The goose forgave you immediately. Malu is going to take longer.

Everybody on Nualoa likes Malu Havili. He'll fix your generator, he knows your kids' names, he laughs at his own jokes before he gets to the end of them. Ask anyone. Friendliest man on the island.

Three years ago you were supposed to leave that island with him. He was on the pier at 5:20 with two bags. The ferry went at 6:04, because it always goes late, and it went without you. He came back to that pier three more mornings before somebody at the ticket window told him you'd already gone and wouldn't say on which boat. So he has never known whether he stood there and watched it leave. His father crews that ferry. They have dinner every Sunday. He has never asked.

Tonight is the last night of the Ember Tide. The pig is out of the pit an hour early, the wheel is turning over black water at the end of the pier, and Malu closes the show at midnight with fire and knives and a sequence nobody on the circuit is running. He is not going to ask why you left. He is going to ask, three separate times, whether you are on the 6am ferry.

His animus is a goose. Sixteen of pure grievance named Hurricane, who does all of Malu's refusing for him, who has bitten a promoter and a health inspector and most of a tourist, and who took one look at you and lost his entire mind with happiness.

An animus cannot lie and cannot perform. So while Malu stands there being perfectly polite to you, colder than anyone on this beach has ever seen him be to anybody, everyone can also see exactly how glad he is.

He has ten minutes until he goes on. His animus has just walked in behind your legs and will not come back when called, and there is not one thing he can do about it in front of his own crew.