by Faith Hunter
Kanoa turned pale and sat down.
“After I left Akamu at school this morning, I went down to the shoreline for a little walk. I tripped on some ’a’a and cut my leg.” She pointed to a scrape on her knee.
“So?”
“What if I’m a mage like she was?”
“Why would you think that?”
“When I cut myself, I think the dragon sensed it somehow, sensed my mother’s power in me, and came looking for me. Maybe he destroyed the school out of frustration.”
“It’s a coincidence,” Kanoa muttered, color returning to his face.
Epena shrugged. “I’m not so sure. I’ve always hated walking barefoot across rock. The stone vibrates beneath my feet, tickling me. I hate it. Which is why I wear slippers all the time.”
Kanoa thought that over for a moment, then glanced at his electrical engineering textbook and pursed his lips.
“What?”
“You said she died from the energy she pulled from the ’a’a?”
“Yes.”
“What if your mother took in too much for her body to hold? What if her body overloaded because there was no way for the extra energy to get out?”
“I don’t understand.”
Kanoa tapped the textbook with a finger. “Maybe the energy flows like electricity, and with no circuit, the energy had no outlet, nowhere to go, so it overheated and blew out.”
She frowned. “But she was standing on the ground. Wouldn’t that complete a circuit?”
He shrugged, then brushed hair out of his eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe with electricity, but I don’t know about this . . . stone energy.”
Epena thought of something else. “Kanoa, I’ve been using powdered ’a’a to make my kakau ink. Do you think the stone in my kakau uhi protects me?”
Kanoa scratched his head.
“If the energy acts like electricity,” she continued, “how should I change my kakau so I don’t burn up like my mother?”
A half-smile quirked his lips. “You’d need to add a ground wire to your design. We’d need to connect your existing patterns together to make one big one, and then extend your leg kakaus down to the soles of your feet. Then you’d have to stand barefoot on ’a’a to fully ground you.”
Epena’s mind raced. “Kanoa, I want you to do it. I want you to give me a ground wire of ’a’a powder. I need to stop ’Ana’ana.”
Kanoa laughed. “You wanna stop the dragon?”
She gritted her teeth. “If someone doesn’t do something, he’ll continue to attack us—forever.” A vision of the still, tiny, sheet-covered bodies at the school flashed into her mind. “I can’t let that happen.”
“Epena, that dragon will kill you.” Kanoa’s eyes grew mournful.
“I don’t have a choice.”
He looked at a clock high on the wall. “Well, it’s almost midnight. I don’t have enough ink, anyway. You’ll have to make more. If I agree to do it, which I’m not happy about, when would you want to start? Tomorrow?”
“Tonight. I need to start right now. Please?”
Kanoa thought for a few moments, his brow furrowed. Finally, his shoulders slumped. “Well, okay. But I need more ink. I don’t have enough for what you need.”
She kissed his cheek quickly, then moved to the door. “Thank you, Kanoa. I’ll get more now.”
Grabbing a burlap sack and hurrying before he could change his mind, she left the shop.
Outside, the moon spilled silver light across the landscape, making it easy for Epena to find her way to a nearby lava field. Chunks of ’a’a lay about, varying in size from pebbles to house-sized boulders. She filled her sack with several fist-sized pieces, then stopped.
Before she went ahead with her plan, maybe she should test it first.
She bent and picked up a small bit of lava and pressed it against her left arm’s kakau, but not quite hard enough to break skin.
The tracings of powdered rock glowed beneath her skin, absorbing energy from the stone in her hand. At the same time, a faint throbbing nibbled at her. She removed the stone and the sensation faded.
So it was true. Her ink glowed when it drew energy from rock. But was it enough to summon a dragon?
She pushed the sharp rock against her arm again, gritted her teeth against the pulsing and dragged the stone’s edge across her arm. The sharp edge bit through her skin and into the etched stone-powder pattern under the surface.
Her entire arm lit up with a flash of bright light, startling her, and she dropped the rock. In a sudden panic, she turned and ran from the lava field, toward a cluster of nearby buildings, a strong sense of imminent danger goading her. Her slippers slapped against her soles, and she didn’t stop until she stood beneath an overhang, gasping and looking at the sky.
Then she saw him.
A dark shape rose into the moonlight and hurtled toward her. She bit her lower lip as ’Ana’ana moved to where she had stood moments earlier. She tore a strip of fabric from the hem of her skirt and wrapped it once, twice, thrice around her arm, stanching the blood and covering her left arm’s kakau, blocking the weak light it still threw off. She crouched, hoping to remain hidden, but his head swiveled in her direction, his eyes blazing.
She mentally kicked herself for not having waited until she’d connected her kakau before experimenting.
Too quickly for her to follow, suddenly ’Ana’ana was in front of her, hovering, a sulfurous reek wafting from his body. Although his form was human, black, feathered wings sprouted from his shoulder blades. His face had a rugged beauty in the moonlight that washed across his naked form, even the tuft of black feathers near his genitalia. He hovered lazily, stirring the warm night air around them with each beat of his powerful wings.
She shivered anyway.
“Have you seen anyone in the lava field?” His voice rumbled.
“No.”
’Ana’ana sniffed, then pointed to the strip of cloth around her arm. “You have been injured. How did this happen?”
Epena trembled, knowing she could not survive if he chose to attack her, at least not at that moment. “I cut myself with a knife, making poi.”
The dragon didn’t seem convinced and hovered, glaring.
“If it helps,” she said, “I saw a flash of light moving across the water near Lana’i.” She pointed a trembling finger at the dark hump of an island across the moonlit water.
The dragon smiled. “You’d better not be lying to me, human.” He flew away slowly, in the general direction of Lana’i.
Epena let out a long, slow sigh of relief, then unwrapped her arm, which had stopped glowing. The bleeding had stopped as well, but her heart pounded like a rabbit’s. She walked to where she’d dropped the burlap sack of ’a’a, picked it up, and then scurried back to Kanoa’s shop, glancing furtively at the sky, hoping the dragon wouldn’t return.
Epena dropped the sack on the workbench.
“I’m going to need more than that,” Kanoa said, glancing at the sack with dismay.
“It will be enough. Are you ready?”
Kanoa shrugged and tucked his hair behind his ears. “I guess.”
“Then I’ll make more ink while you work.” Epena grabbed a bottle of seawater and a hammer. Wielding the hammer like an expert, she pounded the ’a’a inside the sack.
There was no way she was going to tell Kanoa about her encounter with the dragon. But, thinking about it, she hammered harder and harder.
“Epena?” Kanoa’s voice sounded strained.
She looked at him. He held his kakau stick in one hand, the almost-empty bottle of ’a’a ink in the other. “I need to start connecting your arm sleeves to your back design.”
“Oh, sure.” Epena put the hammer down and grabbed the hem of her shirt. She hesitated for a moment, then pulled it over her head. She wore nothing underneath.
Kanoa drew an involuntary breath.
“Let’s focus on our work,” she said, a hint of steel in her voice.
&nbs
p; “Okay,” said Kanoa, his voice strangled.
She picked up the hammer and continued pounding the sack as the first tentative bites of the kakau stick stung her back. She winced, but worked with determination, smashing the pebbles into ever smaller bits while Kanoa timed his kakau taps between her hammer blows.
It was going to be a long night.
Kanoa held up a mirror to show her his finished handiwork and how he’d inscribed thick, black lines down each leg to wrap under the soles of her feet. Epena clucked approvingly and put her shirt back on. She tried to walk, grimacing as her tender feet touched the grass mats Kanoa had scattered across the concrete floor. Pain lanced up her legs and she stumbled.
“I’m sorry,” Kanoa said, and rushed to help her into a chair. “I had to make the bands under your feet extra wide and dark. You couldn’t afford to have too little stone powder there. And to get through the thick skin of your soles—”
“Good thinking,” she said, trying to keep her voice normal. “Can we bandage them?”
“Sure thing.” He collected thick gauze bandages and tape, then knelt at her feet and bandaged, reverently, first one foot and then the other. “There. Try that out.”
She walked across the floor with hesitation at first, then with more confidence. The gauze cushioned her feet, but they still hurt. A lot. “Thank you, Kanoa. You did a magnificent job.”
He shrugged as if it were no big deal, but his eyes were bloodshot. “Be careful if you go after that dragon.”
She slipped her toes into her slippers, placed a hand on Kanoa’s arm and kissed his cheek.
“Thanks for staying up and helping me with all this.”
A red flush suffused Kanoa’s neck. “Go on, get out of here,” he growled, his voice soft.
Epena stepped outside and squinted into the morning light. She couldn’t remember having been so tired before. As she walked home, she thought of her mother, burned alive from within. Of her father’s lifeless body, inert on the floor. Of ’Ana’ana standing over him. Her fists clenched at the thought of those three children dead on their stretchers.
It could so easily have been Akamu’s still form beneath those sheets. Her rage intensified.
It took her forty minutes of mincing footsteps to reach home. She kicked off her slippers and went straight to bed, falling into a deep sleep.
When she awoke, Akamu stood over her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, sitting up and rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Tutu wants to speak with you.” Akamu’s soft voice was oddly subdued.
Epena reached out and drew him into an embrace, murmuring into his hair. “Are you okay, keiki?” He was as precious to her as if he was her own child.
His thin frame shuddered. “’Ana’ana killed my friends. He’ll come kill me, too, I know it. I’m scared of him.”
Akamu leaned away from her and dragged a grubby fist across his nose. “Do I have to go to school tomorrow?”
Epena shook her head. “No, not until it’s rebuilt. You’ll stay home until then. Is that okay?”
Akamu nodded and wandered out of the room.
Epena stood, wincing at the dull pain in her feet. She removed the bandages and studied the bottom of each foot, pleased that the redness had diminished. Replacing the bandages with new ones, she limped to the living room, searching for Tutu, and finally found her in the kitchen, wrapping cleaned fish in a lawalu of broad leaves, in preparation for steaming.
“Good morning, Tutu,” she said, noting the dim light outside.
“Ha,” snorted her grandmother, a kindly smile crinkling the corners of her eyes. “You think it’s morning? You slept all day. It’s almost night.”
Tutu put a wrapped fish on the counter with delicate grace. “I worried when you ran off that you were upset with me for having told you about your parents. I wasn’t sure you would come back home.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Oh, Tutu,” Epena wrapped her arms around her grandmother, who patted her with moist hands.
“It’s okay, wahine. You had a lot to understand, and it was time to clear the air. The lies had gone on long enough.”
“I have some more questions, if you feel like talking.” Epena unwound her arms and picked up a plate of sliced pineapple, then hobbled over to the kitchen table. “Would that be okay?”
Tutu picked up a dish towel and wiped her hands, then joined Epena at the table. “What do you want to know?”
“When my mother attacked ’Ana’ana, how did she do it? I know that she drew energy from ’a’a, but how did she make it work against him?”
Tutu’s face fell. “I have no idea. I’m not a mage, and I’m still unsure how your mother became one. All I know is that when she cut herself with that rock, she glowed and lava fire cooked her alive.”
Epena frowned. “When she attacked the dragon, how did she move her hands?”
Tutu held her fist close to her chest, then thrust it away from her body, palm out, splaying her fingers in one motion. “Like pushing away a boy who’s gotten too fresh. But fire leapt from her open palm and struck ’Ana’ana.”
“What did it look like?”
Tutu picked a bit of pineapple from Epena’s plate and bit into it. “It was so fast, and I was in shock from your father’s murder.” She chewed, eyes looking into the distant past, but she didn’t say more.
Epena stood and looked down at the gray halo of her grandmother’s hair.
“Tutu, I have to leave. I need to go and stop the dragon from hurting anybody ever again.”
Tutu leapt to her feet and clutched Epena to her bosom. “No, child, don’t you dare face that evil creature! I cannot allow it! I lost my baby girl to him; I can’t lose you too!”
Akamu appeared at the kitchen doorway and stared at them.
“Tutu,” Epena pleaded. “I must try. I can’t sit by and do nothing.” She pried herself from her grandmother’s grip, ruffled Akamu’s hair. “Besides,” she said, as she stepped onto the front porch, “I may have some built-in protection.”
Akamu followed her. “Epena?” His voice quavered.
She turned to him, her heart fluttering.
His eyes were big and round. Then a snarl crossed his youthful features. “Kill that nasty dragon and come tell me the story, okay?”
Her eyes stung. “I’ll do my best. Take care of Tutu.”
Akamu ran to her and crushed her in a little boy’s fierce hug. He looked up at her and whispered, “Go get him!”
She stepped off the porch in quick strides, ignoring the sharp stabs of pain radiating up her legs as she moved into the blood-red sunset.
A short distance down Pohakuloa Road, an unmarked dirt trail led her toward the coast. After three miles of steady limping, she heard the ocean pounding on the shore just ahead. She left the trail and stumbled onto the dark sand of a sheltered beach, scattered with massive outcrops of black ’a’a.
In the soft sand she paused, steeling herself for what she was about to endure, then kicked off her slippers and peeled off her bandages.
Immediately, a thin tingling buzzed underfoot as her feet sank into the sand at the water’s edge. Small pebbles throbbed against her tender soles.
Overhead, a faint blue haze was all that remained of the day’s light, and some of the brighter stars twinkled.
With a clenched jaw, she climbed onto a large, broken chunk of ’a’a, four feet high and flat-topped. The vibration in her sore feet increased as she stood on the jagged surface, energy sputtering from the hardened lava into her soles. It was both painful and ticklish, and she desperately wanted to leap off the rock and put her slippers back on.
She spotted a black thorn of ’a’a jutting from a natural cross formation, fashioned from sharp lava crystals. Taking a deep breath, she lifted her right foot and stomped down, heel first, on the stone spike, praying that her faith wasn’t misguided.
Pain shot up her leg, at first from the piercing wound but then from sudden heat. The kakau
on her right leg illuminated, bathing the rock and sand in golden light, glowing like light bulb filaments beneath her skin, from her foot all the way up her body.
Epena reeled and almost fell off the rock. She closed her eyes to overcome sudden vertigo. Overwhelming dread tickled her consciousness, then became stronger, as if she sensed an approaching evil.
She opened her eyes to see ’Ana’ana swoop from the north in human form, screaming in rage. She ducked as he rushed overhead, the trailing tips of his wings brushing her.
He flipped in midair and hurtled toward her. She recalled what her Tutu had said, and thrust her arm forward, splaying her fingers.
Nothing happened.
He slammed into her, knocking her from the rock, onto the sand. Once her feet left the ’a’a, the light drained from her designs and the beach around them plunged back into darkness.
Epena sat up, spitting sand, and scrambled to the rock, climbing it like a lizard, finding hand- and toe-holds in the narrow crevices.
’Ana’ana stood on the sand, watching her in confusion, his hands held limp at his sides. “You are the one I saw under the moonlight. It was you I sensed . . .” His voice held a note of wonder. “How did you hide your true nature from me last night? What manner of mage are you?”
’Ana’ana grew very still. He shifted to dragon form, losing his feathered wings and turning into a large lizard. He took slow, measured steps, closing the distance between them. A long tongue flicked out, tasting the air.
With a burst of speed, Epena got atop the rock, away from the dragon’s probing tongue. She found the spike and lowered her lacerated foot back onto the sharp protrusion, grinding her teeth against the agony. Her tattoos lit up again, and her skin burned anew. A powerful vibration thrummed up her leg.
“I have no idea!” The voice bursting from Epena’s throat wasn’t quite her own—hoarse, angry. Her parents dead, the three children at the school—all gone because of this monster. She squared her shoulders, rage boiling within her. “I’m just a mud-girl. And you killed my parents.”