---

A Girl Bikes Home Alone at Night

by Georgie Morvis

Pina didn’t want to bike home that night from the party, she told the officers. Dad had texted 10 minutes before he was supposed to pick her up. No can make it. Had too many green bottles. He had been like this since the lung cancer spread through Ma’s body like wildfire.

The bike wasn’t even hers, but Lani’s haole family had just moved to Kona from Denver, so there were plenty kine for her to choose from. She would have brought a helmet and worn brighter clothing, instead of the black tank top and ripped jeans she had on when the officers found her.

Pina knew this road well, even in the dark. She took it to get to school, to Big Save, and until a few months ago, the hospital. There were no streetlamps along the highway, and in the starlight you could barely see the fields of lava rock studded with fountain grass. She loved the way the wind whistled through the grass. Dad said “Burn ‘em. Stay one invasive species.”

One of the officers clapped to get her attention. She might be concussed. The other asked her what she remembered. The car was going faster than Dad ever had on the winding road at night. She didn’t see it coming until its headlights rounded a corner, music blasting from the speakers. It looked brand new.

The next moments were blurrier. The gears of the bike had locked up as she tried to maneuver off the road. A shrieking car horn. A screech of tires. Her shoulder scraping against the pavement. She remembered an acrid taste in her mouth, like metal, like rotten eggs. Dad said that’s what a volcano tastes like, because of the sulfur, but they were miles away from Kilauea. The officers looked at each other, said they should wait for the paramedics to finish tending to the injured tourists to check her out.

Pina kept one detail for herself, though. Just before the car swerved out of the way and into the black rock, she thought she saw a woman illuminated in the headlights. One moment, she was young, a red kihei wrapped tightly around her shoulders, obsidian hair flowing down her back; a blink later and she was old, hunched over, wispy white hair clinging to her head like a cloud on a mountain’s peak, but just as beautiful as before. Pina swore she was smiling. When she opened her eyes after the crash, the woman was gone, a haze in her place.

Pina would never know if the car had swerved to avoid her bike or the woman. But she would always remember the strange woman who smelled like a lava flow, life erupting in her eyes.

---

Surrogate Parents

by A A Ademola

You threw many tantrums when they were assigned to you.

You called them stupid, and told them to leave you alone, when they asked how you were doing.

When she made your favorite meal, you deliberately spill it on her, saying it’s too cold, and you’re not an animal to eat such a thing. When he told you it’s no good way to treat your mother, you backtalked, saying she isn’t your mother, and neither is he your father to tell you what to do.

You were told they’d act like real parents and adapt to many new things. But having androids put in the place of your late parents, sounded like a mockery of their death to your face.

You wonder who bought the idea of assigning androids to be parents; you were told it was a non profit organisation. Android parents are expensive, but charities and donations made to the orphanage home had made it possible to assign the surrogate parents to orphan children.

You do not want to like them, and for a long time you don’t. It’s only when life gets in the way, and you have a more matured mind that you realize it’s a good thing to have someone love and care about you, even though they aren’t your real parents.

You grew tolerant towards them.

You couldn’t put yourself up to apologize for being overtly rude to them, but you had it in you.

When you graduated college, they welcome you home with sweet words and a warm embrace. You reflected back and shed joyful tears when you realized they have always care for you, and were always there for you. Admittedly, even your real parents wouldn’t have done better.

You were pleased with how they’ve acted as parents’ replacement for you, over the years. You were very happy with their companionship. But however happy, you can’t be with them forever.

A time will come, when you’ll have to leave them to get married and start your own family. It is at that time, that the android parents will be assigned to another orphan child, and all the memories of you will be erased from their core, so that they will be most accommodating of the new orphan child.

But that, is a story for another day. For now, you enjoy the warmness of their embrace, and relish their companionship.

---

Magic in the Hands

by Carol Scheina

Inside a dust-smeared jar on a dark shelf behind Professor Rhade’s desk, the Prophecy Hand looked like nothing more than a preserved appendage, with its crumpled wastepaper skin, bony fingers, and yellowed nails. Despite its wizened appearance, the Hand was alert, seeing and hearing much as it observed this year’s Incantations Class.

“Not ooohhh. Ooawww,” Rhade lectured. “Pronunciation is essential for an incantation to work.”

In the front row, a girl struggled to pronounce the words.

“Tylla, watch my lips,” Rhade said.

The Hand could feel frustration storming around Tylla as she tried–and failed–to activate the incantation. Its fingers twitched in sympathy, forming a withered thumbs up of encouragement. It liked to give students these little gestures of support, even if no one saw them. People didn’t notice hands, it seemed.

Yet Tylla noticed.

Her eyebrows formed two question marks. She waved a small hello?

The glass container rocked as it waved back. HELLO!

Tylla rewarded it with a smile.

For class after class, Rhade discussed complex words that students struggled to unwrap from their tongues.

“Magic takes two. If you speak incantations to an empty forest, nothing will happen. For an incantation to work, it must be heard clearly by someone else,” Rhade explained.

Tylla’s jaw clenched. The Hand saw her fiddle with plug-like devices in her ears, then speak. The incantation activated on her fourth try.

The Hand flashed its thumb. Tylla grinned back.

Thumbs up, little waves–the Hand was limited in how it could encourage her. Long ago, it would write prophecies, but no one gave it pen and paper nowadays, not when people deemed it faster and easier to speak their own spells to uncover the future.

It watched Tylla recite sounds over and over. It watched her stay late after class, pouring over books until Rhade tapped her shoulder, telling her it was time to leave.

“What drives you?” it wanted to ask.

Late in the school year, Tylla blinked exhaustion, alone in the darkening classroom, the professor having stepped out.

The Hand gave her an encouraging wave, yellowed fingernails tapping on the jar.

For the first time, Tylla spoke to it. She moved her hands alongside her spoken words. “Hand, I need your help. My people don’t hear. We speak with our hands. But magic is sound, like Professor Rhade teaches. We’ve been excluded for so long.” Tylla’s hands moved fiercely. “No more!”

The Hand’s fingers tensed at the girl’s determination.

“I’m learning sound magic so I can translate it to our hand-language. But magic takes two–one to speak, one to understand. I have no one here to practice hand-magic with. No one knows how to communicate in my language. Will you help? Learn my hand-speech?”

A language of hands? Teach me! Let me speak! But the Hand had no way to say that. It waved frantically.

“Make this movement for yes, this for no.”

The Hand signed its first word: YES!

Tylla smiled. “Let’s make some magic.”