Flames of Mana

by Matt Larkin

  The girl kicked up sand. “I don’t want to have to choose between you and Pele.”

  Namaka paced to her side, grabbed her cheeks and kissed her forehead. “You don’t have to choose, Hi‘iaka. The choice is made for you. My world now lies beneath the Muian Sea. Yours remains here on land. Stay with Pele, learn what you can, but become your own woman. A better woman than any of your sisters have been.”

  “I’m supposed to train with Kapo now.”

  Namaka ran her tongue over her teeth. Somehow, that knowledge had made her shark teeth begin to descend. Should it bother her, Hi‘iaka going away with Kapo? Wasn’t Kapo more stable than Pele? Kapo, however, had spent far more time with Mother than Namaka or Pele.

  And how much was Mother a part of Kū-Waha-Ilo’s schemes? Deeply, Namaka suspected. But she knew nothing for certain. Not yet.

  “Be careful,” Namaka said. “Keep your eyes open and make your own judgment about all things. None of your big sisters are perfect people, Hi‘iaka. What I said before, about being better than your sisters—that applies to Kapo, too.”

  Hi‘iaka kissed her cheek. “Aloha.”

  Namaka pushed down a tremble. How tempting, to turn from her duty to Mu and remain here, in the arms of her human ‘ohana. But it was impossible. “Whatever happens, I love you, little one.”

  She needed to rejoin Ake and his forces. They too waited for her, waited to reclaim their home. Mu had been taken by Kanaloa. The he‘e god-king was immeasurably ancient and powerful. And yet, Pele had just shown her that even such a being could be defeated.

  They had beaten his servant.

  There was a way to win.

  And Namaka was going to find it.

  39

  After Namaka left, Pele slipped into the palace to find Naia still sitting beside her brother. Naia looked up at her approach. Her brother did not. Milohai twisted and turned in a sweat that stank of rot. In fact, the whole room smelled of sour urine. Naia gasped at her approach, hands to her face.

  “The monster is dead,” Pele whispered to the woman, who nodded, eyes lit with relief.

  Lonomakua had followed her inside, and Pele passed him the gourd holding the Waters of Life. He stared at it a brief moment, perhaps basking in the mana it held, before pouring a long swallow down Milohai’s throat. At first, nothing happened. And then, slowly, the boy’s moaning and thrashing abated.

  Lonomakua placed the back of his hand on the boy’s head, then nodded. “His fever broke.”

  Pele released a pent-up breath. The Waters worked.

  They had saved Hi‘iaka and now Milohai.

  Of course, they worked. They’d kept that thing alive far beyond its years. But even with that knowledge, some part of her had doubted such a miracle could exist. Outside, the sun was shining, the waves were lapping upon the shore, and a thick ring of clouds encircled the mountains. Why shouldn’t there be miracles?

  And her sister had been saved, more thoroughly than she had even imagined. Pu‘u-hele had become an ‘aumakua. A guardian against the forces of Pō. At night, outside, Pele would embrace the Sight and perhaps catch a glimpse of an owl watching over this place.

  “This is all there was?” Lonomakua asked. When she nodded, he glanced outside through the open door. “We can help maybe one more person with this.”

  “Then you take it.”

  “I’m not injured.”

  With a last warm glance at Naia and Milohai, she drew Lonomakua away from them. “I don’t know how you’ve lived so long already, even for a kupua. But I wouldn’t lose you. Take the Waters.” The thought of him being gone was like a blow to her gut. She would not allow that to happen.

  “You’ve grown so much. I’m proud of you.” The words felt like sunshine on her face. “Keep the Waters. Someone else may fall. I have to move on to other villages, help them.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “You no longer need me to teach you, Pele. I can see it in your eyes. You’ve learned all you need to know. You have no more need for a guardian or tutor. Any more lessons are the ones you have to teach yourself.”

  She swallowed. “Maybe. But I still need my father.”

  “Your …? Pele, I …”

  She threw her arms around him before he could say anything else. “You’re right. I learned a lot of things. I learned some ‘ohana bonds run deeper than blood, and that you have to hold on to the people who really matter.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” The man’s face seemed to soften, like he wrestled with some emotion he struggled to contain.

  He had lost his children. Maybe that was why he had been so good to her.

  “You have ‘ohana, too,” she said.

  After a moment, he pulled away, shaking his head, but smiling wistfully. “So where does the wereboar out there fall in?”

  She shrugged. “Family pet?”

  He chuckled and mussed her hair like she was a child.

  Allowing it, she slipped back outside and turned her gaze back to the mountains. The menehune tunnels ran throughout this island, connecting to the Place of Darkness. What other secrets might those tunnels hold? A way to save more of her people, perhaps?

  But she could afford no time to deal with such things now. Not with Poli‘ahu still out there. She would have to deal with the Snow Queen now, and then there was still the threat Namaka feared from the he‘e and Kanaloa.

  Ever too many fires to tend.

  Beyond the palace wall, Kamapua‘a stood, arms over his chest, watching her but hardly seeming to see. Yes, she supposed he was one more. Should she kill him? Accept him?

  Oh, how she loathed the Boar God inside of the pig. But the pig himself, while an idiot, had some redeeming qualities. She supposed.

  Pele stalked over to him and leaned her elbows on the wall, staring at the wereboar. “I suppose we must talk.”

  He sniffed. “Mostly I like talking. I got a shitting amazing voice and lots of insights and shit. Just like I had one today.”

  “An insight?”

  “Uh, huh. See … I’m shit.”

  Her first instinct was to agree, but then, who was she to judge him? Had she not done worse than Kamapua‘a, and without the excuse of having an akua possessing his body and taking actions against his will?

  In spite of herself, she had to smile at him. “Be better, then.”

  The big man thumped a hand down beside hers, not quite touching her fingers, looking almost afraid. “It keeps coming out of me. More and more of it, until there won’t be a smudge left of Kama. Just the Boar God. Seen like that, maybe she was right to do whatever she did to me.”

  “Who did what now?”

  “Poli‘ahu. She uh … seems to have laid a curse on me. It’s weakening my body. Maybe I can even send the Boar God back to Pō when I go. Dunno. But I can’t be here. Can’t risk it getting into anyone else I care about.”

  Pele frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “Leaving. Leaving Puna, Vai‘i, maybe all Sawaiki. I don’t belong here anymore. Gotta get as far away from people as inhumanly possible.”

  Pele shut her eyes and blew out a slow breath. If she was not fit to judge him, neither was she fit to absolve him of his burdens. Maybe … he was right. He was a danger to her and to Puna and to every other person on Sawaiki.

  She wanted to ask where he would go, but when she opened her eyes, he’d already turned away and shambled down toward the beach. And she could not make herself open her mouth to say anything to him.

  Maybe too much had passed between them for words to ever suffice.

  But if Poli‘ahu had cursed her husband, that gave Pele one more reason to destroy the Snow Queen. She had made it all too obvious that Vai‘i had no room for two kupua queens.

  Let Namaka claim the seas.

  This island would belong the Pele.

  Epilogue

  Locals already called this place the Cave of the Eel, perhaps having mistaken the taniwha for such a r
ay-finned fish, albeit one of immense size. The only approach was from the sea, so Maui paddled his canoe into the brine-saturated den, his gaze darting about the shadows, seeking his prey.

  The whole way between islands, his gut had twisted, his mind had roiled, overcome with a singular thought. Not again. Another family lost, as if the Fates tested his resolve, wondered how far they could push his limits before madness swept over him like a breaking kai e‘e.

  Perhaps, even, they thought madness might better suit their beguiling ends.

  Ah, but the whims of fate remained ever mercurial and inexorable, so much so, Maui found himself occasionally tempted to finally give in to the darkness and let it claim its due. How much, truly, should a man endure?

  Oh, even as the gentle slap of oar on water echoed off the cavern, he knew vengeance would prove a bitter balm for wounds that would not heal given a hundred lifetimes. But what else was he to do? Simply let pass this atrocity?

  A person upon whom such extraordinary violence is visited finds themselves bereft of any option save to embrace that violence and return it in kind.

  Or perhaps he somehow still hoped to find a reason.

  At the back of the cave, his canoe knocked up against a stone ledge, one that receded into shadows. The flames had told him Toona would be here, though, so he clambered up onto the shelf and made his way deeper, until at last the taniwha—in blasphemous human form—emerged, eyes gleaming incandescent, breath foul enough to pollute the air even from twenty feet back.

  The stench was hardly surprising. How, after all, could a creature born of the Eitr not seethe with foulness?

  But until seeing it with his own eyes, he’d almost wanted to deny the possibility that this abomination could take such a shape, like his mo‘o descendants. Still, any other taniwha was but a savage beast, possessed little wit and no capacity for speech, little more than terrible animals.

  The others could not have answered the all-consuming question.

  “Why?” he demanded.

  Toona snarled, a thick sound that filled the air with a weight, as though the cavern tried to close in upon him, though Maui thought it more likely the dragon’s ire weakened the Veil. “Why …?” Its voice reverberated like a mighty drum, though its mouth seemed ill-suited to forming words.

  “Why go after my family?” Maui said.

  Toona growled again. “Why. Go. After. Mine? You brought … my children … even my firstborn here, Firebringer. To what end?”

  Maui frowned. Yes, he had brought Mo‘oinanea and many of her brood here, across the Worldsea to this new home. His intention had never been to antagonize Toona with it, though, he supposed it was a move meant to partially thwart Toona’s creator.

  “You are bothered by seeing your own children here?”

  The dragon bared his teeth. “I am bothered. By having them … manipulated. The master knows … what you are.”

  Maui didn’t bother to dispute that. He had brought the mo‘o to Sawaiki, yes, in the hopes of maintaining a peaceful relation with Kanaloa’s creations. In the hopes of creating a symbiotic bond between them and the kāhuna pyromancers he had trained. In the hopes of avoiding war with these creatures that might have someday come if they were left unattended.

  And … And the fires showed him a great many things yet to pass. They showed women who would come here, sisters, who would need the mo‘o here. One who would meet Mo‘oinanea and maybe change everything.

  In the end, he worked to free Kanaloa’s weapons from his arms.

  He supposed that answered it, then. Kanaloa, though no doubt unaware what Maui intended, knew Maui would use his prescience to interfere with any attempt Kanaloa made to seize control of the Mortal Realm. Because of Maui, his family were dead again.

  Perhaps Kanaloa had Toona provoke him, intending to create this very confrontation, intending to have the dragon slay him and remove him from the board. If so, the he‘e god-king had miscalculated.

  Maui glowered. “I’m going to kill you. And one day, I will watch even your master fail.”

  The dragon’s eyes flared.

  Author’s Note

  Perhaps the most popular and pervasive of all Polynesian characters is the demigod Maui. While the stories vary throughout the different cultures and islands, someone named Maui (or something very similar) remains a dominant figure. A culture hero, a trickster, and a benefactor to mankind—even if one sometimes given to selfish motives and violence.

  Maui is traditionally connected to a woman named Hina. Sometimes she is his mother and sometimes, as I took here, she is his wife. As with Maui himself, Hina’s exact role, exploits, and tales vary in the telling. The whole thing becomes further complicated because numerous figures in Polynesian myth bear the name Hina. In this series, I explain this with the assumption Maui’s wife became famous for her beauty and wisdom, and thus others were named after her.

  Like so much of the source material, differing or conflicting mo‘olelo are considered a source of strength in Polynesian culture, not a problem. For the sake of a novel, though, I had to establish a real “truth.” One I built using bits and pieces of tales from New Zealand to Hawai‘i and everywhere in between.

  Anyone familiar with my other work in the Eschaton Cycle will also see some clear connections between Maui and a certain other figure. The parallels between various trickster heroes in myth are often striking, though I hesitate to talk about the subject too much for the benefit of those who haven’t yet read the other series.

  This particular book also makes use of a more obscure myth, that of Pu‘u-hele (the traveling hill). In short, Pele and her sister (possibly Hi‘iaka, though here I make it Namaka) receive another sister, one born as a bloody fetus. Deciding it’s a monster, they throw the child into the ocean and she eventually comes to Kaupo (on Maui), dies and becomes the hill Kauiki (and a ghost).

  Obviously, I heavily adapted this tale to give more weight to the actions Pele and her sister took.

  While the first book places extra emphasis on Namaka, this one allowed me to delve a little more deeper in Pele (probably the most popular full deity in Hawaiian myth). The whole family of gods remains pretty morally ambiguous, which made these sisters ideal for exploring the themes here.

  Finally, the story of Kana seeking the Waters of Life to revive Niheu does appear in myth, as does Namaka helping Aukele seek the Waters. Having Pele and Namaka seeking it for Hi‘iaka is mostly my own invention.

  I hope this second book in Heirs of Mana has entertained.

  Special thanks to the artists for my beautiful cover, to my editor Regina, to my wife and daughter, and to my Arch Skalds: Al, Dale, Rachel, Bill, Jackie, Graham, and Dawn for feedback.

  Thank you for reading,

  Matt Larkin

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  FLAMES OF MANA

  Heirs of Mana Book 2

  MATT LARKIN

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2019 MATT LARKIN

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Published by Incandescent Phoenix Books

  mattlarkinbooks.com