Flames of Mana

by Matt Larkin

  “Silence!” Pele roared at him. “I’ll broil the flesh from your bones and have my kāhuna dedicate those to Milu herself! I’ll see your soul burnt and frozen and rent into a thousand pieces, animal!”

  “Uh, silence? I thought you just asked me to give you a reason—”

  Pele allowed the flames to spring up along her arms, hands, and hair. Her own people fell back away from her as she advanced toward Kamapua‘a.

  Yet her legs did not want to close in all the way. Her gut twisted at the thought of getting too close to this abomination who had almost … almost … She snarled at him.

  The wereboar cleared his throat. “Shit, Pele, I know we basically got this love at first sight thing going on. It’s like, uh … serenpidilly or some shit. Thing is, it’s best if you’re not rude to me. Insults cut right to uh … my inside voice … my flaming coconut nut woman.”

  Insults? He didn’t want to be insulted? Maybe he should not have attempted to rape her! Did she hurt his fragile feelings? “You insufferable buffoon, I wouldn’t bed you were you the last man on the island! And that is not even accounting for your unconscionable crimes, savagery, and personal violations toward me, the queen of this land.” Her voice shook, and the land with it.

  Behind her, she felt Milohai stumble to one knee. That was it, wasn’t it? If she unleashed her wrath here, she’d have another Uluka‘a. She’d reduce the already devastated and struggling district of Puna to ashes and smolders, and destroy another people in the process.

  “For the sake of these bystanders, I will give you one chance to walk away, Pig, before I roast your balls and feed them to you.”

  “Uh … never thought I’d say I’m not that hungry.”

  “Leave!” she roared.

  Kīlauea cracked, and a river of incandescent lava tumbled down its side in the distance. Pele could barely force down the urge to drive the entire mountain into a glorious eruption to swallow this thing before her.

  Kamapua‘a actually winced, like she’d struck him, and clutched his gut, doubling half over. “Gonna be better if we just get married and have a rut or ten.” Speaking actually seemed hard for him.

  Pele forced herself to take another step forward. “What will it take for you to understand I despise you, creature?”

  Some of the wereboar’s men brandished spears and javelins and axes. There were rather a lot of the warriors. More than she could easily call upon in the village. If they attacked, she would have to use her power to defend Puna.

  “How about … ugh … just a quick romp so … everyone knows you submitted to my posterity.”

  Unable to hold back any longer, Pele flicked her wrist. A lash of fire snapped out and whipped at the pig. He jumped back and the lash struck a female bandit in the face. She fell, screaming, clutching the smoldering ruin of her cheek.

  “Aww, shit,” the wereboar grumbled. Then he scooped the female up in his arms like she weighed no more than a doll. “Now you’ve gone and thrown pig shit in a fire and all you’ve got to show for it is stink.”

  “I’ll immolate every last one of you ghostfuckers!” Pele bellowed, her whole body quivering.

  More and more people on both sides had fallen to their knees as the quakes intensified.

  But Kamapua‘a turned and carried his fallen companion off, and his men withdrew after him, keeping their weapons leveled until they reached the edge of the village.

  Even outnumbered, she could order her people to pursue the wereboar. Set into his men and cut them down. It would cost her … oh, so much.

  But ‘aumākua did Pele want that pig dead!

  Fists clenched, she looked to Kīlauea in the distance. One thought, one lapse of control, and it would rage and end her problem. Oh, how very tempting to let a torrent of flame swallow this blight upon Vai‘i. In so doing, though, she would surely devastate Puna and kill many of her own people. People who had suffered so much already, between the taniwha and this spirit now haunting them.

  Instead, she spit in Kamapua‘a’s direction, and trod back to the house where Moho waited, billowing out a curtain of steam that partially concealed the akua. She knew Makua followed her, but she paid the prophet no mind.

  “He will prove a problem,” the kahuna said, but still, Pele kept her gaze locked on Moho.

  “Can you kill him?” she asked.

  Moho hissed and a strange sense of ire settled over her, until she had to fight the urge to squirm in place and look weak before her people. Staring into the empty eyes of this god always seemed to have that effect.

  “Can you kill that pig?” Pele demanded.

  “The man is kupua and perhaps can die …” Moho’s voice had become liquid, washing over her face and skin, drawing out a sheen of sweat. “Inside the kupua, though, lurks an akua.”

  Pele paused, frowning. What was he saying? That a Moon akua could match a Fire akua? That the thing inside Kamapua‘a was a threat even to a being like Moho, King of Steam?

  “They called them progenitors. A legend of a time when the world was younger. When men made pacts with the night in hopes of surviving it. It is old, now. Older than you can imagine, and more powerful than most any akua.” He almost seemed like he was speaking to himself. “They made them in the darkness and thought they could control it.” Moho chuckled, though the sound lacked humor. “If it can die, I know not how. The host, though, has limits. Finding them remains the issue.”

  “And can you find them?” Makua asked the akua. “Can you destroy this pig before he further disrupts our … kingdom?”

  “You fail to understand, mortal.”

  Pele glanced between them. “So what do we do?”

  “You cannot defend this location,” Moho said. “Not against what will come in the night. When the moon rises, you will lose this kingdom.”

  That drew a sneer. “I don’t run. Much less from a man.”

  “It is not a man,” Moho said.

  Pele glanced up at the sky. Early afternoon. They had a matter of hours before sunset. She shook her head in frustration. With Naia so wounded … Any type of retreat or evacuation would prove difficult. But she couldn’t let Kamapua‘a—or whatever Moho thought was inside the pig—hurt her people just to punish her.

  Neither the kahuna nor the akua seemed to have any good options to offer her. She grimaced, then looked to Makua. Godsdamn it all. “Send the word. There are lava tubes in the slopes of Kīlauea. We make for them. We push hard, as hard as we can.”

  “I will remain,” Moho said.

  “What?”

  “Leave me what warriors you can spare. It is unlikely many will survive.”

  “You’re going to fight him?” Pele asked. “If so, I should remain with you.”

  “Someone must guide the people. There remains another threat in the night, as well you know. Besides which, your power will grow on the volcano. I can buy you time before I retreat. Nor will anything the boar does to this host truly harm me. But if no one remains in the district, he will track your scent and you won’t have time to reach the lava tubes.”

  Much as she disliked it, Pele could see some logic in Moho’s claims. The akua had already demonstrated the strength to overcome Kamapua‘a once, on Mauna Kea. If he could do so again, maybe Pele could keep everyone else safe.

  “Choose the warriors,” she snapped at Makua. “A few others as …” Sacrifices?

  Damn it all.

  She didn’t even know their exact numbers. Two thousand men, women, and children? Maybe half again as many, rushing through the jungle in a half-mad march toward a rumbling volcano, as if it would protect them.

  Pele’s mind kept coming back to Moho’s words. That someone, a long time back, had called up whatever was inside Kamapua‘a. Had called it—and others like it. Progenitors of the shifter kupua. In their arrogance, the ancients had unleashed something terrible into the world. Something that had survived the Deluge, the passing of ages, and everything else.

  That arrogance would cost them all now.r />
  And as the sun began to set, already, Pele felt a hostile presence saturating the evening.

  6

  Days Gone

  Pele’s surfboard glided across the waves in a graceful curve. Back on the shore, villagers cheered, though she knew none of them actually watched her. Not with Namaka up ahead of her, showing off, dancing over waves most wouldn’t even attempt like they were nothing.

  Trying to keep the smile on her face, Pele glided in toward the shore ahead of Namaka. They’d been at this for hours and, frankly, she was hungry enough to eat a whole shark. On the beach, she handed the board off to a slave and stooped to get her clothes. By the time she had her pa‘u tied around her waist, Namaka had joined her, bringing a throng with her.

  The people dared not touch their princess, of course, but they flocked as close as they could without risking accidental contact, clapping their hands, and shouting their appreciation.

  Pele struggled to keep the smile on her face as the public lauded her big sister. Namaka was thirteen, two years older than Pele, and already had begun to develop the first marks of womanhood. Mother had once claimed Pele would be the more beautiful of her daughters, but everyone seemed to love Namaka more.

  Her sister threw an arm around Pele’s shoulder and guided her up to the palace, driving back the throng with a stern look. “You did well.”

  How patronizing Namaka could be. Pele would have shrugged her arm off, except that she honestly suspected Namaka meant it as a compliment. Did well. Just not nearly so well as Namaka could do in her sleep. It was like she was born on the damn waves or something.

  The palace servants scrambled to meet them as they drew near.

  “Bring swordfish,” Namaka commanded them, as if this were some luau and not simply an ordinary evening.

  One of the slaves bowed low. “Your father is here, Princess.”

  Pele and Namaka exchanged a glance.

  While theoretically Mother ruled as the God-Queen of all Uluka‘a, often no one saw her or Father for years at a time. Her kahuna, Kilioe, ran the kingdom in Mother’s name, but mostly just left Pele and Namaka to themselves, other than tutoring.

  “All right,” Namaka said, “take us to him.”

  The servant guided them into a back room in the palace, one used for storage. Pele remembered playing here, years back, hiding from Namaka for hours while the other girl searched. She remembered having to stifle her giggles with her hand to keep from getting discovered. Oh! ‘Aumākua, a rat had run over her toes and she’d yelped, giving away the whole damn game.

  Now, though, her father sat in the dark, sprawled out atop a pile of tapa cloth. Without windows in here, the evening light didn’t really reach the room, yet his eyes had a strange luminosity, as if some inner heat lurked within. In his arms he held a bundle of cloth that smelled of blood and something foul she could not name. Like … rotten fruit, maybe?

  “Father,” Namaka said.

  They saw Kū-Waha-Ilo slightly more often than their mother. Some nights, he’d come in, speak with Kilioe, ask questions Pele could not hear and get answers that would always darken his face. Kilioe had told Pele that their mother Haumea was a kupua heir to the highborn of Old Mu, from before it sank into the sea, and thus a child of the akua. Their father, though, Kilioe had refused to answer many questions about.

  Just that he was ancient, powerful, and not to be trifled with. Clearly a kupua himself, though more than that Kilioe would not say.

  Now, the man leaned forward pushing that wrapped bundle toward the sisters.

  Namaka recoiled. “What in Lua-o-Milu is that?”

  “Your sister, Pu‘u-hele.” Father’s voice was thick and seemed to fill the room, coming from all around rather than just from his throat. “You will raise her and care for her.”

  With Father leaning forward, Pele could see blood had seeped through the tapa wrapping the child. It had soaked the fabric, in fact, and looked ready to drip from the bottom in a foul rain.

  Namaka hesitated, gaping at the bundle in obvious disgust.

  Pele stepped around her sister and gingerly took the child in her arms. The bundle was sticky and a little cold, and Pele found herself compelled to hold it away from her body rather than cradle it close. She eased the tapa away from the child’s face.

  It looked at her.

  She almost dropped it. Would have, had Namaka not suddenly caught her arms.

  The child was oozing blood in tiny rivulets like sweat. Its flesh was unformed, like a fetus, pre-born, and yet somehow alive. Its eyelids remained sealed, yet translucent, revealing wells of darkness behind them. Staring at it, the urge filled her to fling the abomination away from her and run screaming to the nearest fire.

  To hide under a blanket and weep and pray this had been a nightmare.

  “Raise the child.”

  Not trusting herself to speak—fighting not to whimper—Pele clamped her mouth shut and forced her arms to continue holding that thing.

  “Where is Mother?” Namaka demanded.

  Father rose, towering over them, staring down with those heated eyes almost like he imagined eating them. Maybe he did. Rumors in the palace claimed Father and Mother both feasted on man flesh, at times. “Recovering. Hardly a concern of yours. When you are older, you’ll have uses. For now, raise the child.”

  With that, the man stepped around them and slipped, not back into the main house, but rather deeper into the darkness, as if he intended to take the back way out and vanish into the night.

  Pele could no longer suppress the whimper. She tried to shove the bloody bundle at Namaka, but her big sister backed away, raising her hands.

  “Fuck this,” Namaka said, and Pele flinched. Kilioe discouraged that sort of language, but if there was ever a time for it … “How is that thing even alive?”

  Pele’s arms had begun to ache from holding the thing away from her body, but she refused to pull it in close.

  Namaka groaned then grabbed Pele by the shoulder and dragged her outside, away from the houses and into a grove of palm trees. As soon as they were away from the palace, Pele set the bundle down on the sand. And she stared at her arms, sticky and stained with blood, crimson and foul.

  ‘Aumākua! She wanted to wash herself clean immediately.

  “This is Haumea and Kū-Waha-Ilo’s child,” Namaka said, pacing about and casting furtive glances at the bundle. “But it’s a godsdamned monster.”

  “An abomination,” Pele agreed. A sick fear built inside her gut, a hypnotic nightmare that demanded she continue to look on, to watch, knowing it would draw a scream from her. Knowing to see it would forever damn her.

  Bile rising in her throat, Pele dropped to her knees and unwrapped the bundle.

  “What are you doing?” Namaka demanded.

  But Pele had to know. Had to see this thing in all its hideousness. She could not deny it and leave herself to wonder what further horrors lay beneath that tapa. When she cast the cloth aside, the fetus’s chest was also partially translucent, revealing a slowly thumping black heart beyond. Her toes were more like claws, and she had a tail.

  A scaled, writhing tail like a godsdamned lizard.

  “What … the … fuck?” Namaka said.

  Pele could no longer contain the bile and suddenly found herself careening to the side, retching despite her empty stomach. Heaving in pain, giving in to the absolute horror of the abomination laying before her. It was not possible, it was not …

  The fetus laughed. A single throaty, wet cackle, amused at her misery.

  Pele fell over backward, scrambling away on her arse just to put distance between herself and the thing. “Wha …?” she whimpered.

  Namaka threw her arms around Pele and pulled her up. “What? What happened now?”

  “Y-you didn’t hear that?”

  “Hear it cry? Of course I did. I just don’t care. Maybe none of us are quite human, but that is not even close. It’s something spawned from the darkest depths of Pō or beyond. I
don’t know, maybe Father intended this as a test to see how far he could push us.”

  “It’s evil,” Pele said, choking on her own words.

  Namaka nodded, seeming to accept the statement as utter fact. “This is not our sister.”

  “No! No, this is … something for Milu herself.”

  Namaka turned sharply on her. “For Milu? For Milu …”

  “We have to give it to her,” Pele said, not quite believing the words coming out of her own mouth. Still, there was something desperately wrong with this … no, she would not even allow herself to think of it as a child. It was a monster. “We have to sacrifice the thing to the akua.”

  Now her sister backed away, face so grim. She nodded. “Before anyone else in the palace sees this thing … we have to be rid of it. We cannot bring something so tainted, so foul into the village. I don’t even want to think of what might happen if we allowed such a breach of the natural order.”

  No, they could not allow this.

  The moon was high in the sky when they returned to the beach. It glinted off the night waters in the distance as waves lapped at the shore. So peaceful. Indifferent to the murder they intended.

  Except, was it murder to destroy a monster? No. No more than sacrificing someone to the akua was murder. Gods must have their due, after all.

  Pele now held the rancid, bloody babe close to her chest, unable to hold it at arms’ length any longer.

  “The tide is rising,” Namaka said. “Put it in the water and it’ll soon be washed out to sea for Kanaloa and Milu to fight over.”

  Deliberately forcing herself not to look upon the thing’s face again, Pele waded out ankle deep into the sea and laid the babe down in the waters. But hesitated when she meant to withdraw her grip. She glanced over her shoulder at Namaka

  “It’s in the hands of the akua and ‘aumākua,” Namaka said. “Pō will have its due, or return that which it has no desire for.”

  Sucking down a painful breath, Pele scrambled away, back onto the beach beside Namaka.