Liquid Fire

by Anthony Francis

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I’m not casting a fucking enslavement spell.”

  “You won’t have to,” Yolanda said flatly. “When the spirit of the dragon tries to pass the upper focus of the infinity lens, it will become trapped, charging up the Dragon’s Noose. Jewel will take your place in the circuit, and when Pele hatches, the Noose will bind its will to hers—”

  A voice whispered against my skin, oddly distant, oddly muffled, but clear enough in source and intention that I was now certain that it wasn’t me talking to myself, nor was it coming from the Dragon off my back. Something alien spoke to me . . . through my new tattoo.

  Don’t let them make a slave of me!

  I scowled. All right then . . . I’ll do my best.

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this, Jewel,” I said. “No matter how much you pulled the wool over my eyes, I watched you deal with the people around you. I know how much you care. I can’t believe you’d enslave a dragon just so you can spin fire—”

  “You don’t know me at all,” Jewel said. “To hell with the liquid fire. Sure, we’ll take it from her maw once we’ve tamed her. But we have to tame her, because if she hatches freely, she’ll destroy our world. If we can seize control of her, though, she’ll destroy what we want.”

  My mouth fell open.

  “Do what?” I said. “You want to use a Hadean Dragon . . . as a weapon?”

  “Why not?” Jewel asked, extending her hand, encompassing both the cauldron and the caldera. “The Americans cracked the atom to make a weapon, even tested it practically on our doorstep. Why can’t the Hawai`ians crack the dragon’s egg to do the same thing?”

  “Why do you need a weapon?” I said. “The atom bombs are on your side—”

  “On America’s side,” Jewel said, eyes flashing. “Our conquerors.”

  I set my mouth. Almost from the beginning, Jewel had described herself as a Hawaiian native, as an activist, as politically active—and I’d read enough on it to understand the issues that mattered to her, or so I thought. But I never realized how far she wanted to take it.

  “You’re not a Hawaiian nativist,” I said. “You’re a Hawaiian separatist!”

  “Not originally,” Jewel said. “But the more people that come here, the further we natives get squeezed out. But it’s not just the rich and the powerful that are squeezing us out—it’s your whole country, taking our land for granted as if it was its very own.

  “We tried to work with the system, Dakota, we tried. Tried to create reservations for Hawai`ian sacred land. Flawed as they are, they at least would have preserved some buffer for the old ways. But the thanks we got for working within the system—was that!”

  And she pointed over my shoulder. Puzzled, I followed her gaze. Far out, atop a distant ridge, were the twinkling lights of a construction site, reflecting off a half-finished dome. I’d seen the lights earlier from the safe house—good, we hadn’t gone far.

  Something tickled the back of my neck. My eye caught a shimmer of movement, passing behind the dome. Without even seeing it clearly, I knew it was something I’d expected all along, and quickly, I looked away, staring at Jewel, hoping none of the others had seen it yet.

  Then I looked back, as something tickled the back of my mind. Suddenly, I realized what the dome was. I’d seen it flying in. Jewel had mentioned it. I’d read about it in Scientific American. But I still couldn’t quite put two and two together.

  “You’re upset . . . about a telescope?” I said.

  “It’s on sacred ground,” Jewel said. “They call it Science City, and it’s on sacred ground. They’re burrowing hundreds of feet into our sacred rock to put up a . . . a temple to the sun, desecrating our lands, which they’ve already shit on for decades—”

  “You’re upset,” I repeated, “about the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope.”

  “Frost knows what it is,” Yolanda said, staring at me.

  “Of course I know what it is!” I roared. “My girlfriend is a Hawaiian political activist and I looked up what that meant because you’re supposed to understand what your partner is into! What flabbergasts me is that you think it is worth going to war over a telescope!”

  “That’s just a target of opportunity,” Jewel said. “Pele is hatching. As much as we love her, as much as we practically worship her, we cannot let that happen. The devastation would be awesome. We must kill her . . . or tame her. And if we’ve tamed her—”

  “You’ll make her go to war,” I said, “from which the devastation would be awesome—”

  “We aren’t out to hurt anyone,” Jewel said. “We just want to cleanse our land—”

  “Oh, great,” I said. “Whatever happened to a spell turning back upon its owner?”

  “Karmic redress!” she said. “They destroyed our heiau, so we’ll destroy their temple—”

  “And no one will die in that incendiary outrage?” I asked.

  “We are trying,” she said, “to defend Hawai`i—”

  “What, from a telescope?” I said. “Get real—”

  “You think you know everything,” Jewel said. “This place is sacred to us—”

  “To the people who lived and died here centuries ago,” I said. “Not you—”

  One of the fireweavers punched me in the gut. I doubled over, wheezing for effect. I’d needed to lurch forward anyway, and had tightened my abs and started mouthing off, figuring my flapper would win me some blow or cuff or shove that would give me a little cover.

  “Enough—remember kānāwai māmalahoe,” Jewel said, outstretched finger warning both me and her fellow weavers. “This land is ours. It’s sacred. And it’s being desecrated. And it isn’t the first time that our land has been ruined by American scientists.

  “You heard Philip—they marched us off Mokumanamana, our sacred island, at gunpoint! It took three years in Federal court to get our land back. Three years! And when we finally did, we found that so-called scientists from Fish and Wildlife had razed the sacred heiau we’d spent a decade rebuilding because they thought it was vandalism by trespassers!

  “The Americans, they’ve always been the same. They came here and took our land like they owned it. They tortured our people and turned them into trained monkeys in their tourist traps. They even pretended to convert our god Pele to their own joke religion by dropping rocks upon her. I quit Christianity after I learned what the missionaries did, and—”

  She broke off, clenching her fists, savoring some feeling of rage.

  “The spell will work. Pele will hatch, and the Noose of Will will tighten around her throat as she rises from the flames. Liquid fire from her egg will nourish our firespinning, and living fire from her maw will cleanse our sacred lands. Together, we will retake Maui, Pele, and her people. Under her, at last, the people of Hawai`i will again be free—”

  “You know, Jewel,” I said, mouth quirking into a smile, “I believe you’re monologuing.”

  Jewel fell silent, sighed, shook her head. “Only you, Dakota, could make light of this—”

  “But wait, there’s more,” I said, grinning. “If you’re the villain, then I’m the hero, and it’s in my contract to say, ‘but wait, you’ve forgotten something.’ ”

  Jewel turned to me, head cocked, hands on her hips. “All right, I’ll bite. What have I forgotten, Dakota Frost?”

  ———

  “You’ve forgotten, Jewel Grace,” I said, pulling my hands free, “that I’m the most flexible person you’ve ever met.”

  57. Rumble on Pu’u o Maui

  I rammed my elbows into the chins of the twin guards on either side with solid CRACKs. I wasn’t quite free of the karada when I started—my arms were still pulled back behind me—but I had managed to work a few thorns of my vines through the liquid latex, and by the time I completed my motion,
the whole array of ropes fell away from me like hemp confetti.

  Then I went to the closed universe of the Taido form untai no hokei.

  My hands shot out to either side, bladed fingertips nailing the twins in their throats before they recovered. As the guard in front of me whirled to act, I kicked up once, twice, first one connecting with his nuts, the second one with his chin as he hunched over. He toppled back.

  On instinct, I spun like a top, a move called sentai—shielding my face with one hand, then firing off the opposite punch into the breastbone of a chunky guard behind me. I winced as volcanic cinder ground into my knee—but something crunched in his chest, and he fell.

  I whirled back with another sentai, just as the front guard was recovering, lifting my arm just enough so that my wild punch hit his chin. His teeth clicked shut, a bit of blood splattered, and his head flopped back. As he sagged forward, I caught him with both hands.

  My eyes went wide—I’d thrust my hands into the air a hundred times in this part of untai, but never actually caught anything but air. The form worked. Holy shit. The form had worked. Of course, I’d made a complete salsa of it, using its movements in the “wrong” order—the natural order for the situation I’d been in—that I was still in. Letting my breath out very slowly, I twisted to the side, letting the guard fall to the bloody gravel on my left, my body relaxing into an attack posture as I faced the twin who had held my left arm.

  He was staggering up, hand at his throat, recovering. Then his eyes flicked behind me—and I threw both hands to the ground and shot one leg back up in an ebigeri “shrimp” kick. My foot slammed into the twin running up behind me, pain spiked my hands as they ground into the gravel—and I felt ribs break beneath my heel with an ugly CRACK.

  I popped back up to find the other twin in front of me, his fist flying at my face. Without thought, I backflipped away from the punch, just like Paj had drilled us. My feet connected with his chin, I caught myself, turning the failed backflip into an awkward cartwheel—and whacked the recovering twin in the head, who flopped back to earth in a rattle of volcanic cinder.

  I landed and whirled to face the remaining twin. He froze, blood streaming from his nose, his hands held up in a sloppy boxing posture. I crouched in the stance my instructors called chudan, my legs splayed low and wide, my bleeding hands held forward like blades.

  He ran.

  “What the hell!” Jewel cried, standing by the cauldron. Molokii was moving toward me, fists raised, but Jewel jumped forward, hit him on the shoulder, and gestured frantically. He jerked and ran off toward a cache of gear. “Are we not fireweavers? Stop her!”

  I turned to follow him, but a blast of fire slammed into my back, winding me and nearly knocking me off my feet. I whirled to face this new attack, falling into a low stance called jodan, legs coiled like a spring, front fist forward, back hand shot back up behind me.

  Zi and Yolanda faced me, poi whirling around them in shimmering arcs, creating magic bubbles of flames around them. On the left, Yolanda brought her poi together, creating a momentary impression of a flower; then the flower jetted forth a stream of flame.

  Heat flashed against my face and I flinched back—but the magic-infused latex was as much a barrier to her magic as it was mine. The fire roiled off me, eerily repelled by the coating on my body, dissipating into colorful streamers of magic, like a kaleidoscope to my new eyes.

  “Whoops,” I said, as they hesitated. “Hadn’t thought that through, had you?”

  Then I moved in on them.

  Bubbles of magic surged around me, like pulsing jellyfish made of flames, as Zi and Yolanda danced around me, trying to gain the advantage. Unfettered by spinning, I darted back and forth between them, aiming lancing kicks, forcing them back, moving them apart.

  Then a third fireweaver attacked me from behind, a hoopspinner. Her waist ground in an undulation that would have done Jewel proud, and six fire sticks jutted out of her gyrating hula, creating expanding rings of flame that rippled out over me in buffeting waves.

  But the latex barrier that still contained my magic also repelled theirs. The flames washed over me harmlessly, held back inches by an eerie repulsion. Now, here and there, I was getting stings and burns as movement wore the latex off, but I was protected enough to move in.

  I jammed my body between two of her firesticks, stopping the spin, shoving my shoulder against her magic barrier. Darkening waves of mana churned before me as the shield weakened. The fireweaver tried to move back, but I lanced in and punched her jaw.

  She bounced back off the inside of her field and fell into a triple punch—then just fell. I caught the hoop, let her collapse out of it, then turned back toward Zi and Yolanda, who were weaving back and forth, carefully getting into position, prepping a new attack.

  Why hadn’t they attacked me from behind while hula-girl had me distracted? Then I realized that while fireweaver magic was powerful, it wouldn’t be easy to get two giant jellyfish of fire to fight together. The magic would interfere with each other—aha! That’s it!

  I tensed, squinted, analyzing their magic—then saw my opening.

  “Catch!” I said, tossing the hoop high so it landed atop Yolanda’s bubble of magic, rattling back and forth, the flames sparking off the field. The firespinner tried to maintain her shield, but the hoop sank into the magic, the poi intersected, and the field blew apart.

  I cartwheeled in as Zi fell back, slipping one ankle into a hole in his shield. A fiery ball on a chain whipped around my ankle and jerked the poi handle out of his hands. I kicked the poi off desperately, looking up to see Zi stare at me in shock as his shield disintegrated.

  His remaining poi hit him in the head, discharging all its mana at once, and Zi went down. I should have felt relief, but unexpectedly, I was gasping for breath. I firmed my stance and looked around, fearing another attack. Most of the fireweavers were down or running, but Jewel still stood guard over the cauldron, now with lit poi in her hands.

  And one fireweaver had stayed, placing himself between her and me.

  Molokii faced off with me, monkey’s fist poi spinning. Briefly, he transferred them to one hand, not even missing a beat in the complex pattern he was spinning; made a quick gesture, then took the poi back in two hands. To an outsider, it looked like he was calling me out.

  ———

  To someone who spoke sign language, it read, time for the main event.

  58. Take the Rib

  In that brief moment, I took stock. Underneath the layer of goop on my skin, my new Dragon squirmed, singeing me with trapped power. Outside the circle of power, my original Dragon curved, trailing lazily across the sky like a distant comet, unnoticed except by me.

  Before me within the circle, Molokii weaved within a double bubble of magic, whirling the biggest pair of knotted “monkey’s fist” poi I’d ever seen, the blocky knotted wicks blazing with a full load of faux fire, burning white and, to my new eyes, just streaming magic.

  My eyes tightened. Molokii’s shimmering barrier wasn’t bubbles. His shield was two nested baskets woven from flames, swirling around each other constantly, like one of Cinnamon’s mathematical diagrams brought to life in colored streamers of fire.

  I shifted my shoulders, feeling the latex peeling away from my body in places. The fire and fight and volcanic cinder had left me a mess of bruises and burns and scrapes and blood, and my Dragon was moving, but not enough skin was exposed to let me reactivate my magic.

  Or maybe it was the henna. When I tried krumping—flexing my stomach rhythmically to build up magic within my body, that trick that had served me so well—I instead felt electric shocks rippling over my body, followed by a hot cable burning across my belly.

  Molokii smiled viciously, then began flicking his poi left, then right, fluidly, building up some new attack without ever losing his cross-weaving shield.
But the patterns I could now see in his shield gave me an idea, and before he could deliver his blow, I ran.

  Molokii laughed, a rough bark, but the laugh died when I retrieved the hoop and poi of the firespinners, guttering now but still afire. I threw the hoop down, then began whirling the two monkey-fist poi around me, focusing on the simplest spin possible—two parallel planes.

  Molokii snorted, resuming his complicated weave, eyes on me as I moved to a weave of my own, wrists crossing over each other, poi arcing around me in a three-beat pattern—then I added another twist, making it a five-beat weave, the simplest possible beat that could sustain a magical pattern—the fireweaver’s equivalent of the Dance of Five and Two. It was complex, far too complex for me to keep up for more than a minute before clocking myself in the head, but at the same time it was simple, far too simple to do any projective magic. Yet it had the right math to serve as the basis for a crude shield—as long as the right intent was behind it.

  “Spirit of flame,” I murmured, “shield my path.”

  A weak, guttering sphere shimmered into existence around me, a soap bubble compared to Molokii’s huge web of flame. Molokii nodded, then idly flicked a wrist left, then right, one poi seeming to stop midair, the other looping around it, creating a focused blast of fire.

  My shield wavered, nearly popped, at this slightest bit of Molokii’s magic. He flipped his poi in and out, creating a whirlwind around him, the shimmering basket weave never losing its grip as the spinning vortex blasted volcanic cinder on me from all directions.

  Then I threw my poi away—straight at the join of his baskets of fire.

  The guttering balls of fire bounced off the weaving shield, getting drawn up into the sky by the churning of the weave, their chains flicking up and getting tangled not in Molokii’s poi, but in the patterns they made. Molokii cursed, refocused, tried to reinforce his shield.