Her hand, black with soot and ash, reached out from under the cart as she relinquished the last thread of security she had left in this world, and emerged from her hiding place. She still heard the screams reverberating in her head from the horror of yesterday. Before her was ruin. Most huts were destroyed and the embers from the flames still smoldered in their carcasses. Bodies littered the ground and the sand streaked red with blood. She tried to convince herself that this wasn’t real, that the horror before her was only a nightmare, and sometime soon she will wake up and smell the tigerfish cooking over the fire.
“I made it especially for you,” her mother said as she handed Annastia her plate. “Extra-lime, just the way you like it.” Her smile was warm and comforting.
Annastia’s stomach growled. The sun was fierce and the heat made her light-headed. Her eyes scanned across the ruins of the village. She did not see them amongst the corpses, and for a second, she felt a glimmer of hope before remembering the monsters that did this. One of them barged into her home, eyes red with fire, a curly black beard knotted and dirty, his face was splattered crimson. She screamed at his sight.
Annastia’s stomach growled again and hunger clawed at her insides. She could taste the creaminess of the tigerfish when she would let the sauce sit on her tongue, savoring every last drop. She clambered into the husk of the storehouse and found everything she needed. The tigerfish hung from the rafters, freshly caught yesterday morning, and already salted. She instinctively grabbed the smallest piece, hoping that no one would miss it, along with two limes, a pinch of saffron, and black pepper. Creating a fire was not difficult. The embers from one discarded fire pit were still glowing, and after a few moments, the handful of kindling she had placed over the embers had transformed into a hearty flame.
“First, we take the fish and sear it on the saucer,” her mother said. Annastia watched as she placed the fish beside the flames, carefully maneuvering the plate enough so that the flames streaked the fish without it becoming fully engulfed in the fire.
There was a coconut only a few paces from her, and after a few minutes of scavenging, she found both a machete to open the fruit and a pestle to grind it into milk as the fish seared.
“Here, use this for mashing the pulp.” Her calloused hands were warm as she placed the smooth, oblong stone into Annastia’s tiny hands. “My mother gave this pestle to me when I married your father. Any stone like this will work, but for now, hold onto this.”
She had looked hard for it, but it must have disappeared during the raid. Those brutes must have taken it, she thought. With the small, foreign, pestle she found hidden under a plank, she mashed the pulp against its tough crust, creating the milk. She almost sliced herself as she sloppily quartered the limes. Once it was seared, she poured the milk onto the searing fish and wrung the lime of its juices. She turned to season the dish.
“Not too much Anna,” her mother cautioned. “A pinch of saffron will work, anything more will make the fish taste too bitter.”
“Not too much, Anna,” she repeated as the saffron fell in a trickle from her two fingers.
The aroma of the meal wafted into her nose. It reminded her of those warm, lazy nights where her family circled around the fire, listening to the symphony of the night as her father told stories of Qhoro the Great, the Antiban ruler who drove away bandits and brought protection to the village. She and her parents would slap away the mosquitos as they watched Marus and Darius wrestle. She remembered how the savory citrus taste lingered in her teeth after dinner.
“Do you see how it is starting to congeal? That is when we know it is almost ready.”
With two wooden sticks, she peeled the fish from the saucer and onto a fragment of shattered clay and added some cilantro as a finishing touch. Darius always loved cilantro, but Marus hated it, his face would pinch in disgust.
She could not help but look at it as she ate. The burned structure commanded her attention. It demanded her to bear witness to its collapsed roof and burnt beams. It demanded her to bear witness to the plank that was crushing two bodies and the soot that covered the other two.
Every swallow was another memory of what she had lost, but still, she ate. She knew she could never bear to eat this dish again, so she savored every bite even more. The warm fish that melted into her mouth, the stickiness of the congealed sauce that stuck to her fingers, the overpowering scent of citrus that lingered in the air and permeated from her breath.
“Anna,” her mother said. “I want to teach you my tigerfish recipe; my mother taught me when I was young, and one day you will teach your daughter too.”
She processed all of her emotions into one: rage. She screamed as loud as she could, releasing into the world the despair that she felt. She took the fragment of clay and threw it at the trunk of a tree, finding only a sliver of enjoyment in watching it shatter.
Destruction was all around her. There was nothing that she thought she could salvage. She gazed into the distance, past the mangroves, and beyond the lagoon, staring deep into the blue horizon, beyond the shores of everything she had and knew.
“What now?”