Na Akua

by Clayton Smith

  And then they went to work.

  They exploded into a crabby frenzy, digging furiously into the beach and flinging sand in every direction. The little white creatures swarmed over the space, their claws thfft-thfft-thffting in the dry sand. In their haste to complete their mysterious job, some climbed over the backs of others, and a few miniature scuffles broke out as Gray looked on. For a few minutes, he could see nothing but a flickering mass of tiny crabs...then, all together, they stopped their work and backed away, a wide, circular opening forming on the beach where they’d been so diligently scrambling. Gray looked down at the space they left behind.

  Then he completely forgot how to breathe.

  The crabs had written him a message in the sand. It was written in a neat, feminine script. It read, Captured by the man in the black veil. Help me, Grayson. Find Pele.

  Gray shook his head slowly in disbelief.

  The Peabody ducks had never done that.

  “What is this?” he demanded, suddenly angry. He felt like someone was playing a trick on him, and he was definitely not in on it. “What is this?!” But the sand crabs backed away slowly from their work, dispersing across the beach. Some dug tiny caves and disappeared beneath the sand; others scooted backward and sank into the shadows of the night. And just like that, Gray was standing alone with his message in the sand.

  He ruffled his hands through his hair and mopped his palms down his face. Then he stared at the writing and gave a deep sigh.

  “This is the weirdest honeymoon I’ve ever been on.”

  Chapter 4

  It still didn’t make any sense the next morning.

  Gray had puzzled over the message all night. Delivery method aside—and the “written by a team of hyper-intelligent sand crabs” aspect was not something a person could easily just put aside—the message was...well, confusing. It was either from Hi’iaka, or it was meant to look like it was from her; he didn’t know anyone else being chased, either literally or subconsciously, by a man wearing a black veil. But assuming it was from her, and assuming the man in black was actually real, and assuming she really was in trouble, and assuming he wasn’t having the world’s most prolonged stroke...how was he supposed to help her? And who the hell was Pele? Unless the soccer star had retired in Maui, Gray wouldn’t even know where to start.

  And then, there were the sand crabs. Those incredible, terrifying sand crabs. That was a whole sphere of unreality that Gray decided he couldn’t let his brain even try to compute for fear of shutting it down entirely and spending the rest of his life as a drooling zombie mess.

  “What do I do?” he said out loud as he lay in bed, hands behind his head. “What, oh what, oh what, oh what?”

  After twenty minutes without a response from the ceiling, he made a decision.

  •

  “Of course I know who Pele is!” The concierge beamed from behind her massive oak desk, her smile stretching too far for her face to handle. “Don’t you?”

  Gray puffed up his cheeks with air and exhaled. “Wouldn’t be asking if I did,” he said, laughing to smooth the delivery, but doing so a little too loudly.

  If the concierge noticed, she didn’t let on. “Well, just everyone in Hawai’i knows about Pele,” she said, giving him an exaggerated wink.

  “Oh. Okay.” Gray straightened up in his seat. “Do you know how I can get in touch with him?”

  “Sure! Go throw yourself in the nearest volcano!” She slapped the desk and laughed like nothing would ever be serious again.

  Gray squirmed uncomfortably in the chair. “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “And it’s a her,” the concierge continued, barreling through Gray’s confusion.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Pele! She’s a her, not a him!”

  “Oh. All right, well...what do you mean about a volcano?”

  “That’s where she lives!” the concierge cried, screeching with laughter. “Oh! Word to the wise: Make sure you bring her a glass of gin, or she’ll melt you down to lava soup!” She burst out in an insufferable cackle.

  Gray rolled his eyes. “Okay,” he muttered, hauling himself to his feet. “Thanks for your help.”

  Her echoing laughter haunted him all the way out of the lobby.

  That’s it, he decided. I followed the plan; I asked about Pele. But that lady was a lunatic, and it’s time to let it go. And maybe go see a doctor. I might be bleeding in the brain. He prodded his head, feeling for tender spots.

  “Psst! Cuz!”

  Gray started. He glanced around. There were a few other guests milling around the lobby, but none of them were looking at him. He shrugged and kept on toward the elevators.

  The voice spoke up again. “Cuz!”

  Gray stopped. He made a full circle, but didn’t see anyone looking his way. Then he saw the leaves rustle on a nearby potted plant the size of a Buick. Crouched behind the branches, peering through the leaves, was a resort groundskeeper. “Over here,” the man hissed.

  After a cadre of half-sentient sand crabs, a mysterious man hiding behind a Jurassic Park fern was nothing.

  Gray trotted over to the plant and peeked his head around the pot. “Are you talking to me?” he asked.

  The small man in the brown and tan leaf-patterned button-down nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, cuz. Come here.”

  He reached out and grabbed Gray by the front of his shirt, pulling him fully into the concealed corner behind the gargantuan plant. “Hey!”

  “Shhh!” The man held a small finger to his thin lips. “Listen. You looking for Pele?”

  Gray frowned. “Well...yeah...”

  The little man’s eyes narrowed. “Like, Pele Pele?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” Gray whispered. “Who’s Pele Pele?”

  “Not Pele Pele,” the groundkeeper hissed. “Like, Pele Pele. Like, the Pele. You looking for the Pele?”

  “I am looking for a Pele,” Gray shot back. “Right now, I will take literally any Pele.”

  “There’s only one Pele I know of.”

  “Then that’s the one I’ll take.”

  “Ooooh, cuz.” The small man let go of Gray’s shirt and cocked an eyebrow. “She’s a tough customer. You sure you wanna go down that road?”

  “I am sure about absolutely nothing.”

  The groundskeeper sighed. “I can put you in touch with my cousin, Polunu. He can hook you up with Pele.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yep. I think so. I’m pretty sure. I mean, if anyone can do it, he can.”

  Gray furrowed his brow. A meeting with a stranger, set up by another stranger, was about 30% likely to end up with Gray waking up in a bathtub of ice with one kidney missing. “Am I going to get murdered here?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

  The man looked hurt. “No way,” he said. “That’s terrible.” Then he thought about it a moment, and added, “But if you did get murdered in Hawai’i, it wouldn’t be the worst place to die.”

  “Huh.” Gray couldn’t argue with that. “All right,” he sighed. “Let’s do it. Set it up.” He swirled a finger through the air.

  “Good, good,” the groundskeeper said, nodding. He held out his palm. “Fifty bucks.”

  “What?!”

  “You give me fifty bucks, I’ll set you up.”

  “Fifty bucks? That’s extortion!” Gray cried.

  The groundskeeper thought about this. “I guess it is,” he finally decided. He shrugged. “So what?”

  “So what? It’s illegal!” Gray hissed.

  “Yeah, okay. See you ’round. Enjoy your vacation, haole.”

  He turned to leave, but Gray grabbed him by the arm. “Wait!”

  The man stopped.

  “Okay. Geez. Here.” Gray plucked his w
allet from his pocket and counted out three twenties. “You have change for sixty?”

  “Nope,” the groundskeeper said, swiping the bills. “Sixty is good. Now I’ll even tell my cousin to be nice to you, okay?”

  “Great,” Gray mumbled miserably. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” He thumbed through the cash to make sure it all added up. Then he stuffed it in his pocket. “Listen,” he said, glancing up at Gray, his eyes softening a bit. “I gotta warn you: you go see Pele, you get yourself into a whole world you don’t understand. You know?”

  “No,” Gray said, shaking his head. “I very, very much do not know.”

  “No,” the groundskeeper agreed. “You don’t.” He sighed, rested his hands on his hips, and gave his head a little shake. “I’m just saying, if you’re gonna go looking for Pele, you better make sure it’s for the right reason.”

  “I am,” Gray said, and he was surprised by his lack of hesitation.

  “No. Be really sure,” the groundskeeper insisted. “You ain’t never met no one like her, I promise you. This is a dangerous thing.”

  A chill prickled its way down Gray’s spine. He shook it off and thrust his chin toward the smaller man. “I teach at a public school,” he said. “I can handle anything.”

  “All right, cuz,” the groundskeeper shrugged. “It’s your funeral. Now go find a pen. I’ll give you directions.”

  Chapter 5

  In one quarter of a mile, your destination will be on the right.

  Gray pulled off his sunglasses and squinted through the windshield. He saw trees, and he saw some more trees, and beyond those, he saw lots more trees. But there most definitely was not a store called Mile Marker 3 Fruit & Nuts.

  You have passed your destination, the phone’s navigation voice scolded him. Finding a new route.

  “Stupid phone,” he said, giving it a good shake. But the blue line on the screen was insistent. The store was behind him. So he decided to give it one more pass.

  He pulled over onto the shoulder and waited for the road to clear. Then he whipped around and drove slowly back the way he’d come, and the phone felt that this was a very good decision.

  In one thousand feet, your destination will be on the left.

  Gray slowed even more. A car zoomed up behind him and honked, and Gray waved him around. The car swerved into the oncoming traffic lane and blew past, but the driver gave him a genuine and kindly wave as he zipped around.

  Huh, Gray thought, and he shrugged. Hawai’i.

  The phone told him once more that he’d reached his destination, and Gray shook his head in disbelief. There was nothing out here on the highway. Nothing. He pulled over to the shoulder again and put the car in park. He peered through the window and out into the jungle. He wasn’t insane. There was no Mile Marker 3 Fruit & Nuts.

  There was a green mile marker on the side of the road. And it was the marker for the third mile of the road. And there also was an old, rusty VW bus with a canopy strung up along the side of it, hidden off the side of the road beneath some rainbow eucalyptus trees. And there was a table set up under the canopy with a few pineapples, some mangoes, a half-dozen bunches of tiny bananas, and a cardboard box holding Ziploc bags full of roasted nuts. And now that he looked carefully, he did see a paper bag pinned to the side of the Volkswagen that said “Fruit and Nuts” written in a hasty, scrawling hand.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered, pressing his forehead against the glass. “It’s George of the Jungle out here.”

  He took a deep breath and gathered his courage. This is it, he thought. This is the point of no return. He could just go back to the resort, plant himself in a pool chair, keep the island drinks coming, finish out the week in Maui, and forget all about the beautiful, enigmatic woman who jabbered nonsense in the moonlight. Or he could open the car door, cross the street, present himself to the Hawai’ian van-fruit person, and get himself entangled in the weird, mystifying drama of Hi’iaka, his own personal Cinderella of the Sand Crabs.

  He pictured the hotel pool. It looked beautiful. The water sparkled, the sun soaked the patio; the wind blew a sweet, cool caress against the sunbathers, and the women baked themselves from pastry white to coconut brown. It was a good place, that pool. A comfortable place. And with any luck, no one would remember him as the guy who puked behind the towel bin. And if they did, well, so what? He was on vacation.

  The pool was nice. The pool was safe. But a kidnapped woman and a message written by beach creatures and a man named Polunu who sold pineapples and roasted nuts under a tarp by the side of the road…those things weren’t comfortable. They were not safe. They were confusing and strange. They were way too adventurous for a vacation of heartbreak. They were epic-level complications.

  He taught epics in the classroom. He knew how they ended.

  He sure as hell didn’t want to live one.

  He shook his head and sighed. “People drown in pools all the time,” he said aloud. Then he popped open the door and jogged across the road.

  “Hello?” he asked uncertainly, keeping a safe distance from the fruit table and peering into the van windows as best he could. “Um…hello?”

  “HOWZIT, BRADDAH?” The door to the van was thrown open, and the largest Hawai’ian man Gray had ever seen stepped out from the shadows inside. He was well over six feet tall, and almost that wide, too. He was chubby, but he was more than that; he was also broad and powerful. The great rolls under his chin, along his belly, under his arms…it was like they had been fitted into place, bespoke accessories of skin and fat, perfectly custom-fit for this mountain of a man. He wore his weight like a suit of armor.

  Gray felt small and frail by comparison.

  And pasty. He felt embarrassingly pasty, too.

  The Hawai’ian man had a long, shiny mane of jet-black hair that he had piled into a knot on the top of his head. He wore baggy blue shorts and a sleeveless gray t-shirt that must have been made from the sails of some long-shipwrecked boat. A thick labyrinth of tattoos covered his upper left arm and disappeared under his shirt as they continued along his chest. They were jagged, tribal shapes that spiraled into ocean waves and tongues of fire, crisscrossed with fishing nets and long, sprawling silhouettes of lizards. He wore loose, ragged flip-flops on his feet, stained red by the dense Maui dirt.

  “HOWZIT?” he boomed again, his voice a shot from a cannon.

  “Sorry…what?” Gray asked, taking a few steps backward. “How…How’s what?”

  The Hawai’ian uncovered his teeth with a wide smile that took up the entire bottom half of his face. “I said, ‘Howzit, braddah?’” he said again, in a much more manageable tone. He let loose a great laugh, and his belly bounced happily under the thin gray cotton. He held up his huge hands and rolled them through the air. “How-are-you-doing?”

  “Oh. Fine. I’m fine. Good. Um...are you...?” He paused and pulled the hastily-scrawled note from the hotel groundskeeper from his pocket to double-check. “Are you...Polunu?”

  “That’s me! King of the fruit! Whatchoo want? I got the best pineapple on Maui, mmmm—you ain’t never tasted nothing like this. I’ll tell you the secret: I only plant pineapple at night, and only three full nights after a full moon. You do that, you sprinkle the ground with cinnamon, you say the blessing—boom; you grow the best pineapple on Earth.” He leaned down, and Gray shivered as he fell completely into the big man’s shadow. “You don’t tell no one Polunu’s secret, okay?”

  Gray gulped. “Um. Sure. No. I won’t.”

  Polunu winked. “Good,” he said with a grin. He reached behind the table and pulled out an old, worn machete. “You try some of this goodness!” He brought the machete down hard, and Gray screamed. But Polunu wasn’t swinging at him; he brought the blade down on the nearest pineapple and sliced the crown clean off. He picked up the shorn pineapple and began
gently cutting away the prickly skin with the machete like a normal-sized man might peel an apple with a paring knife. “I also got these mangoes and apple bananas—they’re pretty good too. You like papaya? I don’t got no papaya. You come back tomorrow, you can have banana bread. Ooooo, the best banana bread on Maui, braddah—swear my life on it. Here, give this a try.” He held out a piece of the freshly-cut pineapple, and Gray began to protest, but Polunu smiled his huge smile and shoved the fruit into Gray’s mouth. Gray sputtered and coughed. Polunu laughed, and the earth shook with his thunder. “That first bite, it get you like whoa!”

  “Thanks, but...I’m not here for fruit.” Gray crushed the pineapple between his teeth, and a million fireworks exploded on his tongue. The pineapple was sweet, and juicy, yes, but complex...the taste was intensely floral, like he was eating a pineapple juice-soaked bouquet of orchids. “Wow. That is really good, though.”

  “Nighttime and cinnamon,” Polunu reaffirmed, holding his hand up like he was taking an oath. “How many you want? Eight? I’ll sell you eight. Very expensive,” he added with a grin, “but worth it, you know?”

  “No,” Gray replied. “I mean, yeah, worth it, I guess, but I’m not buying any fruit.”

  “Oh.” Polunu’s face fell. “Well, maybe you’re in the wrong place, then.” He gestured to the van with a sweep of one massive hand. “See, this is a fruit stand.”

  “I know. I know. Um...look, this is sort of weird, but...your cousin sent me? He said you could help me.”

  “Which cousin?” Polunu asked suspiciously.

  “Oh. Uh...I didn’t get his name. He works at the Hyatt?”