Na Akua

by Clayton Smith

  This is what it’s like to be dead, he thought.

  Then he opened his eyes.

  Kamapua’a still stood before him, his swinish chin hairs bristling against Gray’s skin. But his eyes were wide and bulging, and the spittle that dripped from his tusks was now frothy and tinged with pink.

  Gray looked down.

  The tip of Maui’s hook jutted out from Kamapua’a’s stomach, dripping scarlet beads of blood.

  Gray stared at the demigod’s wound, stunned. Kamapua’a coughed and sputtered. A thick, azure liquid spilled out from the hole in his abdomen, mixing with the blood and spreading into a purple between his feet.

  Gray leaned to the side and looked around at Kamapua’a’s back. Hi’iaka stood behind him, fierce in the flickering light of the fire, the handle of Manaiakalani clutched tightly in her hands. She stepped up closer to the half-pig demigod and bared her teeth. “The games of nā akua are not yours to play, half-god.” Then she twisted the hook, pulled hard, and ripped it back out of his body. The life and divinity flowed out of him like water.

  The boars began to back away. They shook their heads and twitched their ears, pawed at their snouts with their great, dirty hooves, and backed into the forest. They turned and disappeared into the brush, squealing and snorting and leaving their god to bleed.

  Kamapua’a’s head began to sag. His cheeks drooped, and his snout began to melt down over his tusks. The hairs fell out of his chin, and his ears withered down and shriveled up against the sides of his skull. The splotchy black pigment faded into nutshell brown, and his skin melted and warped until it had reformed itself into his human face.

  He staggered around to face Hi’iaka. His eyes were round with shock, and the blood that dripped from his lips was frothing with anger. “Little Egg...” he hissed.

  She stepped up close, the fire of her eyes boring into his. “I told you I would break you like a shell,” she said through clenched teeth. “You should have taken better care with your words. And your deeds.” She lifted her hands into the air, still grasping the red and dripping Manaiakalani. She moved her lips, chanting a silent song, and clouds gathered in the night sky. They grew black and ominous, and within seconds, lightning crackled to life above the storm, flashing through the clouds and spreading to all horizons. A bolt shot down and cracked against the pane of magic glass, shattering it into molten drops of sand. The sound was deafening, and Gray clapped his hands to his ears and prayed—prayed—that he wasn’t wetting himself again. Two more bolts crackled down and struck on either side of Kamapua’a, scorching the earth at his feet and bubbling the pools of blood and divinity that were spreading through the grass. “Go, Kamapua’a. Go, Lord of No Pigs. Crawl into the woods like an animal and die quietly beneath the frail leaves of your kukui trees. There is no more place for you on Maui; you do not deserve, nor will you receive, the mercy of Hawai’i.”

  The electric storm raged overhead, and fear filled Kamapua’a’s eyes. He clutched his stomach and stumbled back, falling speechlessly into the upcountry wild. He tried to drag himself back up to his feet, to summon his strength, to stem the loss of his own mana, but his body failed him, slowly draining itself of its immortality, and his legs gave out beneath him. He crawled away on his elbows and knees, whimpering with the incredulity of pain, and he pulled himself up to the river’s edge. He reached up, as if grasping for some hidden rope to pull him over the water.

  Then he toppled headfirst into the raging waters and was washed away into the crushing falls below.

  Chapter 24

  “What…just happened?”

  Gray swooned, as much from exhaustion and shock as from overall blood loss, and Hi’iaka caught him, wrapping an arm around his waist and helping him stand tall. “You saved me, Grayson Park,” she said, her eyes shining and a smile spreading across her lips. Her wind chime voice had returned, and the very sound of it soothed his breath.

  He shook his head, trying to clear some sense into his brain. “I don’t…no, you saved me.”

  Hi’iaka nodded with a smile. “We seem to have saved each other.”

  Gray leaned on her support, and the scent of her overpowered his senses. He filled himself with it until he was coursing with coconut and vanilla from the tips of his toes to the ends of his hair. It gave him strength, and he stood straighter, though he didn’t lift his arm from around her shoulders. “But you said…you said you couldn’t help. And it was real, you were…I mean, you couldn’t.” He remembered the crack that splintered his heart when she’d said the words.

  “I couldn’t. I was contained. I was trapped in the pig-god’s circle. But you brought Manaiakalani. You brought a tool of the gods, imbued with such power…didn’t you see?” Hi’iaka laughed. It was the sound of birds chirping amid the rumble of a summer storm.

  Gray shook his head. “See what?” he asked.

  “When you dropped Manaiakalani on the ground…the pig-god kicked it aside. Didn’t you see?”

  Gray closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. He was trying desperately to follow along. “No. I mean, I saw him kick it, yes, but…?”

  “He kicked it into my circle. Manaiakalani hit the ground and slid through the dirt, wiping a blank space through the line, breaking my prison. You brought the key to my cell, Grayson,” she said, taking his face in her hands. “And Kamapua’a himself turned it in the lock.”

  “Oh.” Gray blinked. Then he blinked again. He felt a smile curl up at the corners of his lips as he melted into her touch. “Well...I mean…it was Pele’s idea to get the hook,” he said, shrugging modestly.

  “My sister has great love for me,” Hi’iaka nodded, brushing the tips of her fingers along Gray’s cheek. “I have never doubted that, not truly. But she has her responsibilities, and you…you were the one to see it through.” Her cheeks burned crimson, then, and she glanced away as she added, “Just like I had hoped you would be.”

  Gray smiled…but as the scent of her became a thing less potent, the reality of the last few days rushed back to him. “I…” he began. But a lump rose up in his throat, blocking the words. Tears welled up in his eyes, and he pressed his forehead into Hi’iaka’s hair. “I…I lost a…a friend.” The word was so completely inadequate that his neck burned with the shame of it. “Not a friend. Not even family. Something…different. Something bigger. I don’t know the word for it.” The tears spilled over, and a shaking sob wracked his chest. “I lost a Polunu,” he wept quietly. “I lost my Polunu.”

  Hi’iaka burrowed her face into his chest. “I know,” she whispered. “I know. I am so sorry, Grayson.” She dabbed her own tears on the collar of his shirt. “I am sorry for being the cause of—”

  “No,” he said curtly, cutting her off. “It wasn’t you. Coming here was what he wanted. He believed all along. He knew, and he believed, and he wouldn’t stop until it was made right. And because of him, we did make it right.” He lifted his head and snuffled as he wiped his nose on his sleeve. “It’s just—he was—he—”

  Hi’iaka placed a palm on Gray’s chest. “He was your ‘ohana, Grayson.”

  Gray laughed, a short, sad burst, his eyes working to blink back his tears and proving themselves unequal to the task. “It’s stupid, I literally did not know him at all. I don’t—”

  “He was your ‘ohana,” she said again, more firmly. “And we will not forget him.”

  Something inside of Gray broke, something tucked deep inside his heart, and he began to sob. “No,” he said, wiping his face with his hands and trying to control his breath, “we will not.”

  They stood there together like that until the moon was high in the nighttime sky, clinging to each other, wiping their tears and sharing their smiles and not really knowing how to feel, but feeling it all the same.

  Chapter 25

  Kamapua’a heaved himself out of the water, his fingers
digging into the mud and pulling his trailing body up the shore.

  His body had been slammed through three separate falls, churned against the river’s floor, and battered against its boulders. But he was a demigod, and broken bones were for mortals.

  Still…as he lay there wheezing against the silt, he felt a splinter in his side, and blood now trickled from his head and his elbow in addition to the wound in his belly, which still leaked a strange and unfamiliar mixture of scarlet red and azure blue. His skin had never before suffered a puncture wound, and he was somewhat surprised to see his own blood, but immensely intrigued at the sight of the blue fluid. He had never seen any being, mortal or immortal, weep bright blue blood from a wound, and it mesmerized him. This blue is a thing of power, he reasoned. It belongs to Kamapua’a alone, and it flows from me now as a sign that I shall rise again and take vengeance on my enemies. And the number of his enemies was growing by the day.

  Still, he felt dizzy…weak. Those were things he had never felt before.

  And he could not transform into his true face.

  That was concerning, too.

  He crawled up the shore, pulling himself from the water by the roots of the pili grass that grew along the bank. Safe from the current’s pull, he rolled over onto his back and pressed his hand once more to the wound on his belly, urging the blood to stop flowing.

  Maui kept his hook sharper than I gave him credit for, he thought, pressing into the gash. The old man was earning a higher rank on Kamapua’a’s list.

  He lay there on the bank for many minutes, collecting his strength and willing the bloods, both red and blue, to stop flowing. And finally, the azure fluid did stop. It dripped its final drops onto the grass, and Kamapua’a felt himself emptied of the substance, and he decided to count himself lucky. Sign of power or not, a foreign body in the bloodstream can only prove bothersome, he concluded, and he was well rid of the strangely-colored stuff.

  And yet…he felt so strange, so weary, so bone-tired now, the way he had always imagined a mortal must feel, locked within a chamber of withering skin and moldering bone, and Kamapua’a wondered if the azure blood had anything to do with that.

  He had only just pulled himself to his knees when he heard the beat of a distant drum.

  He cocked his head and listened intently. The sound was unmistakable; it was being played in the style of the ancients, the slow, methodical way the warriors would beat a tattoo while they marched between their battles for the islands. The sound of the drum grew louder, drew nearer, until it was just beyond the trees and still moving his way.

  A shimmering blue light began to glow beyond the woods. The Lord of Pigs squinted his eyes to see better in the darkness, something he had never needed to do before. And in the gloaming, he saw the withering shapes of ghostly blue warriors marching slowly between the trees, their faces drawn in mournful remembrance, their steps heavy and plodding, weary and spent.

  It was the Night Marchers, tangled in their eternal search for the gateway to the life beyond.

  Kamapua’a sneered as he dragged himself to his feet. As a demigod, he was immune to their curse, and he felt somehow scorned by their appearance on this shore, on this mountain, on this island, as if this place were for the pig-god alone, and the other demons and ghosts of Hawai’i should know to pay homage to his solitude.

  He drew himself up to his full height as they marched nearer, though it caused him a slicing pain in his belly that he had never thought possible. The Night Marchers came on, beating the drum and stepping in time, and he stared them down, knowing that after all he’d been through, after the inexplicable blow dealt by the Little Egg and her mainlander whelp, and after his temporarily-failed attempt to double his strength and establish dominance over the gods, he could still wield power over at least some of the otherworldly forces that haunted the islands. And so he stood, tall and proud, and he looked the ghostly soldiers in the eye and snidely ushered them past.

  But three of the soldiers broke rank when they approached his place on the shore. They floated toward him, their eyes sunken to black holes, their mouths gaping and slack. They dared approach Kamapua’a, the greatest demigod of the Polynesian realm, and they reached out for him with their ghastly, ghostly fingers. He withdrew in repulsion, and commanded them, “Back to your rank-and-file, cretins.” But still they reached, and their hollow fingers seized upon his wrists, and he gasped and tried to pull away, but they held him tight. “Release me!” he screamed, but the ghosts would not relent. They began to retreat, and they dragged him from the grass at the edge of the river, pulling him down into the host of ghouls. “Unhand me!” Kamapua’a screeched, struggling against their grip. “I am akua! I am your god! Release me, or you will pay the price!”

  But the Night Marchers felt for his immortality and found it drained away. Kamapua’a was no longer the half-man, half-pig demigod of Hawai’i. He was a mortal man, wounded and sick, half-drowned and half-dead, and he had dared to lock eyes with the soldiers of death’s army.

  The truth dawned upon Kamapua’a too late. He screamed as the ghosts dragged him into their line, and then he was swallowed up by the dead, lost forever, another slack-mouthed ghost with hollowed eyes, one of so many Night Marchers, endlessly wandering for the rest of all eternity.

  Chapter 26

  Hi’iaka melted into her sister’s embrace. She glowed red with the heat of Pele’s fire, then she became soft and rendered down into lava. The two sisters became one swirling column of burning magma, little jets of fire bursting from all sides. Then they pulled away and reformed into themselves, solid and whole and beaming and radiant.

  Gray found he needed to sit down.

  “You are safe, Little Egg,” Pele said, caressing her sister’s cheek tenderly. The lava surrounding them surged triumphantly into the air. Gray pulled his feet back from the edge and tried not to get splashed.

  “Thanks to you, sister,” Hi’iaka replied, clasping Pele’s hands in her own. “And thanks to Grayson.”

  Pele turned toward the human in surprise, as if she had just now realized that he was there. “Yes, mainlander. You succeeded admirably. My sister chose you well.”

  “And you still burned me,” he said, working his injured shoulder.

  Pele smirked. “You lacked motivation and required encouragement. But in the end, you did very well.”

  “I…I didn’t do it alone.” Gray’s hands trembled, and he fussed at the hem of his shirt to keep them busy. “Polunu…he was…” He cleared his throat, blinked back his tears, and began again. “Polunu…helped. But he…he fell.”

  Pele lowered her eyes and nodded. “Yes. I know. Your friend was a brave soul. He had a good heart, and a fierce love of Hawai’i. We will honor him.”

  “We will,” Hi’iaka confirmed, patting Gray’s hand.

  “I know,” he said, giving up a weak smile. “We will.” He sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “I need to…find his family, or something. Tell them what happened.”

  “I will handle that task,” Pele said. “I set him on the journey; the responsibility is mine.”

  “Oh. Okay. That’s great.” He nodded awkwardly. “Thank you.”

  “I will send my mo’o to seek out his ‘ohana.”

  Gray leapt to his feet. “What?!”

  But Hi’iaka squeezed his hand reassuringly. “Not all mo’o are evil, Grayson. Many are good spirits, and kind. They will be apt for the task.”

  Gray shook his head. “I just do not understand Hawai’ian mythology,” he mumbled.

  “There is plenty of time to learn.” A smile played on Hi’iaka’s lips, and her eyes danced in the light of the swirling lava.

  “You returned Manaiakalani to Maui?” Pele asked, cutting them short.

  “Yes,” Gray nodded. “We did.”

  “And he was grateful?”
<
br />   Gray frowned. “He said we should have thrown it into the river with Kamapua’a and let it be washed out to the center of the ocean.”

  “But his little sea monsters were happy to have a purpose again,” Hi’iaka added cheerfully.

  “All is well, then. Mainlander, it is nearly sunrise, and you must be exhausted, being mortal and weak of flesh.”

  Gray frowned. “Umm…well…I am tired. I’m not…I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m weak of flesh…” He instinctively rubbed his shoulder, which still hurt, even though Hi’iaka had reset it. He hoped she wouldn’t bring it up.

  “You must go now, and rest. Restore your energy, and be satisfied in the feat you have accomplished. It is no small thing to face a demigod; you have aided greatly in the salvation of Hawai’i, and you will forever be counted as a friend of the islands.”

  “Thank you.” Then Grayson bowed, because he felt like he should do something, but maybe a bow wasn’t it, because it was a stiff bow, and awkward, and he wished he hadn’t tried it at all.

  Pele turned to Hi’iaka. “Sister…would that I could have raged against Kamapua’a myself. But my responsibilities here…” She let her words drift, and a current of regret ran beneath them.

  But Hi’iaka held up her hand. “I know that what you do here is a great sacrifice, and a greater burden. I did not wish to distract you from it, sister. I know full well what Nāmaka would do if you left your cauldron for even a moment. All I needed was for you to set the humans on their course, and you did. You are ever my loving sister.” She kissed Pele’s cheek, and Pele returned the embrace.

  “And you, my Little Egg,” the volcano goddess whispered.

  Hi’iaka smiled. “Be well, Pele-honua-mea. I will see you soon.”

  Then she stepped out of the lava pool and disappeared through the doorway, beckoning with a nod for Grayson to follow.