Islands of Fire

by Eldritch, Brian

  Apparently satisfied, the canoes turn and leave the bay. Kina and Hekalo wait to make sure they are truly gone before moving.

  “We shouldn’t dally,” Kina says.

  “Wait,” Hekalo says, and scrambles over the rocks. He slips into a tide pool and spends a couple of minutes there, splashing around. Kina calls to him but he ignores her. At last, he returns across the rocks carrying several motionless crabs in his arms.

  “Let’s eat.”

  “Where did you get these?”

  “I caught them in the tide pool.”

  “Magic?”

  “No,” Hekalo says. “Good old fashioned brute force.”

  They dash the crabs against rocks and eat them raw out of the shell. It makes for meager provisions, but Kina’s stomach thanks her.

  Fed, they venture out of the pools at the cave mouth and head inside.

  Sunlight succumbs quickly to the dark. Just inside the entrance, the tunnel widens into a natural grotto. The tide pools take the force out of incoming waves, and by the time they get into the grotto they aren’t much more than a gentle, lapping wavelet. The grotto floor is deep, the water clear, and just enough light penetrates the echoing stillness that Kina can see the water is teeming with fish.

  They swim across the grotto to a gritty beach on the far side. The sand gives way to pebbles, then rocks, and then before long, they are gazing into the pitch black maw of a tunnel.

  “We didn’t plan well,” Kina says. “We have no light. We’ll have to return outside and make some torches out of kukui nut. This complicates things.”

  “It’s no matter,” Hekalo says. “I have a solution.”

  Kina is puzzled as Hekalo returns to the grotto beach. There, in great weathered piles are pieces of driftwood. He picks through them and selects a wave-smoothed branch about as long as his arm. He holds it in front of him triumphantly.

  “I don’t understand,” Kina says, then just as she is realizing what he means to do, Hekalo mutters some strange words and the end of the stick bursts into a white, hollow-looking flame.

  “After you?” Hekalo says, holding the magical light high.

  Kina and Hekalo move into the cave. The passage is worn by centuries of waves, but Kina is sure this was once one of the holes cut by lava, back when this island was forming. She wonders if Mokolo can remember far enough back to recall the creation of his domain.

  “We aren’t the first ones here, that’s for sure,” Hekalo says, and points to the wall. Faded old ink on the rock depicts several humans gathering fish, hunting boar, and paying tribute to a god. The god has the same scowling features Kina saw on the stones leading up the mountain. The expression is so unlike the blank face of To`o that she grows more certain that the God in the Stone is, in fact, a fraud.

  “Do you suppose that’s Mokolo?” she asks.

  Hekalo is looking at the markings. “I’m almost sure of it.”

  “But why does he look so fierce? When he spoke, he seemed more warm. These faces look like terrifying.”

  “Maybe that’s how the original people of the island saw him?”

  “No, there’s something else,” Kina says. Then she realizes what it must be. “He’s lost his power. He is a shell of what he once was, right? Now that he has no worshippers, and his mana is nearly gone, and he has been forced from his own island, he doesn’t have his old energy. This is why he doesn’t seem so fierce anymore.”

  “Could be,” Hekalo says. “Do you think he’s warlike, then? Are we returning a dangerous god to power?”

  Kina looks at the pictures some more. “It’s possible,” she says. “But it doesn’t really matter, in the end. We need what he can give us, and he needs what we can give him. As long as he is true to his word, we have little choice but to go forward.”

  They leave the drawings and move farther into the cave. Eventually, the cave begins to dip downward. It seems to end at an oblong pool.

  “So this is it?” Hekalo asks. “I don’t get it.”

  Kina replies, “No, this isn’t the end. Don’t you remember? Mokolo said he flooded the tunnel to trap the traitors.”

  “Then how do we get through?” Hekalo asks. “I’m not the strongest swimmer.”

  “Let me test it.”

  Kina readies herself, then dives in. The water is chilly and threatens to take her breath, but she steels herself against the cold and starts swimming. She leaves behind the flickering, unsteady light from Hekalo’s torch, forced to find her way along with her hands. At one point she finds a place where she can come up. It is a tiny pocket of air. She sucks in a breath, and the sound is close and reverberates in the small space. Then she dives once more and continues, coming up in a much larger tunnel. It is dark as primordial night in here. Kina rests for a minute, catching her breath. The only sound is a distant drip of water and her own ragged breath.

  Then, for a moment, she is sure she hears a faint shush of something sliding.

  “Who’s there?” she says. She wants to make her voice sound bold and loud, but it is quiet in the dark.

  There is no response.

  Having caught her breath, Kina slips back into the water and returns to Hekalo, stopping again for a breath in the air pocket.

  Hekalo is visibly relieved when Kina returns.

  “I was sure you had drowned!” he exclaims. “What took so long?”

  “It isn’t a long passage, just hard to swim in the dark.” She points with a dripping hand to the torch. “What are we going to do about that?”

  “What, this?” Hekalo asks. “Not a problem. Lead the way.”

  Kina goes back into the water and Hekalo follows. When he submerges the torch, to Kina’s surprise it remains lit.

  “I see why you steal the power of the gods,” she says, “if you can do things like that.”

  “It has it’s uses.”

  “Follow me.”

  They swim underwater, pause for a breath, then finally come up on the far side. Now that Hekalo has brought light, Kina can see the passage goes on for some distance then comes to an end.

  From where they are, Kina and Hekalo can see bones scattered across the floor, hundreds of arm and leg bones and skulls, alongside dozens of old spears and shark-tooth clubs.

  “This is it,” Hekalo says. “This is where they killed all the people who stayed faithful to Mokolo. And this is where To`o’s traitors died amongst the bodies of their victims.”

  It is a tranquil, if macabre, scene. Kina looks over the bones, remembering the slight sound of motion she had heard earlier.

  “Well,” she says, “Let’s do what we need to do and go.”

  “Indeed,” Hekalo says. He walks toward the middle of the chamber, torch high. There, he stops for a moment, gazing around at the dead. Then he begins to speak a long, low incantation.

  The bones begin to quietly stir and rise.

  The Traitors Return

  Kina watches the bones slowly move, horror rising within her. The bones reassemble, shifting back into their proper alignment. Old legs, long since rotten down to mossy bones, attach to hip bones. Spines realign. Skulls roll back to their proper places atop rib cages. Arms snap back into place at the shoulders. Flexing as if trying to remember old movements, the arms swivel, the legs bend. One reassembled skeleton, pushes itself back to a sitting position. Another begins to stand on wobbly knees. Then another. And another.

  Hekalo snaps out of his stunned immobility first. He takes a few steps back, heels stepping on writhing bones.

  “What is this?” he hisses. He swings the torch around, lighting up the moving dead on all sides. The moving torch creates fantastic shadows on the wall, skeletons three times as large as a man.

  “Cast the spell!” Kina says. “Now!”

  Hekalo looks at her, desperation in his eyes. “It takes a long time,” he says. “Minutes. Releasing the souls of the dead isn’t the same as creating a little imaginary fire.”

&n
bsp; “Then you better get started!”

  “I think we should retreat,” Hekalo says. He passes Kina, who grabs his arm.

  “No retreat. We don’t have time to change the plan.”

  One of the skeletons has stood up, tottering as if dimly remembering how to walk. It takes one tentative step forward, then another, its empty eye sockets locked on Kina. Its lower jaw dangles open, and a hollow moan, like air moving through a canyon, issues from its mouth.

  Then they are all rising. Kina jabs at one with her pahi. “Get back!” she says. “Hekalo, maybe you’re right.”

  He mutters a familiar series of syllables, and a ball of light appears in one hand moments before thunfer peals through the room. The sound bounces off the naked stone in a deafening clap. Kina drops the pahi to hold her hands to her ears. When she looks up, several of the skeletons have been blasted back and have fallen apart. It’s a start, but more of them are now approaching.

  Kina picks up the pahi, her ears ringing. “Warn me next time!” she shouts.

  “There won’t be a next time,” Hekalo says. “It didn’t do anything. Look! They’re coming together again!”

  Sure enough, the skeletons Hekalo’s spell had shattered are beginning to realign, forming their human shapes once more.

  It is time to go.

  Kina pushes Hekalo back into the water, then follows him in. “Get moving. They’re coming faster!”

  Three skeletons, remembering how to run, splash into the water almost as quick as Kina can speak. One grapples her, while the others go for Hekalo.

  Kina slashes open its skull with her pahi and shoves it back. Taking advantage of the opportunity, she dives back into the water.

  Hekalo is already under, kicking to free himself of the skeletons that cling to his leg. He has dropped the magical torch. It’s light shimmers from the deepest part of the water, illuminating them all from below. Kina swipes their arms off with the pahi. The two begin to swim once more, moving away from the abandoned torch into the darkness of the flooded tunnel.

  Kina risks one glance back after sucking in a quick gulp of air midpoint in the swim. Several skeletons are striding underwater, their movement graceful and slow as they fight the drag of the water. Now that they are past the torch, the skeletons are grisly silhouettes, draped with rotting tapa clothing. The sight threatens to overwhelm Kina’s mind with terror. She has faced an army, seen ghosts, and fought a devil, but to her this phantasmagorical sight is almost more than she can take.

  Hekalo reaches the end of the water ahead of her, and by the time Kina has recovered her senses enough to join him, he has already waded out of the cold water and is feeling his way into the tunnel. Kina is now forced to rely on touch and hearing. She trips over stones in the floor, runs her hands along the damp, cold walls. The only thing she can see are the faintly-glowing runes on the pahi.

  She hisses, “Hekalo!”

  “Over here!” he calls back. She moves his direction, tentatively feeling for obstacles.

  “Where are you?”

  “Come to my voice,” he replies. “This is the way out, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “It’s hard to tell. I’m turned around.”

  The sound of water stirring meets Kina’s ears. The skeletons are emerging from the flooding part of the cave.

  Spurred to move quicker, Kina barks her shin on a rock, nearly falls over on a slope, and scrapes her hand on rough cave walls, but she can tell she is making progress. She feels a slight stir of warm air and knows it is coming in from where the cave empties into the grotto.

  “Keep going,” she says to Hekalo.

  His voice carries back to her from farther ahead than she thought. “I think I can see a little bit of light.”

  “Where are you? Keep talking, so I can focus on you.”

  “You’re doing great. Go this way.” After a moment, he says, “I can hear the sea. Wait, I think I can see now.”

  Scrapes and clatters are growing closer behind her. Consumed by terror, she makes too many mistakes. A rock trips her and she falls heavily onto solid stone. The pahi drops from her hands, sliding several feet away.

  At that moment, she feels clawlike hands grabbing for her leg.

  Kina kicks and thrashes, but the hands keep coming. One of the skeletons takes hold of her skirt and pulls. She feels it starting to slide from her hips. A couple of the shark teeth fall out of the waistline and clatter on the floor.

  “Hekalo!” she screams, and feels around for the teeth, scooping the sharp objects into her hand. A couple more twisting kicks and she is temporarily free from the skeletons. She slides across the stones and grabs the pahi with her other hand.

  There is no time even to stand. Several skeletons are on her, clawing and moaning that horrible sighing moan. Kina swings wildly. The pahi’s runes arc back and forth in the darkness. She feels first one, then two skeletons collapse beneath the pahi’s blade. Others tear at her flesh. Her legs are sliced. Blood runs down her shins and feet.

  There is another thunderclap and Kina is forced to the ground. She lies there, stunned and bloody, slowly realizing Hekalo had cast another of his spells. At least the skeletons around her seem to have been knocked back into pieces, as she doesn’t feel them attacking her anymore.

  “I thought I told you to warn me!” she says, getting to her feet. She is still holding the pahi and the dropped shark teeth.

  “Sorry,” Hekalo says. “Thought you needed it.”

  “I did,” she says.

  “Come toward me. I can see where you are because of that weird weapon. Hurry, before they come back together!”

  Kina joins Hekalo and they make their way back through the tunnel until they get to the grotto. Never has Kina been so grateful to be returned to daylight.

  “Hold on,” she says, and stops to tuck the teeth back into her waistband. Then they wade into the water and swim for the far side of the grotto.

  When the skeletons reach the beach, all the living creatures in the water seem to scatter at once. A mass of fish of all different sizes and shapes rush past and around her, making a cloud of greens, blues, yellows, and grays. Just as soon as the fish pass, they are gone, fleeing through the cracks in the jumbled stones forming the barrier at the grotto mouth.

  Kina and Hekalo stagger over those stones, trying to find purchase on the sharp rocks, while the skeletons plunge without stopping into the grotto’s clear water.

  “Wait!” Hekalo says. He presses his hands against Kina’s stomach to stop her.

  Up ahead, through the grotto’s tall cave mouth, Kina can see five Burning Warrior canoes. Several warriors are beaching them, pulling them onto a flat rock table.

  “They’re coming this way? What are they doing?” Hekalo asks.

  “They’re looking for us, I guess.”

  Kina looks back at the skeletons, which are striding slowly across the sandy grotto floor, growing ever closer. She looks back at the warriors tying off the canoes.

  She has an idea.

  “Follow my lead,” she tells Hekalo, and stands up so she can be seen. Hekalo looks at her in shock as she shouts at the warriors, insulting them and threatening to kill them all.

  “What are you doing?” he hisses, and tries to pull Kina back down. But it is too late. The warriors look up, spot Kina, and begin charging along the stone bench toward the cave.

  “Now they’re going to kill us!” Hekalo says. “We’re trapped between them and these things back here!”

  “Not for long,” Kina says. She pulls Hekalo toward the side of the cave mouth opposite of the warriors. Among the tumbledown rocks, slick with seawater, they keep low and wait for the warriors to arrive. Arrows clatter off the wall above them as the warriors make a futile attack from afar. “Keep your head down,” Kina says.

  She loses sight of the warriors for a moment, and then they come into view, moving quickly over the rocks.

  “There they are!” one of them shouts.

 
; Another says, “I remember her. That’s the slave!”

  Something moves in the grotto. Kina looks that way and sees the first of the skeletons climbing out of the water onto the higher ground at the cave mouth.

  The first bunch of warriors to arrive stop dead in their tracks, all thought of Kina and Hekalo lost as they behold what is rising up out of the cavern. They stand in dumb shock as more and more skeletons emerge from the placid grotto waters.

  Unable to see Kina and Hekalo, the skeletons turn their rotten skulls toward the Burning Warriors.

  What happens next fills Kina with dark satisfaction. Several of the warriors draw their leiomano clubs and form a defensive line against the oncoming dead. From her vantage point, Kina watches as the skeletons launch at them in fury, raking them with claws and tackling them. The warriors fight with ferocity, pushing back several skeletons and even breaking some of them up into piles of bones. As more skeletons emerge from the cavern, and the ones that have already been knocked apart begin to form again, the warriors cry out and break from battle, running as fast as they can back toward the canoes.