Umbra’s hand gripped a thorn nestled in the rice plants, leaving a deep gash that bled. Her blood dripped into the paddy’s water and seeped into the soil. She took her rusty knife from its holster, quietly cursing the pain in her hand, and hacked away at the rice once more.
She worked in her little patch of the nursery paddy, where the rice plants had grown from seeds to small spuds over the past month. Her back and knees ached as she bent and squatted, but her sack was nearly full of infant rice. Huffs and yawns filled the humid air, mingling with the sounds of nocturnal creatures waking up, while her people worked under the fast-setting sun.
Umbra yawned the loudest and most frequently, under-rested and thoroughly exhausted as she was. The horn sounded, signalling the end of another hard day’s work. She walked back through the fields, her sack heavy with rice, and her hand now throbbing.
The field workers looked equally exhausted, dragging themselves to carts packed with rice sacks that weighed heavily on their shoulders. They threw their sacks onto the cart one after the other and left the fields, eager to get home for their second meal of the day.
Adorjan stood by the cart as they did so, the only one with any zeal left to show, complimenting the workers on their hauls and receiving either grunts or feeble thanks in return.
‘Are you trying to break the cart with this?’ he said when he took Umbra’s sack, throwing it over his shoulder with exaggerated effort.
‘Do you need me tomorrow?’ Umbra asked.
‘Yes, please. I’ll get this cart to the other paddy, and we can start planting again tomorrow. Get some sleep now. It looks like you need it.’
‘Goodnight, then,’ Umbra mumbled, turning to take her leave.
‘Hold it,’ Adorjan called after her. He held a pile of rice from her sack, sprinkled with red. ‘I wasn’t aware that rice could bleed.’
Umbra shrugged. ‘I was hacking it up with a knife.’
Adorjan smiled again. ‘I see you missed the rice and hacked yourself. Let me see.’
The wound was dark, and the bleeding had already subsided. ‘It was just a thorn,’ Umbra said. ‘It hurt a little, but it’s fine now.’
‘Let Vada see it all the same,’ Adorjan said, tossing the blood-splattered rice back into Umbra’s arms. ‘The last thing I need is for one of my best workers to get infected. You can just throw it in the firewood pile on your way down.’
Umbra made her way in the general direction of home, down a hill with the sunset over the sea in view, toward the island’s western shore. She already felt a chill in the evening air, although it was not yet dark.
This was her favourite time of day—the hour before sunset, just as the stars began to appear. It was a time when she was left alone, and it felt like the island was hers to play with. Everyone else would rush to their huts for their fish and rice, leaving the outdoors to her. Just for a little while, until she was expected back home, she had a little world for herself.
She followed her feet with no particular destination in mind. She didn’t feel like climbing the cliff faces today or straying too far from home because she was growing hungry and didn’t want to make a trek for dinner. This evening called for relaxation in sweet solitude, admiring the orange sky.
The beach called out to her this time. She sat in her favourite spot on the sand, a place covered by the shadow of the burial cliff where she was watched over by the wooden burial figures at its peak. She sometimes pretended they were watching the sky with her, or that she was eavesdropping on a secret conversation of theirs. She was too young to have met any of the people the figures represented, so she made up her own personalities for them. One was always sleeping, one was always argumentative, and one was always laughing. As she grew older, it dawned on her that some of them were based on people she knew. It was a fun game to play sometimes, but today she just wanted to relish the ocean’s salty breeze on her face and the tickle of the sand on her skin.
Not much time passed as she watched the ripples of the dying sun on the waves until she realised she still had bloodied rice plants in her hand. Tied together in a bundle and not heavy, they were easy to forget about.
She tossed the rice as far into the water as she could, which was barely far enough for the waves to grab it and slowly carry it away. She watched it float away on the sea’s calm ripples until it vanished into the deep, washing her bloody hand in the water as she did so.
Only when the sun fully set did she pry herself away from her perfect peace and carry herself home.

Dinner was salted mackerel and seaweed that Umbra roasted on an open fire. The scent was alluring and always clung to her hut’s walls long after it had been cooked. Umbra could smell lemongrass as the mackerel roasted on the fire, which Adorjan must have picked and added to today’s rations. She was happy about it because it added some novelty to this ordinary day.
She topped two wooden bowls filled with rice, seaweed, and mackerel and then filled two cups with water from an almost-empty bucket.
‘It’s ready,’ she said.
‘Hm. So am I.’ Varyis, her father, lay on his floor bed, his locked and unkempt hair scattered around him. He slowly sat up and took the portion Umbra brought over. The bowl shook in his hands, but more gently than the night before. Umbra thought he had more strength and energy than on most evenings because he could sit up by himself.
Umbra put the water by Varyis’s feet. ‘Adorjan added lemongrass for us.’
Varyis grunted through his first mouthful, his lip trembling with each swallow. ‘Working tomorrow too?’
‘We’re planting the rice in the main paddy tomorrow.’
Varyis grunted again, battling with his chopsticks shaking in his fingers. ‘Your hand,’ he said.
Umbra looked down at her palm, still bloodied. ‘Just a cut from a thorn.’
‘Clean it in the sea after you eat.’
‘I already did.’
Umbra ate a mouthful of food and watched her father from the corner of her eye, sitting on his floor bed with his head bowed, his long hair hiding his face. Umbra had almost forgotten the sound of her father’s voice. These days, she was accustomed to hearing mostly grunts and moans from him. His skin had become pale after so many years spent in the shadows of their tiny hut with only candlelight to warm him.
Umbra took another bite. The mackerel was rich in flavour, and the salt-seasoning on the rice was strong, making it hard to swallow. She heard a clattering sound beside her. Her father’s cup had fallen to the ground, spilling its water. Varyis’s fingers shook where the cup had fallen, and he quietly watched it roll by his feet.
Umbra quickly drank from her own cup. ‘I need more too,’ she said, taking the empty cup from the ground and reaching for the almost-empty bucket of water. But when she stood up, there was another clattering sound. Her father’s bowl fell from his fingers and hit the ground with a hollow ring, spilling out its contents. Both his hands shook violently.
Umbra sighed as she saw her father’s head drop.
‘You can have some of–’
‘Just…’ her father said. ‘Just get out.’
‘Father, have some—’
‘Get out. Get out.’
He kicked the bowl with what might have been all his strength. It slid along the ground with a hollow chime and tapped Umbra’s foot. She didn’t hesitate. She filled her father’s cup with water, placed it at his feet, and left the hut, taking her meal with her.
The sky had turned to a blend of black and deep violet since Umbra had gotten home. She walked along the sandy shore next to the calm sea tides until she found herself back at her earlier spot on the beach. She sat quietly and finished her meal, savouring every second she was gifted to be alone again.
Umbra looked out over the ocean, at the pale white moonlight rippling on it. It wasn’t so rare for her to be in solitude anymore, but she was always grateful for it. Every occasion like it was peaceful, playful, or whatever she wanted it to be. Nothing ever imposed on her little world when she had time alone. Not until tonight.
It was a small but significant event that marked a change in this otherwise mundane night. Umbra noticed a subtle change in the sky after she ate her last bite. A crack of deep green light formed far above her, as though one small part of the sky were torn in two. It grew brighter and brighter, but never more than a subtle glow. It might have gone unnoticed if not for how alien the tone of green was.
Umbra was enthralled and utterly baffled, watching the light with fascination. It looked lonely and isolated, like a solitary flame in the dark. It flickered and pulsed like an unsteady heartbeat, casting a subtle reflection on the sea. The longer she looked at it, the more she realised how colossal this crack in the sky was. It was utterly captivating.
But she was soon left disappointed, as the light faded away as quickly as it had appeared, leaving nothing in its wake but the normality of a clear dark sky.
Umbra waited a while longer, keeping her eyes keenly on the sky, but the light never appeared again. The rest of the night passed as many nights before. She sat watching the sea until it became too cold on the beach, and then she dragged herself home.
The hut was dark and quiet. Her father sighed in deep sleep. The smell of mackerel hung around the hut. Only remnants of the spilled meal were left on the floor. Her father’s bowl was empty, and the spoils of fish oil and seaweed were still on his fingers. Umbra felt guilty as she realised he had eaten his spilled meal from the floor. He wouldn’t have eaten it off the floor if I hadn’t left him hungry, or if I had given him my bowl.
Umbra quietly lay on the bare floor far from her father’s mat. Sleep did not find her swiftly that night, as a mixture of guilt for her father and fascination with the strange green glow kept her awake.
That same light eventually led her to a sound sleep and followed her into her dreams. She dreamed of fishing on the open sea under the light of a bright green moon.

When Umbra woke up to a bright orange sunrise piercing her eyelids and a harsh heat on her skin, she heard music being expertly played outside. She rose from the floor and changed from her sweat-drenched rags into her other tattered garments. Her father still slept. Umbra drank half of the lukewarm water left in their bucket and then stepped out of the hut with an empty woven food sack in her hands.
The morning sky and a calm sea greeted her outside. Some from the village sat on the seashore, where Cadeo stood in the sand playing his T’rung. His long, locked white hair clung to his back in a woven sack as he played to the sea, smiling. It was the familiar and unnamed melody Cadeo played most days. Umbra named it “The Wandering of Fishermen” because its purpose was to guide the fishermen back to the island shore. Umbra used to imagine herself as the one at sea for whom the song was played. She imagined being out there, filling her nets, sweating under the hot sun, and then sailing back ashore to a beautiful song welcoming her. This romantic daydream lasted only until she was old enough to learn the song’s purpose—then it became just another practical facet of her weekly routine.
She also learned why the song was created in the first place. She learned about a dense fog that the oldest people in the village claimed had once hung over the island and sea, causing the fishermen to lose their way back home. Some remained lost and were never seen again, and were therefore immortalized in songs and as wooden figures on the burial hill. Umbra had heard many stories about what might have happened to those fishermen lost at sea and about old villagers who wandered too far from the shore only to be caught in an angry wave. The song Cadeo now played was for little more than a tradition maintained through decades, as there had been no fog in many years and no one had been witless enough to swim in an impending storm. The fishermen could find their way back home just fine now, with or without the song to guide them. It was especially pointless now that Cadeo only began playing the song when the boats were in view of the shore.
Three boats were presently floating on the horizon, dark specks out on the sea. Umbra joined her village on the shore, waiting quietly for The Wandering Fishermen to return home once again.