Cindy, her father, and Tony left the
police station and went to Cindy’s home.
There at Cindy’s home, Cindy and her father told her story:
The story began eighteen years earlier,
when Cindy’s father was returning from a fishing trip. As he walked along the stone path leading to
his home, he heard a baby’s cry coming from a field of taro plants. Following the sound, he found a girl baby
lying naked on the bare, wet ground.
“How could anyone be this cruel to a
baby?” he asked himself. “And why?” Because the weather was beginning to turn a
little cool, the man was wearing a tee shirt.
He took off his tee shirt, wrapped the baby in it, and held her with one
arm. With the other hand, he carried the
fish he had caught. He looked around,
but he didn’t see a house or other people. Then he decided to take her home, and dress
and feed her. He thought that, after she
had been fed and clothed, he would take her to the police station in hopes that
they could find her parents.
His wife had died several years earlier
and left him with three sons. At the
time he found the baby, the man’s sons were already teenagers. After feeding the baby and making her
comfortable, he prepared the fish for his family’s supper.
After supper, he decided that it was time
to take the baby to the police station.
When he went to the bed where he had laid her, he saw that the baby girl
had turned into a baby fox. That’s when
he realized that she was a fox fairy.
He knew that the Caroline Islands
government was trying to kill all the foxes on Kanifay Island. He had also heard terrible legends about fox
fairies. He saw why she had been left
alone to die in the taro field. Either
someone had feared that something terrible would happen to them if they tried
to raise her as their daughter; or her fox mother had been killed with no one
to take care of the baby fox.
He
had little fear for his own life, but what about his three sons? What if he kept her to raise as his
daughter? Would something terrible
happen to his sons? He seriously thought
that he should take her back to the taro field where he had found her.
His youngest son saw the look in his eyes
and said to him, “Papa, I’ve always wanted to have a sister. It would be cruel to take her back to the
taro field to die. Maybe she’s the
sister I’ve always wanted. Please. If you don’t want her, I’ll take good care of
her myself.”
“I will, too,” said another son.
“We all will,” said the third.
He looked into face of the baby fox and
remembered how she had looked as a baby girl.
His first thought was that he should name her Kit, since baby foxes are
called kits. Then he decided that it
wouldn’t be right to call her Kit. He
would name her Cynthia and call her Cindy, after his wife who had died years
earlier.
After Cindy entered the first grade, her
brothers took her with them to practice traditional dances. Probably because Cindy was thin, graceful,
and high-spirited, she wanted to learn the graceful and exciting stick dance.
Because Cindy was thinner than most girls,
she learned a more graceful way to move than any of the other dancers. Stick dancers were naturally expected to
sometimes shout during stick dances.
Cindy took her sounds a step further by loudly howling. People noticed her special style of moving
and howling as she stick danced; and she became very popular among tourists.
Most girls learned to smile for the
tourists, but Cindy had a smile for everybody.
What’s more, it was said that her smile was so bright that it could
light up a room. By the time Cindy was
in her teens, it seemed that every tourist wanted to take her picture. The only dancer who would be as popular among
tourists as Cindy was a seven-year-old whom tourists said was cute and funny
looking; but that was years later.
From the age of six, Cindy was also
expected to learn how to make handicrafts.
She learned handicrafts in school, and her aunt often gave her more
lessons in handicrafts. Girls learned
how to make handbags from palm leaves, small box toys from bamboo leaves, or
strings of flowers to wear around their necks or on their heads. Cindy’s favorite thing to make was bamboo
leaf boxes. Even at the age of
eighteen, box making was still her favorite handicraft.
When Cindy was twelve or thirteen, her
aunt came to her house more often to give her lessons in using the hand loom. At that age, girls were expected to know how
to weave their own skirts. At first, the
lessons were simple. She made skirts,
each with its own design. Little by
little, she learned to add little ideas to her skirts so that each skirt was
different from all other skirts on the island.
The skirts were pretty, and they would
last for a lifetime. On Kanifay Island,
people had more respect for a girl or woman who could make her own skirt
because it showed that she was a capable person.
Over time, Cindy’s brothers grew up, went
to Ponape Island State College, got married and started families of their
own. For the most part, Cindy’s
childhood was normal for a girl of Kanifay Island. Cindy had a happy childhood; and, finally,
only Cindy and her father were left in their family home.
It wasn’t all happy, of course. Kanifay Island had typhoons every year. Sometimes typhoons were so strong that houses
were broken and had to be built again.
Typhoon Maysak had hit Kanifay Island only a few months before Tony had
come to the island. Some rebuilding was
still taking place when Tony arrived.
As a teenager, Cindy wished that she could
have had a normal social life. Churches
and other organizations arranged activities for teenagers, but most of them
were held at night. As you now see,
Cindy was unable to go out at night without other people finding out her secret
life as a fox fairy.
While other teenagers enjoyed teen
activities, Cindy was often at home in her fox form. Sometimes she read a book as her father
turned the pages. Sometimes she listened
to music or watched a movie DVD. Her
favorite movie actor, as you know by now, was the movie action hero Dash Tobey. She had seen each of his movies several
times.
It’s human nature to praise. When we like something, we want to praise it
to other people. Our enjoyment becomes
complete when we invite others to praise it along with us. That’s why we often hear such praise
invitations as, “Wasn’t it great!”
When Cindy met Tony, she was excited to
hear that Tony was also a big fan of Dash Tobey. Cindy had finally met someone with whom she
could share her praise for the action movie hero Dash Tobey. She had not thought it possible to admire
Dash Tobey more than she did. When Tony
told her that Dash in real life had rescued lost people in the mountains of
Wyoming, Cindy admired Dash Tobey even more than ever.
Cindy breathed deeply as she thought about
Dash Tobey. She was now eighteen years old; she was a woman. Soon, she would move to another country and
start a new life. She had to learn to
look at life as a grown woman sees life.
When Cindy was a child, she spoke as a child, she understood things as a
child; she thought as a child. Now that
Cindy was a woman, it was time for her to put away childish things.
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