Castaways in Paradise | “Passing Through: None” by Sun Yung Shin

“What brings you here,” he asked.
“What do you seek in this high tower,
Phaëthon—you, an heir no parent would
deny?”¹

They saw tracks of animals—goats, the
men assumed, but actually deer—but
found the corpse of only one. Like so
much else in the “other world,” they
knew not what to make of the sight.

The father put aside his shining crown
and told him to draw nearer and took
him in his arms: “It would not be
appropriate for me to disavow our
relationship…”

Consumed by the idea of this small child
alone in the wilderness, Columbus inter-
vened, pledging the boy “to God and
fortune.”

How often she would be too terrified to
lie down by herself in the deep woods,
and wandered to the fields near her old
home! … Often she hid herself at the sight
of beasts, forgetting that she was a beast
herself. And the bear was frightened by
the sight of bears up in the mountains—
and afraid of wolves, although her father
had been changed to one.

Columbus assumed that the object
“must be those of some ancestors of the
family; because those houses were of a
kind where many persons live in one,
and they should be relations descended
from only one.”

To keep her from successfully appeal-
ing to Jupiter, her speech was snatched
away: only a growl from deep within her
chest, a rumble, hoarse and menacing,
remained.

A pile of bare human bones testified to
their predilection: “All that could be
gnawed on, had been gnawed on, and
all that was left, was what could not be
eaten, because it was inedible.”