by Matt Larkin
Namaka paused at the summit, reveling in the beauteous expanse of water before her. The place, though hard to reach, was certainly flush with mana, closer to Avaiki, the Veil growing thin here. Lightning flashed overhead, bright, so close it left afterimages dancing in front of her eyes.
“Well, shit,” Kamapua‘a said. “That there is a sight worth rudimentating over. I mean, I could sit here all night mediating on those waters.” He scratched his chin. “I’d probably fall asleep, but it would be some epic mediating before that happened. Like, legendary mediating and shit.”
Ignoring him, Namaka skidded down the incline slightly, cutting over to where a smaller stream carried overflow from the basin down the slope they had climbed, feeding a series of cataracts they had avoided on the way up. The whole summit smelled of an inextricable mix of growth and decay, bursting with koas and banyans and underbrush, flowering with hibiscus and plumerias and all manner of flora, but undercut by the fungus and rot from which it all sprang.
“No birds,” Niheu said, obviously picking his footing with care lest he plummet down the slope.
No. No fauna of any kind lurked up here, in fact, despite the abundance of plant life. Yet, still, a presence lingered in the trees, a deepness that pulsed through the land and the water and the sky, its breath the sighing of the wind whipping her hair about in wild fury.
Another flash of lightning. Another peal of thunder.
A timid groan from Taema, back with her sister.
Something laired here, in this place. Perhaps something physical, though it carried with it the unnamable disquiet mortals inherently felt when something drew near from the far side of the Veil. Ghosts and spirits, invisible to most, might still be felt, especially by those with sensitivity. A tingling on the back of the neck, a sudden inexplicable chill. An unease that refused to leave one, not unlike what now grasped her—and from the look of the others, them as well.
Pō, the mortals called the Astral Realm.
But Namaka knew this was more than something drawn from night—after all, half her soul came from beyond Pō.
With a nod to Niheu, she scrambled onto rocks leading downward. The surface was slick with moss and her heel gave out, sending her tumbling onto a lower shelf. In an instant, the kupua jumped down there with her, caught her, and helped her back to her feet.
“Shiiiit,” Kamapua‘a complained, his legs wobbling as he tried to make his own way downward, face locked in a grimace.
Looking at his swollen, almost bulbous legs, Namaka found herself imagining doing something to aid him, to remove the fluid buildup. But not even she had such precise control of liquids, and she knew too little of the Art to even consider that route. In truth, she could do nothing for the wereboar, no matter how much she sympathized with his plight.
“He’s cursed,” Tilafaiga said in her ear, apparently having followed her gaze. “By Art darker than I’d have expected of mortals in this era.”
“In this era?”
The other mermaid shrugged. “There are rumors about the sorcerous wars between Old Mu and Kumari Kandam. And older still, myths about profane rituals attempted in Kêr-Ys. Such things are lost to the world now, though, and we are well rid of them.” She sniffed. “This place tastes of toxic power.”
“Dragon blood,” Namaka agreed. The poisonous blood of the Elder Deep.
The five of them made their trudging way down to the caldera, slipping many times—once Taema almost plunged off the side—until coming to a rest by the water’s edge by some unspoken agreement. The heart of the lake remained almost too still, trembling only slightly in the rain, shielded from the wind by the soaring peaks around them.
“Well?” Tilafaiga finally asked. “We have come here, Princess. Now what?”
Namaka blew out a breath and stalked the water’s edge, seeing no obvious sign of the great mo‘o progenitor, despite the undeniable presence seeping into the entire valley. A desperate quiet that swallowed even the sound of thunder made it seem farther away, as if they had passed into another world. And, indeed, with the Veil grown so thin, that was perhaps not entirely untrue.
She made her way around, almost to the falls, and still saw no caves or obvious hollows for the dragon to claim as her lair.
Another breath. “Mo‘oinanea!” she shouted.
Her voice echoed around the basin, danced over the waters, and came back to her sounding frail in this majestic place. If anything, the silence seemed to deepen as the echoes died out.
Like the others, she glanced about. No sign of anyone or anything. No response to her entreaty.
No caves … Not up here. Narrowing her eyes, she focused her mind—her soul—into the waters themselves. They didn’t flow, they didn’t have the infinitely complex, glorious currents of the sea, and thus, they did not quite sing to her. But still, she could feel it, the break, far beneath the surface, where the caldera dropped away into what might have been lava tubes. A hidden refuge.
Suppressing a tremble, she looked to Tilafaiga. “We have to go down there.”
The other mer nodded.
“Awww, shit,” Kamapua‘a moaned.
While Nyi Rara could have gone alone, Tilafaiga offered to accompany her, insisting Taema remain behind, with the air-breathers. Compared to descending alone into Naunet to face the Elder Deep herself, confronting one of the goddess’s children should have been nothing. Yet a foreboding had seized Nyi Rara, enough she welcomed Tilafaiga’s company as they descended into the warm, sulfur-tinged waters.
The taste of it made her want to spit and stung her gills, though complaining now would have seemed egregiously petty, especially given Tilafaiga made no comment. Instead, the gold-tailed mermaid just stuck close by her side as they dove deeper and deeper into the lake. Indeed, the basin fell away quickly, creating surprising depth for this lake.
She felt Tilafaiga glance her way, looking to her, perhaps expecting her to say something, but Nyi Rara had no words. The silence here was sacred, its own kind of tabu, and underwater, the thunder became muted. The further down they pushed, the more certain she became they brushed up against Avaiki, the water becoming more wet.
Yes, it was not so very unlike Naunet.
If Mo‘oinanea truly dwelt here, had the ancient dragon fashioned this place in deliberate mimicry of the domain of her mother? Ah, but then, the Elder Deep was the mother of the taniwha, but not actually Mo‘oinanea’s immediate forebear, which had been Toona. Either way, though, Nyi Rara could not but imagine the parallel in lairs deliberate.
Down there, the tenebrous lakebed shifted, a slow twisting as though a living thing. A flowing bulk—a blur of muscle and power made flesh—before it vanished, slipping away into a lava tube, granting no clear picture of the beast, but enough to guess that Aukele had been right. Surely the dragon’s sinuous form stretched beyond fifty feet.
The bridge between mo‘o and taniwha, like her father, Toona.
Nyi Rara shared another glance with Tilafaiga, felt the other’s tacit agreement, and dove down, swimming for that tunnel herself. This was why they had come, and no matter how much she might wish to turn back—no matter how heavy the pulse of her heart, how choking the sense of dread—she could not leave without finding the dragon and speaking with her.
The lava tube vanished into near blackness not even mer eyes could adapt to, and thus Nyi Rara found herself navigating by feel, webbed fingers tracing over the impossibly smooth tunnel walls, soul pushing against the boundaries of the wide tube. Deeper she swam, finding the sense that the tunnel wormed through the volcano, bending back upon itself, even as the waters grew warmer, and the space more liminal.
Was she now in Avaiki? Halfway between the Mortal Realm and the Spirit Realm? A portion of the Astral Realm? The place seemed to defy the normal laws of reality, brushing multiple realities. At last, the tube upturned, rising up into an air-filled cavern adumbrated by incandescent rocks pulsing in the walls.
A sudden, tremendous flowing of shadows, and the m
o‘o dropped down on them from above, snatching the pair of them each up in a claw even as they broke the surface. A snarling, horned reptilian face drew close to them an instant before Nyi Rara was thrust down upon the rocky floor with such force as to knock all thought from her head, to paint her gaze in a sheen of white.
Namaka jolted, gasped, barely able to draw breath into lungs so compressed by the dragon’s palm.
“You slew my child.” The voice came from just off to the side, though Namaka could not turn her head far enough. She could feel the putrid wind of the dragon’s breath, though, the scorching heat. The poison of creation misting the air.
The pressure increased, the mo‘o leaning in, pushing down, until only a wisp of air could slip in and out of Namaka’s lungs. Mo‘oinanea craned her reptilian face around, creeping closer until Namaka could gape into her incandescent eye, could lose herself in its gleaming depths.
“My … father …” she wheezed.
“Yes,” Mo‘oinanea said, another growl that had the whole cavern closing in around Namaka, compressed to the size of a fist. “Your own kin.”
“No … choice … Tried … kill … me …” Her vision had begun to blur once more, blocking out everything save that radiant eye boring down into her soul. “Kanaloa …”
A slight easing of the weight, enough to allow blessed air into her lungs.
“Speak.”
Namaka gasped. “Kanaloa … controlled Kū-Waha-Ilo.” Her pants threatened to swallow her words. “Do you … really wish your children … to be his slaves forever?”
Mo‘oinanea withdrew her claw at last, allowing Namaka and Tilafaiga to sit. The other mermaid had retained her tail, but now formed legs to scramble away, back toward the water. Namaka watched her go from the corner of her eye, focusing on Mo‘oinanea.
“You came here with Maui,” Namaka ventured, sparing at glance at Tilafaiga who remained on the surface of the water, watching her. “Eight hundred years ago, you came here, not with Kanaloa, nor even your father, but with the Firebringer.”
“Yesssss.” A hiss, sibilant, that once again seemed to diminish the distance between them, to warn Namaka she toyed with the most dangerous of all beasts.
“And Maui saw bits of the future in the flames. I think you agreed to come with him because he promised you a chance at freedom from the he‘e god-king. But he failed, didn’t he? Maybe he intended to reclaim the Chintamaniya, maybe to kill Kanaloa, I don’t know.” Maybe she should have asked him—but then, what did it matter, his intent back then? “But that is it, isn’t it? The Chintamani stones allow Kanaloa to overmaster any mo‘o, just as he did the taniwha. The octopus can take control of your children as he sees fit, force them to serve so long as he exudes his Will. Am I correct?”
Her only answer was a low growl, another warning that Mo‘oinanea drew near to losing her temper.
Namaka dared a step closer. “Tell me where to find the Chintamaniya and I will free your people. Where did the he‘e king hide his trove? Where are the flaming pearls?”
“If I help you, sooner or later, he will learn of it, call it betrayal. There will be war among my kind—my children slaughtering one another.”
That drew a wince. Namaka had seen more than enough of siblings warring with one another, and would wish it upon no one. “Not if I win.”
The dragon rumbled, an inarticulate groan. An internal war, perhaps deciding whether or not to simply slay Namaka and be done with this conversation. And then she spoke. “He said you would come.”
“Kanaloa?”
“The Firebringer.”
Namaka faltered, fell back a step. “W-when?”
“You. Know. When.”
No. Her hand reflexively covered her mouth. The flames could not have shown him so far, so much. Not back then …
How? How was this possible? Mo‘oinanea intimated that Maui had known she would come here, pose this offer, even eight hundred years ago. Was that the truth of why he had brought the mo‘o across the Worldsea to live in Sawaiki? Were she to ask him now, would he finally reveal the depths of his machinations?
That seemed … unlikely.
“You will make me another offer,” Mo‘oinanea said, voice now far away, as if she too did not quite believe this conversation had taken such a turn. As if even a dragon found it hard to fathom any scheme set in motion across ages. Maui and Kanaloa, plotting the course of the future. She’d thought it all a kōnane game, but it ran so much deeper. Ten thousand games, played in succession down from the dawn of the era, from the Deluge itself.
Kanaloa had meant to use her—to use all the sisters, children of Haumea—as his playing pieces, but somewhere along the line Maui had tried to usurp those pieces. To turn the weapon of his enemy against him, first with Pele, but even back then, he had laid in motion these plans for Namaka as well.
“What offer?” Namaka rasped, her legs wanting to give out beneath from the weight of history crashing down upon her. “What am I to offer you?”
“The grandeur and majesty of our forebears was sacrificed in the name of granting Kanaloa amphibious servants. But you, should you claim the Chintamaniya, you might use them to transform some few of my children into something yet nobler than these mere lizard forms.”
‘Aumākua … Namaka had not even considered that Kanaloa had deliberately limited the mo‘o’s transformation in order to avoid creating beings that might prove a threat even to himself. And why not? The Chintamaniya were the condensed mana of the Elder Deep. They possessed near limitless power … enough to grant a dragon the power of a taniwha and the intellect of a mo‘o.
“You’d have me engender a new race entirely. That’s … that’s what Maui said I would do?”
The dragon snickered now, the sound a grating avalanche. “Maui said you would come, you would try to rise against Kanaloa. He never said you would succeed, mermaid.”
As Maui himself had fallen, defeated by Kū-Waha-Ilo in Kanaloa’s name.
He didn’t see everything.
Namaka found she could not swallow. “I swear I will do as you ask. I will use the flaming pearls to elevate your brood. Where are the Chintamani stones? Where is the cache of Kanaloa?”
Mo‘oinanea grumbled, leaning in closer. “Follow the deepest recesses of Tenebrous Chasm beyond the He‘e Aupuni, eastward, toward the South Sea. Where the gorge breaks into the abyss and, as with this place, brushes the liminal spaces between the worlds, dive deep, mermaid.” The dragon rose up, towering above her. “Dive deep, if you think yourself fit to challenge the guardians the octopus king left behind in his wake.”
The answer drew a gasp from Tilafaiga, a fear rising up at the thought of passing into Tenebrous Chasm, a place forbidden to Muians. A place Nyi Rara had died, once, and almost lost her soul.
Namaka turned to go, then paused, suddenly remembering. “Another of your descendants awaits you on the surface, beset by a foul curse. He hopes you will save him.”
The dragon murmured, something between a groan and a growl, before slinking off into the water.
Tilafaiga yelped as Mo‘oinanea passed—presumably to see to Kamapua‘a—then, hand to her heart, looked to Namaka. “You cannot think to go there.”
Namaka plodded back toward the water. “You should know by now. There is nowhere I will not go to achieve my ends.”
24
Climbing the mountain had proved difficult enough to cut down on Kamapua‘a’s expected sense of dread at seeking out Mo‘oinanea. Seeing her rise from the dark waters of the lake, on the other hand, gave him plenty of time to stand around scratching his balls, trying not to let intimidation take over.
Phew, when did a wereboar even feel intimidated? How would he even know how to deal with something like that?
Kama did not like the feeling in his gut at all, as those great horns broke the surface, followed by a draconic body that just kept going and going and going … Well, she wasn’t a taniwha. Not exactly, anyway.
Still big enough he had
a quick look at the ground behind himself to make sure he hadn’t shit without realizing. Nope. Not yet.
As if by some unspoken agreement, the others drifted from his side, joining Namaka where she rose a few hundred feet away, leaving him alone with his ancestor.
“So, uh … you’re kinda like my living ‘aumakua, right? Come to defenestrate some wisdom to your … uh … antecedent?”
The dragon frowned.
Well, he imagined it was a frown. Could’ve just been her normal reptilian expression. Reptiles weren’t known for their smiles. Lizards never smiled, and if you ever saw a sea turtle grin, it was time to leave the water. That, and maybe take a night off the awa, too.
Mo‘oinanea paced halfway out of the lake, water streaming from her in great sheets as she stalked around him. A forked tongue darted out, passing within a hair of his neck.
“Whoa … yeah, me I prefer to sniff with the snout. I mean, you can do what you wish, I suppose. Just, uh … never imagined grandma licking my face before, is all. Yeah, so, um …” He cleared his throat. “Aww, wait, shit! You can talk right? I mean, I talk real good, maybe good enough for the both of us, but this is one of those occupations where I need actual information from you, which is gonna make me carrying on both sides of the conversation—”
The dragon hissed at him. “Do you never cease your inane blather, kupua?”
“Uh …” Kama scratched his beard. “Guess it depends. Which kind of blather is the inane kind?”
A low rumble began in her chest and thrummed down, through the ground, and right up into his aching legs.
Huh. That was different. “So, listen, your Scaly Preposterousness. The reason I’m here is actually two reasons. One of which is my legs are really sore. Not just sore like I-climbed-a-mountain sore, but like a sorceress cursed me with dropsy and I don’t like it. That kind of sore.” He cleared his throat. “Also, the progenitor of all wereboars is inside me and continuously trying to take over my body and use to wreak havoc across the Worldsea. That’s, uh … yeah, also a bit of an issue for me I was hoping you can help with.”