru was never careless — but the tight coil in his shoulders had eased.

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  That unsettled her more than it should have.

  It was the hope in his expression that turned her stomach.

  Hope made people stupid.

  And she hated that she missed it.

  She remembered Anaru as a boy — loud, red-faced, forever chasing her oldest brother. Back then, the village had space for leaking hearts.

  Then the war came and took the space with it.

  Anaru had cried once after the news reached them. Quietly. Behind the smokehouse.

  Then he stopped.

  Now his hair was tied in the same tight knot her brother used to wear. Even his posture felt borrowed.

  He was wearing a dead man’s shape like armor, believing responsibility might stay if he held himself just right.

  Kina turned away before the thought could settle its weight.

  The old warehouse crouched at the jungle’s edge, patient as rot. Once it rang with hammers and argument. Now it waited.

  Beyond it, the longhouse sat hollowed out — beams holding, space scraped clean. It used to be full of voices and bodies waiting out storms together.

  Now it only filled when there was no other choice.

  Heat flared in Kina’s chest.

  Not sadness. Sadness took too long.

  “May Rokon choke on every name he stole from this place,” she muttered, spitting into the sand.

  There. Better.

  Her thoughts brushed her mother — living apart now, speaking to corners because the light had grown too heavy. Her father had forbidden Kina from visiting.

  Kina went anyway.

  Her father preferred a quiet house to a hard truth. Cowardice wore many masks. His was called protection.

  A surge of voices drew her back toward the central path.

  The wheelbarrow sat there, wood and iron dressed up like a miracle. People took turns pushing it, marveling as heavy loads glided over packed earth. Saron’s name passed from mouth to mouth like a charm.

  Kina placed a hand on the handle.

  The wood was already smooth — not from years of labor, but from too many hands wanting to touch something new.

  She pushed.

  On hard ground, it rolled beautifully.

  She veered toward softer silt.

  The wheel groaned. Sank. Dragged. She leaned her weight into it to keep it upright.

  Useful, she admitted.

  Until the ground stops agreeing with you. Until it rains.

  Until something breaks and everyone waits for the joker to fix it.

  Including her. Damn it.

  “It sticks after rain,” someone murmured.

  “And the axle complains,” another added.

  Of course it does, Kina thought. Everything complains eventually.

  ?From a shaded porch, a cluster of younger women watched Saron. They adjusted their wraps with practiced nonchalance—pulling them a little tighter here, letting a shoulder slip just a fraction there. Their eyes tracked the line of sweat down Saron’s back as he hauled a crate, their gazes as heavy and sticky as sap.

  ?Kina rolled her eyes so hard it gave her a fleeting headache.

  ?Little harlots, she thought, her mouth twisting into a thin, dry line.

  ?She knew exactly how this played out. If left to their own devices, that particular brand of idle heat would turn sour by noon. They’d be trading barbs over the mending, "accidentally" spilling wash water on each other’s feet, and making everyone else’s life a misery just to claim a bit of the newcomer’s attention.

  ?She couldn’t have it. She had enough to fix without adding a civil war of the heart to the list.

  ?"Mara! Lani!" Kina called out, her voice shifting into its 'Princess' register—light, melodic, and impossible to ignore. She wore a smile that looked like a gift but felt like a leash.

  ?The girls jumped, their eyes snapping away from Saron’s back.

  ?"The elders mentioned the north storage mats are smelling of damp," Kina said, tilting her head with a look of feigned concern. "And since you both have such… vigorous energy this morning, I thought you’d be the best ones to haul them out to the drying stones. It’s a two-person job. You’ll need to stay close to keep the edges from dragging."

  ?She watched the disappointment wash over them, followed quickly by the realization that they couldn't say no.

  ?"Go on then," Kina nudged, her tone dripping with mock-sweetness. "Before the sun gets too high. We wouldn't want those pretty complexions to burn while you're working so hard for the village."

  ?As they trudged off, already whispering furiously to one another, Kina let the smile drop.

  ?There, she thought, watching them go. If they're busy lifting heavy reed mats, they won't have the breath left to claw each other's eyes out. She turned back to the clearing, her gaze finding Saron again.

  ?"Men," she muttered to herself, adjusting the bone comb in her hair. "One man with a decent set of shoulders and suddenly everyone forgets how to breathe through their nose."

  She turned to leave and nearly collided with him.

  “Sorry,” Saron said, catching her elbows before yanking his hands back like she burned. His grin came easy — then wobbled. “I move before I look.”

  “Clearly,” Kina said gently.

  “The wheelbarrow,” he gestured, confidence springing a leak. “It’s… not perfect. The axle’s stiff on turns.”

  “I noticed.”

  He waited.

  Praise. Gratitude. A smile that wasn’t a locked door.

  She gave him a neutral nod.

  For a breath, something real flickered across his face — sharp uncertainty — before the joker snapped back into place.

  ?“Right. Well. Plenty more where that came from. Innovations! Progress! Or at least, fewer sore backs for a week.”

  ?He moved on, laughter blooming around him again as he rejoined the circle of boys.

  Men with easy words are always the worst, her grandmother’s voice echoed in her head. Perverts usually. Or politicians. Same thing.

  Kina paused, remembering the same grandmother once tried to feed the moon mashed yams because it looked thin.

  Yes, well, she thought. Even a madwoman gets a rhyme right once in a while.

  Miss you, Grandma.

  ?The rest of the morning passed in the margins.

  ?People came to her with their small, nagging failures. A twine shortage for the nets. An overgrown path that the elders refused to clear because it led to a "taboo" grove that was really just full of stinging nettles. Elders who answered every question with silence or a riddle about the "Great Current."

  ?Kina listened. She sorted. She stored. She told Tane where to find the extra twine and she told the young boys she’d give them an extra ration of dried fruit if they cleared the path "quietly."

  ?On their raised platform, the elders sat like sun-bleached stones. They were certain that if they remained passive enough, the world would simply stop changing. They treated the passage of time as a personal affront.

  Months ago, Kina had knelt on the beach, hands pressed into wet sand, begging for power. For something to break the rot.

  The next morning, Saron had washed ashore.

  She watched him now, laughing with boys who wanted to be him. Anaru stood nearby, loose and quiet, guarding a man who didn’t even know he was being watched.

  I asked for power, Kina thought, fingers closing around the bone comb in her pocket.

  And the gods sent me a joker.

  The village moved differently now. Lighter. Louder. Faster.

  Not healed.

  Not safe.

  Kina began to hum again, but the melody felt thin, stretched too far.

  Some things were better left asleep.

  Unfortunately.