Islands of Fire Page 19

  Kina nods. “If that’s what you want, I’ll do it.”

  “If I don’t come back,” Hekalo says, “please don’t leave me here, okay? I don’t want to have my spirit trapped in this cave. Take me somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

  “I will.”

  Hekalo takes a deep breath, staring down at his feet. For a long moment he takes in the sight of his own body, as if making peace with his departure. Kina can feel her heart racing, and knows Hekalo must be almost mad with barely-concealed terror.

  “Okay,” he says at last. “Do it. But please make it quick.”

  Kina says, “If I don’t see you again, it was an honor knowing you.”

  “Same to you. Thank you for helping me find my answers.”

  Kina nods. Then she steps forward and drives the pahi through Hekalo’s chest.

  For a second his eyes bulge, a rattling hiss escaping from his chest. When Kina pulls the pahi back out, he drops to his knees, then flops to the floor. Blood pools out of Hekalo’s mouth and he sucks in ragged, bubbly breaths.

  Kina suddenly wonders if she has done the right thing, if Hekalo has somehow misunderstood Mokolo’s instructions, or if he was to die another way. But before she can get beyond this thought, Hekalo’s eyes lose focus and he stops breathing.

  She is alone.

  Kina stands there, her legs shaking. She drops the pahi to the floor, this horrible instrument, and she lowers the torch beside Hekalo. Kneeling, Kina touches his face. “Hekalo?” she asks. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”

  He doesn’t respond. He is clearly dead.

  Kina gets back up, too stunned to do much. After a while, she looks at the water, starting to consider how she can get his body out of this cave. She leaves the pahi where it is, knowing she’ll come back for it later. Then she tosses the torch back into the flooded passage, letting its guttering light illuminate the water. Once this is done, she crouches down to pick up Hekalo.

  His body jerks and he sucks in a huge breath, like a man who just removed something lodged in his throat. Hekalo’s eyes fly open and he looks wildly at Kina. He scrambles to sit up. “Mai?” he screeches, his voice hideous in the close, dark cave.

  Kina can see one of his hands is curled into a claw, as if clutching someone else’s hand. It is empty.

  “She’s not here,” Kina says. “It’s me! You’re back!”

  “Mai!” Hekalo screeches again, and looks back down at his hand. It is still curled in the same shape. When Kina looks, she can see the faint impression of phantom fingers there, pressing against Hekalo’s real flesh.

  Then suddenly Kina can see it: a half-visible outline of a hand, the forearm trailing into nothing.

  Kina scrambles back, scuttling across the stone floor.

  In the glimmering, dim light from the submerged torch, Kina watches as the hand grows more solid, the arm extending until a torso can be seen, and then the shape of a head, another arm, legs.

  Hekalo is sobbing, frozen in place as he babbles the name, “Mai” over and over.

  Before Kina has taken five more breaths, the vague outline has become a woman, one of blood and flesh, nude as a newborn. Hekalo is howling in triumph. He pulls the woman toward him and embraces her. Kina can see her shock expression.

  “Hekalo?” she says. “Where are we? Did we make it?”

  He is sobbing too hard to answer her for a few seconds. “We did,” he finally says. “We made it.”

  Kina props herself up against the wall of the cave, trying to catch her breath. She lets the two lovers hug and sob for a while, and then when their tears start to turn to laughter, she rises and offers the two of them her hand.

  By the time they get out of the cave, the sun has rises to its noon position, and welcome heat has settled over the buzzing forest and the shore. Pupo has built a fire. Though he looks disapprovingly at Hekalo, Kina catches him starting at Mai in undisguised wonderment. He acts nervous, as though he isn’t sure whether or not to trust the woman.

  When he has a moment along with Kina, he asks where the woman came from. Kina explains what she saw, and how Mai seemed to materialize out of thin air.

  “What of the injury you gave Hekalo?” he asks. “I see no signs of it now.”

  Kina has no answer for this.

  As Hekalo and Mai sit around the fire, Kina heads out to hunt, gathering together fruits and some small shorebirds. Her thoughts are preoccupied with the business of survival. If they are going to be trapped on this island, they’ll need to build shelter, gather supplies, maybe start growing some food. Kina doesn’t know how to make a canoe, but she figures she’ll have to teach herself if she doesn’t want to remain here forever.

  The thought of canoes sparks a memory. Setting down the brace of shorebirds and the pile of fruits in a safe place, she begins to run back up the beach. It takes a while, but at last she gets to the area she recognizes from when she and Nakali had first arrived here. She heads up into the treeline, looking for a mound of brush. And there it is.

  The canoe.

  She walks back out onto the beach, looking out across the flat horizon of the ocean, a thin smile on her lips.

  Mother

  Part Three: Forbidden Shores

  Kina first knows something isn’t right before their canoe has even left the shallow water facing Makoahiva’s desolate beach. The usual march of wavelets, tamed by their passage through the reef, push their canoe around like waves three times their size. Kina staggers and nearly falls, trying to direct the angle of the sail, as Pupo and Hekalo bend to the task of rowing. Hekalo’s lover, Mai, rests beside him. She is still too weak to offer must assistance.

  “Is it the wind?” Pupo asks. Though he is older by far than Kina, or even Hekalo, he is an able oarsman, and hardly looks back to shout his question.

  “I don’t think so,” Kina says, warily watching the next group of waves approach. “There’s a force behind the water. Something is wrong.”

  They handle the waves, and before long approach the reef. Great peals of thunder accompany each wave crashing on the coral head. White, foamy water hisses everywhere, stirred by eddies.

  “Perhaps we should go back,” Hekalo says. “This could be signs of a storm at sea. We can wait a day or two, let it pass.”

  Kina says, “No. Every day that goes by, Motua is in greater and greater danger. The Burning Warriors have him, and I know they mean to make a drum from him, and trap his soul forever. Do you know what happens when they beat that drum? His soul will be forced to do battle as a ghost warrior. It’s the same fate they wanted from me, before we managed to escape. I can’t let that happen to him.”

  “It might have already happened!” Pupo shouts. A wave crests near them, and the surge spins their craft around. The two men labor to point it back toward the ocean.

  What Pupo said is the truth, and Kina is all too aware of it. By her reckoning, it’s already been three weeks since she last saw Motua, that horrible night when the devil `Imu`imu attacked the fleet of the Burning Warriors. What had happened to Motua? According to Pupo, they had both survived by falling into the sea. Kina had killed the devil with the strange, obsidian pahi that she still carried, but she, and the priestess, Nakali, had become lost in the night. Some of the fleet had gone looking for Nakali while the others had returned to Keli`anu, their home.

  It had certainly been long enough for them to kill Motua, skin him, then prepare his flesh to become the skin of the drum that would trap his ghost. How long could something like that take? A few days?

  But there was a problem. The high priestess, Nakali, had been with Kina. Could they perform such a rite without her?

  Ever since Kina had been originally captured a month or more ago, Nakali had been a burr under Kina’s foot. First, the high priestess had selected Kina to become one of their drums, and then when Kina had escaped the pits at Toko-Mua with her newfound ally Motua, Nakali had gathered her army, along with her elite fighters called the Burning Warriors, and chased them al
l the way to a distant chain of islands.

  And all because of this weird weapon she had stolen, the pahi. It is about as long as a man’s forearm, black as night, and carved exquisitely out of fine, nearly unbreakable obsidian. Along the glassy blade is a row of symbols the likes of which Kina has never seen — except for carved onto the walls of a ruined temple in Lohoke`a, a coincidence even Nakali couldn’t help but notice.

  That coincidence had driven the two of them to Makoahiva, an abandoned island known only for being the home of To`o, the “God in the Stone,” from whom Nakali had hoped to receive answers.

  Kina gazes back at the island. It is not a large island, as they go, but the rugged, forested slopes stretch high above the empty shorelines. Up there somewhere, Kina and Nakali had found To`o. A voice from deep within a carved stone head resting in the center of a dead crater, To`o had told them he would give them answers only if they killed a devil haunting the island. With the pahi, they could do it — of this, Kina was certain, because she had used it to kill the devil `Imu`imu when it attacked the fleet of the Burning Warriors.

  But, as it turned out, To`o had been lying. Manipulating them, hoping they would finish off the true god of this island, Mokolo. With Mokolo’s help, Kina, aided by her new friend, the sorcerer Hekalo, turned the tables on To`o and destroyed that devil. Mokolo was once more able to reclaim his rightful rule of Makoahiva.

  And, finally, Kina got her answers.

  What Mokolo had told her was a secret history of Mokukai, stretching farther back than Kina ever imagined. The Progenitors — Father Sky and Mother Ocean — had created the world long ago, the seas and the islands and the vast firmament, and all the gods that ruled the islands, and in turn all the humans that lived across the face of Mokukai. But before this, long before the first gods were ever born, before the warm ocean stretched across the world, Father Sky had been betrothed to Mother Fire, and Mokukai had been a place of heat and flame. A sea of magma, broken by sharp pinnacles of rock, had spanned Mokukai — then called Mokuakeahi — and upon those islands had dwelt the creatures called kakonu. When Father Sky grew tired of Mother Fire’s temper and abuse, he expelled her deep into the recesses of the world and replaced her with Mother Ocean. Together, they recreated the world as a more serene, beautiful place of warm seas and verdant jungles.

  Was Mother Fire there, buried in the depths of her own creation, still? Kina had to think so, as her influence still stretched to the island of Howe`a, the home of the goddess Puahiki. No man can set foot on Howe`a, as it is an inferno, an active volcano spewing hot rock and magma so high its fire can be seen for a hundred miles.

  Mokolo had suggested that Puahiki was no goddess, but one of the kakonu. Her kind had created children of their own, a race of beings Kina could not possibly imagine. They were long gone, but three sacred armaments forged by one of their kind remained to this day — the Kota`ianapahu.

  And Kina was holding one of them.

  The pahi, that strange blade, was older than Kina’s known world. When the old syllables carved on its blade were spoken, it would wreath itself in flame. It’s partner, a round obsidian shield Kina had found in that ancient abandoned temple, could do the same. Presumably the third piece of the Kota`ianapahu was no different, whatever it was. The Burning Warriors had the shield, and their leader, Nakali, had fought hard to reclaim the pahi. The third piece could be anywhere, though Mokolo had suggested she ask Puahiki about it.

  But seeking it out — indeed, taking back the shield — was not Kina’s first task. Out there, across the ocean, is the island of Keli`anu, home to the Burning Warriors and their Cult of the Ebon Flame. There, Motua is in grave danger. The Kota`ianapahu can wait.

  Her thoughts are broken by the collapse of a huge wave near the canoe, sending a spray of water across her and her companions. The surge knocks Kina down for a moment. As she stands, sputtering and drenched, she wipes the water away from her eyes and looks toward the next wave. For a moment, she is sure she can see a face deep in the churning white water.

  “Mother Ocean!” Kina shouts.

  The wave strikes the side of the canoe hard, threatening to topple them. In its trough the reef lies exposed for a moment, and down in the cracks Kina can see the gliding forms of sharks.

  “This isn’t natural!” Pupo hollers, having to raise his voice to be heard over the wind and crumpling waves.

  No, it’s not, Kina thinks. This is Mother Ocean’s doing. She knows that Mokolo has told her secret. To keep the it, Mother Ocean is surely going to bash them against the reef and then let them drown or be ravaged by sharks.

  But how to fight back against a Progenitor? Even a god can bend reality to its will, but they cringe before the power of the Progenitors.

  “I beg of you, stop for a moment!” Kina says, having to spit out a mouthful of salty spray.

  She is interrupted by the next wave, much larger than the first. It picks up the canoe and flips it, turning it upside down in a tunnel of thundering water. Kina finds herself flung helplessly into the air, her body hitting the water head first. She is engulfed in the wave, and she tumbles with her arms and legs flailing uselessly.

  Years of experience with the ocean helps her respond by locking her chest. She has a minute, at most, of air in her lungs and she knows she might need it all in order to swim out from under the turbulent waves above. As soon as she is oriented, catching a glimpse of the heaving ceiling over her, she begins to swim in the direction of the surf, hoping to reach the calmer area inside the reef.

  But there is no reef.

  Below her is a black void, like the deepest ocean. She can feel currents, like invisible fingers, wrapping themselves around her and sucking her downward. Barely visible through the churned-up water, she can also see Pupo, Hekalo and Mai struggling against their own unseen grapplers. Kina tries to kick out of the suction and head toward them, but to no avail. In moments she is sucked ever deeper, until the surf overhead recedes into a blue abyss. Soon her friends vanish into the distance and then she is alone in an ever-darkening void.

  A cold calm washes over her and she stops kicking. For a moment she stares into nothing. Mother Ocean, you are drowning us. Why?

  Even as she asks, Kina is sure she knows the reason. She is unprepared to receive an answer, but one comes to her from the water all around, a barely audible voice that lives in the bubbles, the click and scuttle of the deep-sea creatures, the hiss of foam. No passage will be given, it says. The secret you now have is forbidden. Your life is the price for such knowledge.

  I have humbly served you as your own daughter my whole life. Many times you have heeded my prayers, and for those times I thank you. What I know changes nothing. You are still my mother.

  The voice replies, It matters not. Father Sky must forget he ever loved her. Do you not know of the power of a woman’s jealousy? Mother Fire is gone but she always seeks to return and steal Father Sky from me once more. And thus all memory of her must remain buried, just as she is buried. I sing sorrow at your death but you will have a place in the Lands Beyond.

  But, Kina thinks, Hekalo, Mai and Pupo do not know what I know. I did not tell them. Please, spare their lives and take mine.

  What are they to you? How much do you know of them? Pupo has committed murder against one of his own family. Hekalo steals mana from the gods. And Mai belongs in the Lands Beyond.

  No one is without their flaws. I only beg you do not punish them for my own.

  Your concern is noble. This is what I have come to expect from you, my child. I have heard your plea, and will spare them. And they shall know it was your death that earned their lives.

  There is another who knows your secret, Kina says, caught between feeling relief for her friends and horror at her own impending death. By now, she has sunk so deep into the ocean that the gulf around her is nearly completely black. She wonders how she is able to survive, so deep in the water, without the air being crushed from her lungs. Surely this is Mother Ocean’s power.
<
br />   Continue, Mother Ocean says.

  Nakali heard the words of Mokolo. Have you claimed her as well?

  I have not, Mother Ocean replies. Where is the one of which you speak?

  Kina is confused. What do you mean, where is she? I think she’s out on your waters. She had a head start of a day or two. I believe she is returning to Keli`anu. She has the shield, one of the Kota`ianapahu. I fear what she means to do with it.

  I can sense no canoes, nor can I find Nakali. Are you sure she is not already dead?

  It’s possible, Kina thinks, a little surprised. It’s a relief to know she is already in the Lands Beyond. I hope the Kota`ianapahu sank with her.

  She is not dead, either, Mother Ocean replies. She no longer exists.