Na Akua

by Clayton Smith

  “So are you,” he grinned. “And yet, here you stand.”

  “I have seen many, many nights, pig-god, and many full moons, and so have you. We both know the moon does not cast shadows.”

  Kamapua’a’s lips curled back over his tusks; his beady eyes burned with fire, and he squealed a terrible screech of glee. “But tonight, I have this.” He signaled to his herd, and the boars began rooting through the dirt at the edge of the clearing. They threw soil and leaves with their snouts and hooves, burrowing into the earth. When they’d dug out a long, shallow trough, one boar, a large female, lowered her head into the hole and locked her jaws around something buried within. She pulled out a long wooden staff with a warped shield of glass fastened to one end with a rope of woven palm leaves. The boar carried the staff gingerly in her jaws and laid it at Kamapua’a’s feet. Then the boar lowered its head and backed away to rejoin its herd.

  The pig-god snorted as he picked up the staff, brushed off the dirt, and held it up for Hi’iaka to see. The glass disk fixed to the top of the pole was the size of a dinner platter, roughly shaped but clear as a windowpane. “Your smithing skills need practice,” Hi’iaka said, her chin held high.

  “Perhaps. But it’s not the craftsmanship of the glass that makes it a thing of beauty.”

  “Clearly,” Hi’iaka said, narrowing her eyes.

  Kamapua’a bared his teeth, annoyed, but he continued. “It is the magic that was woven through its substance in the forge. Our friend Kanaloa imbued this little plate of glass with an extraordinary bit of sorcery. You see, it’s a lens.” He circled behind Hi’iaka and plunged the staff into the ground. It rocked gently on its anchor when the pig-god removed his hand, and the pane of glass came up to Hi’iaka’s shoulders. “When the full moon rises, its light will shine through the glass. Kanaloa’s magic will magnify and intensify the glow, and it will throw your shadow, Little Egg. It will stretch long and deep, and I will stand in it, wash myself in it, and in your moon-shadow, I will drink your mana like water.”

  A dread chill tumbled through her veins. She had never heard of such magic…but Kanaloa was a powerful akua of sorcery, and if any could infuse the lens with the ability to throw moonglow like sunlight, it was him. “Why would the god of the underworld and magic help you?” she whispered.

  The pig-god laughed. “Why would he help me? Why wouldn’t he help me? The families of Kāne and Pele have kept Kanaloa buried beneath the earth for millennia. While we bask in the sunshine, he grows bitter and cold in the caverns of death. The status quo punishes him cruelly. What would he not give to upset it?”

  “A change of order is one thing. But you think Kanaloa will let you destroy nā akua and take power over the islands? You think he will not see your vileness and cast such magic on you that you become the one locked away beneath the ground? You think he would let Hawai’i fall to sadistic ruin because he bears a grudge against Kāne? Kanaloa may be embittered, but he is not stupid.”

  “Well,” the pig-god said, his teeth gleaming dangerously in the dying light, “stupid enough to think I would actually allow him access to the upside.”

  Hi’iaka laughed once, a hard, cold burst. “You are meddling with such strengths as you cannot possibly hope to defeat.”

  “Tsk-tsk-tsk,” Kamapua’a said, shaking his head in mock injury. “It is as if you do not listen to a word I say.”

  “Your plan will not work,” Hi’iaka insisted, but her words trembled with doubt. “No akua has ever had her mana stolen by shadow magic. You are a fool, and you will fail.”

  Kamapua’a lifted his eyes to the setting sun. “Well,” he said, giving a little shrug, “soon enough, we will see.”

  Chapter 23

  Gray was tired, and hungry, and he couldn’t hold out much longer.

  He hadn’t eaten since the mangos at the fallen tree. His stomach snarled; his blood sugar had hit a new low, and his mental and emotional anguish had frayed his nerves down to sparking wires. His legs were sore from the climb through the impenetrable terrain, and the world was spinning from exhaustion and hunger and confusion, making it impossible to progress beyond a slow crawl. And on top of everything else, the sun was starting to set, which meant two things: One, he’d been on the mountain for almost twelve hours, which was impossible to process; and two, the full moon would be rising soon, and he was running out of time.

  He labored up the pig trail, crawling on his hands and knees at places, digging Manaiakalani into the earth and using it like a mountain climbing pick to pull himself up. He took a tumble over the snarling roots of a tree, hitting the ground chin-first, his teeth clacking painfully in his head. He groaned and rolled over onto his side, ready to just lie there until the end. But he turned and saw the grass was dotted with small, greenish fruit from the tree. He didn’t recognize it, but his stomach grumbled, and he thought, Well…death by poison can’t be worse than death by half-pig demigod.

  He picked one up and took a bite. It was sour, and sharp, and the flavor of it rang through his mouth in an uncomfortable sort of way. But it also quenched his thirst, and when he swallowed it, his stomach greedily demanded more. He pulled himself to his knees and gathered up as many of the fruits as he could. He pulled them all back and leaned up against the trunk of the tree, shoving the fruit into a pile between his legs. He held one green ball in each hand and bit into them, gorging himself, stuffing his mouth so full he couldn’t breathe. He choked down his sour saviors and picked up two more fruit, tearing into them just as hungrily.

  When it was all said and done, he’d eaten nine of the apple-sized fruits, and his stomach felt like it might burst.

  “Thank you, tree,” he whispered, closing his eyes and resting his head against the bark. “The rain brings trees, and the trees bring food.” It wasn’t exactly Polunu’s Hawai’ian saying, but it was tribute enough, and true.

  Gray pushed himself back up to his feet. The light was dying; he needed to hurry. The fruit had re-energized him; the horizon was no longer spinning, and the ground seemed firmer and his feet less cumbersome beneath him. He tightened his grip on Maui’s hook and hurried up the hill, plowing through the growth and moving as fast as his legs would allow.

  And then, within seconds, he heard the unmistakable chorus of snorting pigs and spied the light of a bonfire through the bushes.

  He had come to the trail’s end.

  He crept up behind a dark green bush with wide leaves and peered around the edge, holding Manaiakalani at the ready. The bonfire threw the long shadows of pigs into the forest. They seemed to be dancing wild circles around a man wearing only a piece of animal hide around his waist and what looked like an elaborate headdress over his entire head. But as the man jerked closer to the fire, Gray saw with growing dread and terror that it wasn’t a headdress at all. It was his actual head…the head of a giant boar.

  It was Kamapua’a, the half-pig god.

  “He’s not so big,” Gray whispered aloud. But there was no point trying to trick his brain; the demigod was built like a professional athlete, with the added bonus of sporting three-inch tusks out of each side of his mouth. He was at least a full head taller than Gray, probably more, and the pig-god outweighed the mainlander by at least a good 50 pounds of muscle and sweat. “What am I doing here, what am I doing here, what am I doing here?” Gray hissed in a panic. Manaiakalani suddenly felt like it weighed a ton.

  But then he looked beyond the pig-god, and there, in the center of the clearing, stood Hi’iaka. The wind whipped through her dark, shining hair, winding it around her shoulders. She wore a blue silk dress, and even though it was torn at the hem and splattered with mud, and even though she looked tired and raw, and even though her back was bowed with defeat and her lips pursed in despair, she was radiant. The setting sun framed her shoulders, and the tips of her hair were alight with the fire of the sky. Her honey brown skin shone with a
rosy glow in the crackling firelight, and her eyes held such a fierceness and depth that he lost his heart all over again.

  He smelled it, then, the coconut-vanilla scent of her. It carried across the clearing on the breeze and filled his lungs. His heart began to race, his mind was cleared of its clouds, and he felt strength surge through his veins.

  And with that strength came hope.

  “Hi’iaka,” he whispered, breathing her name across the leaves.

  She looked up. She squinted into the dying light. She locked eyes with him and gasped. Tears sprang into her eyes, and she gave her head a little shake, wiping the tears away with the tips of her fingers. And then she lowered her head, dropping her chin to her chest, and she smiled.

  Something in that smile set off a charge.

  “AAAHHHHH!!!” Gray exploded through the bush and screamed a warrior’s cry as he sprinted at the pig-god, Manaiakalani held high.

  Then he tripped on a half-buried stone, lost his footing, and went sprawling face-first into the squealing herd of pigs.

  The boars screamed with anger and excitement. As Gray plunged into their circle, they attacked, stamping his fingers beneath their hooves and thrusting their tusks against his skin. Gray cried out in agony until the rumble of a deep, rich laughter reached a crescendo over the din of the pigs, and the crushing and stabbing subsided. The boars retreated and drew themselves into a tight circle around the rumpled, injured human lying in the mud and whimpering against his wounds.

  The laugher rang through the mountain. Kamapua’a stepped through the ring of hogs, his ribs shaking with the force of his delight. He approached Gray and crouched down to one knee. He grabbed the human’s chin with one hand and pinched, hard. Gray squeaked in pain, and Kamapua’a lowered his terrible boar’s head so that Gray could see the wet blackness in his wild eyes and smell the rotten meat on his breath. “So here is Pele’s army,” the pig-god snarled, turning Gray’s head from side to side and inspecting it carefully. “You are more pathetic than I could have possibly imagined.” He released his grip on Gray’s jaw, and Gray sank down to the ground.

  “And she armed you with this!” Kamapua’a continued gleefully, reaching down and plucking Manaiakalani from the earth. He held it up to the last rays of the sun; even after all the distress, and despite the barnacles that still clung to its surface, the bone gleamed in the light like a polished gem. “Manaiakalani. Old Maui’s crutch.” He laughed heartily and flung the hook down in the mud beside Gray. It stuck straight up in the earth and quivered with power. “Didn’t the queen of volcanoes tell you? I am no parcel of land to be dredged up by hooks.” He turned toward Hi’iaka and gestured down at the fallen mortal with both hands. “You see what your sister sends? Is it folly, do you think? Or does she truly not care to see you live? Her failure to send real help seems almost intentional.”

  Gray pushed himself up to his hands and knees. His hands were bruised and bleeding, and his left thumb was either jammed, or broken. He had shallow tusk wounds on both legs, and at least one below his sore ribs. It was a struggle to breathe. Everything hurt; everything bled. The pigs leered at him, hungry for more destruction. They were ravenous, and even if he could best them, their demigod was no trifle. If Gray had come into the clearing with any hope of escaping alive, it had just evaporated like water on a desert rock.

  But if he was going out, he was going out hard.

  He lunged forward and threw his shoulder into Kamapua’a’s shins. The pig-god’s legs buckled, and the two men went tumbling to the ground. Kamapua’a laughed, and the ringing, squealing sound of it dug into Gray’s skin like tiny shards of glass. He swung his fist up and slammed it into the pig-god’s chin. Kamapua’a snorted in surprise, and his teeth snapped together with a loud crack, but Gray took the brunt of the pain; the demigod had bones as hard as iron, and Gray’s hand popped sickeningly as it crunched into the unyielding skull.

  “Ow!” he cried, rolling onto his back and shaking the pain from his fist. “What are you made of?!”

  The pig-god pulled himself up to his feet and sneered down at the mortal. “The brutality of nature, meat-thing. Immortality and the raw strength of the earth.”

  Gray squeezed his eyes shut tight and flexed his fingers. “Did you just call me ‘meat-thing’?” he asked.

  “Gray!” The voice this time was Hi’iaka’s, sharp as cracking crystal. “Look out!”

  Gray opened his eyes just in time to see Kamapua’a’s bare foot rushing down at his neck from above. He cried out and spun to his side as the demigod’s heel stomped down into the earth, leaving a shallow crater that had almost been Gray’s flattened trachea. Gray reached out and grabbed Maui’s hook. He tried to roll away, but the circle of snarling pigs shouldered him back into the ring. He clamored to his feet and danced away from their gleaming tusks. “Hi’iaka!” Gray shouted desperately to his left, not taking his eyes from the advancing Kamapua’a. “Any chance of a little help?”

  Hi’iaka placed a palm against her forehead and closed her eyes as tears spilled down her cheeks. “I can’t,” she said quietly, and Gray felt his heart break inside of her words.

  “Well, that really sucks,” he mumbled.

  The demigod stalked closer, grinning beneath his snout, drooling down his own belly. He circled around the mainlander, giving him a wide berth, enjoying the moment. “You are playing an important role in history, mainlander. I wonder if you appreciate that. Once the moon rises and captures the Little Egg in its light, the very essence of this world will shift.” The sun had sunk completely behind the horizon now, and the sky was slowly plunging into its velvet-blue darkness. The first stars had already twinkled to life high above the mountain, and the moon wouldn’t be far behind. “Soon,” the pig-god grinned. “With the mana of Hi’iaka, I will extinguish Pele. I will bind Nāmaka with ropes of barbed wire. I will lock Kāne in a box and drown him in the ocean. I will tear down the thrones of Wakea and Papa and chain them to the spirits of the underworld. I will slit Maui’s throat with the bones of a fish. I will rip each akua from his place beneath the sun and drown him beneath the waters of my whim. And when I alone remain, I will demand great sacrifice from the people of Hawai’i. They will laud me with beasts and bloodthirsty games. And when they disappoint me, I will pluck their limbs from their trunks and sprinkle the valleys with their blood. I am Kamapua’a, and my power will be absolute.”

  “Yeah, I got it—you’re gonna destroy the world,” Gray said through gritted teeth. “Can we just get it over with?”

  “I do not think we are done,” Kamapua’a sneered.

  But Gray was. He lunged at the demigod. He swung Manaiakalani, hard. It sang like steel as it sliced through the air. Gray brought it down hard against Kamapua’a’s neck...but the demigod tilted his head at just the last moment, and the point of the hook collided with his tusk. The bones rang out like two boulders being smashed together, and the shock from the force of it dislocated Gray’s shoulder. He screamed in pain and dropped the great Hook of Maui. He fell back to his knees and clutched at his shoulder, whimpering and cursing. He looked up and locked eyes with Hi’iaka, who had gone ghostly pale. She buried her mouth against her hands and shook her head in helpless disbelief.

  Gray struggled to keep his voice even as he said, “I’m sorry. I tried.”

  Hi’iaka lowered her trembling hands and placed them over her heart. “No,” she whispered. “I am sorry. I am so sorry, Grayson Park.”

  “You are both sorry,” the pig-god sneered. “But see how impatiently the moon rises.” He gestured up into the sky with his snout, and indeed, the moon had already begun its ascension into the sky. “Now, mainlander, I think we are done.”

  The lens atop the pole caught the moon’s light, and Hi’iaka was horrified to see the glow intensify and focus into a soft, luminescent beam that struck the dirt at her feet. She backed up to the far edg
e of her circle, as far as she could go, but as the moon rose, the light crept closer. In just a few minutes, it would cast her shadow, and Kamapua’a would step into it, draining her of her strength and doubling his own. There was no doubt now that it would happen as he predicted; the glowing beam of moonlight on the dirt thrummed with the unmistakable power of Kanaloa’s magic.

  The akua of the underworld had bargained with the pig-lord and doomed them all.

  “So we have run out of time.” Kamapua’a hooked his foot beneath Manaiakalani and kicked it back, flinging it away and far out of reach.

  Gray clutched his right arm as he struggled painfully to his feet. If he was going to get eaten by a half-pig demigod, he was going to do it with some dignity. “You won’t get away with this,” he said, though he was pretty sure it wasn’t true. It just seemed like the right sort of thing to say.

  Kamapua’a placed his hands on Gray’s shoulders. Gray cringed and tried not to shrink away, but the demigod was terrible to behold, and he smelled even worse. He pulled his head away, but Kamapua’a nuzzled forward and brushed his tusks along Gray’s cheek. “It has been many ages since a human has made a sacrifice of himself to me. I have missed the flavor of submission.” He licked at his hog lips, and Gray squirmed as a stream of festering saliva splattered against his temple. “Before you die, it is important that you know that you have been absolutely insignificant. Your life has meant little, even now at the end. And your death...it means nothing at all.”

  Then he lunged forward, and Gray fell beneath his teeth; the fleshy, sunken sound of bone plunging into skin filled his ears as the world went dark.

  Even the pigs fell silent as their demigod feasted.

  That darkness and that silence lasted for several very long seconds before Grayson realized he didn’t feel any pain.