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WILD GIRL
Chapter 15: Then, Koa
After the disturbing discoveries in the aluminum box, Koa needed to move. It had been days since she’d checked her snares. “A good hunter or fisher kills prey quickly,” Mama used to say. “If you’re going to put out snares, you have to monitor them. The animals don’t deserve to suffer.”
There were many pigs in Waimalia Valley; no matter how many she caught, there were plenty more to replace them. Koa tried to keep the population away from her homestead, though, because even one pig could ravage the garden in minutes, undoing months of work. The animal that had come close enough to forage for nuts that morning might find the garden next. Catching it was priority.
Koa set the metal box on the wooden counter with Mama’s ID on top. She drank more water, ate some smoked pork and fish and a cold cooked sweet potato, unceremoniously stuffing the food into her mouth as she stood beside the sink and chewing it quickly. Food was fuel, and though she’d sat to enjoy meals with Mama when she was alive, eating alone held no joy; it was just another necessity.
She went to her sleep alcove and dressed for hunting, donning a pair of sturdy hiking pants with cargo pockets. She loaded those with additional snares, a roll of strong cord and more. She threaded on a belt from which her sturdy hunting knife could hang in its scabbard; her waist was so narrow she’d had to pierce the leather and cut it so it was tight enough. Lastly, Koa donned a long-sleeved camo-print shirt made out of stretchy material. This additional barrier covered her skin when dealing with tusks, bushes and mosquitoes.
She wore shoes when hunting: a pair of sturdy wet/dry sandals with velcro straps that helped her make her way through brush with no trails. The sandals were a little too large, but it was worth the loss in dexterity to have protection on her feet. Finally, Koa filled a small metal water bottle and hung it from the other side of her belt, balancing out the weight of the heavy knife in its scabbard on the opposite hip.
Koa paused, considering the compound bow hanging on a pair of pegs on the wall.
Finding that prize on the free pile had been almost too good to be true, and Mama had suspected someone had left it for them intentionally. “They will want something in return,” she’d said darkly when they’d discovered the bow, sized for a large child or woman, leaning against the shelter with a quiver of razor-tipped arrows. “If you take that, you’ll owe them.”
Mama’s mysterious “them.” People they didn’t know, which had included everyone but Ella and her father, Kimo.
Kimo was a dark-browed man whose paranoia matched Mama’s, but whose temper was even worse when he was drinking. The two had met on the road near the free pile and become an odd pair of friends, which was how Ella and Koa came to know each other as children.
Koa still remembered meeting Ella for the first time, how thrilled she’d been to discover someone her own size. She’d thought her friend’s black hair, brown eyes, tan skin, and bright smile were beyond beautiful.
The girls played in the dirt under the porch of Ella’s house with her friend’s caramel-colored plastic Barbie dolls with their white, silky hair. Overhead, Mama and Ella’s father swapped stories involving “the man” while drinking beer.
Kimo and Ella had always been critical to survival, a conduit to news and supplies from topside; but the day they found the bow felt nearly as important. The bow meant protection from a distance, as well as fresh game to hunt.
“The pigs don’t always come to the snares, Mama,” Koa had argued, lifting the bow to cradle it; what a prize it was! “With this, I can go after goats, and protect the house from Bad Men.”
Mama had shaken her head. “It’s on you, then, to learn to use it and bring something home.”
Koa had practiced shooting for months before she went out hunting goats. These surefooted descendants the animals the Hawaiians had brought to the islands in canoes lived at high elevations on the steep ridges around the Valley’s finger canyons.
Eventually, after many failures, Koa had shot a big old billy on one of the ridges. She’d had a terrible time retrieving it and butchering the unfamiliar carcass, then lugging the meat home through dense brush down the steep slope of the ridge. Most of it had to be abandoned because it went bad before she could get it home to the smokehouse. Disappointingly after all that effort, the goat meat had come out of the smoker gamey and tough. Barely edible.
Koa only took small, young goats now.
But today she didn’t plan to go far enough out for goat; she would check her snare line and set out new one for the pig that had come close to the house. That was all. Day was past the high point of the sun; she didn’t want to get stuck out after dark, guarding whatever she’d killed from rats while being eaten by mosquitoes.
Koa left the bow and arrows where they hung on the wall and headed out into the forest.
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