Covenant by Mason Koa

The ramps by Midpark were flooded and now the loons thought they could make their homes anywhere. John-Mark and I had visited his side of the family in Manila, and the flight back was turbulent. We were watching that documentary on the Unabomber to unwind when we heard the first clarinet choking overhead. It was still raining outside, and I called him over from the top rung of the ladder. We found the pair of loons wailing, making a nest between the rows of shingles, and the first words out of his mouth were They don’t belong here. He helped me climb down from the roof so I wouldn’t slip. I dried off while he put away the ladder. We had forgotten to pause. Ted Kaczynski was already dead in jail.

John-Mark held a broom and was setting up the ladder again.

I said Let’s let them stay up there, until the flooding dies off.

He said They’ll get swept away by the wind and the rain, anyway.

I said But and then he said Because this is our home and then I said But and then he said Because it is not theirs.

Then I didn’t say anything. I watched the loons tremolo and sputter away, the sky coming down on us. Branches clotted together against the storm drain.

John-Mark wanted to read the Bible to me that night. Genesis, Noah’s Ark. God flooded the Earth and started anew.

In the morning, we heard a loon call and each bone in my body shivered. We checked the roof and the pair had returned, along with their nest. There was an egg in there now, small and speckled.

Conceiving in a storm like this? I exhaled while rocking my head.

He got a call from his mom. Monsoon season in the Philippines should have ended by now. The water was up to her elbows. She fell asleep in the attic praying the ceiling would not give in. She was miles away from home talking into a phone attached to the wall, saying We, saying We as in You and me, saying We are running out of islands.

The loons were gone before we knew it. We found the nest still there between the tiles, drenched and empty.

John-Mark threw the Bible out into the rain today and we watched the pages get swallowed up in the basin, because there is no sight like water devouring a story. We remembered we had gods too, once. He hoisted me onto the roof without the ladder; ladders were for people coming back down. He kneeled on the shingles beside the nest, and I climbed onto his shoulders. The sound of a loon wailing before flight is like a ghost calling for her children. Bellowing into the rain, my arms spread.

Mason Koa is a Filipino- and Chinese-American youth writer from Northern California. His work can be found in Mid-American Review, The Penn Review, Quarterly West, Vestal Review, XRAY, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Best Microfiction 2024 and was the runner-up for the 2023 Quarterly West Prose Contest.

28 February 2025