After I was done I went exploring in the wood. I found more grubs and a plant that looked familiar. It had frilly blue leaves and a fat root. I was pretty sure that Nia had gathered plants like this. The root was baked, as I remembered. It was starchy and tasteless but filling. I pulled up nine or ten.

The arboreal animals made noises above me. They threw more twigs. I waited, hoping for another piece of fruit. No such luck. I gave up finally and went back to the shore, rebaited my trap and gathered driftwood. I was starting to feel a little bored. I was going to be stuck on the island for another three or four days. I wasn’t going to starve and I didn’t need a shelter. What was I going to do?

I scratched myself absently. I could look for a natural bug repellent. I could practice my calligraphy in the sand. I could sleep a lot. I could negotiate with the spirits: Guan Yin and the Mother of Mothers or the odd little spirit who had appeared in my dream.

Ask them for what? To save me and my friends.

I could think about what I was going to do after I crossed the river. There was forest over there. Tanajin had mentioned an animal called the killer of the forest. It did not sound like anything I wanted to meet. What about the lizards? They were migratory. They did not like fast water. Maybe they went overland when they came to the rapids. I imagined them, huge and dark and dangerous, moving through the shadows of the forest.

How fast were they on land? Could I outrun them?

I could build a signal fire. If my friends were alive, they’d see it.

I decided to build the fire. Not today. The sun was well into the west. By the time I had enough wood gathered, it’d be night. That would be tomorrow’s project.

I checked the trap again. It was empty. I looked for hermit squid. I found none. Dinner would have to be the roots. I washed them in the river and baked them in my fire.

The sun went down. I ate the roots. They tasted like nothing in particular. I described them—and the creature I had found in the trap—to my recorder. Then I went to sleep.

I woke with indigestion. The fire was a heap of coals. Stars filled the sky. And I had a really terrible case of gas.

Those damn roots! I must have been wrong. They weren’t the kind that Nia had found. I rebuilt the fire and sat next to it, waiting for the pain to go away or worsen.

If I got out alive, I was going to name this place. If I had to, I would stand over the members of the cartography team as they input the information. Most likely I would call it Little Bug Island, though I also liked the Island of Petty Aggravations. That had a ring. I imagined people in the future looking at the name and saying, “There has to be a story here. What were the aggravations? And who was the person who was aggravated?”

The pain stopped finally. I went back to sleep.

The next morning was sunny with a bit of haze, cool at the moment. I waded out to my trap.

Ah! I had a fish. It was large and orange with a dark blue dorsal fin. There were long, narrow, pale blue tendrils around its mouth. They moved slowly, feeling the air or maybe tasting it.

“You’re ugly,” I said.

The fish opened its mouth and croaked.

“The same to me, eh?”

The fish croaked again.

I wasn’t especially hungry, not after a night of indigestion. The fish would keep. I lowered the trap into the water and waded to shore.

I spent the morning gathering driftwood. By noon I was covered with sweat and a little queasy from the heat. The sky was full of high clouds, barely visible through the haze. The trees along my beach were motionless. There was going to be a storm, but not for a while. I lit the signal fire.

It caught slowly. I added dry leaves and pieces of bark. The flames licked around the twisted white branches. Smoke rose. The heat was intense. I moved back and looked around. The sky was empty except for the clouds and the haze.

No one else was signaling.

Be patient, I told myself. I added more wood.

I kept the fire going most of the afternoon. More clouds moved in. A wind began to blow. My trail of smoke went sideways rather than up. I went and got my fish and killed it, cleaned it, and baked it in the coals at the edge of the fire.

There were whitecaps on the river now. Thunder rumbled to the west of me. I ate the fish. It had a muddy flavor. I should have kept it alive for three days in clean running water or else smoked it. That’s what you did with carp. I licked my fingers. The first drops of rain came down, hissing in my fire. I moved into the shelter of the trees.

Lightning flashed. Thunder made loud noises. Rain fell in sheets that swept over the river, billowing in front of the wind. I huddled under a bush, and water dripped through the foliage above me, forming pools on the ground.

The storm moved east finally. The rain stopped. I crawled out from under my bush, took off my clothes, and wrung them out, then went to look at my fire. It was soaked. There was no way to relight it. Tomorrow maybe.

But everything was still wet then, and I spent the day foraging. The hermit squid had vanished. I found new grubs and the tree with indigo fruit. The tree had a straight trunk, and the fruit was high up. This was no problem. The branches were full of animals. I stood and waited. The animals became uneasy. They chirped and whistled.

“The same to you,” I said.

They threw fruit. I gathered it. They made more angry noises.

“T.S.”

I rebaited my trap and rebuilt my cooking fire, then made a new menstrual pad. The flow had almost stopped. I was going to be able to leave the island in another day or two.

Lunch was cold fish. Dessert was a piece of fruit. I spent the afternoon resting. Around sunset I checked the trap. Nothing. I lowered it and heard a noise. I looked up. Birds. They were so high that I couldn’t make out any detail. They certainly were numerous. The flock extended from north to south as far as I could see in either direction. It was a band that wavered continuously, growing broad, then narrow, sometimes breaking, then re-forming. There were thousands of birds up there. Maybe millions. They called to one another as they flew. Their cry was high and shrill—clearly audible, in spite of distance. On and on it went. I had never seen this many birds.

The end came in sight. A few stragglers—subsidiary bunches—followed all the rest. A hundred here. Two hundred there. Flying south, crying, “Hey, wait for us.”

Then the sky was empty. I waded back to shore.

A fall migration. The lizards went south by water. The birds went south by air. But so many! I remembered what I’d read about America before the coming of civilization. Herds of buffalo that covered the prairie. Flocks of birds that made the sky go dark at noon.

I scratched my head. It itched. I needed soap and a shower.

The next day was clear and bright. I rebuilt the signal fire. This time it caught. At noon I checked my trap. The grubs were gone. Something had eaten them and left. I went foraging again, along the edges of the island. I found a few dead fish. They had been dead for a while, and they did not look appealing. At the southern end of the island I found an animal. A biped. It lay on the beach, half in the water. Dead, but not for long. It was less than a meter. Its feathers were blue-green, the color of the sky, and it had a long red crest. The arms ended in delicate claws. The hind legs were designed for running. The open mouth was full of teeth. A lovely little predator. An eater of what? Large flying bugs? Or maybe little furry creatures.

I carried it back to my fire and cut it up. Most of it I buried, but I used a couple of pieces to rebait my trap.

After that I sat and watched the river, looking for lizards. I saw none. It ought to be safe to swim across.