Islands of Fire Read online

  Deciding to keep off her feet, Kina crawls on her hands and knees across the earth, paying no mind to the new cuts and gashes torn open on her knees and palms from the brutally sharp stones.

  By the time she draws near, she can see Puahiki cradling something in her arms, kneeling in the center of the depression. Here, the stone is so smooth it is almost glassy, fused into one black chunk that is slick as eggshell. Now that she is close, Kina can hear Puahiki sniffling, saying, “It won’t bring you back.”

  Puahiki has abandoned her fearsome appearance from before, now looking like the mild, beautiful and ageless woman that Kina had first seen. There is something vulnerable about her, now, as though she holds to this more human image as a way of pushing back against her own darkness.

  Kina gets to her feet, lifting the pahi. Now that she is close, she can see what Puahiki is holding.

  An umbilical cord.

  The sight of it, brown and shriveled and dry, here in this place of ferocity and power, is enough to pause Kina in her tracks.

  Puahiki says, “It is all that remains of Kuanutoa. I don’t even have his bones. He lies at the bottom of the ocean, and I cannot reach him. His soul itself is gone. Do you know what that feels like to a mother? I would sooner have lost my own heart.”

  Kina is still holding the pahi high, but she is frozen, unable to swing it. Is this another trick?

  Puahiki turns her head slightly. “You come here to kill me, thinking I seek the subjugation of the world because I am evil, but you don’t know my drive. You don’t know what Mother Ocean did to my own mother, Mother Fire. What Father Sky did to her! The betrayal! Driving her deep into the earth, burying her creations until only enough remains to allow your kind to grow, and our own children to die off for good.”

  “Mother Fire was cruel,” Kina says. “She was violent, and she was unreliable.”

  “Is that what you heard? From whom, Mother Ocean?”

  “Another god.”

  Puahiki silently turns back to the umbilical cord in her hands, then lovingly lays it in the center of the smooth crater. Suddenly, Kina is sure this was the birthing place where Kuanutoa was created.

  “I must amend my words earlier,” Puahiki says. “I have never seen a human like you. To come all this way, to brave what you must know is your own death, to press on despite your destroyed body, to survive being submerged in my inner fires…”

  “That was Tiamuta,” Kina says. “You can thank her for the tattoos that allowed me to survive under there.”

  “That wasn’t her gift,” Puahiki says. “That was mine. I was the one who taught the trick to Tiamuta.”

  Kina asks, “You did?”

  “Did you think a lowly god holds that kind of mana? Tiamuta is ambitious, but she doesn’t have the power to back it up. She needed something from me, and I needed something from her.”

  “And you can’t just take back your gift,” Kina says, more a statement than a question.

  Puahiki replies, “There’s no need. You won’t leave here alive.”

  “I’m going to throw this helmet into the sea, and you can sit here and clutch your son’s cord and boil in rage in your volcano until the end of time. You have lost.”

  Kina turns and begins to walk out of the glass bowl. Behind her comes a slithering sound like the rough skin of a lizard on a palm bole. Kina stops, the pahi at her side, then turns to look back.

  Where Puahiki was moments before is now an enormous creature, an eel with four sets of sinewy legs down its length, and a muscular plate on its back from which rise two slender, flipper-like wings. Each webbed foot ends in a claw identical to the curved horn Kina had found on the lower slopes of this mountain, spearlike and powerful. Its jaw juts out to reveal a line of teeth as sharp as a shark’s, each as long as the pahi in Kina’s hand.

  She is reminded of a strange fish she once saw in a Huka`i market, found on the shore of a nearby island and claimed to have floated up from the darkest abyss in the deep ocean. Kina’s first reaction had been horror that such a thing could exist, and she had leaned in close to peer at its uncanny shape. It had seemed alien, otherworldly, more like something dredged up from a nightmare than from the common sea. Though it had been dead, it felt somehow like it was still dangerous, and though she had been goaded on by her friends, she didn’t dare reach out and put her fingers near its wicked jaw.

  The thing towering over her coils and twists, its body curling like living rope. It gazes down at her with eyes like those of a squid, a curved slit for a pupil, slick and bulbous eyes flicking back and forth as it takes in Kina’s tiny form.

  “Kakona,” Kina says. The thing drops its jaw and roars wetly, ropes of saliva dropping from its teeth.

  Kina knows she isn’t going anywhere. The helmet will remain right here, at the top of this mountain. And so will she. But if she is going to die, she will take Puahiki with her.

  The roar becomes a rumble deep in Puahiki’s throat, and a line of white-hot fire explodes from her throat. For a second, Kina is bathed in this fire, feeling it only as a scorching wind. When it ends, Puahiki’s eyes narrow in anger. She rears back and bellows into the sky.

  Kina forces a laugh, then says, “Try again.”

  Puahiki is impossibly fast. Her body uncoils like a snapping cord. Kina barely has time to swing the pahi and feel it rip through the slick flesh before Puahiki’s jaw closes over her head. There is a loud crunch, and Kina is sure it is the sound of her own skull being crushed, but she opens up her eyes once more to find she has been knocked to the ground, in agony but in one piece.

  Puahiki rears back, several of her teeth snapped right out of her jaw. The broken bits slide around the interior of the bowl like discarded bone chips.

  Puahiki goes wild with the pain, thrashing and spasming. Kina scrambles to her feet and tries to get out of range, but is hit by Puahiki’s immense tail and flung like an insect out over the stones. When she comes down, she feels something in her left arm snap and a piercing, white-hot pain shoots up her arm. Her head bangs against a rock and for a moment everything is shot through with bright lights and a dull ringing noise. Without the helmet, her skull would certainly have been smashed open.

  Agony overcomes her and she rolls around for a moment, dropping the pahi to instinctively hold her arm tight at her side. It takes a moment to work up the nerve to look down, and to her horror Kina sees the bone of her forearm has been snapped like a stick and has punched through the skin. It is slick with blood, white and shiny under the red.

  The world is tilting and falling out from under her. Through swimming vision, Kina realizes she has fallen back down. It is hard to focus. It’s fine, she thinks — she is okay with dying here. At least she tried. How nice it will be to join the others in the Lands Beyond, and finally be rid of this troubled life.

  Puahiki has vanished. Moments later, she rises out of the lake of lava as if rejuvenated by its heat. Blobs of molten rock bead on her sleek skin and drop off, spattering onto the gray stones to remain there, little burning droplets.

  That huge head swivels, seeking out her victim, and now Kina can see where the pahi bit into Puahiki’s face. The jaw is cut in half, and hangs as though she is unable to fully close it. When she roars, the sound is thick with swallowed blood, and though Puahiki is speaking in a language Kina can understand, the words are so garbled she can only make out her own name.

  “I’m here,” Kina says, and sits back up. She tries to say “Come get me” again but the world has once more gone blurry and she knows she is losing a lot of blood.

  Finding the surface of the boulder onto which she fell, Kina pushes against it with her good arm, then bends to scoop up the pahi once more. Her ruined arm hangs at her side, dangling uselessly.

  Puahiki glowers at her with huge, bulbous eyes, ragged jaw gurgling. Then the great wings unfurl and stretch out until they cover an enormous span, blocking out swaths of her vision. Kina staggers back, ready for another onrush, but Puahiki flexes her wings
with a great swoop. A gust of strong wind showers Kina with tiny bits of stone and dust. She pinches her eyes shut to keep the grit out of her eyes as she feels it blast across her naked skin. While she is wiping away the dust, something slams into her with enough force to force the air out of her lungs, an impact strong enough that she doesn’t at first feel the vertiginous sensation of traveling high into the air. There is something strong as stone crushing her legs but leaving her torso free. Flung about, her arms and head jerk back and forth as she tries to suck air into her locked lungs.

  Blinking at the wind and the bits of sand stuck in her eyes, Kina realizes she is far over the land, and for a second she struggles to understand what is going on, her mind bewildered with pain, shock, and surprise. When she finally manages to pull some air into her lungs, she is surprised to find it much more clear, and very cold. The pahi is still in her fingers, knuckles turning white with the force of her grip. Looking down, she sees her legs are pinned inside something round and pebbly, like a large eroded stone cut by waves into curves and folds. It is only after seeing the sword-like claws that she realizes she is clutched in Puahiki’s huge talons. Leading up and away are those powerful, muscular legs and the whale-like wall of her massive body.

  Kina can tell by the cold, hurricane-force winds and the spiraling panorama far below that Puahiki is flying with her. It only takes another second for Kina to realize that Puahiki means to drop her, deciding a fall from this great height is the surest way to kill a pesky human who can withstand her hottest fires.

  Against the power of the wind and the torque of her flailing body, Kina raises the pahi and begins to hack at Puahiki’s claws. There comes a great howl from somewhere above and the talons uncurl enough that Kina gets one leg free. This new posture doesn’t help her stability, and now she flaps about with no power to steady herself.

  Puahiki’s arm bends and another hut-sized paw seeks her out, taking hold of her with the force of a falling boulder. A talon plunges through Kina’s free leg and the pain is enough make Kina throw her head back and scream uncontrollably for several seconds, cupped in this tiny vault formed by Puahiki’s grasp. Her body is smashed against Puahiki’s hot skin. Kina feels a pop in her left leg, followed by a wet and cold sensation, the talon tearing its way sideways out through the meat. She is being crushed. Surely Puahiki plans to smash her nearly helpless before dropping her battered body through the atmosphere.

  The pahi is still there, though Kina’s fingers have relaxed their grip. She takes up the handle and yanks it back toward her, aware that the pain from her shattered arm and leg has gone numb, and a whirring blackness is looming in around the edges of her vision. Twisting the pahi to face Puahiki, she pushes as hard as she can, plunging the blade into the wall of rubbery flesh.

  Kina is rewarded with a bath of steaming, magma-like blood, and a roar of pain that is deafeningly loud, this close to Puahiki’s chest.

  The huge hands let go, and suddenly Kina is alone, turning over and over in the freezing, thin air.

  Wind buffets her, tears at her hear, fills her ears with a constant rumble. Kina rotates, looking back at Puahiki, who is already receding far above her. The creature is writhing, trying to stay aloft on agitated wings. A fountain of hot blood is misting out of Puahiki’s chest, but Kina can’t tell if she did any lasting damage before her gyrating fall removes Puahiki from sight once more. All she knows is the pahi is gone, either falling somewhere nearby or embedded in Puahiki’s chest. Kina is beyond caring.

  From up here, she can see across hundreds of miles of ocean. To the east she can make out the tiny specks of the islands of Keli`anu and its neighbor, Ku`ano`ano. Off to the side and much farther away she can see the bright turquoise plain of the Shallow Sea, where, fleeing with Motua, Kina had first encountered the Kota`ianapahu, and had started what she now realizes was a personal war against the Cult of the Ebon Flame and Nakali’s Burning Warriors. To the south, she can see the scattered dots of Kilakila. Somewhere among them is Makoahiva and the god Mokolo, to which she owes much gratitude. The sun is dropping toward the west, lighting up the ocean in a blinding flare, and Kina knows that, somewhere out there, is the island of Kotuhiwa and her old home, the sprawling city of Huka`i. Though she had been on the run from its stinking maze of streets and backstabbing politics for the last several years, she is suddenly struck with a bittersweet longing. She wishes she could be standing in the muddy, crowded market at this moment, all of this behind her.

  She looks upward once more, but Puahiki is gone, made invisible by the distance between them. Kina is surprised by her serenity in this moment. Once, she would have been consumed in horror and regret, feeling as though her life was being cut too short, overcome with the urge to survive. But now she finds a peace there, rather than an angry fire. Soon she will be in the Lands Beyond, free from all of this — the thought is gratifying, not terrifying.

  By now, her uncontrolled spin has stopped, and all she feels is the air pushing against her like a storm, and an exhilarating freedom of the body, as though she has been cut free from the tether of the world, having broken free from the bonds of gravity. Far below her the world is bisected, one half grayish-brown rock, the other half the royal blue of the ocean, scudded with windswept waves. From here, it looks abstract, no more immediate than the shores of an island glimpsed through miles of sea haze. Is this the view from the Lands Beyond? Is this what the ancestors, and all those friends and loved ones, dead and gone all these years, see when they look down at the world? Right now the stars are obscured by the veil of blue sky, but the kupunas say the dead smile down upon us, day or night. How removed they must feel from the world, observing it from such a distance! How petty must the problems of its people seem to them, unmoored now from the living soil!

  Kina closes her eyes, taking in the feel of the wind and the liberated lightness of her body. Soon, she thinks, I will see you again, Motua. I will apologize to you. And to you, Pupo, and Hekalo, and Mai. I am sorry your deaths came for nothing. Puahiki is going to win, reclaiming the helmet from my ruined corpse on the shoreline below, and though Nakali is dead, her people will have the helmet. They won’t have the rest of the Kota`ianapahu, but with Puahiki on their side, I’m sure they will find a way to use it against the people of Mokukai.

  Then, a thought comes to her. Opening her eyes, Kina sees the steaming shore of Howe`a below her, still far off but coming up, fast. She is close to the waterline.

  Kina thinks of a flat stone falling through the water, and how, despite its unstoppable weight, it will curve off to one side, cutting sideways toward the bottom. If she could make herself like a stone…

  Spreading out her body, Kina focuses on the water. At first it seems like an impossible gap, but very quickly she realizes she has exerted just enough control over her own descent to bring her out over the edge.

  With her one good hand, she reaches up and tugs off the helmet. She lets go, and it whips and tumbles away, falling a little faster than her own body. It hits the water a few seconds before she does, and Kina is filled with a flood of satisfaction when a cresting wave opens up to swallow it whole, sucking it down into Mother Ocean’s safe arms.

  The last of the Kota`ianapahu is gone, and with it, the last hopes of Mother Fire. Kina closes her eyes.

  In the village, it is dark and balmy, like a warm midsummer night, alive with the odors of cooking and the sound of dancing drums. There is a feast to honor her arrival, but Kina turns and walks down to the moon-lit shore, where she sees Motua waiting for her.

 

 

 
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