Flames of Mana

by Matt Larkin

  For a moment you teetered on the edge of eternity, ready to connect with the universe. And in fear, you pulled back.

  Lonomakua’s words rang in her mind. The blood monster stalking ever closer was not her father. The kahuna who never stopped believing in her, never doubted her—he was her father. Blood be damned.

  She was the daughter of Maui.

  She raised her head, staring at the river of lava, just out of reach. There, by its edge, stood Pu‘u-hele. Pele coughed, spat up blood. She wanted to ask how her sister had come here. But she knew—she saw her the same way Milohai had once seen her. Because she teetered on the edge of death, because her soul had begun to pass into Pō. She had slipped into the Sight without even trying.

  Pu‘u-hele reached a hand toward her, palm up, pressing against some invisible barrier. It held her back, but she kept pushing, obvious strain on her face. The air around her hand rippled.

  And then her palm burst forward and clasped Pele’s own. Solid.

  And she knew.

  An ‘aumākua, watching over her kin. Protecting her ‘ohana.

  Against all reason, Pu‘u-hele had chosen Pele. Had come here to protect her.

  Pele screamed in pain as her dead sister pulled her forward, toward the lava.

  Somewhere beyond, the blood monster laughed at her. She didn’t need to hear him. He no longer mattered. Only her real ‘ohana mattered.

  Instead of sending your mana out to control the flame, pull mana from it. Call it into you and direct it to the places that hurt the most. I know you can do this, Pele. Just put your hand in the fire.

  Yes, Father.

  She had failed back then. Had drawn only the tiniest morsel of strength from the flame. Now, weeping with the effort, she stretched a single finger onto the lava river’s surface. It bubbled ever so slightly in response. She was still pouring mana in. Because anger was a force to feed a fire. Lonomakua said drawing energy from it was a matter of opening herself up to it. Of meditative peace.

  She shut her eyes, shut her ears to the mad cackle of the kupua now hovering above her. All fear and pain and loss and doubt was a burden. So, she let it go.

  Everything goes into the flame.

  And she fell, falling through space, falling into the flame. The instinct to back away, to catch herself surged to the surface, and she beat it down. Let herself fall until her very self joined her emotions in the flame. Time ceased.

  In emptiness, her ribs knitted back together. Her cuts sealed. Her swollen kidney receded back to a healthy size.

  She opened her eyes to see the lava had cooled at her touch, transformed into igneous rock for thirty feet in a hemisphere around her. Heat coursed through her, fresh mana, more than she had ever held, ready to burst through her very pores. Indeed, her skin now glowed like it was made of magma itself. And she stood, facing Kū-Waha-Ilo.

  The blood kupua faltered, mouth agape. The expression of shock made all the more poignant for she knew his face had not borne such a look in an age. Maybe not even when he had fought Maui himself.

  “Wh-what did you …?”

  Pele didn’t bother to answer. She did not owe this creature answers. She owed him nothing. He was not her ‘ohana. Had never been. Even as her strength returned, her vision of Pu‘u-hele faded. But she was there, smiling at her, beyond the Veil, and Pele would need but embrace the Sight to see her. Maybe she would always be there, watching over her. And that was a comfort.

  Arms wide, Pele advanced on Kū-Waha-Ilo and he, ancient kupua, grandson of great Toona, fell back a step.

  “You are so obsessed with Maui and his great feat of felling a dragon,” Kū-Waha-Ilo said. “You never asked what it cost him.” Kū-Waha-Ilo dropped to all fours, arching his back. His neck popped and snapped, elongating even as his eyes narrowed into slits.

  Writhing and slithering, he transformed in the space of a few heartbeats from a man into a horned monitor lizard almost twenty feet in length.

  Kū-Waha-Ilo reared back on his hind legs and roared, the sound bombarding off the cavern like the clap of a volcano, driving Pele backward. Her chest seized up in primal fear, a deeply ingrained response to encountering such a predator. The fires on her hands winked out and she stumbled away, even as Kū-Waha-Ilo passed through steam and circled round her like a shark, his form reduced to shadows by clouds of toxic vapor. The mo‘o’s anger seeped into the air and had the cavern closing in around her.

  He was anger.

  It permeated his being.

  It consumed him, as it had so often consumed her.

  But now, thanks to a real ‘ohana, perhaps she could use rage without becoming rage. Perhaps she could leave fear behind.

  The dragon lunged at her, snapping jaws big enough to bite her in half.

  Pele flung herself to the side, gasping, coming up in a roll. With one hand she reached out to the lava fall, directing the entire remainder of the river. She pulled it into a circle, a curtain of swirling, dripping lava enclosing her and the demon in a ring of fire. There would be no retreat.

  She rose and took another step toward him.

  The dragon glanced about himself, casting its incandescent gaze one way and another, seeking some escape from her power. She fancied she could see it in his eyes. The knowledge that, even if he killed her, he would still perish in the ring of flame.

  That, despite his millennia of life, he would fall now. He would lose to his own spawn.

  His form broke apart, becoming flying blood. It scattered around the ring, seeking an exit before finally reforming behind her. Near the lava river.

  Slowly, she began to draw her arms in toward her body, closing her fingers into a fist. As she did so, the lava curtain answered her call, constricting into smaller and smaller circles until it had closed the two of them in a dome no more than thirty feet across. It took an enormous amount of mana, more than she had ever burned, to exercise such control and power at the same time. Thanks to Pu‘u-hele and Lonomakua, she had that mana.

  Drops of lava fell, hissing on the ground, dangerously close to the overgrown lizard. Kū-Waha-Ilo shrank, resuming his human form in an effort to avoid getting scalded. “You have grown powerful, Daughter. I-I’m proud.”

  “Don’t be. It had nothing to do with you.”

  He tried to back away and found the lava river at his heels. “I am your father.”

  “No.” Pele shook her head. “I have a father. And he is nothing like you.”

  He opened his mouth. Maybe to protest. She didn’t care what else he had to say.

  With a scream of wordless rage, she reached into the river and fed it all her anger and pain. It erupted in a column sixty feet tall before crashing down upon Kū-Waha-Ilo. He broke apart, turning to blood to try to flee, but there was nowhere to go. Blood, flesh, or whatever else he was, a hundred tons of molten rock buried him. Pele called forward the lava curtain she had built, let it pass through her, and piled it upon the dragon’s resting place.

  When she at last turned away, Namaka sat on her knees, panting, surrounded by the bodies of many dead bird-men and bird-women. She, Kamapua‘a, Upoho, and Kana, all stared at Pele.

  Pele smiled.

  And then, exhaustion hit her like a kai e‘e, and Pele toppled to the ground.

  When she managed to open her eyes, the wereboar was standing over her.

  He cleared his throat. “I just want you to know that was shitting amazing. Also. I love you.”

  Pele groaned. He just would not quit. Whether his affections were lust, love, or perhaps yet another joke didn’t really matter.

  Finally, she rolled to her feet. No sign of Namaka or Kana or Upoho, just the damn wereboar and the corpses of too many bird creatures. Where had they come from and why had they served Kū-Waha-Ilo? Had he … spawned them as well? The thought disgusted her and, by some instinct she could not name, she directed fires to cremate each of the corpses.

  “You want to say a prayer?” Kama asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m
not a kahuna.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Where is the Sea Queen?”

  Kama frowned, but pointed to a spot near to the lava falls. Pele walked the path there, finally spotting Namaka staring at something behind the fall. A small gap separated the lava from the rocks behind it, and now that she had drawn close, she could see obsidian stairs descending behind it. Namaka, obviously, seemed reluctant to try to edge her way back there. Perhaps the monster managed to get down there by assuming blood form.

  Now that she’d had the chance to search the cavern, she spotted other tunnels leading in here as well. One day, she’d have to come back and explore, find a way to get here without passing through the menehune village.

  When she drew near, she swept the lava apart, forming a doorway. Namaka glanced at her before descending the stairs, followed by Kana and Upoho. Pele trailed behind them, letting the lava drop back into place before the amorous wereboar could follow her.

  “Shit!” he shouted from the other side.

  She smirked and lit a torch in her hand so they could see. The others waited on her light, and they descended together, none daring to speak. There had to be at least fifty stairs, and by the time they reached the bottom, fresh fatigue had set in. Her battle with the monster had drained her. Her sister seemed equally spent.

  The stairs opened into a circular chamber no more than twenty feet around. At its center, a bowl-shaped opening was cut into the floor, a well no bigger than a gourd. A well filled with water.

  “That’s all there is?” Kana asked.

  “There’s strong mana in the Water,” Namaka said, then knelt beside it. Her face was drawn tight, teeth worrying her lips. “This is … enough for five people. No more, I think.”

  Pele frowned. Kū-Waha-Ilo had said there wasn’t enough to share with the rest of the island. He had not been exaggerating. It must refill itself eventually—it had sustained that monster for five thousand years. But there would never be enough to go around. “How do you know that?”

  “I have a thing with water.” Namaka ground her teeth, shaking her head. The Sea Queen was actually trembling.

  Enough for Hi‘iaka, though, and Nihei.

  Kana knelt and filled his gourd. After they rose, Pele took her own gourd and filled the rest of the Waters in it.

  The time had come for them all to flee the Place of Darkness.

  38

  With a gourd carrying the precious Waters of Life, Kana had left for Kaua‘i, intent to save his brother, then rescue his mother. Namaka wished him all the luck in the Worldsea. Maybe it would save the young man. She hoped that, thanks to his brother’s love, Nihei would have a life now.

  Namaka and Pele could not afford to go with Kana. Not with Hi‘iaka hanging so precariously near to the edge of Pō.

  No. No, they made for Puna, Pele leading the way, with Upoho and Kamapua‘a in tow. Namaka fell in step behind her younger sister, staring at the woman’s back and unable, no matter how many hours passed, to quite reconcile the events of the recent past with the children they’d been, with who they’d become when they murdered Pu‘u-hele.

  It was a name Namaka had avoided even thinking of for so very, very long. A name that bore with it the greatest shame of her life and the origins of the gulf that had grown between her and Pele. There was no forgiveness for such things, of course. No redemption possible for some violations of the bonds of ‘ohana.

  There was only moving forward.

  That, and the wonder, deep in her gut … had part of her desire to kill Pele come from wanting to remove one privy to her shameful past? Had some wretched portion of her soul allowed herself to imagine that if no one was left alive who knew of her crime, it would no longer exist?

  In the middle of the jungle, though, Pele faltered, then turned back to Namaka, eyes looking heavily lidded. “There are things we should discuss, I think.”

  Yes.

  Yes, there surely were.

  “After,” Namaka said. “After Hi‘iaka. We can waste no time now.”

  Lonomakua—Maui—was there, lifting Hi‘iaka’s head while Pele poured the Waters over their sister’s cold lips. Namaka still had no idea how to feel about the man. Rather, it seemed easier to push him from her mind entirely.

  Nothing happened. Hi‘iaka lay still, the Waters running over her mouth until Namaka groaned. All of this could not have been for nothing. All of this …

  Then Hi‘iaka spasmed, gurgling. Abruptly, she drew a faint, shuddering breath.

  Her heart beating once more.

  Pele let out an inexplicable wail and threw her head upon Hi‘iaka’s chest, sobbing softly. Namaka couldn’t recall seeing that from her sister in … an age.

  Unable to put words to the roiling in her gut—even Nyi Rara could not say she had seen someone come back from Pō—Namaka laid a hand on each of her sisters’ heads.

  Behind her, Kapo whispered something under her breath, some prayer or thanks to the ‘aumākua, Namaka didn’t know.

  How many miles, years, and deaths had separated them, the four sisters? Five sisters. How much pain and betrayal and loss?

  It was like a great tide had swept into Uluka’a and seized her, seized them all and bore them here. And that tide had cost so very, very much.

  When it was clear Hi‘iaka would live—though she remained unconscious—Pele had asked everyone else to leave, save Namaka and Kapo. Just the sisters, sitting around the light of a single flickering candle, Pele never taking her hand from Hi‘iaka’s shoulder as the girl twisted in feverish dreams.

  Given the nature of Pō, given what Namaka knew of what darkness lay behind the Veil of light, Namaka suspected Hi‘iaka’s dreams would remain haunted a great many years, maybe all her life.

  Pele spoke first, broke the silence when she announced—as if Namaka had not already surmised, much less seen for herself—that their father was a mo‘o. That all of them were bred for some grand purpose she did not fathom, but that Maui had come after Namaka’s power had shown itself. It had been too late for him to do anything for her, but he’d come and convinced Haumea to let him train Pele without ever revealing himself to Kū-Waha-Ilo.

  Maui had killed Toona, grandfather of Kū-Waha-Ilo, though why Toona had attacked Maui’s family, Pele admitted to not knowing.

  “Toona was the father of Mo‘oinanea,” Namaka said. “Who was the first true mo‘o, transformed by Kanaloa using a Chintamani stone, changed from a taniwha into something that could take human form and breed with humans. Milolii was one of her descendants.”

  “Perhaps one of Kū-Waha-Ilo’s too,” Pele added.

  Namaka winced at the thought her old nurse maid, her beloved dragon, had perhaps been her half-sister. Yes, Kū-Waha-Ilo had sired other children, so it was possible. It would also explain why he’d set Milolii to watch over Namaka. But that would mean … the dragon she had so loved had served at his behest. At Kanaloa’s behest.

  “The bloodlines of Old Mu had great and terrible power,” Kapo said. “Mother was of those lines.”

  Namaka nodded grimly. “And Kanaloa deliberately bred Haumea and Kū-Waha-Ilo to produce us. The god-king of the he‘e may have allied himself with Hiyoya for now, but I have every reason to believe he intends to claim the entire Worldsea and rule this world as his own mother rules Avaiki. If I fail to stop him, I think not even land will remain free from the grasp of his arms.”

  Pele paled in the firelight, leaning back. “You mean … we were to have been their weapons. When Kū-Waha-Ilo said he had plans for us, he meant we would have ruled as he and mother did, spreading Kanaloa’s influence.”

  Namaka inclined her head. “But Mu disrupted those plans when they claimed me as a mer host, and Lonomakua had already swayed you away from our parents.”

  Pele abruptly looked to Kapo, who frowned and rose, shaking her head. “My own mentor is dead now, and I have to attend to that.”

  “What did Mother tell you?” Pele demanded.

  Kapo shook her head
again.

  “What did she say?” Pele repeated.

  But their sister ducked out of the room and into the night.

  “Can we trust her?” Pele asked, now looking to Namaka.

  Who knew? Namaka wasn’t sure she ought to trust Pele save that she alone was raised by one known to be hostile to Kanaloa.

  “I don’t have all the answers yet. I have to go back to Mu, though. I have to stop the he‘e.”

  Pele frowned. “My people are still beset by Poli‘ahu.”

  Namaka rose. “I suppose we both have more battles ahead, then.”

  “I suppose we do.”

  Part of her wanted to say more, to find some warmth for her sister. But the words wouldn’t come. Not yet, maybe never.

  In the moonlight, Namaka stared out over the waves. Out there, Mu waited for her. Once she descended into the depths, everything would change. She’d find herself drawn into war once again.

  The pressing nature of Hi‘iaka’s need had allowed Namaka to delay that inevitable outcome a little, offering an almost welcome reprieve. Yes, she feared Kanaloa and what war with the he‘e god-king would cost her and the Muians. She couldn’t even say which half of her soul the fear came from. Both, perhaps.

  A deep and primal terror not so unlike that she’d felt on witnessing the awful grandeur of the Elder Deep itself. But unlike then, against Kanaloa she needed to fight. She needed to win.

  Namaka heard the footfalls in the sand, but didn’t turn. Not until Hi‘iaka spoke.

  “You’re leaving again.”

  Now she faced her littlest sister. “I have to.”

  “You and Pele finally solved things. Can’t we all stay together now?”

  ‘Aumākua! Namaka wasn’t sure whether she’d rather laugh or cry at the girl’s naivety. The words threatened to stick in her throat, thick and painful. “That will never happen, Hi‘iaka. Pele and I didn’t solve things. We managed to avoid killing each other because of a common goal. But nothing changes the past. Our mistakes circle round us like sharks, ever drawn to the blood. We may find reprieve, but never resolution. It is possible for something to break into so many pieces you can never repair it.”