Na Akua

by Clayton Smith

  But when she opened her door, the man from her dreams was standing there, silent as a statue, as tall and as wide as the doorframe. A black sheet covered his face and draped across his shoulders. He wore no shirt and no shoes—no clothes at all, save a pair of crude boar-skin breeches, raggedly cut and loosely fastened. Hi’iaka gasped, and that moment of surprise was all he needed. By the time she managed to react, he was inside the room, muscling his way through the door and grabbing her roughly by the shoulders. She opened her mouth to scream, and he hit her in the stomach, hard, with a closed fist. The wind left her, and she collapsed, heaving on the floor. He stood over her, his fingers flexing in anticipation. Then he removed the veil from his head and dropped it over Hi’iaka’s in one fluid movement, so she never got the chance to see his face. Then he delivered another blow, this one to the side of her head, and the world exploded briefly in light, and then it fell utterly, utterly dark, and she fell with it.

  She had been careless. And that had been foolish.

  She should have fled to Moloka’i.

  Now she was a prisoner in the upcountry, judging by the thickness of the woods, and who would dare risk the mountains to save her?

  “Show me your face!” she screamed again, her voice exploding powerfully through the rain. Her hair clung in wet strings across her shoulders, and her silk dress melted to her skin. She held herself silent and waited for a response.

  There was nothing but the rutting squeals of pigs.

  Her prison was a flimsy shed of corrugated tin. One of the walls had fallen completely away; it was carpeted by vines and moss and wild grasses that had crept in over the years. A reddish-brown palette of rust broke through the open tangles of green.

  The other three walls still stood, but just barely. One had started bowing outward; the weight of mountain rainfall would buckle it before long. The other two walls would follow, but for now, they wavered dangerously in the wind.

  The roof had been patched so many times, it was little more than a metal quilt. The joints were poorly sealed, which allowed the sheet to drop water like a hard, flat rain cloud.

  The upcountry forest was a dangerous and terrible place. Wild boars ruled the underbrush in the Maui hills, with their sharp, muddy tusks and their tenacious greed. But they weren’t the only concern. Far from it. The land itself could kill as easily as any other wild creature, opening up in unexpected places, cracking into cliffs where there should have been dirt, dropping away to hard, cragged lava caves beneath a grove of lush and tangling trees. The rains could turn a small mountain stream into a raging torrent in a matter of minutes, sweeping a stranded goat or a foolish hiker away in its path, whipping him down the hard slopes of the mountain, crushing his bones beneath the falls, and washing his remains out into the open ocean far, far below.

  But the land wasn’t even the most dangerous part. The people of the upcountry followed their own primal gods, and they lived by a code kept secret to themselves. They were removed—a hungry people. They craved seclusion; they worshipped silence. Many stalked through the forests, armed with guns and sharpened spears, foraging through the brush, scraping out scant crops and hollowing themselves against the world.

  Inside the shack was a fight for freedom. Outside the shack was a fight for survival.

  Still, Hi’iaka would rather take her chances out there in the wild than be tortured here in the shed. She’d rather die on her own terms than suffer on someone else’s. But if the shack was a prison, the circle carved into the mud around her feet was a cell, and she could not step beyond it, no matter how strong her will.

  There were rules about these things. They were ancient, and they could not be broken.

  The pigs outside the shack screamed as they gouged at each other, undaunted by the rain. Every so often, a boar rumbled over the fallen wall, skidding on the metal beneath the brush and screeching its anger. They were huge, powerful beasts, with slavering mouths and furious eyes. A few of the boars had ventured into the shack, stalking the prisoner slowly, snorting at the air, getting the scent of her. They came close to the circle, pawing at the mud and blasting her with hot air from their snouts, but they did not advance past the line.

  Wild though they were, even they bowed to the primal rules.

  They could not enter the circle, and she could not leave it.

  Her captor had been careful to keep himself hidden, approaching the shed only at the standing walls, pressing his eye through the rust-ringed holes in the tin. He was anxious, she could tell, by the way he stalked around outside crashing through the brush and smacking the flanks of the irritable boars. Anxious for what, she couldn’t say...but it had something to do with the full moon; her dreams had been clear enough on that. And the moon would be full the following night.

  “La luna,” she’d heard the mainlander say in the young hours of a morning that seemed like years ago.

  She spat in the mud beyond the ring, to spread herself beyond her cell in any way she could.

  She should have fled to Moloka’i.

  Her captor had been stacking dry brush at the corner of the shack, half in Hi’iaka’s view, half hidden by the walls. When the rain had begun to fall, he had thrown a tarp over the pile. But now, as the storm began to slow to a few spattering drops, she heard him squelching through the mud and grabbing the end of the tarp. He whisked it away with such sudden force that she jumped, to see her half of the cover ripped away. Still hidden from view, he grunted as he threw another bundle of branches on the stack. The pigs began to emerge slowly from the jungle, stepping up to the brush pile and grunting their approval. Smoke began to stream out from the bottom of the mound, first in a string of pale wisps, then a full white column, and Hi’iaka knew the man had struck fire to the kindling beneath the branches. She heard him blowing against the struggling flames, and the pigs joined in, huffing and snuffling at the fire until it caught the dry leaves at the bottom with a gentle whoosh. Suddenly, the brush was crackling, the whole pile lighting up with flickering flames made pale by the daylight. The boars squealed with their mad approval, and the man squealed too, screeching and stamping. The pigs whipped themselves into a frenzy, stomping over the fallen sheet of metal, smashing each other with the flats of their tusks, nipping at each other’s ears, slamming each other toward the fire.

  The man joined them, emerging around the edge of the fire, flinging his limbs in a mad, tribal dance, his back to his prisoner. He moved with hard, jerking steps through the sounder of boars, squealing and screeching and howling at the clouds. Then he launched himself at the pigs, grabbing them by the legs, wrestling them to the ground, shoving them about, laughing madly as they attacked him back, grunting and rolling and crashing into the fire.

  The man leapt to his feet, and a boar smashed its head into his hip, causing him to turn.

  In this way, he showed her his face.

  It was a face she knew very well.

  Chapter 9

  “How do you just know where to find Maui?”

  The drive back from the lava tube was no less harrowing than the drive there, but Gray’s mind was a little too preoccupied with his run-in with the lava-flinging volcano goddess to notice.

  “Everyone knows where to find Maui,” Polunu said with a shrug. “He ain’t hiding, cuz.”

  “Oh, so everyone knows where to find the ancient demigod who dredged the islands up from the bottom of the ocean with his giant hook a billion years ago?”

  Polunu clapped his great hands happily and smiled. “You see how much I’m teaching you about Hawai’ian mythology? You’re learning the stories already!”

  “Great. Good for me.”

  “Maui did a lot of things for Hawai’i. Not just dragging up the islands. He is, like, the all-powerful hero of Hawai’ian legend. You know. Like Hercules.”

  “Great. I don’t care. Tell me how it’s pos
sible that he’s just hanging out somewhere on the island for anyone to discover, because I’ve watched the news here, and he hasn’t been in a single segment, and it seems like a Hawai’ian god might rate a cameraman or two, so I am having some pretty serious doubts.”

  Polunu thought about this. “I mean, people would know where to find him if they paid attention,” he said. “He’s got, like, a sign and everything.”

  It was well past lunchtime, and Gray felt his blood sugar falling. His eyes began to vibrate, and the trees outside the car began to spin. “I need to eat something,” he said flatly.

  “No problem!” Polunu said cheerfully. “We’ll get dinner at Maui’s.”

  “Much as I’d love to gnaw on charred goat heads or roasted palm tree bark or whatever the hell ancient gods eat, I need something now. Or we might seriously drive right off this mountain.”

  “Hey—two more mile markers, and you got the best banana bread on the island.”

  “Banana bread?”

  “Made with the best apple bananas! The best! Mmmmm.” His big smile plastered his face as he rolled down the window to wave happily to a family standing at a scenic overlook on the side of the road. “Aloha, white people!” he called.

  “You sure are in a good mood,” Gray soured.

  “Aren’t you?”

  He snorted. “Seeing as how a cranky deity from a religion I don’t believe in just threw lava on me and pretty much sent us to our deaths, no, I’m not really feeling that great.”

  “No, cuz; you’re seeing it wrong! We just survived a meeting with Pele! That’s cause for celebration! She could have cooked us in her cauldron.”

  “What a consolation,” Gray moaned.

  “And she cooled down your shoulder afterward,” Polunu pointed out. “And it only hurt for, like, a second right? Looks healed and everything.”

  “Not the point,” Gray snapped, fingering the little hole that Pele had singed into his shirt.

  Polunu shrugged. “You’ll feel better soon. Banana bread fixes everything, you know?”

  “I don’t even know what an apple banana is.”

  “Tsk-tsk-tsk,” said Polunu. “You need to get out of Missouri.”

  “I am out of Missouri.”

  “And ain’t you having a good time?” he grinned.

  “No,” Gray confirmed. “So far, the fun has eluded me.”

  But they did stop for the banana bread, at Polunu’s insistence, and Gray had to admit that it did make him happier. A little, at least.

  Not long afterward, they saw the sign for a coastal town called Haiku. “Turn off here,” Polunu said, nodding toward the ocean. “This is where we find Maui, and our hook.” Then, more to himself, he added, “I hope he’s in a better mood than Pele was.”

  Gray eased the car off the highway and rolled along on the small road toward the town. “Okay,” he pronounced, “so let’s just understand from now on that anytime we talk about gods as if they’re real people, it doesn’t mean I believe in them, and no matter what happens next, I’m pretty convinced this is all a really complex fever dream.”

  “It’s your trip, cuz,” Polunu shrugged. “Call it what you want.”

  “Having said that, do you honestly think Maui is going to let us borrow his hook to rescue Hi’iaka just because Pele says we need it?”

  Polunu shrugged. “Sure, why not? If he’s not, like, using it.”

  Haiku was a sleepy little hippie town full of art galleries and tattoo parlors. Suntanned beach bums hauled boogie boards across the sidewalks and propped them up against the walls before heading in to the thrift stores and taco shacks. Polunu navigated them down the main street, and soon they pulled up in front of a rundown clapboard building overlooking the ocean from its perch on the edge of the coast.

  Gray looked up at the faded, weathered sign. “You have got to be kidding me,” he said.

  “What you expect, brah?” Polunu laughed, stepping out of the car. “A beauty parlor?”

  “I don’t know what I expected,” Gray sighed, turning off the ignition. “I don’t think I know anything about anything anymore.” He locked the Corolla, and the two men headed into Maui and Son Fish Company.

  “The all-powerful hero of Hawai’ian legend runs a restaurant,” Gray murmured, shaking his head as they approached the hostess stand.

  “Well, it’s not just a restaurant. It’s a whole fish company.”

  Gray scratched his brow and closed his eyes. “Of course it is. My mistake.”

  The hostess seated them on a deck that extended over the ocean. A small fleet of fishing dinghies were tied to the dock below, bobbing dizzily in the water, threatening to tip right over and sink. Gray peered over the railing and raised his eyebrows at the splinted and sun-bleached boats. “I thought fishing boats were...bigger these days.”

  Polunu shrugged. “I never said it was a good fishing company.”

  The waiter stalked up to the table, his straight, black hair disheveled by the wind. His loose white t-shirt was stained with splatters of grease, and his jeans were ripped through at the knees. He wore a crooked nametag that said Nanamaoa.

  “We got ahi and mahi mahi today,” the young man started in, “blackened and macadamia nut-crusted. Either one comes with taro chips.” Boredom stifled his voice like cotton.

  “Aloha, cousin! You Maui’s son?” Polunu asked. He shifted his weight on the small wooden chair, and it groaned in protest.

  “Yeah.” He blew a string of hair out of his eyes and tapped his foot impatiently. “Ahi or mahi mahi?”

  Polunu leaned in close and wiggled his eyebrows conspiratorially. “He’s, like, the real Maui, right?”

  The waiter rolled his eyes. “Ahi or mahi mahi?” he repeated.

  “Hold on, cuz, hold on. This is serious. We gotta speak with your makuakāne. He around?”

  Nanamaoa exhaled dramatically. “Maui!” he yelled. He turned and slunk back inside the restaurant, heading toward the kitchen. “Maaaauuuuiiiii!”

  Gray shook his head, watching him go. “Reminds me of my students.”

  “Hey — you wash dishes for your makuakāne for a few thousand years, you see how happy you are.”

  Gray nodded. “Good point.”

  A few minutes later, a grizzled old man emerged from the bowels of the restaurant. He squinted as he stepped onto the deck and sized up the two men at the table. The old god had long, scraggly hair, gone mostly pepper gray. His skin was deeply tanned and tough as jerky; sea salt filled the creases, streaking him with white hairline stripes from his forehead to the tips of his toes. His right eye bore a scar that began at the eyebrow and tapered off at his cheekbone, and he favored the eye by closing it fully against the sun. He wore a short-sleeve blue button-down shirt opened to the belly and a pair of bedraggled white shorts. The sandals on his feet looked as if they might have once been green, but were now sun-faded to a soft lime white.

  He shuffled across the deck and leaned his gnarled hands on the table. “You boys looking for me?” he asked. His voice was sand on a thin sheet of metal.

  “Maui-a-kalana!” Polunu gasped. He struggled with his chair, scraping it backward over the wooden planks in short bursts. He banged the table with his knees getting up, knocking over the water glasses and soaking the napkins. He fell to the floor in a mountainous heap and pressed his forehead to the deck. “It is a great honor, Kupuna Maui.”

  The old man scowled at the prostrate Hawai’ian. He nodded down at him and addressed Gray: “What’s wrong with your friend?”

  “He thinks you’re a demigod,” Gray replied, mopping up the spilled water.

  “Hmpf. He always like this?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know him that well.”

  The old man grunted. Then he kicked Polunu under the arm. “Get up, son,�
� he said. Polunu struggled to his feet and plopped back into his chair, out of breath. “Easy, now,” the old man soured as the seat threatened to crack. He crossed his ropy arms, covered with white hairs that sprouted through a maze of fading tattoos. “Chairs are expensive.”

  Polunu was visibly flustered. His shirt stuck to his chest, and he pulled at it nervously. “We need your help, grandfather. We need to—”

  “I’m not your grandfather,” the old man gruffed.

  Polunu screwed up his brow. “But...you are Maui...?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m Maui…no big secret. So?”

  “Just to clarify,” Gray cut in, “and I’m sorry of this is stupid, but are you the ancient, powerful demigod Maui, or just a regular human non-god Maui?”

  Maui gritted his teeth. “I’m a fisherman Maui,” he said. “That’s all.” He pulled a pad of paper from his back pocket and clicked a pen out of his lapel. “What are you boys having? We got mahi mahi today, and ahi tuna. Either of them blackened, or else crusted with macadamia…” His voice trailed off as his eyes wandered over the shoulder of Gray’s ruined shirt. He shuffled closer and peered down at the burned holes in the cotton. “What do we have here?” he muttered.

  Gray frowned down at his wound. “That’s sort of why we’re here,” he said. He gently scooted his chair over toward the railing, putting a bit of distance between himself and the old man. “Um...I was sort of attacked by—”

  “Lava burn,” Maui said, his gravelly voice hissing between his teeth. He grinned at Gray, a dangerous, sharp-toothed smile. He leaned in closer, and Gray could smell the stench of fish rising from him like a wave. “Now where did you get that?”

  “Tūtū Pele,” Polunu said, leaning forward in his chair. “She sent us to you for help.”

  The old man grunted again, and some long-hidden memory passed across his eyes. He pulled over a chair from the next table and lowered himself into it gently. “Pele still guards her cauldron, then,” he said, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. “Good for her.”