Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #221

by TTA Press Authors

Okilani was not apologizing for her mother's death.

  "Not even a diver's burial?” Leilani had not anticipated this.

  "We can't. She hadn't dove in years."

  "She did it every day!"

  The wind blew back Okilani's graying hair, rattled her mandagah-jewel necklace. “Not with the others, Lei."

  Leilani bit her bottom lip, but stopped before she drew blood. She would not throw one of her mother's fits. She would not. “Is that all that matters?” she asked, her tone combative, her posture submissive.

  Okilani gestured with her head to the group of elders still seated ceremoniously in the great kukui grove. The five stared straight ahead, but Leilani knew where their attention was riveted.

  Okilani did too. “To them,” she said. Loudly.

  Leilani looked past the one she still loved, to the others she now despised. Leva'ula, the head elder, met her gaze with the same gentle smile she always wore. Leilani had always thought her expression an indication of deep piety, of a mind focused on other, higher matters. Leva'ula gripped her knobbed kukui-wood walking stick like a scepter, she wore her red mandagah jewel like a proclamation. She had been an elder for as long as Leilani had been alive and Leilani couldn't help but feel a little awe in her presence.

  Six elders. Pineki had been the seventh, before the council declared her unworthy, a vow-breaker. Pineki had laughed at the idea of chastity, and now they refused to even burn her body in the grove.

  "Whoever did it,” Leilani said, “they took her jewel.” A shimmering, mesmerizing drop of palest orange, given to Pineki unexpectedly three years ago by a dying mandagah fish. The elders had reluctantly taken this wayward child, older than anyone marked in recent memory, into their collective bosom. And then, one year later, they spat her out again. Pineki had never been to everyone's taste.

  Uku, the only male elder and the youngest of the six, stood. “Your mother lost her right to the sacred gift. Hopefully the new owner will make better use of it."

  He seemed furious. Leilani stared at him, confused. He had a body like a kukui tree—dark and lean and chiseled as only years of the tides and fishermen's nets could make you. The younger divers would joke about how it was a shame that such a specimen had as much interest in them as the great grove itself. And Pineki would always laugh—blind and so delighted it hurt to watch.

  Uku seemed infuriated by Leilani's silence. He took a step toward them. Okilani threw him a sharp look and he paused. “Lei,” she said, a little desperately. “We don't want—"

  "Enough.” Leilani left the grove.

  * * * *

  The body began to stink, and so she rubbed her mother with salt while she waited for the sunset. She did not touch the head, where strange red and pink bruises had begun to tinge the tip of her mother's nose and right cheek. Her skin had turned a sickening almost-gray beneath the deep nut brown that had always been Pineki's joy. Even without the gaping hole in the back of her head, smashed like the egg of a moa, she looked to Leilani like a carcass, a dead body as far from life as a grouper on a stick.

  Pineki's leibo were dry now, but they had been wet this morning. At least her murderer had allowed that one concession, a final dive. Leilani looked in the deep pockets of the bone-white diving pants and found three jewels. All were beautiful specimens; Pineki had a knack for only seeking out the healthiest mandagah for their jewels.

  The flies came when the sun had just passed its zenith and even the salt could not retard the smell. Leilani peeled off her shirt and swatted at them viciously until her arms burned and she nearly fainted from exertion.

  She could hear her mother's laugh. “So much effort. So little result."

  Leilani stared at the corpse. “This would never have happened if you had just done as they said!"

  But her mother's sweet, mildly mocking delight still echoed in her head and she sat still. The flies began to feast on the brain. They stayed away from her mother's eyes.

  Leilani did not know why she awoke so early this morning, why she had known something was wrong. They lived together, despite everything. Pineki even occasionally spent her nights at home. Yesterday Pineki had given her a pineapple the size of her torso, a fruit so massive that she had been forced to roll it up the stairs like a giant log.

  "What is this?” Leilani had asked, when her mother presented it with an air of most uncharacteristic solemnity.

  "You used to love them when you were a baby. You would chew my fingers to get at the juice."

  "Oh, Piki,” she said, using the nickname that could so clearly express simultaneous affection and annoyance, “we left that a long time ago."

  Her mother had smiled at her, but so sadly that Leilani nearly burst into tears. Her mother never cried. Her joy seemed to guard against that kind of abject expression, or perhaps even made it redundant. Leilani almost never cried, and sometimes the effort to resist was so great it felt like every tearless moment was one bargained for in blood.

  Pineki left without another word. Leilani, busy in contemplation of the monstrous fruit, did not even watch her go.

  * * * *

  Kapa found her, shaking and dry-eyed. “I heard,” he said, standing back diffidently. Pineki had always intimidated him. Death, as Leilani was discovering, changed little.

  Or everything. “It must be all over the island by now.” Her voice was very calm. “You're the only one who came."

  Kapa looked at the rotting body, the cloud of flies. “We heard the elders refused ... I think the others are just worried. They'll come."

  "Of course.” Less than a day ago, Pineki had rolled a giant pineapple up the stairs. Less than a day, and it would stretch until the end of her life.

  "Leilani,” he said, a little helplessly. He still hadn't touched her. He hadn't even moved close enough for her to smell the fishy scent that always seeped into his clothes after a day's labor. Kapa's parents had died years before, drowned on a boat in a storm. He had survived by clinging to a plank of wood. He was a terrible fisherman, but he knew his way around a lute. They had met right after his parents died. Pineki introduced them ("Make this poor child feel better!” she had said, and so commanded, Leilani tried her best).

  Kapa began to cry. “Who would do this to her?” Leilani envied him the ease of his release even as she despised him for it.

  "Who wouldn't?” She began to take a deep breath and then thought better of it when the stench from her mother's corpse nearly overwhelmed her. “Who was she sleeping with?"

  Kapa looked shocked. “I ... How would I know?” Recent years had stripped most of the child-like fleshiness from his face. Leilani noted, in dispassionate surprise, that her childhood friend was almost handsome. Not such a paragon of beauty as Uku, but well enough. She wondered, for the first time, if other girls had noticed.

  Kapa's question had given her a goal, a question for which an answer could be sought. Someone had murdered her mother. Their identity had not seemed so very important this morning, but it was a reason to not sit beside her mother's rotting corpse in a stupor.

  "What will you do with...” Kapa gestured awkwardly to the body.

  "Burn her at sunset."

  He looked shocked again. Leilani almost laughed. His sensibilities, as Pineki would say, were delicately guarded. “But the elders refused a funeral!"

  "I'm burning her at sunset."

  * * * *

  Kapa followed her to the hills in the center of the island, where the slopes and valleys were covered with small plots of land that produced almost all of their food. She rarely ventured here. The divers were a class above the common farmers, and the women of her family had been divers for centuries. She was proud of her legacy, though of course Pineki had viewed this attitude with amused tolerance. She was more inclined to think of the unbroken line of mothers and daughters as the product of “luck, and a knack for holding our breath."

  Leilani only saw gentle slopes covered in rich black soil and the flowers of taro plants, but Kapa led her unhesitati
ngly through the fields and into the valley beyond. It occurred to her that his mother must have farmed, before she died. Perhaps he had spent his childhood in the fruit groves. The farmers—men and women with sunbaked skin and bare torsos glistening with sweat—stopped and stared as she walked past. They did not whisper. That made it worse.

  She rested underneath some orange trees, out of their immediate sight, and just a few feet away from the disappointingly normal pineapple plants. Where had her mother found the monster? Had she conjured it up from a bit of twine and spit, like in the tales? Had the spirits then taken their revenge for her presumption?

  A man on the other side of the pineapple plants waved and began walking towards her. He was too far away to recognize.

  "Lei,” Kapa said, startling her. She had forgotten he was there.

  In the distance, a pair of moas chortled their deep love song. The trees were heavy with ripe orange-green fruit—she could practically feel its sharp fragrance on her skin. Like the initial shiver of jumping into the morning ocean.

  "I've been meaning to ask ... I mean, I know how hard this must be ... and now with the elders, and I just wanted you to know that I've always...” He paused and cleared his throat. Leilani glanced at him, but kept her gaze focused on the approaching figure. He looked more familiar as he came closer, even through the heat shimmer of late afternoon in the harvest season.

  "I make a good income from the fish,” he said quietly. “Maybe together—"

  "Ukele!” Leilani exclaimed, when the man was close enough to see clearly. Uku's almost-as-handsome farmer brother was crying as he approached them.

  "I just heard,” he said, embracing her freely. Strange, she thought, and Kapa had yet to touch her. “My sorrow is too great for words."

  She looked at him thoughtfully, remembering his brother's obvious hatred earlier this morning. The two were bound by blood, not temperament. And she, after all, should know something of that.

  "Did she sleep with you?” she asked.

  Kapa grimaced, but Ukele merely laughed and wiped his eyes. “Ah, there's some Pineki in you, then? Yes, I had that pleasure. Only twice, but yes."

  Lucky Piki, Leilani surprised herself by thinking. But great Kai, those were two beautiful brothers. His hair was curly and cropped close to his head. His skin was darker than Uku's, which made the sand-brown of his irises stand out like mandagah jewels.

  "Leilani, I swear, if I find out who did this..."

  She shook her head, and wondered if Ukele and Kapa were the only two people on the island who truly regretted her mother's murder. Pineki had lived to offend, to transgress, to break taboos and laugh at the pleasure. And now she had died for it.

  "Ukele, this sounds strange, but yesterday she gave me a giant pineapple. Do you know—"

  He put a hand over her lips to stop her question and looked around. Then he motioned silently for them to follow.

  They left the shade of the oranges and walked into the full glare of the sun. She could feel the sweat dripping down the back of her neck and under her arms. The salt-smell of the ocean was faint here, overpowered by manure and soil. Already, her breath came out in shallow little bursts. All around her, anonymous figures hacked into the earth to harvest her food. In the distance, a woman raised her voice in an eerie, ululating chant.

  If diving was a legacy, what was this?

  * * * *

  At first glance, it looked like paradise. A land of the giants, where every seed planted grew vast and plentiful fruit. Deep within the still-unripe coconut groves and hidden by a few steep hills, grew pineapples the size of her body, oranges larger than a coconut, plantains fit to feed a family of pygmy elephants and a taro with a sprout so large she thought it would take five men to pluck the tuber from the earth. An earthworm poked its head out of the ground nearby. Its body was thick as her handspan, and decorated with red and white bands as sharply defined as a layered rock.

  "Great Kai,” Kapa said, reverently.

  Leilani's heartbeat sounded like a drum in her ears. This was all so beautiful. And so unnatural. “Did Pineki..."

  Ukele was crying again. “This was her gift,” he said. “To our families."

  Last year's harvest had been nearly destroyed by an early rainy season, she recalled. The farmers had, ironically, been the ones least able to afford the remaining food. Pineki had hardly eaten until the rains stopped, much to Leilani's annoyance. Recalling how she had snapped at her mother for what she saw as put-upon martyrdom, Leilani felt almost physically ill.

  "Lei..."

  There was a note in Kapa's voice that made her turn to him immediately. He was pointing to one of the massive coconut trees in the corner of the hidden patch. These, unlike the normal crops surrounding it, were fully ripe. Several of its fruits had been knocked from the branches and something heavy had smashed through both the outer and inner shells. In some cases, the coconuts looked as though they had shattered under the force of multiple blows.

  There was nothing overtly disturbing about the scene, and yet the three of them were mute in momentary horror. There were visible dents in the base of the tree trunk where something almost unimaginably strong had struck it. A splatter of juice had dried to a shiny film on the fronds scattered among the fruit. Gobbets of white flesh hung by fibrous tendrils from the inner casing. This was rage and this was satisfaction.

  At least no crabs stole the flesh, but she knew the flies would come for it soon. She had, she realized, past experience.

  Leilani knelt quietly among the carnage. She vomited.

  * * * *

  "I'm burning her at sundown."

  Quietly, steadily, she said this to everyone she passed. Kapa followed her like a lost moa chick, but she barely noticed his presence. She had two facts now. Two pieces of knowledge that she knew would lead her to an answer. She would force them to.

  Fact number one: Someone had murdered her mother. Straightforward and unassailable. Just like when she had come upon the body, alone, this morning. There had been no moment of denial. No frantic calling of her mother's name and pleading for her to be alive. She had seen and she had known.

  Fact number two: Her mother had been playing with the spirits, and someone didn't like it.

  How else to explain the fruit grove? Nothing could grow so large naturally. Pineki had been an elder, one of the select few who learn the mysteries of geas bindings and the wild earth spirit. And though they had stripped her of her rank after only a year, she was clever enough to learn what she could while she had the chance. The elders thought they had kicked her out, but perhaps Pineki had merely decided to leave.

  "Where are you going?” Kapa asked, when they had left the farms.

  "What else can a girl do before she burns her mother?"

  Kapa just stared at her like he could speak from his pores.

  She shook her head. “I'm going diving."

  "Before sundown? What about the day-eels?"

  "You can tell Okilani."

  * * * *

  She took off first her sweaty, dusty shirt and then her leibo. Naked, the sun fell on her back like a bonfire. The freshwater eddied around her feet. Kapa had gone, of course, terrified enough of the day-eels to take her advice.

  She looked out at the water breaking over the shore, at the innocuously clear ocean surface and felt a shiver of something she had never properly experienced: the delight of anticipating terror. Is this what her mother had loved? Is this why she always sought to offend and to shock—for that frisson of pleasure in the very act of defiance? Leilani had always found her pleasure in tradition, in reason, in fulfilling expectations. When her mother had become an elder, it had never occurred to Leilani that she might not want it. That the strictures against marriage and sex would be as laughable to Pineki as ones against diving or breathing. She hadn't been a bad mother, precisely, but she certainly hadn't embraced the virtues of responsibility either. She would leave Leilani with friends for days at a time while she vanished on some adventur
e. She first took Leilani diving at age three—dangerously young, according to the elders. The respectable had condemned her for it, but those dives were Leilani's first memories. Their magic still made her breath catch.

  Leilani had spent most of her life hating her mother. She had interpreted Pineki's carelessness as not caring, her multiple lovers as not loving.

  She had thought a woman who didn't cry never wanted to.

  She had not anticipated enigmatic gifts of massive pineapples. She had not anticipated violent death.

  Leilani noted the position of the sun—four hours after noon. The day-eels would be out in force. She took a deep, practiced breath and dove under the surface.

  The water slid around her body like the finest cloth from the inner islands—cool and supple. The water was not very deep here, and the sunlight penetrated straight to the coral floor. The mandagah were nowhere to be found at this time of day, but for sheer physical beauty nothing could match their island's natural coral. It rose like a castle from the deep, built by some mad designer with a fetish for bright colors and retractable parts. A massive purple fan waved lazily beneath her until covered by her shadow. It vanished faster than she could blink, leaving nothing but an unremarkable piece of porous gray stone behind. She shook her head in delight, but did not stay to watch its slow re-emergence. Pineki always swims too far, the divers would complain to Leilani when their entreaties did not seem to penetrate her mother's laugh. She dives too deep. It was unspeakably rude to leave your partner alone on a dive. Even worse, it was dangerous, and Pineki always left anyone behind who couldn't keep up.

  "Why can't you just stay with the others!” Leilani screamed once, after another incident. “Even you aren't totally fearless!"

  Pineki hadn't laughed, though Leilani could tell she wanted to. “Oh, keika. I'm not fearless at all. Nothing's any fun if you're fearless."

  That was before Pineki had refused altogether to dive with the group.

  Leilani had made it a point of pride to always dive judiciously and accommodate her partner. Her etiquette had been impeccable, as though she had thought it would make up for her mother's wildness. Pineki had taken a perverse pride in Leilani's conformity. She had once boasted to another diver that her daughter had “never once dipped below thirty feet."