by Matt Larkin
When she did, the creature nodded and cleared his throat, a sound that reminded her of the land’s anger before an eruption. “You,” he said, indicating Namaka, “are not human.”
“No. I am Nyi Rara, a princess of Hiyoya.”
The menehune groaned, then shook his head. “Complicated. He is human. We can use him.”
That did not sound good. Not at all. “You are the chief here?”
“Forgive me, yes. I am Molowa, chief of this enclave. And you, Water spirit, are trespassing. Perhaps you did not see the innumerable warnings on the way here?”
His tone made her seem a fool and she didn’t appreciate it. “We thought those were invitations.”
“Do not test me, girl. Were you human I would plant my seed in your belly and watch as a new menehune grew from within. Since that might well produce some abomination, I will forgo. It does not mean I forgive your presence here. We do not want visitors, human or otherwise.”
Namaka kept her eyes locked on Molowa’s, unwilling to let him see the tinge of fear his words had opened in her gut. The horrid casualness with which he spoke of using humans merely to breed his kind made it seem very likely. But though the menehune’s eyes remained unreadable, something in his voice betrayed a clear hesitance. A nervousness under his bravado and threats. “I’m sure you don’t. But I don’t think you want trouble with Hiyoya either. You want to be left alone? Abducting the queen’s niece is not the best way to do that.”
Molowa held up a hand, acknowledging—or at least forestalling—her point. “Him,” he said, pointing at Kana, “we can use. He is human.”
“Wh-what?” Kana asked. “I don’t think you can plant your seed in my belly. He can’t do that, can he?”
Namaka shook her head, reasonably certain that would be impossible. And even more certain that wasn’t what Molowa had meant.
“You know how it is, Water spirit. Human hosts break down as the years roll by. We always need more. And every so often, some fool boy or girl ignores the warnings and wanders the deep places. Where do you think we got all these bodies?” He thumped his chest. “This one, for example, has lasted me past four centuries. I am due for another, and as if by fate, one presents himself on my doorstep.”
“No. You can’t have him.”
The menehune chuckled. “Can’t have him? How are you going to stop me? His soul might be strong now, but enough abuse and I can slide right inside.”
“What is he talking about?” Kana demanded. “Is this still about … rape?” He sounded sick.
“If that’s how we have to break your spirit, why not?” Molowa said.
“No!” Namaka shouted.
The guard outside strode back in at her outburst, but Molowa stalled him with a single glance. “Human, I need a new body. This—” he indicated his decaying flesh “—is a shell. A host for my true essence. And you are going to be my next host. And again, I ask you, Water spirit, how are you going to stop me?”
“This man is under my protection.”
Molowa groaned and shook his head. “Would you risk war between our kinds over a human?”
Namaka leaned forward now. “Would you? I am my human now. We are merged in symbiosis.”
Molowa’s face scrunched up like he’d eaten spoiled poi. “You jest.”
Since he clearly knew better, she didn’t bother to answer that. “We’re looking for the Place of Darkness. And you are going to help us find it.”
Molowa laughed, a dry chuckle that spread even to the guard watching over them. “Now I believe you must have a human brain clogging your thoughts. Why would you want to go to anywhere called the Place of Darkness? Does that sound like a nice spot? Do you know why we call it that?”
“It’s dark?”
“Well, yes, certainly. But we call it that so imbeciles like you two won’t go looking for it and get eaten by its guardians. Believe me when I tell you there are more frightening things than us in that valley.”
Eaten? What in Lua-O-Milu lived there? The truth was, it didn’t really matter. Yes, the name was forbidding—maybe another reason was why no one had retrieved the Waters of Life in many years. She still had to get them. “Take us.”
“Why would I do that? Even if I grant you your lives, release you in the name of peace with Hiyoya, I have no reason to help you. None.”
Namaka opened her mouth, half-tempted to threaten him with the wrath of Hiyoya again. Still, she was far from their domain and she wasn’t certain how far she could push that line.
Before she could think of another plan, Kana spoke. “What if I let you have me, willingly, once we get what we came for?”
“Kana, no,” Namaka said. “You don’t know what you’re offering.”
“If it means I can save Niheu … he’s my family.”
Molowa steepled his thick fingers, clearly intrigued.
Namaka glanced back and forth between the man and the menehune. “Listen to me. Most spirits are not like the one inside me. You would be giving away your life, spending centuries as a prisoner in your own body.”
“He is my brother.”
“You seek the Waters of Life,” Molowa said. “Yes. I could show you where to look, though you would more than likely perish in the attempt.” He sighed and spread his hands. “You would have to swear a blood oath. An oath that you belong to me on the moonrise after your brother is saved.”
“Do not do this,” Namaka warned.
“I-I swear it.”
Molowa laughed again. “It’s not that easy, boy.” From nowhere that knife appeared in his hand again and Molowa slit open his palm. He advanced on Kana, drew open the man’s shirt, and traced a symbol on his chest. Marking him in blood with the Glyph of his own soul.
Namaka cringed, feeling sick. She ought to stop this. To tell him that buying Niheu a few decades of life was not worth centuries of his own pain. But this was the only way to save her mother, her village, her entire island. And they were her duty.
She fought down bile as Molowa handed Kana the knife and the man drew it along his own palm. Then they clasped hands.
“Swear you are mine.”
Kana panted, his fear so real, so raw it pained even her. “I swear, if my brother is healed by the Waters of Life, I am yours the next night.” Namaka could see Molowa squeezing the man’s hand. Then Kana cried out as if burned and Namaka had to look away.
Even if the Waters saved everyone, the price had just become higher than she had ever imagined.
20
The evening sun lit the sea, reflecting off the floating lanterns. Little boxes illuminated by candlenut flames, disappearing slowly over the horizon. There had to be a dozen drifting out to sea now, one for each of the souls who had perished in this village. Out there, setting them adrift, friends and family of the fallen sat on surfboards.
Pele had returned to Puako Village to find funerals. Already the sickness claimed lives. Each lost soul a tiny flame drifting out to sea.
Ku-Aha-Ilo might have helped save the need for some of those candles. By refusing he had, in his way, almost lit the candles himself. They weren’t her family—her mother and brother still survived—but they were her people, and she was powerless to help them. As she stood upon the shore watching the lanterns drift away, so too she watched the flames of those who counted on her slip from the Earth and return to the Worldsea.
She had to clench her fists just to bottle her rage, her growing fury at her own impotence. If she let that anger out she could annihilate the village with volcanic fires and earthquakes. She could crush an army, but had no way to save the life of a single child ravaged by fever.
And some of those lanterns were the souls of children, their ghosts pulled from the Earth before they had seen ten years. Each was like a little sun, burning her eyes, blinding her. Damning her for failing them. All she could ever come back to was the question—could Ku-Aha-Ilo have stopped this with his secret knowledge? The Art, as far as she understood the concept, drew power from the G
host World. Ku-Aha-Ilo knew of that, more deeply than any kahuna ever would.
But still, the kahuna knew something. The local one—a rotund old man who was now half blind—danced about, casting off the ghosts, sending away the souls of the lost so they would not linger to haunt the living. No matter how much the living might deserve it.
This ceremony might have happened later at night, if not for the fear pervading the village. By now the people spoke of a ghost, and Pele had even heard whispers of a Nightmarcher. They knew something haunted the dark, and they were afraid. That fear most likely fed the hatred of this spirit. It might not have been sent here by Ku-Aha-Ilo, but it had still found its way into Puako at the same time as him.
Though it took a significant effort of will, Pele tore her gaze from the damning lanterns and watched the kahuna. His rhythmic chants seemed to invoke spirits and ghosts both, beseeching them to guide away those who had newly passed. The useless old fool had done nothing to even slow the spread of this disease, claimed it lay beyond his Art. Meager arts, then. Nor had he managed to banish the Nightmarcher. And still, she dared not interrupt his ritual. The last thing anyone needed now was more angry ghosts menacing the living.
Instead she circled the man, making her way to his temple atop the hill. It must have taken weeks to gather all the waterworn stones that composed the open-air platform there. In its center stood a brazier burning sacred smoke, lit with a flame that must never be allowed to flicker out. Ki’i masks ringed the temple. A grass roof covered the brazier itself, shielding it from the heaviest rains and winds, but it was the kahuna’s duty to keep the flame ever lit. None but a kahuna could approach the fire. Not even she, the Princess of Flame, was to tend it.
Within those flames lurked a hypnotic message she could never quite make out. Like falling into herself. Perhaps that was the meditative trance Fire-Keeper had so often urged her to try for. If she truly achieved it, maybe she would find more answers, knowledge beyond human ken. As a Princess, she was far more than human in power, and yet still bound by the limitations of human wisdom—what little there was of that. The kahuna, on the other hand, were by and large weak old men, but they had at least glimpsed knowledge from the Ghost World.
The old man’s shuffling gait and panting alerted her to his approach long before he crested the hill. She turned to see him, squinting at her while leaning heavily on his walking stick. No doubtexhausted from his dancing and invocations, but she had neither time nor patience to concern herself with tact. Not while the lives of so many, of perhaps her entire island, hung so precariously over the volcano.
“Princess?” he asked, his voice raspy.
“What do you see in the flame?”
“I … There are many sacred mysteries, of course, my Princess.” Sacred mysteries—or the kahuna’s desire to protect their own importance as the keepers of secret lore.
She closed the distance between them in two strides so she could glare into his eyes from a breath away. “I am the Princess of this island, trained by a kahuna. Do not prevaricate with me, old man. A ghost haunts this village. That means you have failed in your duty, one way or another.”
The kahuna fell back, clearly unused to being spoken to this way. After a moment he composed himself and motioned for her to follow. He led her around the far side of the hill where his own grass hut stood watching over the village. Pele folded her arms, not certain what the old man was up to and having no patience for games. She was about to say so when he ducked into the house. The kahuna returned a moment later with a gourd filled with water and offered it to her.
Pele took a sip, then passed it back. The old man drank deeply, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Finally, he held the gourd out to her again. Pele frowned, glancing down at it then back at the man.
“I’m not thirsty.” She was a bit, perhaps, but that wasn’t the point.
“This water is what most people understand of our world and the world beyond it.” He set the gourd down, then shambled over to the side of the hut so he could look down on a pool of water near the village. It was filled by a series of low waterfalls pouring from the mountains and eventually drained into the ocean. He pointed at the pool. “That is what the kahuna know.” Then he turned his gaze out to the ocean. “And that … the endless Worldsea, is what we don’t know. How far does it reach, Princess? Fifty thousand leagues from here? Five hundred thousand? More? How deep is the sea? We don’t even know that.”
Perhaps it was the chill of the evening wind, sweeping over the mountains, accompanied by a light drizzle of rain, but the metaphor made her shiver. Never before had she heard a kahuna admit to ignorance on so vast a scale. To not even being able to imagine how pale and insignificant their knowledge stood in the face of eternity. And if it was all true then the common people, the people she wanted to protect, were able to live their lives precisely because they remained ignorant of the depth of their own ignorance.
“People want to think we have all the answers. It helps them to feel safe, secure. And we do have a few more answers than them, for certain. Mostly, though, we just have a better idea that nothing is quite what it seems. That beyond the human realm lies something ancient, ineffable, and unknowable.”
“But you can look into that flame and find some answers,” she said. The kahuna could plead ignorance all he wanted. It remained his duty, his kapu to protect humanity from the supernatural. Some Princess years ago had slept with this man and ever since he had lived with power and the reverence of the masses. It was time he earned that. “Find answers to this plague and this spirit. Are your eyes so weak? Do you need me to give you a closer look into the flames?”
The kahuna recoiled from her threat and spread his hands, his face that of a helpless child caught in a lie. At last he pointed to the ocean again. “You want me to dive in and find you a fish. Not just any fish. You want me to search the Worldsea for a specific fish. Had I a thousand lifetimes and the ability to breathe water, still I could not guarantee success in such an attempt.”
The ground rumbled with her growing irritation. What was he saying? That there was no hope? She refused to believe that. Not now, not ever. “You will try! You do not get to give up.”
At that she shoved the kahuna—violating several tabus, of course—and stormed back down the hill.
The waves lapped upon the shore in a ceaseless rhythm that ought to have comforted Pele. It did not. All she could think, over and over, was that she was failing her island. Just like the kahuna. The villagers spoke of the troubles on the Valley Isle, how too few kahuna remained alive to send the souls of all the dead. And so, left to linger, the dead would become restless, haunting the living. The worst of them, the Nightmarchers, would prey on those caught out alone, kill such victims to feed their own ranks. Rumors claimed they stalked the Valley Isle. And now, she was all but certain the defiled ghost she’d seen in the volcano was among their numbers.
She rubbed her eyes. The night should have been beautiful. A nearly full moon reflected off the waves, casting them in a light so blue it could have made her weep. Beyond the beach and the rocky shore, emerald-green mountains rose in all directions, those too faintly lit by the moon. It was a night for luaus and lovers. A night for joy. Instead she sat in the surf, brooding over those who had died and the fate that awaited them in the Ghost World. While the villagers hid in their houses, fearing the presence that stalked the darkness.
There were not enough kahuna on the Valley Isle. In truth, there were too few here on the Big Isle as well. She had not taken a lover in years, not for fear of burning the man. It meant she had not given rise to new kahuna. Every so often, one was born naturally with the potential. Mostly, though, kahuna were created by drawing mana from a Princess.
Instead of storming around this island doing whatever she was doing, Namaka should have been home, spreading her legs in every village she came to. Most people had their first sexual encounter before they even hit puberty, but it was different for a Princess. Ha
rder, perhaps, because of the pressure, because kapu demanded it of them.
Pele grunted. Namaka’s sexual activities were not her problem. Besides, what on Lua-O-Milu was the Sea Princess doing on the Big Isle? That foreign captain had said something, hadn’t he? Pele had been so enraged she’d not bothered to think about his words. Her stomach lurched. The man had claimed Namaka came here looking for a cure to the plague. The same plague that now spread across the Big Isle. Did that mean there was a cure here? Or had the Sea Princess merely turned so desperate she had traveled here and trespassed in Pele’s domain in some vain hope?
Either way, Pele needed to find hope. She needed to help her people find it. And at the moment, all she could think of was helping to give rise to more kahuna. The old kahunas of the last generation would perish, if not from this plague then merely from the ravages of age. Before that happened, they needed apprentices, men they could train to carry on their work. And maybe who could be assigned to send the dead so the master kahunas might focus their efforts on curing the plague.
It was not a good plan. It was simply her only plan. There remained, however, the difficulty of the actual act of sharing her mana. A man could share it through sex, through bringing her to fulfillment. But when aroused she couldn’t control her fires. Heat built in her cheeks and her hair lit aflame even thinking of it. Her passions might be an asset, but they could easily prove her weakness as well. Nor could she enter into such an engagement dispassionately. Even if she were capable of it, if she felt nothing, the potential kahuna would gain nothing.
In any event, she had denied her own desires and pleasures for too long, always afraid of hurting someone. It was time to indulge, and with luck, give rise to a new generation of kahuna. She trod back into the village, its eerie silence. Everyone hidden away now, no doubt praying the kahuna’s prayers would save them.