Quote:

“We have formed a band,” Mai-Mio confided. “There are six of us: Ipa, Tuiti, Hali-Sai-Iano, Zoma, Oiu-Ngo and myself. We have pledged never to leave the island.”

Comment: According to foreverness the original manuscript was lost after having been submitted to Worlds Beyond, which never published it, but was later rewritten form memory.

Republished in The World-Thinker and Other Stories, Spatterlight, 2012