“There are others like you?”

“Here and there.13 Cocobolo isn’t just one island, you see. We are all Cocobolo. But I am your father.”

“I’ll believe you if you can prove it,” said Zheng. “What were the last words you said to me?”

“Come and find me,” said the voice. “And don’t let grass grow under your feet.”

Zheng fell to his knees and wept. It was true: his father was the island, and the island was his father. The caves were his nose and mouth, the earth his skin, the grass his hair. The gold filling the pit Zheng had dug was his blood. If his father had come here seeking a cure, he’d failed to find one—and so had Zheng. He felt desperate and hopeless. Is this what he was doomed to become?

“Oh, Father, it’s awful, it’s awful!”

“It isn’t awful,” his father replied, sounding a bit injured. “I like being an island.”

“You do?”

“It took a bit of getting used to, of course, but it’s infinitely better than the alternative.”

“And what’s so bad about being human?” It was Zheng’s turn to feel insulted.

“Nothing at all,” his father said, “if human is what you’re meant to be. I myself was not meant to be human forever, though for many years I couldn’t accept it. I fought hard against the changes that were overtaking me—and which are also overtaking you. I solicited the help of doctors, and when they proved useless I sought out distant cultures and consulted their sorcerers and witch doctors, but no one could make it stop. I was unutterably miserable. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and I left home, found a distant patch of ocean in which to live, and allowed my sand to spread and my grass to grow—and heavens, it was such a relief.”

“And you’re really happy like this?” said Zheng. “A smudge of jaguar-infested jungle in the middle of the sea?”

“I am,” his father replied. “Though I admit being an island is lonely sometimes. The only other Cocobolo in this part of the world is a tiresome old crank, and the only humans who visit me want to drain my blood. But if my son were here alongside me—ah, I’d want for nothing!”

“I’m sorry,” said Zheng, “but that isn’t why I’ve come. I don’t want to be an island. I want to be normal!”

“But you and I aren’t normal,” said his father.

“You gave up too soon, that’s all. There must be a cure!”

“No, son,” said the island, letting out a sigh of such force that it blew Zheng’s hair back. “There is no cure. This is our natural form.”

To Zheng this news was worse than a death sentence. Overwhelmed by hopelessness and anger, he raged and wept. His father tried to console him. He raised a bed of soft grass for Zheng to lie on. When it began to rain, he bent the palms so that they sheltered him. After Zheng exhausted himself and fell asleep, his father kept the jungle cats at bay with frightening rumbles.