A shadow swung over them, like the hand of some massive clock sweeping across the sky. Kalani gathered him in and hugged him fiercely. They huddled together in a crouch, pressing into the boulder, and all of Ori’s confusion and pain and fear were banished for this moment, held away by Kalani’s strong shoulders.
“I don’t think it can hear us,” Kalani whispered. “It goes by movement. You shouldn’t have come for me, Ori. I’m so sorry. I made you kill me, and now I’m getting you killed. I’m just…” Ori could almost complete the sentence in Kalani’s voice. I’m no good for you.
But it wasn’t true.
“No,” said Ori. “No, because it’s going to be all right. I’m going to fix this.” “You always say that.” Kalani sniffed.
“I always mean it,” Ori said, without hesitating. The thing—it looked like a spider glued onto a snake’s body, Jesus—stood in one place again, reared up on its back six legs with its upper half swaying like seaweed. “I just want things to go right for you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. I don’t care what it takes.” Even if it means losing you. “Do you want to go to them? To your parents? Do you want to jump? That’s why you’re here, right?” He pulled free from Kalani’s arms in painstakingly slow but urgent movement. Tossed the spear and caught it again overhand. His world narrowed to the movement of the monstrous creature: timing, measuring, predicting, calculating.
“Yes.” Kalani’s voice was breathy, overcome, possessed. He sucked in a breath and seemed to gather some distance, shaking the strange hypnotism off. “It’s like a magnet. Like my heart hurts if I’m not moving toward my home. I thought I was on my way. Once I got free from my body, I looked all over, I found my ‘aumakua—he looked like an albatross—and he flew me here, flew me over all the kuewa, but that fucking caterpillar ate him. I couldn’t believe it. They’re almost like gods, and it picked him right out of the sky.”
Now that Kalani said it, Ori could place the form and its weird inching, hitching motion. A caterpillar, mandibles and clawed head-legs pinching down on its prey from above, just a gravity-defying, utterly horrifying version of a little nasty thing that might be eating fruit flies in his mother’s back garden.
“I’m going to kill it,” Ori said. He had no idea how. The spear was good and sharp, but it was like a toothpick compared to the caterpillar’s bulk. “You’re going home, and I’m helping you get there.”
If that’s what you want. “What about you?” Kalani said, grabbing Ori around the wrist and pulling his spear arm back. “Dammit, Ori. Stop this.I don’t want this.”
“You don’t want to go home?” He couldn’t help the hope in his voice.
“I don’t want youto… youto…” Kalani struggled, but Ori understood. “This is what I want, Kalani. It’s all I’ve ever been good for. Just let me—get up. I’m gonna—I’m gonna distract it. You make a run for the rock. I’ll be okay. I’ll figure it out.”
“What the fuck kind of strategy is that? Do you want to die? Is that what this is about?” Kalani was angry. Ori had never seen Kalani so angry before. “Get it through your thick soldier skull. I don’t want you to be a martyr for me. I never wanted that. But no matter what I did, you always—” He shook his head, and his normal friendly optimism (crossing the line into madness, at this moment) returned. “Look, we’ll take it down together, okay? We live together, we die together. Oorah!” He whisper-shouted, pumping his fist. God, that crazy grin.
“I’m in love with you,” Ori said, all in a rush. He was smiling back. He couldn’t even help it. “But the marines say that. Not the army.”
“I know.” Kalani failed to elaborate which of Ori’s statements he was replying to. He clapped a hand on Ori’s shoulder in solidarity, and Ori took his chance to lean in and breathlessly kiss him, maybe for the last time. He wished he hadn’t waited so long. Even here in this horrible place, Kalani’s kiss was sweet and warm and safe. Ori couldn’t help but wonder how his life could have gone if he’d have had this comfort before.
He had room to think, finally. The caterpillar was essentially a sniper with a very limited range. He broke away from Kalani’s kiss and tried to speak his revelation, but the translation from military concept-space fell through, and he stuttered. Kalani’s wide, patient eyes, his warmth, brought Ori back to language. “We can measure its striking range. Stay just beyond it.”
“Okay, I’m with you,” said Kalani. “Those legs that hold it up at the base, we watch those, judge the distance. They’re stubby. Can’t run too fast, I bet.” The jumping-off point was thirty or so feet away: a vaguely triangular boulder that overlooked the jagged, frothy shoreline, the treacherous farthest tip of Oahu. Behind them, a length of sand dunes and scrub brush that ended in a sharply rising mountain.
Ori began to draw vectors in his mind over the landscape. The best part of his plan? If it didn’t work, if they couldn’t take down the caterpillar from hell, Kalani would still have a clear route to the jumping-off point. Not that Kalani was need-toknow on that aspect. “You distract it,” he said. “Get it to follow you out onto the rock. Then I come from behind and go for the legs with the spear. Unbalance it enough to fall over. If it’s enough like a real caterpillar, it’s not gonna deal with salt water too well.”
Kalani would leap from the boulder’s flat surface, into the sea, but maybe a sharp updraft would catch him and buoy him upward, like an eagle. Carry him to the clouds and his mother.
Or maybe he’d just fall to the rocks and be shattered like a surfer hitting coral. Ori had to trust that he wouldn’t, that the magic of this place was real enough to save him, just as it was real enough to endanger him.
Either way, it didn’t really matter what happened to Ori then. Maybe Saul would keep him from bleeding out back in the real world, and he’d be drawn back into his crippled body. Maybe dying here in the spirit world meant his body died automatically. Maybe he’d be reincarnated. He didn’t know. It didn’t matter. Kalani may have ordered him to give up the martyr act, but he couldn’t. Not until Kalani was safe. “That’s a big if,” said Kalani, suspicious. “And it could turn right around and—” “It’s our best chance. Just trust me. I was in Iraq, and I’ve got a magic spear. Oh
Jesus I can’t believe I said a sentence that fucking insane.” Kalani laughed very quietly, really laughed, and the sound was so beautiful that it drove all of Ori’s fear away. He hunched down a few more inches and started drawing lines in the sand feverishly. “See, I crawl about thirty feet here…”
* * * *
The long, low, naked crawl lasted an eternity in subjective time. Maybe even an eternity in literal time. Maybe there was no difference here. Close to the end, Ori desperately wanted to look up to see if the sun had sunk, but the slightest turn of his neck could be just the motion that caught those globular eyes and sent those mandibles diving down into him.
Slow, slow, chameleon-slow. Every so often, a shadow silently crossed his path— the mechanical rotation of the caterpillar’s anchored upper length. The terror would well up. Ori pushed it right back down again. He couldn’t afford to tremble.
Most of the stretch was sand, but an unfortunate patch of jagged rocks had scraped his right thigh. Sand filled the cuts and halted the bleeding.
He imagined a million possibilities and eventualities, spending the most mental effort on the ones where Kalani finished safe and free. Even now, even if the giant mandibles drove into Ori’s flesh, it would mean half a second of wrenching agony before death and engulfment, but also half a second of hope that his death was worthwhile as Kalani sprinted for the rock.
Kalani’s crawl to the other direction was silent too. All Ori could hear was the faint whine of the wind. Almost there. One more rocking stretch. One more chameleon contraction. A clatter of stones. Oh God, Kalani.
No. Wrong direction.
The shadow fell forward until it paralleled Ori’s body, like they were both hands of a clock pointing toward noon. He was under the thing. Right under it. He lifted h
is eyes up from the sand, breaking out of slow motion but staying smooth and please let him not die blind and not knowing why, or where he was going.
Kuewa. He’d almost forgotten their existence in this world. A knot had crept forward. A knot, yes, clinging to one another, their joints like knots too, bodies elongated and desiccated, bellies concave, dark, dry lips drawn back from leathery gums drawn back from stained white teeth.
Ori was just about to count the kuewa when the caterpillar struck. Its hovering head jackhammered down. Half the kuewa disappeared into the thing’s maw. Mandibles pumped. Chitin-clawed head-legs sank into human thighs, greedily stuffing the rest upward. The kuewa’s foot flopped convulsively as the caterpillar reared back into the sky, the last useless gesture of a useless wasted afterlife.
The rest of the kuewa turned and fled backward toward the cliff. The caterpillar struck down twice more, engulfing one, neatly scissoring the head from another. That kuewa ran for a couple of paces, its truncated neck oozing thick black blood, before it collapsed to the sand.
One of the kuewa hadn’t moved. Couldn’t move. Ori realized it was half-sized, a child, a girl or maybe a long-haired boy, though the hair was only a few ragged patches. Kuewa faces might as well be shriveled masks, but this one’s body spoke of fear. The way it trembled and cringed. They’d held on to one another… Had they been a family, before they died? None of this was right; there was no justice to the metaphysics of this world.
The original plan was hopeless. But now they had a new opportunity and a clear path to the jumping-off point. A short sprint, and they’d be there, leaving the caterpillar to the kuewa and the kuewa to the caterpillar. Kalani would be free.
That was all that mattered. That was all that was supposed to matter. Kalani was the world. Kalani was— He looked over, for strength, to remind himself of who he was doing this for, who he always said he would do anything for, and Kalani stared back, silent, but eyes burning holes into Ori’s.
There was no mistaking that expression. It said, Don’t you fucking dare. Dare to move? Dare to let the child be eaten?
I love you, Ori mouthed, tightened his fist around the spear, and jerked himself upright.
The scissoring hulking head came down to meet him.
The motion was slower than before, more deliberate, stalking instead of striking. Taking time to choose between Ori and the kuewa child. Ori seized that time, and when the huge swinging head lowered into range, jumped forward and jabbed the spear into the largest cluster of eyes just above the mandibles. A weird feeling swept up his arm, a burning numbness—thin, stiff bristles like foot-long hypodermic needles had jabbed his arm in return.
The caterpillar writhed upward, horribly silent, all its pain and anger trembling on the surface of its mottled, bristly skin.
Ori thought he heard someone calling his name.
Kalani. He was getting up, ready to run. Yes. Now. The head lashed down. Ori ran like an animal, like the prey he was, dodged to the right, then calculated, back in human headspace, that the uncoiling would intersect his course. He slammed his right heel into the sand and halted his momentum. The caterpillar struck, the thick pillar of its freakish body slamming against the ground Ori would have been running on. Sand puffed up around it. Ori stabbed, ripped, and ran back down the length stabbing and ripping again, ignoring the jabs of the protective bristles that broke off on his arm, on his chest, on his thighs.
The skin was soft. A dense meaty jelly welled up in the wounds, quivering but too viscous to be called blood. Feel this hurt, look to me, I am the one, look to me. Kalani would be running for the leaping point now, and that was the most important trajectory to calculate.
Except he wasn’t. Kalani was—the kuewa child. Kalani bounded up the beach, sand flying under his feet, and without stopping scooped the child up under one arm and kept running.
Ori shouted, “Kalani! No!” after him, but he was already off, rushing the child back to the rest of the kuewa even as it writhed and rolled in his grip until it could gnaw at his arm.
It was all going to hell.
The caterpillar reared again, this time swinging pendulously, off-balance and, he hoped, in pain. Could it feel pain? Irregular thuds sounded, signaling the shift of its anchoring rear leg cluster. It rocked away from Ori and back toward the ocean, clearing space for another strike.
So huge, and growing impossibly more huge right in front of his eyes. Its shadow stretched across the beach, rippling and shifting like a mirage over the uneven surface of the land.
Ori spun to look for Kalani. More kuewa had crawled out of hiding—knots, clumps, a whole starving mass. Among them, Kalani was easy to spot. He was the only human figure bleeding bright red. He staggered, hunched and twitching and pushing away the red-smeared child that clung to him like a malicious love-starved monkey.
Two larger kuewa fell on Kalani and bore him down. Ori ran forward. He had no other choice. They were all dying, a nightmare-slow dying, last seconds trickling thickly like black blood through tight veins. No. Kalani wasn’t born to suffer like this.
The kuewa heaved on top of Kalani, teeth snapping, keening noises erupting from their ropey throats. Ori stabbed the closest one in the back of the head. The spear hooked on bone. He jerked the kuewa backward, kicked it off the end of his spear, and went for the next one. No time to check if they could really die, but time enough for one fleeting sorrow: you were once someone real, a human, a child, someone loved.
He’d killed before, in war. He did it again. And again. Until he dragged the last kuewa off a still, bleeding form.
Kalani was…altered. Not all of his fingers were there anymore.
Ori burned.
The wind cooled him. He was flying through the air. How? He couldn’t remember—no, this wasn’t that kind of dream. The caterpillar had struck out of the sky. Missed swallowing him only to knock him flying. He hit the ground hard, hitting not just sand but jagged rock, feeling something break deep inside him but not knowing exactly where, knowing only that he was still burning, and now it was in his blood too, the venom from the broken-off bristles tracing channels of lava under his skin.
He closed his eyes against the sun and wished he could have died lying next to Kalani.
The sound of rocks shifting. Dragging. The hissing of sand. That would be the caterpillar hitching and humping toward him. His eyelids cooled and registered the absence of sunlight. That would be the killing-shadow of its head. He opened his eyes, impatient for the end and grown quite fearless.
Mandibles the size of elephant tusks, beautiful in their shimmering chitinous translucence, struck downward in a sickeningly familiar movement.
He thought he heard someone call his name.
The course of the caterpillar’s maw curved. Spasmed. Its trajectory, spoiled. The loop of its upper body fell ungracefully. A slow, teetering loss of balance became an inexorable descent became a violent collision, became chaos, curtains of sand and dust rising up in the air.
The caterpillar reared again. But this time leathery figures clung to its sides, uncaring of the bristles, peeling open the edges of the wound Ori had opened with his spear. The kuewa scooped out great chunks of jellied flesh to cram down their throats. They were little maggots swarming and biting into a giant maggot. An army of ants taking apart a thrashing snake, streaming down from the mountains, dying and dying but never stopping.
Someone sank to his side. A kuewa, come to gnaw on him.
“Ori… I took your spear.”
“Kalani?”
“Yes.” A hand took his own. He saw, but he couldn’t feel anymore. A hand missing fingers, but still, of course, Kalani’s hand.
I can die now.
Kuewa circled.
He closed his eyes against the bright sun beating down on him, the shadows of the kuewa, and listened to the sea. The waves rolling in and out against the rocky beach.
Like Hawai’i herself, primordial mother, murmuring shush, shush to ease his pained groans and Ka
lani’s rattled breathing.
Shush, shush.
Chapter Twelve
2000 Kalani said it was because he wanted to try out the big rope hammock he’d gotten for his birthday, but Ori saw through him. It was probably because Kalani’s six-year-old cousin, who slept in the top bunk, was on his second day of the flu and his third night of crying and puking and puking and crying.
Anela helped them string up the hammock between two spindly palm trees, gave them hurried kisses and a bag of chips, and told them point-blank if they got scared, they could come back in, but they’d have to be quiet as mice. She still said things like that—quiet as mice—even though they were way too old for it, but they only rolled their eyes as soon as her back turned. Auntie Anela was nice, even if she did treat them like babies sometimes.
When she’d gone back to the house, Kalani dropped the bag of chips and took a running dive for the hammock. He landed with so much momentum that it spun and twisted and wrapped him up like a cocoon. His fingers poked through the weave of the rope and clung, and he moaned “Kiiiiillll meeeeee,” in his best impression of the Duke Nukem girls.
Ori scrabbled in the shadows under the tree until he found a stick to beat Kalani with. “Ow! Dammit!” The stick was dry and hollow and soon broke in half over Kalani’s shoulder. Ori collapsed to the ground, laughing. “You better watch out. I’m gonna kick your ass out of this hammock as soon you fall asleep.”
Ori opened the chip bag and started munching. “Go ahead and try. I’ve got spider senses.” They joked and trash-talked and worked through the bag of chips until the night was as black as it would ever get. The porch light still shone fifty feet away, and Ori could still dimly see the whites of Kalani’s eyes and his teeth when he smiled.
“I like it out here,” said Kalani as he made room for Ori on the other end of the hammock. They kicked back and forth at each other, trying to find an equal share of space but ending up mostly roughhousing, and the hammock enfolded them in its strange, perfect balance. Eventually they settled, entangled and soaking up each other’s body heat.
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