Maui’s words echoed in his ears. Pele wants you to hook Kamapua’a in the chest, and then Pele wants you to yank the hook out, because Pele knows that when you do, you’ll draw out the divine soul of him, leaving him mortal and vulnerable.
It wasn’t enough to drive the point of Manaiakalani into a divine creature. That was just a flesh wound. The magic came in pulling the hook back out and taking the divinity with it.
Polunu had lost his grip when he stabbed the tail. Now he was fighting to get it back.
The dragon whirled, spewing fire into the air. It lumbered back toward the canyon, stumbling through the trees, blinded by its anger. Its tail thrashed from side to side. Polunu reached out and touched the handle of Manaiakalani with the tips of his fingers. Then the dragon whipped around, hard, and Polunu lost his grip on the tail. He was launched through the air, sailing out over the open ravine.
“Polunu!” Gray screamed. He burst out from his hiding spot and ran to the edge of the cliff as Polunu arced over the canyon. His heart froze in his chest as Polunu fell...and somehow—miraculously, incredibly, unbelievably—crashed onto the rope bridge, hitting it right in the center. The bridge buckled, and the ropes along the northern side snapped. The slats gave away, and the whole bridge tilted onto its side, now held above the furious river by only one set of ropes. Polunu lunged out with an exhausted arm and caught one of the supports. He hoisted himself up and grabbed onto the edge of a vertical plank, feeding his arm through the gap between the slats and holding himself up against the collapsing bridge.
But Gray didn’t know how long he could possibly hold on.
He knew it couldn’t be long, though.
Gray turned toward the mo’o and told his terrified brain to shut up and stop screaming.
He had to destroy the dragon.
The mo’o snapped its tail from side to side, working to dislodge the hook, but it was mostly focused on Polunu. It fanned out its wings and roared a stream of fire out across the falling bridge. The ball of flame evaporated into smoke before it reached Polunu, and the ropes and the wood were so soaked through with rain that the fire only caught in a few places, burning low and hissing in the falling drizzle. The dragon stomped its huge feet in frustration, shaking the world. Gray bounced low on his knees and managed to stay on his feet. The dragon reared back to let a second fireball fly, and Gray took his chance. He sprinted forward and dove for the monster’s tail. As the mo’o snarled its fiery breath at the bridge, Gray slammed into the plate-like scales of the tail. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs. Gasping for air, he clawed his arm up toward the hook. He threw himself forward in a desperate gamble, and his fingers seized on Manaiakalani. The dragon flicked its tail, and Gray slipped. He went flying back into the jungle. He hit the ground hard and rolled to a stop against an outcropping of rock. Dazed, he looked down at his hand.
He held Maui’s hook.
He had ripped it out of the dragon’s flesh.
The mo’o let its stream of fire roar out over the bridge, and the force of its anger pushed the rolling flames farther. The fireballs streamed up against Polunu, and he cried out in pain. But he was at the very edge of the heat, and when the fire dissipated, his shirt was smoking, his skin was beet red, but he was still whole, and he still clung to the hanging bridge.
The dragon whirled around and shrieked angrily at its tail. A chunk of its dark green flesh had been ripped out with Manaiakalani, and a stream of thick, azure liquid spouted out the hole like a geyser. The mo’o screamed again, but the fire had died in its nostrils and throat; steam poured out instead. The monster thrashed its arms, slicing the air with its talons, screeching in pain…but the creature’s divinity continued to spill out, and the mo’o began to shrink like a withering vine.
Gray screwed up his face and stuck out his tongue in revulsion. “Divinity is…blue?” He stared in grotesque wonder, then ducked as the dragon’s tail whipped past his head, narrowly avoiding having his skull caved in. A stream of the blue liquid spattered across his shoulders. His stomach lurched; the divinity juice smelled like moss and flour and pepper and bile. He swallowed down the urge to wretch and watched the dragon shrivel into nothing.
Relatively nothing.
The mo’o shrank and shrank, twisting and contorting; its horns melted down into its skull, and its wings pinched and pulled and finally disintegrated into the air, until it was no longer a dragon, no longer a mo’o at all. Drained of its divinity and magic, the lizard-demon was now just a small, unremarkable, blue-and-yellow-mottled skink lizard.
Gray looked down at the tiny thing, amazed. The lizard blinked back up at him. It flicked out its tongue and cocked its head…then it scurried off into the trees and disappeared from sight.
“Gray! Help!”
Gray gasped himself out of his thoughts and looked toward the bridge. The dragon’s first blast of fire hadn’t done much to burn the ropes, but it had gone a long way toward drying them…and its second stream of fire now crackled across the bridge, the flames feeding on the hissing, popping fibers of rope. There were three cords woven together to form the handrail that was now the only support for the entire bridge.
One of them snapped as Gray looked on.
“Polunu!” he screamed. He sprinted down to the cliff’s edge but stood helplessly at the rope’s anchor. Polunu was halfway across the bridge, and Gray couldn’t think. “What do I do?!”
“I don’t know! I don’t know!” Polunu’s cries were battered by the roar of the falls. Tears streaked his cheeks; he was losing his grip on the wet planks.
“Hold on! Hold on!” Gray screamed. He pushed his hands through his hair, he paced along the cliff, and he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t reach Polunu. He couldn’t hold the bridge. The fire continued to burn, and the second rope snapped. The entire bridge dropped a few feet, and Polunu screamed. “Hold on!” Gray yelled against the falls. He had to put out the fire. It was out of reach, way too far out of reach, but he had to try.
It was the only thing he could do.
“I’m gonna put out the fire!” He looked around wildly, spinning a full circle, looking for something, anything that might be able to extinguish the flames. All he saw were trees and plants and rocks. He cursed. The bridge groaned.
“Grayson!” Polunu screamed desperately. “Help!”
“I don’t know what to do!” he screamed back. Tears spilled from his eyes. He dropped to his knees, threw Manaiakalani to the side, and began clawing at the wet earth. He tossed fistfuls of red soil at the flames. Most of it spread in the air and sailed out above the river, but even the dirt that hit the fire had no effect.
There just wasn’t enough of it.
“I can smother it!” Gray screamed, tearing through the ground. His nails struck stone; they chipped and bled, but still he dug, pulling up dirt and heaving it at the flames. He dug and he threw, and he dug and he threw, and he dug and he threw, but he couldn’t dig enough or throw enough, and the bridge burned higher and hotter.
The flames crackled. The bridge roasted.
And then, the third rope snapped.
Polunu hung suspended in the air for only a moment…then the ropes dropped away, the planks lurched, Polunu lost his grip, and he fell, helpless and dazed, though the mist and the air. He spun through the wind, reaching out with his hand, grasping for help that would not come. Gray watched in silent, open-mouthed horror as Polunu drifted away, falling in slow motion; entire nations were built and destroyed in the time that he fell. Then his friend, his brother—his ‘ohana—dropped into the raging river as silently as a stone. He was swallowed by the water and mist, and he was gone, swept away by the current, pulled down the mountain, and washed out into the sea.
Chapter 21
Grayson lay on his back in the disheveled earth and waited for his tears to run dry. But he had tapped into a w
ell that was as deep as the ocean, and he cried until so much salt had flowed that it began to burn in the tracks of the tears across his temples.
And then he cried some more.
His brain felt numb, soaked through in the anesthetic of his shock. His thoughts were wrapped in blankets, and there were thousands of them, twirling sluggishly through his gray matter, bumping softly against the edges of his mind, but not unwrapping themselves, so he could only guess at the shapes of their softness.
The waterfall roared, the wind blew, the fires died, time ticked on, and Gray lay on his back in the disheveled earth and waited for the world to stop.
He should call someone. But he didn’t know who. He pulled himself up to a seat and fumbled through his pocket for his phone. It took him almost a full minute to remember that an emergency line existed for tragedies like this, and that its number was 9-1-1. He tapped the screen to life and dialed…but he was in the upcountry, well beyond the limits of his civilized comforts, and there was no signal.
He couldn’t even make the phone call.
He couldn’t even do that.
The screen went dark in his hands, and he stared down at the phone. It looked so foreign here, in this place, in this time. It didn’t fit in his new world of magic, gods, and monsters.
Grayson had been a fool. He’d been chasing myths since that night on the hotel deck, accepting them as some fluke of existence that would reset itself when he left Hawai’i. He’d gone on this mad journey, pushing the unbelievable but unavoidable truth to the side, ignoring it as much as he could, scattering the pieces of it to the hidden corners of his brain, never giving them enough time or attention to allow themselves to reassemble into a complete and solid thought. He had charged ahead in a state of self-inflicted blindness, through Pele’s cave and the lava wound, past the meeting with Maui and retrieval of Manaiakalani, beyond the witch with no face and the demonic lizards, and none of those things, as extraordinary and mind-blowing as they were, none of them could make his brain actually register what was happening. He was too good at compartmentalizing the legends and locking them in drawers and hiding them away to gather the dust of neglect. He hadn’t known the incredible strength of his own denial, but there it was. The proof was in the shadows.
But Polunu’s fall could not be scattered into the dark. His death couldn’t be hidden behind a curtain or swept beneath a rug. It was real. It wasn’t part of a story to be catalogued in an index. It was the truth. Polunu had fallen to his death, he was gone, and because that was real, that meant the mo’o were real. The faceless mujina was real. Nā akua were real. This was happening, this was the truth of it, this was the way the world worked now, at least here, at least for this while, and he had no choice now but to accept it and face it like the light of the sun.
He’d pushed the reality from his mind because on some level, he thought it would drive him to the point of insanity. But as he sat at the edge of the cliff, gathering the pieces of thought that he’d scattered to the sides and molding them together into the terrifying truth of nā akua and their dangerous games, Grayson’s brain didn’t break. It didn’t scream and tear itself to pieces. It became hard, and resolved. Polunu’s death was the crucible in which Gray’s understanding was forged. He stuffed his phone into his pocket and rose to his feet, jaw clenched, his fists balled tightly at his sides. Kamapua’a was near, and he had dark plans for Hi’iaka. Beyond his concerns and his feelings for the goddess, and beyond the sense of responsibility for getting her caught, and beyond his maddening need to risk the impossible—looming above all that was the fact that the schemes of gods meant a holocaust for humans. The schemes of gods always meant ruin for mankind. The stories were always clear.
Perhaps Polunu had understood that from the beginning.
He had certainly died for it.
And Gray might die, too. That threat was real. It was part of the new truth. In all probability, he’d end the day either dead or severely wounded and praying for death. He didn’t want to die. And he didn’t want to feel pain.
But that’s not how the world worked anymore.
He wiped the tears from his face with the back of his wrist. He picked up Manaiakalani and squeezed it tightly in his right hand. He stood at the edge of the cliff. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into the chasm. “Polunu...I am so, so sorry.” Then he choked the lump in his throat, turned his back on the river, and pushed his way through the brush, picking up the trail of pigs and following it up the mountain.
It was time to end things, one way or another.
Chapter 22
Kamapua’a leered down at Hi’iaka, his eyes gleaming in the dimness of the shed. “Your army was just cut in half by my mo’o. Only one lone soldier draws near. And my trees tell me he is a scrawny haole.” The pig-god leaned forward, his hands on his knees, bringing his snout near enough to Hi’iaka’s face that she could smell the putrid stench of his breath. His tusks dripped with saliva as he whispered, “What do you think he will taste like?”
“You’ll never know,” Hi’iaka said sharply. But though her voice was strong, her heart was weak. Grayson had proven resilient, surviving a mujina and three mo’o, yes. But he could not defeat Kamapua’a. The pig-god was too strong, too ruthless, too hungry for whatever power he thought he could drain from Hi’iaka. And with his army of boars to protect him, he was practically invincible. Pele had been a fool to send two mortals alone. Or perhaps she was sending Hi’iaka a message. They had a special bond, that was true, but it wouldn’t be the first time one sister had wounded the other.
Though it might prove to be the last.
The pig-god sneered. “Do you know the hour grows late?”
“As the daylight dies, so does your chance to set me free without Pele slaughtering you like the pig you are.”
Kampapua’a’s eyes blazed, and then he squealed with laughter. “You are fiery, Little Egg. Just like your sister.” The demigod straightened up to his full height. “I’m not even sure your hero will make it to us before sunset. And soon after that, the full moon will rise. Then I will have your mana, and Pele’s power will no longer rival mine. It will not come close. Perhaps I will drain her at the next full moon…she certainly has that coming.” He scratched his whiskered chin as he paced the floor. Mucus dribbled out from his snout and strung across the dirt like a spider’s web. “I will be stronger than Kāne and Nāmaka and Papa together. I will be the greatest force in all of Polynesia, Little Egg. I will be a full god, a real akua, the strongest god the world has ever seen, and the people of Hawai’i will fall to their knees in worship of me. They will scrape and bleed at my whim.” He stopped pacing and gave a mean little smile. “Won’t that be fun?”
Hi’iaka rolled her eyes. She couldn’t stand these pathetic speeches. One of the few good things about the people losing their faith in nā akua and moving away to new religions was that there was now seldom cause for grand and grating monologues from her family. “The only flaw in your plan is the glaring fact that you cannot steal my mana by stepping into my shadow, pig-god. Have you been so long forgotten that you yourself forget the rules? Shadow-stealing was the magic of the ancients, and it has only ever applied to mortals.”
“You are correct, as so rarely happens. It has never worked before. But it will work today.”
Hi’iaka snorted her laughter and derision. “And how do you expect to make that little mo’olelo come true?”
Kamapua’a did not respond, not outright. Instead, he squealed out an order to his boar army in his animal tongue. The pigs answered the call, storming into the shed on hooves of thunder. They rushed toward Hi’iaka, and she braced herself. But they parted like a river around her circle and stampeded at the walls of the shed instead. One-third of the herd ran straight to the back wall; one-third veered to the left, and one-third charged to the right. They plowed into the flimsy tin supports, and the three wav
ering walls collapsed out onto the forest floor. The roof groaned and fell in, and Hi’iaka raised her arms against it, but Kamapua’a caught the broad sheet of tin in his upturned hands and held it above them like a great platter. He hurled the roof to the side, and it crashed into the trees.
They were out in the open now, and Hi’iaka smiled in spite of her circumstances. It was good to feel the rush of air, to hear the rustle of the leaves, and to see the sky again.
Confinement did not suit her.
The forest smelled of gardenia and mango, and it was reassuring, somehow, to recognize beauty amid such ugliness. The water she had heard through the walls was close; a little river ran past the clearing, just on the other side of the trees where the tin roof now lay. The water cut a path straight down the mountain, gathering speed as it disappeared through a crater of its own design.
Such beauty in the world, she thought. And such ugliness.
Hi’iaka looked down at her shadow, which stretched long in the light cast by the falling sun. It slashed across Kamapua’a’s legs, and she sneered. “You stand in my shadow, Lord of Pigs, as is fitting. And do you feel my mana coursing through your veins? Or are you a pathetic fool with a reckoning swinging over his head like an axe?”
Kamapua’a returned the leering smile and crossed his arms. “The sun is for mortals,” he said. “The moonlight is for us gods. When you cast your night shadow, then will I have your mana, Little Egg.”
“The moonlight?” Hi’iaka laughed. “Even with the brain of a pig, you should know that a moon will not throw enough light, full or not. The night shadow is a myth.”
Na Akua Page 17