Na Akua

by Clayton Smith

  “Me, you dummy!” Polunu said, giving Gray a little shove that sent him pin-wheeling back. “And Hi’iaka! And Pele, and Maui, and all the people who work at your stupid mainlander resort, and all those idiots who almost ran you off the road today, and everyone, but mostly Hi’iaka! And me too, you know?” Polunu wiped his nose on his wrist, then crossed his arms and stood firm.

  “Are you serious? I don’t love you, or Hi’iaka, or any of the janitors at the hotel!” Gray cried. “I love me, and I want to save me by going back to the hotel, packing my bags, and getting the hell out of Maui, stat!”

  “You so stupid,” Polunu muttered, shaking his head, “you don’t even know that we are ‘ohana.”

  Gray threw his hands up in frustration. “What the hell is ‘ohana?” he demanded.

  “It’s family, stupid! You and me, we are brothers! We are ‘ohana. We are in this together, ’cause we got a bond, you know? And Hi’iaka, she is your ‘ohana too. She cares for you, brah. You think she would risk getting attacked by a demigod like Kamapua’a for someone she don’t care about? Are you serious? She cares about you, and you care about her, too, otherwise what are we doing in the upcountry? It’s scary as hell up here! But we came because she’s ‘ohana too now. She’s your family, and I’m your family, and everyone else on this island, they are all your family, haole. And on O’ahu, too, and Kaua’i, and the Big Island, and Moloka’i, and Lāna’i, and Ni’ihau, all those people, they your ‘ohana.” He laced his fingers together and held them out over his belly. “We are all connected. I know you feel that. And if you don’t, then you go back to the car, you drive back to the hotel, you go home to St. Louis and never think about old Polunu again. But if you feel it here,” he said, reaching out and touching Gray lightly on the chest, “then you better come with me up that mountain and face whatever scary shit Kamapua’a can throw, with me—together—and we will do everything we can to save that girl who touched your heart.” Polunu paused a second to let his words take hold. “Now what you gonna do, haole? You gonna go home? Or you gonna go up that mountain and maybe get eaten alive by lizards and pigs, and fight for your ‘ohana?”

  Gray gritted his teeth. He looked up the mountain. There was no telling what sorts of horrors still stood between them and Kamapua’a. The closer they got to the demigod, the more difficult the traps were bound to become. They’d survived so far, but only just barely, and if they pushed on up the mountain, they would almost certainly die. And he had a hunch it wouldn’t be painless, or quick.

  But Hi’iaka was on her own sort of altar up there—a sacrificial altar. Even though she was a goddess, and even though she may have been strong, and even though Kamapua’a needed her alive, she was in trouble. Gray could feel it in his bones. Could he really leave her there to suffer at the hands of the pig-god? Could he abandon Polunu, leave him with his heart in the wind, go back to the mainland, and never think about Hawai’i or its archaic gods and their pathetic rivalries ever again?

  He could, he realized. He really could leave it all behind on the island. He could walk away.

  He really, really could.

  But he didn’t want to.

  He wanted to stay and fight for his ‘ohana.

  “Do you seriously think we can handle this?” Gray asked.

  Polunu nodded once, and no more. “Yes, I do. Or else I’d still be at my pineapple stand, and you’d be up here alone.”

  Gray took a deep breath. He closed his eyes. “All right,” he decided. “Let’s keep going. Let’s go rescue a goddess or get roasted by lizard demons trying.” He marched past Polunu and stalked back through the trees.

  Polunu smiled.

  Then he turned and followed his brother up the hill.

  Chapter 20

  Gray just wanted to die.

  He shook his head firmly and scrubbed his hands down his face. “There is no way the pigs went this way,” he said, his voice muffled by his palms.

  “The tracks don’t lie, cuz. They crossed that bridge, all right.”

  Gray peeked out between his fingers. The old rope bridge had to be 8,000 years old, at least. Half the wooden slats were broken or missing, while the other half were slick with moss and rain, and the ropes that strung them from one side of the gulch to the other were sun-faded and frayed to the point of being glorified twine. It spanned a canyon of 150 feet or so, almost as wide as a football field. The drop, though...that was closer to 500 feet—on the conservative side—and it ended in a pounding rush beneath the waterfall they’d glimpsed from further down the mountain. The falls rose high to their left, and they fell so far and so hard that Gray had to scream to be heard over the sound when he said, “No way!”

  “Come on—what’re you afraid of? If a herd of pigs can do it, you can do it.”

  “I’m not sure all the pigs made it over,” Gray said, eyeing the gaps in the bridge. He grabbed onto a tree that grew near the edge of the cliff for support and peered down at the frothing river below. The rain was finally letting up, but there must have been a downpour higher up the mountain; the waterfall was surging, and the river was angry. “That is almost definitely a pig down there,” he said, pointing down at something that was pretty clearly a rock.

  “Hey, we can turn around if you’re gonna be scared of heights like a man-baby,” Polunu shrugged.

  Gray grunted. “No way. I get enough family guilt from my actual family in Missouri. I think I’ve had enough from you for one lifetime, too.” He reached out carefully and put his hand on one of the ropes. He could feel the vibration from the wind. The bottoms of his feet began to tingle. “Hey, how about this? You go first.”

  “Look at me, cuz.” Polunu spread his arms out wide, inviting a good glance. “I weigh, like, three hundred pounds more than you. If it breaks for anyone, it’s me.”

  “That’s how we’ll test whether it’s safe for me!”

  “But if I break the bridge, no one can get through. If you go first, then even if I snap the ropes, you’re still good to go! Trust me, braddah, you’ll be good. That bridge’ll hold you for sure.”

  “Great. Really comforting.” He shook the rope, and even though the bridge swayed, it did seem pretty solid. He eased one foot onto the first plank and tested it with a little weight. It groaned a little, but it held. “What happens if I get attacked by a mo’o halfway over?”

  “Maybe we’re done with nā mo’o,” Polunu said with a hopeful shrug. “Maybe we don’t see no more of them, you know?”

  “I teach stories for a living,” Gray sighed. “If I know one thing for sure, it’s that mythological monsters will always come in threes.” Then he stepped onto the rope bridge and out over the chasm before his brain could talk the rest of his body out of it.

  Don’t look down, he reminded himself, slowly and carefully stepping one foot in front of the other. The planks were surprisingly wide, and they actually felt almost sturdy beneath his shoe. He grabbed the ropes on either side so hard that his palms ached, but that was a small price to pay for not tumbling through a crack. Don’t look down. Just don’t look down.

  Gray had seen a lot of movies. He knew that when people told themselves not to look down, that was exactly when they always looked down. So he was stern with himself. He meant it when he said to keep his eyes up.

  But then his left foot came down on nothing but empty air, and he fell into the hole where a board used to be.

  He shrieked as his leg dropped clean through the bridge, and he fell forward, his left leg dangling above the river, his right foot slipping on the wet boards. He grabbed the ropes even harder, pulling on them for support…and they didn’t like that. The rope on the right tilted down, taking the bridge with it, swinging him into a forty five-degree angle to the cliff. He hooked his left leg over the edge of the last sturdy board, but he slid down into the loose netting of ropes that zigzagged along the
side of the bridge, which made the bridge twist even more, and now when he looked down at his feet, he saw the top of the falls. His head hung out sideways over open air.

  He screamed and screamed.

  Polunu rushed forward onto the first few planks and threw his weight to the left side of the bridge. The ropes rocked back a little, enough for Gray, even twenty feet away, to lunge upward, grab the ropes on the other side, and pull himself flat against the board to give the bridge some balance. He lay there, shaking and wailing, with his mouth flat against the wet, wooden plank, one arm clutching the ropes, the other wrapped around the board. His feet were hooked around the ropes on the other side, and he was determined to just lie there until the whole bridge collapsed and he fell to his death.

  “I don’t want to do this anymore!” he yelled, squeezing his eyes shut.

  “You doing great!” Polunu shouted back, trying to sound encouraging and failing completely. “Almost there! Just...be careful. You know?”

  “I don’t want to die!” Gray wailed.

  “If pigs can do it, you can do it!”

  “Pigs get eaten all the time!”

  Polunu furrowed his brow. “So what?”

  “I don’t know, it just isn’t very comforting right now to know that they’re not smart enough to not get eaten!”

  “You can do it, braddah! You’re almost there!”

  Gray lifted his head and chanced a look at how much further he had to go. “I am not,” he called back.

  “You want me to come carry you?”

  “No!”

  “I’ll do it. Honest. I don’t mind. I’ll come pick you up and carry you. Hold on, I’m coming.” The big man took a step back onto the bridge.

  “No, no, no!” Gray shrieked. He shot out a hand to keep Polunu at bay. “No more weight! Just…I’ll be fine. I’ll do it. I’m gonna do it.” He paused for a few seconds. “Am I doing it?”

  “No,” Polunu frowned.

  Gray cursed. He was telling his body to get up, but it was refusing to listen. “Stupid body,” he whispered. “Cross the bridge, and I’ll give you donuts.” His legs responded to that, pushing him shakily up to his feet, and his hands resumed their death grips on the ropes on either side. He tried to block out the crush of the waterfall, which seemed to be growing louder and angrier every second. He lifted his foot and stepped gingerly over the space of the missing slat, setting down lightly on the next plank and testing it for strength.

  It held.

  Then he moved slowly forward, testing each board before giving it his full weight, rubbing his hands raw on the ropes. Each sway of the bridge caused his heart to plunge into his feet. At one point, he slipped on a wet plank, and his foot almost shot through the ropes. But his shoe got tangled in the webbing, and he stayed upright on the bridge, so he pushed on, with the river surging and frothing so far below.

  Soon he was crossing the halfway point, where the bridge began to slope upward toward the other side. This made the crossing a little easier, since keeping his eyes on the planks no longer meant looking straight down into the misty chasm, and he quickened his pace. The bridge wobbled harder in response, and Gray threw himself up toward the far ledge, his belly hitting half on the bridge, half on solid ground. He’d never felt so good being so uncomfortable in his entire life.

  “I made it!” he called out. “I made it!”

  “How did it feel?” Polunu called back from the other side of the canyon. “Strong?”

  “You know, it did. It did make me feel pretty strong,” Gray affirmed proudly, climbing to his feet and wicking the slimy water from his shirt.

  “Not you, dummy. The bridge. Did the bridge feel strong?”

  “Oh.” Gray tinged pink with embarrassment. “No. The bridge did not feel strong at all.”

  “Great,” Polunu said miserably. “Say a prayer for me, cuz. I’m coming over.”

  Gray held his breath as Polunu shifted his entire bulk onto the slats of the bridge. The ropes groaned, and the whole bridge swayed ominously, but the pieces held.

  “Okay,” he said, his breath shallow, “here I come.”

  Polunu moved with an ease and grace befitting a much leaner man. When the bridge shifted one way, he gently countered; when it shifted back, he leaned into the sway. He held the ropes gently, especially in his right hand, which was also tasked with carrying Manaiakalani. He stepped carefully and cleanly over the missing planks, his feet never seeming to slip despite being clad only in his smooth, worn flip-flops.

  “What are you, a mountain goat?” Gray asked, wholly unable to hide his jealousy at the big man’s fluid movements.

  “I am Hawai’ian,” Polunu called back, concentrating on the climb up the second half of slippery boards, “just like the bridge. We have an understanding.”

  “It must be xenophobic,” Gray grumbled.

  Polunu pulled his way up the gently sloping bridge and carefully stepped onto firm ground next to Gray. The ropes sighed with relief. “See?” he grinned. “Nothing to it. You just—” But his words died out in his throat.

  Gray wrinkled his brow as Polunu’s eyes grew wide. “What? What is it? What’s—?”

  Polunu lifted a trembling finger, pointing over Gray’s shoulder. “Mo’o,” he said with great terror, his voice all but swallowed up by the roar of the falls. Then he hissed, “Gray—run!”

  Gray turned slowly, his heart pounding, and he heard the demon before he saw it—heard its wet, ragged breath and a deep, guttural growl that Gray felt rumbling through his skin and rattling his bones in their joints. He smelled it, too, a heavy mixture of sulfur and mud. And when he finished his revolution, his mouth hung open, and a quiet wheeze of horror escaped from his lungs, because what stood before him—what towered over him—wasn’t a lizard or an old man with skin stretched tight over his ribs.

  It was a dragon.

  The beast stood three stories tall, with dark green scales and blue and yellow spots spattered across its back and head, and two long, spiked horns thrusting viciously out from its brow. Flames burned in its nostrils, and when it opened its massive jaw, it let slip the shade of a bright fiery light glowing in the recesses of its throat. The monster’s cry was an unearthly shriek that pierced the air with such force that the waters spilling down the falls shifted, bowing out like ribbon against the rush of wind. The dragon reared back onto its powerful back legs and spread its arms wide, stretching its mammoth bat wings through the treetops. The creature’s exposed belly was light green, a perfect match for its huge, pale, serpent eyes.

  The dragon screamed again, and a stream of fire spewed from its throat, filling up the sky and setting fire to the leaves of a swath of trees. They crackled and flared like they’d been doused in napalm, continuing to burn long after the dragon reined in its fire.

  Gray couldn’t speak. He couldn’t move.

  “Gray!” Polunu hissed again, giving him a shove. “Run!”

  The dragon fell back down onto all fours, rocking the earth and slamming both men to the ground. It opened its mouth, and Gray saw the flames begin to roil in the back of its throat.

  Suddenly, his legs found their motivation to work.

  He stumbled forward, darting into the cover of the trees. He heard Polunu lumber off somewhere in the opposite direction, splitting the dragon’s focus. Gray dove into a copse of purple-flowered jacarandas, pressing himself up against twisting trunk of one of the trees. He felt the air sizzle with heat, and suddenly, his entire field of vision was billowing clouds of orange and red. He could feel the moisture evaporating from his skin as the dragon’s fire rolled past him on either side, split in two by the trunk of the tree. He flattened himself up even more, and screamed. Then the fire pushed on, evaporating into hazy streams of hot air and drifting up through the branches.

  Gray gasped. He did
a frantic inventory of his body parts, and all were accounted for. His sleeves were smoldering, and his arms glowed pink with some degree of burn, but he was alive. “Thank you, tree,” he whispered, pushing himself up from the ground. He turned and saw the exposed half of the trunk, and most of the branches, engulfed in flames. The dragon leaned down close to the ground, snaking its neck between the trees, slipping its head down to within a few feet of Gray’s own. “Polunu!” he cried, searching for an escape. “Help!”

  The mo’o sneered. It opened its jaws. It lunged forward to snap down on its meal. But the gleaming black teeth fell short. Instead of slicing through Gray’s torso, they reared back as the monster screeched in pain. Gray took the chance to dive out of the way, into a thicket of gardenias. He peered out from behind the leaves and saw Polunu hugging onto the dragon’s tail, the Hook of Maui buried deep in the monster’s flesh.

  The dragon screamed again, and its mouth exploded with a blazing stream of fire, but it couldn’t hit Polunu without searing its own tail. It roared in frustration and slammed its tail hard on the ground, but Polunu held on for his life, digging his big fingers up under the dragon’s scales and wrapping his legs around the tapered end of the tail. The mo’o flapped its wings and rose into the air, but didn’t appear to be much of a flier. It hovered only a few feet off the ground. Instead of flying, it flung its tail against a tree, smashing straight through the vertical roots. The whole tree buckled, and Polunu ducked just in time to avoid decapitation by banyan.

  The dragon wheeled around, crashing its tail into tree after tree. Each time, Polunu ducked or adjusted in time to avoid being splattered across the mountain, but he couldn’t keep it up for much longer. His face was red and streaming with sweat, and even at this distance, with the flurry of motion, Gray could see that his arms were shaking from the strain of holding on. He wondered why Polunu didn’t just let go and try to roll to safety…but then he saw the Hawai’ian reach up, trying to grasp the exposed handle of Manaiakalani, and he understood.