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  Escape from Toko-Mua

  In the cool pre-dawn darkness, Kina and Motua run into the forest, with the burning warriors close behind. The village of Toko-Mua is coming alive, cries of alarm audible even this far into the forest. Temple warriors are already beating the drums. Glancing back, Kina can see a column of smoke rising over the village. The stockade has caught fire and is burning very well, filling the night sky with an orange glow and lifting sparks—or were they ghosts?—high over the trees.

  Her wrists still stinging from weeks bound by rough sennit ropes, Kina clutches at the strange object bundled tightly in tapa. She can feel its warmth even through the thick cloth. She wonders if it can harm her simply by holding it.

  Briefly, she thinks of pitching it into the darkness, ridding herself of it. But the thought of it being recovered and placed back onto its stand of bones in the temple at the center of Toko-Mua, of it being used to sever the necks of more captives, makes her cling tighter despite her fear.

  She pants and struggles to keep up with the fleet-footed Motua, who moves through the brush as easily as through his own home. “Wait,” she hisses. “You’re moving too fast. I can’t run as swiftly as you when I’m carrying this thing.”

  Motua pauses and lets her catch up. Kina leans against the thick buttress roots of a tree and tries to catch her breath.

  “Let me carry it,” Motua offers.

  “You focus on getting us away from the village,” Kina says. “I don’t want to get lost.”

  Motua gestures toward a looming ridge, not much more than a black wall against the deep night sky. “We’re going up there. It will be steep. Are you sure you don’t want me to carry it?”

  Kina hands Motua the bundle.

  From farther back in the forest, they can make out the flickering light of dozens of torches. “Hurry,” Motua says, and takes Kina by the hand. Together they round the tree and forge through the underbrush until the land begins to slope upward. Before long, they are bent at the waist, clinging to branches and brush to help them scramble up the hill.

  The drums are getting louder. The burning warriors are close, now, very close. They look up and spot her, letting out a victorious whoop and leaning into the slope to double their pace.

  “We must move!”

  “Wait,” Kina says. “Where is the pahi?”

  Motua finds the strange thing where he had left it. He lifts it and takes Kina’s hand and begins to pull her up the slope.

  Where is he getting this energy? For the last two weeks, Motua had been in the pit with Kina and a handful of other starving, miserable captives. Once a day, the priests came and tossed down handfuls of fruits and meats, and the captives scrambled to pick the meager food from the mud. Daily rains filled a trough from which they drank water infested with mosquito larvae. Kina was able to hear the cries of many other captives coming from other pits dotting the field near the temple.

  “We are here for the drums,” one of the other prisoners told her. He was an elderly taro farmer from the island of Heka, and just like Kina, had been captured in a nighttime raid by the helmeted warriors of this dark cult.

  Kina had glanced up the walls of the pit, which were lined with sharpened bamboo stakes. The pit’s mouth was covered by a mat of reeds into which had been woven shark teeth. Already, Kina had been thinking about how she might escape it—perhaps easier for a gutter rat from the streets of Huka`i like herself—but as the taro farmer spoke she realized waiting to do so was a luxury she didn’t have.

  “They will take you to the temple,” he told her. “They will have a ceremony there and they will kneel you down before their god and they will cleave your head from your shoulders with a black blade wielded by their high priestess. It will be the last thing you see. And as your lifeblood pumps out into a stone basin, they will already be flaying your hide to paint and use as the drumhead. Your spirit will be trapped and placed into the drum.”

  “You lie,” Kina said. “How do you know this? Have you seen this ceremony?”

  “Not myself, no. But in my youth I met a man who came from here. He fled Keli`anu to try and live away from the Cult of the Ebon Flame. When he told my ali`i about the terrible rites conducted here on Keli`anu, and of the spirit drums themselves, he organized an army of his best warriors to destroy the village and its temple. Only five returned, and did so only after spending several months fleeing across the ocean in an attempt to elude the burning warriors and ensure they could not be traced back to our home.”

  Several days later, the man from Heka was taken from the pit, lifted out by a lassos held by several strong warriors, and that night Kina first heard the drums.

  Still holding Motua’s hand, Kina nearly crawls up a steep and muddy slope. Motua is still moving, though he is panting heavily. Under the canopy of the trees, it is too dark for her to see much more than the objects directly under her. How can he move so quickly and with such precision?

  Before long, they crest the ridge and are suddenly peering down on the world from on high. Behind them, the burning warriors still race up the slope, their torches dancing like fireflies. But on the other side they can see a broad, sheltered bay lit partially by the first hint of sunrise—a thin violet tint brushed across the ocean horizon.

  “Is there another village down there?” Kina asks, hoping Motua can see better than she.

  Motua pauses, looking intently down at the bay. “I see some structures there. They look like fishermen’s huts.”

  “How can you see anything? I can barely make out where the land meets the sea in this light.”

  Motua doesn’t answer. He steps over to the slope and looks down. “This side is too steep.”

  “Can we climb down?”

  “In better light, perhaps, and when not being pursued. If we take the time to climb down, the burning warriors will catch up to us. We’ll be easy targets if they want to roll some of these rocks down at us.”

  Kina glances back at the pursuers. She gauges they’d arrive in a few minutes.

  “We’ll have to fight them.”

  “Fight them?” Kina asks, stunned. “With what?”

  “With this.”

  Motua kneels and sets the bundle on the ground. The pahi inside is still warm to the touch. He peels back the ceremonial tapa in which Kina had wrapped it as they fled the temple. As the cloth falls away, Kina can make out the shape of the pahi only because it is black as tar, even darker than the night around them. It is a long knife, as long as Motua’s forearm, and made of a black stone Kina has never before seen. Chipped into a shape similar to a dagger, though much longer, the pahi is easily as sharp as any sharks’ tooth, and has one single razor edge that runs the length of one side. When they had come into the temple to take it, the pahi had glinted and caught the light of the burning trenches on either side of the ceremonial platform, flickering images reflecting off its smooth surface. Neither of them had enough time then to examine the thing. Kina focused instead on wrapping it up and getting out quickly, but even then she had noticed strange images carved into the length of the blade. Now, in the darkness, she can see those images lit up as though from fires within the blade.

  Motua holds it, dumbstruck, just as shocked by the thing’s appearance as Kina. At last, Kina nudges
him.

  “Why do you hesitate? What are you doing?”

  Motua lifts the blade. “It glows!” he whispers. “Do you think there’s fire inside? Is that why it’s warm?”

  “Let’s think about that later. Hurry!”

  “Right,” Motua says, and stands up. He points to some large rocks. “Help me roll these down at them.”

  With the pahi sunk into the ground at Motua’s feet, the two of them heave at boulders nearly as large as themselves, until the boulders break free of the soil and crash downslope at the burning warriors. With cries of alarm, the warriors attempt to dodge out of the way. The first boulder catches one in the leg, snapping his shin. The next hits a burning warrior squarely in the chest, and as he spits up blood, he falls back into one of this brethren and the two of them begin flailing down the slope.

  The last five warriors spread out, coming up the slope apart from one another. Motua hurls smaller rocks down at them, but to no avail.

  “I have no weapon,” Kina says.

  “Stay behind me and try to get one of their leiomano.”

  The first burning warrior reaches the top of the slope and charges them. Motua sidesteps and tries to grip him but the warrior’s skin is slick with oil. They fight for a moment until Motua runs the pahi through the warrior’s gut, dropping him. Kina wrenches the shark-tooth club and the burning torch from the fallen man’s hands and joins Motua. The two of them stand back to back as the remaining four warriors crest the rise and flank them.

  Smiling, the warriors close in. Kina blocks a blow with her own leiomano and ducks under another. She rolls to the side and slices the sharp teeth across a warrior’s neck. Motua staggers back, fending off attacks by the other warriors, then cuts the hand off one of them with a quick swipe of the pahi.

  Even the warrior seems shocked at how easily the black blade cut through the man’s bone. The handless warrior drops his leiomano and falls to the ground, clutching his stump and roaring with pain. The remaining two warriors regroup, facing Motua and Kina, circling so that they have them up against the steep slope.

  “Mind your step,” Motua says to Kina.

  “How did you do that?” she asks Motua, but there is no time for a reply. The two remaining burning warriors pluck small gourds from their waists and take a swig of some fluid. Holding their torches in front of them, they shoot a jet of flame at Motua and Kina.

  Kina ducks and slips over the edge of the slope, arresting her fall by grabbing exposed roots. Motua is still above her, flames rippling across his body.

  She heaves herself back up to the level ground and grabs the tapa cloth. “Hold still!” she shouts and beats Motua with the cloth to put out the fire. The two burning warriors force their way between her and Motua. With horror, Kina realizes she has dropped the leiomano, so she is forced to duck and roll away from the attacks. She swings the loose cloth in the face of one of the warriors, taking advantage of his momentary blindness to tackle him to the ground. The two of them struggle for the leiomano in his hand. Just as it looks like Kina will pry it free of his fingers, the other warrior grabs hold of her hair and pulls her up. He is raising his laiomano to slice her neck when he is struck from behind. The pahi, held by Motua, sinks through the man’s shoulder and into his torso before stopping.

  The last remaining burning warrior scrambles to his feet. For a moment he faces Motua and Kina, then turns to flee back down the slope toward the village.

  Motua charges after him, but Kina stops him. “Let him go!”

  “He’ll get the rest of the warriors!”

  “They’re already coming. Let’s go, while we still can.”

  Motua watches the warrior scramble down the hill past his injured brother who still clutches a boulder-snapped leg. “You’re right. Come on, let’s get down this cliff.”

  As the first glimmer of dawn grows brighter, they carefully ease down the steep rocky incline until they are safely in the forest below. Before long they come out onto a windy beach, the waters of the sheltered bay lapping at the shore.

  It is now light enough that Kina can see the village. They move down the beach until they approach the cluster of huts. This early in the morning, most of the canoes can be seen out near the bay’s mouth, the men of the village making their trade. Their wives use the cool hours of early light to attend to more domestic duties. Kina can see them beating cloth against stones down near the shoreline.

  Staying away from the village, Kina and Motua search along the treeline until they find an unused canoe. The one they find is undergoing repairs, but Motua tells Kina it should still be able to carry them away from here. They set the pahi bundle on board then shove it off its platform and down into the water. Motua shoves it through the shallows while Kina draws up the tapa sail. By the time the village women have spotted the theft, Kina and Motua are well away from the shoreline.

  They hug the edge of the bay, then as they approach the mouth, the fishermen catch sight of them and try to intercept them, but Motua takes up a paddle while Kina works the single sail, and before long they are at the surging waves that beat against the reef. The strong waves threaten to overtake them several times. Kina and Motua are drenched by the time they cut through the last of the waves and make it beyond the reef.

  Kina looks back to see the frustrated fishermen remaining safely on the other side of the reef, unwilling to risk losing their catch or the remaining morning hours to pursue a single canoe.

  Pursued!

  The harsh noon sun shines down on their bobbing craft by the time Keli`anu has begun to noticeably recede in the distance. Waves hiss against the prow of the canoe and the sail flaps in the shifting winds.

  “We were fools to have left without water and food,” Motua says, resting with the paddle in his lap. “We have no supplies, no plan. Maybe we should return to Keli`anu and try to hide.”

  Kina looks back at the island. Its high peaks are wreathed in clouds and she can see a powerful rainstorm blurring out the near slopes. Motua’s idea has merit. They are ill-equipped for a voyage. “How far is Ku`ano`ano from here?”

  Motua points toward the island. “It’s on the other side, and a couple days’ travel beyond. But do you think we should even attempt that passage, with no supplies?”

  “We do need water, at the very least.”

  Without a word, Motua rotates the sail to bring the canoe about. Kina cringes at the thought of returning to Keli`anu, especially after what they had done to escape.

  They allow the prevailing current to carry them eastward along the shore, turning inland at last when they come to a windswept peninsula. Over the rocky seafloor, Kina guides the canoe until Motua can leap out and wrestle it into shallows.

  “I wish we had something to tie this off. There’s no way to get it up over these rocks, and high tide will take the canoe away for sure.”

  Kina helps him wedge it between three large boulders. “Then one of us should stay with it and make sure it doesn’t float off.”

  “Me?”

  “No,” Kina replies. “I was thinking me. You’re the wilderness guide, after all.”

  “There’s more to being an alaka`i nahele than being a guide, you know.”

  “Clearly. You’re an excellent fighter.”

  Motua looks sideways at her. “I’ve been taught how to use some weapons. But you weren’t bad, either.”

  Kina stands in ankle-deep water and scans the horizon. “I’ve been forced to learn over the years. Are you going to go, or stand here jabbering?”

  Motua nods. “I’ll see what I can find nearby.” He begins to climb the tumble of sea-battered lava rocks. “If you see anything…”

  “I’ll shout, of course.” Kina says.

  Motua turns and disappears over the rocks.

  The day wears on, and Kina occupies herself with some fishing. Though she has no spear, and has never fished with a leiomano, she is able to bash some reef fish which explore the tide pools, killing them with a quick str
oke of the shark-tooth club. She drops their twitching bodies into the canoe, then pauses and looks at the tapa cloth wrapped around the pahi. Motua had left it behind, at she can understand why. There’s something about the black blade that unsettles her.

  Reaching for the tapa, she folds back one corner until just the end of the blade is visible. It is still just as black as when she first saw it, even out here in full daylight. It gleams with reflected light on the scalloped edges where the stone from which it was forged had been chipped. It is hard to imagine the skill it must have taken to create such a thing; the blade feels just as hard as the lava rocks around her.

  Feeling a little more brave in the daylight, she pulls away the tapa and lifts the pahi, holding it the way she might hold a leiomano. It is much longer, somewhere between a club and one of the shortspears warriors sometimes use. Though it is heavy, she realizes now it is balanced well and isn’t any harder to hoist than a taiaha. She gives it a couple of test swings and finds she likes how it feels slicing through the air.

  Scrambling up onto a boulder, she sweeps it back and forth as though fighting phantom warriors. Kina pantomimes a feint, then a slashing swing, then ends with a thrust that would drive the blade home through the gut of the strongest warrior.

  As she holds the pahi, point outward toward the ocean, her gaze travels to the horizon. There, like a school of massive fish, a fleet comprised of dozens of canoes is rounding a far point of land. Smaller and lighter canoes race out as the vanguard for a massive war canoe from which flap the red pennants of the high priestess herself. Though upwind, Kina can already hear the far-off beating of war drums.

  She gasps and lowers the pahi.

  They have launched their armada, she realizes, terror returning.

  Kina turns toward the line of trees and yells as loudly as she can to Motua. Glancing back at the fleet, she races over the stones to the pebbly beach and cries out for him again. After several minutes, she remembers the canoe, and goes back to where they had hid it between the stones. It is still there, though it has drifted into deeper water. Kina sets the pahi on a rock and wades out to the canoe, dragging it back into the shallows.