by Matt Larkin
Perhaps, even now, her ancestor experienced existence much as she did at this moment, looking through the Veil from the far side, Spirit Walking along Pō. Drenched in shifting shadows, she moved amid the invader camp unseen, gauging their numbers and mettle while perceived by them—if at all—as nothing save a cool breeze, a nameless unease that set one on edge.
With their leaders Uli and Huma dead, and that accursed wereboar gone, she had rather expected the invaders to break. To flee these shores and admit Haupu was beyond their reach. Still, they lingered, and thus she continued to feed Kalai-pahoa bits of their essence and allow the Wood akua to ravage their bowels and unmake them with disease and corruption.
Why would these people not falter? Why, given the enormity of their suffering, did they not realize their akua had turned upon them and thus their cause was lost? Was it sheer tenacity that had them continue to fling themselves upon the sealed tunnel like madmen, casting their lives away?
Poli‘ahu tired of the siege. She had grown weary of the human reek of Haupu. The stench of sweat and shit that had infected the very rocks of the fortress. The crowding of men around her, looking at her, looking to her as if to ask why this did not end. She loathed them now, almost as much as the invaders.
Almost enough to demand Kaupeepee travel forth and harry the besiegers directly, bring this to a head. After all, surely the Kahikians had grown weak now, after so long plagued by Kalai-pahoa. Pummeled by hail, pierced by javelins. Surely now they must be primed to crack and fracture into a thousand pieces.
But now … the distorted visages across the Veil gathered along the shore, flocking there not with obvious intent to load their canoes and flee, but in greeting of other canoes. Frowning, Poli‘ahu followed the throng, content none could see her now that Uli was dead.
Reinforcements joined the invaders now, and among them, two kupua, flush with mana permeating Pō, their auras ablaze with power. Auras she knew, even as she knew it impossible.
Kana and … Niheu. Poli‘ahu had slain Hina’s son. She had murdered him, of that she had been certain. Yet …
She could not see his face through the distortion of the Veil, but from his aura, it had to be him. It had to.
Which meant her work at breaking these people had somehow come undone. How was it possible?
The Waters of Life … Waiau answered in her mind.
What? Those were real? She had thought them a mere part of Maui’s legend.
Glowering—almost ready to scream out her frustration—she retreated back to the fortress.
Slipping back into her body was like waking too quickly from too deep a sleep. She slumped over onto her side, groaning away the waves of fatigue and disorientation that accompanied her.
Push it too far there and you may find yourself lost in the Penumbra …
The snow sisters were forever warning her about the risks of Spirit Walking. Nevertheless, it was the only way to feed Kalai-pahoa the invader essences. And now she might well have to attempt that with Kana and Niheu.
Milu take the souls of these invaders.
None of them belonged here. That these brothers had been born in Sawaiki counted for little, considering the actions of their forebears.
On rare occasions, she had wondered what it would take to achieve peace with the invaders.
The submission of the Kahikians to the old Savai‘ian dynasty. The acknowledgement of their right to rule, as the heirs of Manua. Of course, none of that would be possible as long as kupua like Pele—and these two brothers—kept buoying the hopes of the invaders. They still believed conquest was possible, maybe even inevitable.
Which meant Poli‘ahu had no choice but to resort to ever more drastic means of disabusing them of such beliefs. Whatever it took to secure her dynasty. To shock these invaders into realizing they could not take this land.
Dawn had not even arisen when the calls sounded through Haupu, the warnings that the invaders once again tried to scale the cliffs leading from the waters up to the fortress. Grim-faced, Poli‘ahu plodded up to the battlements and found Kaupeepee staring down into the night.
“One of them cocks moves too fast. He dodges or catches every javelin we throw at him. Didn’t know better, I’d call him a fucking mo‘o, wriggling around like a lizard.”
Poli‘ahu nodded, unsurprised. “That would be Kana. Hina’s son.”
“Well, this rate, her boy’ll be in our armpits any moment now. Suppose we can take one man, no matter how fast, but it’s likely to disrupt the defenses and allow others to get up here. Kupua are fucking …” Kaupeepee paused, looking at her and perhaps remembering she too, was kupua. “… Strong.”
Poli‘ahu glanced over the side. “Indeed.” And she had no intention of allowing him to mount the battlements.
Instead, she shut her eyes, feeding mana into the air, seeping it into the waters. That mana coalesced, thrumming through invisible currents, siphoning her life energy to form up into mist that rose along the wall. Not mere vapor, though, but mist with substance, forming a viscous barrier Kana would have to virtually swim through to climb upward.
And indeed, mired into the treacherous mist, his ascent slowed to a crawl.
Poli‘ahu leaned against the battlements to still her trembling limbs. “Pelt him with your javelins now.” Her voice shook, just a little, and she glanced at Kaupeepee, hoping he hadn’t caught it. Expending so much mana left her chilled and unsteady.
“Uh … Can’t actually see much through that fog,” the bandit complained.
Poli‘ahu barely restrained herself from rolling her eyes. Mist created little barrier for her, though, so she pointed down, guiding Kaupeepee’s aim. When he loosed, the javelin soared true. It struck Kana, though Poli‘ahu could not tell how badly. In either event, the young kupua faltered, arms flailing, pitching backward and plummeting into the gulch below, a shadow slipping through the night sky.
“Did I get him?” Kaupeepee asked.
“Yes.” Poli‘ahu pushed off the battlements and made her way slowly back toward the main fortress. “But I doubt a kupua like that will die so easily.”
A great many benthic monstrosities escaped into your world during the Deluge, Waiau said in her mind.
Poli‘ahu sat in the darkness of a fortress room illuminated by but a single candlenut torch. For this, she had demanded a sacrifice of Kaupeepee, and he had offered up three prisoners. Their corpses now lay piled in the corner, their blood decorating the room in an expansive web of glyphs.
Monstrosities because she needed these invaders to break now. She needed to visit upon them such obscenity that they could not help but acknowledge her dominance of Sawaiki, no matter the cost. No matter even if she had to invoke spirits Lilinoe claimed forbidden even in Old Mu.
Despite the warning, the Mist spirit waited just across the Veil, fairly teetering with obvious excitement. Wondering, perhaps, if her pupil could attain such heights.
It was not even the spirits Poli‘ahu truly needed, but rather, their ability to influence one of those benthic creatures spawned in the depths of the World of Water. Something that would swamp every canoe, thwart any attempt to climb the declivities by denying access to the gulches. And moreover, something that would horrify the Kahikians beyond measure.
Hail had not broken them, nor the murder of Uli, nor the ravages of poison tree akua. But this …
So far as she knew, no mortal had attempted such a thing in the history of Sawaiki.
Oh, there were tales of the mer kingdoms calling up behemoths, taniwha and the like, yes … but for a mortal to try it?
Let it break them.
Waiau snickered in her mind, and she could have even sworn Lilinoe chuckled faintly, a wispy sound, gone even before it was noticed.
Drying, cooling blood caked her fingers from painting the glyphs. She wiped her hands on her pa‘u while inspecting her work, checking to be certain everything was flawlessly done. The nature of such a spell relied heavily upon calling up a Water spirit—a m
er—from its home world to summon and overmaster the monster she needed.
But for such a feat, she needed not only to control the Water spirit and bind it to her Will, she needed to enhance its own power to enact such a feat. That meant invoking a great many more spirits to keep the mer under her control. Even so, it was hard to predict what she would have to offer a Water spirit for its service.
“Saveasi‘uleo,” she finally called.
Psychic currents reverberated through the room, pulsed through Pō and—she imagined—carried outward, down through the depths and beyond, into the Spirit Realm. Into the World of Water whom some called Avaiki, where dwelt the particular mer she called upon. One of ancient lineage and power. Vast power.
“Saveasi‘uleo,” she repeated, evoking it, intermixing the name in her Supernal incantation and the imploring of the innumerable other spirits she needed to make this work.
In her Sight, the whole of the room swirled, shadows lurching away from the vibrations of her voice and the drum that was her Will beating at the hinges of reality.
They came …
A procession lacking order or form. Incipient shapes melting in at the fringes of her sphere of glyphs, drifting into the Penumbra to cast their gazes upon the mortal sorceress with the temerity or foolishness to invoke their names.
They came, with the glint of avarice in their eyes. A thirst not for material wealth, but sensual pleasures and the respite the Mortal Realm might provide them if they could find any chink in her wards, any wavering of her Will. That they would slip inside her and claim her as their own, their route into this Realm.
They came, forming and unforming as if one with the shifting flow of shadows and yet somehow casting the illusion of humanity as though it were their own shadow. Akua … Gods, men called them, and not without cause.
“Saveasi‘uleo, heed me!” she implored in Supernal.
And she fell.
The floor surged up to meet her, grabbed her face and pummeled it. Her soul untethered itself, snapping like a rope pulled too taut, and Pō slithered into greater focus, even while colors of the physical world drained away. Its omnipresent chill seeped into her bones, heedless of her affinity for the cold.
She had fallen into Pō … Drawn in or unwittingly Spirit Walking … in either case, her soul recoiled, knowing all too well the peril she’d stumbled upon.
Predators lurked at the fringes, a throng of horrors watching her, perhaps ready now to feast upon her soul, held back only by fragile wards and her flagging Will.
But it was the fish-man in clearest relief, kneeling before her, opalescent eyes seeming to bore into her … that she could not tear her gaze from. Some mollusk-like growths crowned his head, but his body was otherwise adorned with shimmering golden scales and translucent fins. Though he glittered like a walking treasure, the air he projected was so alien it stole even her breath.
With a scaled, rough finger, the mer traced a line along her cheek. “You called for me.”
3
Clouds of ash cast the setting sun in a myriad blaze, as though the sky itself burned, rather than the land. Hints of incandescence still pocketed the cooling lava that had cascaded through Hilo. A silence had descended now, broken only by the crackle of flames where the fringes of the forest still smoldered. The people—those few who had survived Pele’s onslaught—had fled, along with the animals, leaving a wasteland not so very unlike what Uluka‘a had become, albeit on a smaller scale.
Grim-faced, Pele trod amid what had—only this morning—been a blooming village, a thriving community. Her victims.
“Many are innocent,” Lonomakua had reminded her.
“I know.” But with Poli‘ahu away and unable to halt the advance of lava, this had been Pele’s chance to destroy the Snow Queen’s army in a single swoop. To break the back of her foe and effectively end the war while the other woman fought over some petty fortress on Moloka‘i.
“It will not end here,” the kahuna had warned.
“I know,” she’d repeated.
Not end. Not yet. She knew all the things he would have said. That violence is a fire that feeds upon itself, fueled from one bloody stroke to the next. That, were she to take this extreme action, Poli‘ahu would respond in kind.
Naturally, this meant that Pele would have to hunt down and destroy the Snow Queen before the other woman had the chance to retaliate.
For the longest time, Pele had sat upon the slopes of Kīlauea with Lonomakua at her side, feeling the rumble of power beneath the surface. Debating, with him and with herself, the prudence of such an extreme course. In the end, desperation had won out. She needed to end this war so Sawaiki could prosper, and Poli‘ahu would never back down.
Namaka had once told her—when they were young queens—that if a point needed to be made, to make certain she had to only make it once.
Now, ash still rained down from above, even while refuse crunched under her heels.
Really, there wasn’t so much to see here. Lava had swept every structure, leaving nothing but a field of blackened char in its wake. An empty, obsidian plain leading down to the sea.
There was nothing to see … but still she felt obliged to walk here and see that very nothing.
The oblivion that resulted from her actions, her choices.
When the lava had cooled enough, kāhuna came to send the dead into the depths of Pō, lest their pain and fear and rage transform them into lapu. Kamalo came and danced, giving no sign of the pain his aged back must feel. Lonomakua too, and four others besides—all to attend to the slaughter she had wrought.
It went on all night, and Pele forced herself to watch them dance, to listen to their mele, and to imagine those who they now implored to leave this world behind. Knees folded beneath her, hands resting upon them, she allowed her vision to drift into Sight, to glimpse the shifting shadows of Pō just beyond the Veil.
She saw the shades of her victims. Men, women, children, all drawn to the vibrations created by the kāhuna. What would the masses think, could they see beyond the world and know the fallen did indeed hearken to the calls of the living? At least for a moment more.
She saw ghostly mothers clutching ghostly infants to their breasts and could not help glance at the ethereal owl perched in the distance, watching. Her ‘aumakua … Pu‘u-hele, who had also died before she had experienced a moment of life. Also because of Pele. Did Pu‘u-hele judge her for this?
Either way, she judged herself.
“The greatest danger posed by Poli‘ahu is not her control of snow or mist, but her practice of the Art,” Lonomakua said. They had returned to Puna and walked now among the jungle just outside the town. “She delves ever deeper into secrets that ought to have remained lost with the fall of Old Mu. So many wrongs in this world trace back to men and women trying to rewrite reality by calling upon forces they cannot begin to understand.”
Pele glanced at the mentor she had chosen as a stepfather before nodding absently. “She laid a curse upon Kamapua‘a.” Whether or not he deserved it remained rather immaterial. The fact the sorceress could do such a thing was the greater horror.
“Practitioners of the Art lose pieces of their humanity, including inhibitions that might have limited their extremes.”
Pele scoffed. “One does not have to practice sorcery to cross boundaries and act without compassion.” She had plenty of experience with wrath driving her—and Namaka—to reprehensible deeds.
“Certainly true, yes, but the erosion of pieces of the soul make such actions even easier. Which is to say, in the throes of desperation, any way out may seem prudent to one such as her, even tracks a normal person would never consider.”
Pele ducked under a low-hanging branch, making her way down to a stream cutting through the valley. “You mean destroying Hilo may prompt her to call up some madness from Pō … or beyond.” She knelt, splashing water on her face. Times like this, she sometimes mused over giving up. Backing away … leaving everything. But such fancies
didn’t last long. She had sworn to claim rulership over this island. Sworn to rule Vai‘i, make a home for her people, and punish Poli‘ahu for her actions. She wiped away the water, then looked to him. “All the more reason I have to act swiftly. I’ll need to hunt her at this Haupu and destroy her before she can call up anything.”
“You risk her turning to those very powers if you attempt it.”
“And if I do nothing, she’ll invoke something or other regardless.” Pele folded her arms over her chest. “She has to die and we both know it. We can stand here and argue about what she might do if cornered, but we don’t actually know what she’ll do if left alone, either. Unless you’ve seen something in the flames you haven’t deigned to share?”
His hint of a smile answered that—clearly, as always, he had seen a great deal more than he shared with anyone.
In the late evening, her warriors gathered in the harbor, stowing javelins and spears in canoes, bundling down baskets of fish and poi, making ready for the voyage to Moloka‘i. The better part of Pele’s army would remain on Vai‘i and defend Puna from any remnants of Poli‘ahu’s supporters, but Pele thought it wise to take the strongest of her people along.
They needed a decisive victory over her enemies. And more—if she wanted the respect of the other islands—they needed to see her and her forces as the source of that victory.
She planned to leave with the dawn, which meant having everything prepared now.
At the gentle footfalls, she turned to see Hi‘iaka making her way down the shore. The girl’s fingers twitched with unconcealed anxieties. No doubt her whole body felt charged given the nature of her power. Energies she couldn’t control or understand coruscated just below the surface of her skin, probably feeling ready to burst forth at any moment. Pele could feel those currents, could see her sister’s aura ready to erupt in the overflow.