by Matt Larkin
“How are the people holding up?” she asked the woman.
Naia glanced over her shoulder as if to check no one might overhear. “They’re scared. Some claim the ‘aumākua have abandoned us. Others have said the taniwha was a sign of Kāne’s own wrath, manifesting before a second Deluge.”
“And what do you think?”
Naia snorted. “I think the mer treat humans like playthings. They are mercurial gods, but gods nonetheless. And your sister is somehow one of them.”
Pele didn’t really want to contemplate that.
“Most people have a small worldview,” Lonomakua had told her once. “Anything outside of that view is a threat to be feared. Most of all if the threat endangers their own misconceptions.” The kahuna had paused as if to let his words sink in. He did that a lot. Always trying to teach her how to think for herself. He had called fire the light through which mankind could burn away ignorance. That served as his excuse to always force her to draw her own conclusions, to seek her own truths. “There is a time for reflection. But sometimes one must press forward to find the answers.”
Pele sighed. “Namaka is … whatever she is now. I need you to reassure the villagers. I have to find a way to save Hi‘iaka before it’s too late. Then I’ll deal with … everything else.”
Naia was right, though. Namaka had always been different, but now, it was hard to see her as anything but a monster. Still, a monster that truly wished to aid Hi‘iaka, and that made her an ally, at least for now.
“You do well by the people of Puna,” Naia said, guiding her through the village.
“What?”
“No other chief, no king, no queen, could have hoped to have done better under these circumstances. We were attacked by a godsdamned taniwha of all things. Now we learn there’s a war between the mer we find ourselves caught in the midst of, all while facing our own war against Poli‘ahu and the old dynasty. But here you are, walking the village, trying to help the common folk.”
Pele laughed softly, though little Naia said was truly amusing. This woman, this fallen queen, was supportive, introspective, and most of all, willing to listen and offer comfort in return. “You are the sister I should have had.” Pele shook her head, smiling despite the situation. “And I hope you’re right. I hope I can save the people of Puna, of this whole island. A fortnight ago, I thought our biggest worry was the Snow Queen.”
“She still may be. People say she’s partnered with Kaupeepee.”
“Who?”
Naia paused in their walk a moment. “A chiefless warrior operating out of a fortress on Moloka‘i, a place called Haupu. He’s been raiding the Kahikian settlers for years now. Perhaps an alliance between himself and Poli‘ahu was inevitable, but it doesn’t bode well for those in the north.”
Pele shook her head. “I can’t worry about the northern islands right now. Not while this island remains in jeopardy.” And not while Hi‘iaka’s time remained so short. No, Pele’s first task was to aid her little sister. Then she would put an end to Poli‘ahu. With luck, that might offer some aid to the northern settlers as well.
“There’s a story,” Naia said. “I don’t know how much truth to it, but … tales are that, a generation ago, Poli‘ahu fought Kapo. A bitter, terrible fight.”
What? It seemed Pele would have to question her other sister about that. Though perhaps under more opportune circumstances.
She followed Naia along the shore to a lean-to the village had set up just after the taniwha had died. The old kahuna drifted among the wounded, inspecting them, offering prayers to gods that may or may not have even been listening.
“Kamalo,” Pele called.
He turned at her voice, nodded once to her, then whispered a final prayer over a boy.
Kamalo rose, leading her away from the rest of the villagers. Naia moved to follow them, but Pele patted her arm. “Give me some time alone with him.”
A slight frown turned at the corner of her mouth. Yes, Kamalo had been Naia’s kahuna once. But no longer. And Pele wasn’t sure what the old man would say or what she could safely share with others.
The former queen plodded off back into the main village. It was well she was there to help the people.
“How are things at the other villages?” she asked Kamalo as Naia left.
The old kahuna sighed. He leaned heavily on his walking stick, the badge of his office. Finally, away from the others, he sank onto the sand and motioned her to do the same. The man didn’t have many years left, from what Pele could guess. A twinge of regret filled her. She didn’t know him well, but still, he seemed a good man. “The situation is dire. There are more dead than I can send in a timely manner and I will soon have to travel even farther abroad. But word came of something wrong here, on the shore by the sea.”
“What does that mean?”
Kamalo grimaced, shifting around on the sand like his arse hurt. “You are caught up in the loss of your sister and not nearly attuned enough to the problems spread across the district. There are whispers of something angry here.”
“You mean people saying the ‘aumākua have forsaken them.”
“No. Ever since the taniwha came, the nights have been … darker. As though something lurks out there, something that followed in its wake. People are scared, though they know not of what. Some fear the Nightmarchers, but I do not think those hunters are the only problem. Still, the wise stay indoors once the sun sets.”
Frowning, she glanced back at the village. Chances were good the other villagers were merely spooked by the horror and violence the taniwha had visited upon them. But what if something else was going on?
This was her island, these were her people. And she, the Flame Queen, would protect them. In the past, she had done them more than enough harm. Her fight with Namaka had devastated more than one land. She had so many things to make up for.
Pele sighed. “I’ll look into it. But I need to ask you about the Waters of Life.”
Kamalo grunted, then looked up at the evening sky. “Great thing about walking is, it gives you lots of time to think, to reflect. I was reminded of a story I heard as a young kahuna in training, back on Moloka‘i. But the tale actually comes from this island, a long time ago, some generations after the fall of Maui. A man’s beloved wife had fallen deathly ill. And this man, he traveled across the full island, searching for the Place of Darkness where Maui had fallen. There, locked away from mortal eyes, Kāne had hidden the mythical Waters of Life. And this man faced great danger and claimed the Waters, and they saved his wife.”
“Is it true? The spring is on this island?”
“I don’t know.” He sighed. “I could consult with other kāhuna …”
But that would mean leaving this place.
Pele groaned. “Just … do what you can for the locals first.”
She couldn’t be certain the villagers would speak openly in front of their queen, but she needed to know how they truly fared under these desperate circumstances.
So instead, she walked alone, trekking the outskirts, wrapped in a kihei and shawl to conceal her hair and visage. She walked with a slight stoop in her step, making herself seem older, making certain no one would recognize her as their queen.
And Naia was right. People did seem scared, though the former queen had not realized what Kamalo had said. The lower the sun dipped, the fewer folk she saw out and about. They fled as if truly expecting the Nightmarchers to fly through the sky tonight and carry off souls.
When everyone had fled indoors, Pele set about gathering some kindling at the village’s edge. After padding it with dry palm leaves, she snapped her fingers, sending sparks skittering along the tinder. It caught almost immediately, and a wave of her hand sent the flames climbing. It wouldn’t be long before the sun set, but likely she was in for a wait after that.
Lonomakua had told her stories of Nightmarchers, long ago, though she couldn’t tell whether the kahuna actually believed in such things. But tales that claimed them as akua
of Darkness, flying through the night sky on storm clouds, hunting souls to feast upon in the shadows beyond Pō.
Children’s ghost stories, perhaps.
But Pele could not dismiss Kamalo or the villagers’ fears that something was going on in Puna. Something dark, caused by Nightmarchers or angry ‘aumākua or something else entirely.
Folding her legs beneath her, Pele settled in front of the fire.
A slight rain had come and gone, briefly forcing Pele to expend energy to keep her fire going. It wasn’t as though she truly needed it—the night had grown at most brisk, not cold. But flame was a comfort, always. Too long away from it and she found herself lost, as if the burning itself offered some guidance. Such musing was pointless, but Lonomakua had always encouraged introspection. And why not—he too so often lost himself for hours, staring into flames as if they might hold the answers to questions she had not yet imagined.
The moon had risen, but it was largely hidden by the clouds, keeping everything beyond the edge of her fire shrouded in darkness. If there was something out there, perhaps she would never see it. Not only did the fire ruin her night vision, but its light and warmth kept darkness at bay. Her whole exercise would prove pointless unless she submersed herself in the dark, welcomed it in and drank up the unnatural terror it had evoked here. Sighing, she clapped her hands together, extinguishing the flame.
Pele rose and padded through Puna. All the houses were closed now, tapa cloths draped over the entryways. Every single person in the village had fled inside, huddled together in whatever slim protection their houses offered. Everyone save her. To walk the village and see not a single soul, it made the place seem abandoned, forgotten. Pele was not given to loneliness, but the sheer emptiness here felt like a hand squeezing the back of her neck, weighing her down.
And that realization led to another—with the fire’s crackle silenced, an unnatural stillness had settled upon the district. No birds cawed in the night, nor did she hear any of the other sounds one associated with a sleeping settlement. No snoring, no sound of couples gently making love. Not even the chirp of insects. The only sounds at all, the pad of her feet on the ground and the distant waves.
The sensation of a waking dream crept into her mind, and once it did, she could not shake it. It left the hair on the back of her neck standing on end, a tingling in her feet as though she might float away.
An almost irresistible urge to light her hand aflame seized her. To do anything to banish the silence and stillness of the shadows lingering all around. She clenched her fists to fight that urge. ‘Aumākua, what was going on here? A slight rustle behind her. She spun, transfixed by a sound that wouldn’t have even caught her notice under any other circumstance.
The leaves on the trees at the jungle’s edge were twisting, as though some breeze had caught them. But all wind had died this night and no source of the movement revealed itself. And still, first one branch moved, then another. Like some vast, invisible, intangible force slithered through the jungle canopy, just out of her sight.
A gasp escaped her as instinct to flee wrapped around her gut. Her breath misted the air, though the night wasn’t cold enough for that. What was going on here?
“Where are you?” The night seemed to swallow the sound of her voice until it was nothing but the hesitant cry of a baby bird.
And then a breath brushed the back of her neck. Icy, hostile. She froze. Something was toying with her. Shrieking, she lit both hands on fire and spun, flailing at whatever stalked behind her. Her hands swept through thin air. Nothing. Nothing there.
Damn it. Damn her. Being spooked by a breeze like some child.
She stalked through the village, passing house after silent house. At the edges of covered windows and doors the welcoming light of candles burned, almost but not quite escaping the homes. How easy it would be to duck inside one, weather the night and leave in the morning.
There was nothing here. These people were afraid of nothing.
Footfalls sounded behind a house. Her heart leapt into her throat. She fought it down, then dashed around the back of the hut. Only emptiness and shrubbery, swaying in an imagined wind. Heart pounding, she stumbled back into the center of the village.
“I’m going to find you. You hear me? I’m going to find you!”
Her only answer was a bird cawing, high overhead.
She’d thought the silence was bad, but the sound that shattered it sent her ducking from imaginary attackers. At least for an instant. Damn, was she glad none of the villagers had seen their queen cower at a fucking bird.
Squinting at it, she could barely make out its form in the darkness. It banked sharply, as if it might attack her in a dive, though it was too large to be a hawk. Another frantic beat of her heart and she realized it wasn’t diving.
It was plummeting.
It fell like a stone from the sky, slamming into the sand with an impact that threw up a cloud of dust three feet high.
What the …?
She ran to the bird’s body. Its wing had bent back on itself, its feet twisted above its broken head. A black-footed albatross. Lonomakua loved birds, had taught her the names of hundreds of them. An albatross shouldn’t have even been out this late at night.
Not certain she wanted to know, but unable to look away, Pele knelt beside it to examine it. She had to try to understand what had caused it to crash. She extinguished the flame on one hand, used it to pull the broken foot away from the bird’s face, while bringing her other torch closer. Then she gasped, barely able to avoid retching.
The bird had no eyes.
What in Lua-o-Milu? She scrambled away from the corpse on all fours, then fell back, hand to her mouth. What could have done such a thing? Though still feeling like she would vomit, she forced herself to take another look. The bird’s body had been broken in the fall, but the eyes—they looked like they had melted. It must have been dead before it even hit the ground.
Maybe … maybe she could have dismissed the other signs. But this … Something was horribly wrong here, something protruding into the natural world. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be seen, save perhaps for the effects it had. The revolt of nature against the profoundly unnatural.
She reached a hand toward the bird. Even as she did so, its wings began to disintegrate, turning to dust and disappearing into the sand. The desiccation spread until, in the space of a few heartbeats, the entire bird had vanished.
She’d been wrong. She wasn’t alone at all. A presence lingered here, watching her, seeming to come from all around her. Like eyes peering at her from every tree in the jungle.
How was she to fight something like this?
She should have known it before, should have been more attuned to the signs, even before the bird.
She climbed to her feet, relighting the torches on both hands, blazing them brighter than ever. The flames offered her the only protection against the night. Maybe that was the only reason she yet lived, not consumed by whatever vileness had desiccated the bird. At that thought, she lit her hair ablaze as well.
Maybe the flames would prevent her from seeing into the darkness of night.
As she returned to the center of the village, she was no longer certain that was a bad thing.
Either way, it would be a very long night.
3
If Nyi Rara concentrated hard enough, she could almost get a sense of Mu, even so many miles away. Enough of a sense to know the he‘e god-king Kanaloa lingered there, sprawling in the benthic city like a hole in the ocean. Long had Namaka’s people worshipped Kanaloa as the god of magic, god of the unknowable deep, without ever suspecting their deity was actually king of the he‘e. Nyi Rara, for all her power, had no real way to fight such a foe. The creature was enormous, perhaps bigger even than the taniwha, and a master of the Art. No one in Mu could be certain what the god-king was capable of, and that made everyone afraid.
No, she needed another plan. Once again, she found herself desperately missing Milolii. Th
e dragon had raised Namaka, consoled her in moments of weakness, and always had a bit of sage advice for her. And, in the end, had sacrificed herself to ensure Namaka could defeat the taniwha.
With a last look in the direction of Mu, Nyi Rara swam back down into the trench, passing several hidden sentries before reaching the tunnels into Uluhai.
Though numerous mer swam about the compound, compared to the majesty of Mu itself, the tunnels here seemed cramped and plain. In truth, whole sections had collapsed with the passage of time and the long abandonment of this colony. According to Taema, Uluhai had been founded back when Dakuwaqa ‘Ohana still ruled Mu, and in those, had housed the College of Triteia, named after some mythical mermaid out of the Middle Sea. In those days, scholars had come all the way from Ogygia, perhaps even Baltia, to research and teach here, delving into arcane metaphysics and philosophical debates that would rage on for decades at a time.
They had held discourses that had stretched for days in some cases, speculating on the nature of the Astral Realm and its liminal existence between Avaiki and the Mortal Realm. Perhaps they had come to some conclusion about reality, but if so, those thoughts were lost, known perhaps to the Urchin alone.
Of course, such things were well before Nyi Rara’s time. Now, she threaded her way among the tunnels, swimming around chunks of fallen debris the size of small buildings. In some cases, the blockages were so tight she had to squeeze around, close to the tunnel roofs. The ‘ohanas of Mu had each selected a segment of Uluhai to begin excavating as their own, though that still left great depths of the place untended.
The he‘e might know about this place, and the arguments about abandoning Uluhai had continued the entire time Nyi Rara had been here. They could push out further, yes, but the truth remained that all former colonies, outposts, and fallen cities had been built in the days when Mu held the he‘e as slaves. There was nowhere they didn’t know of, so now Queen Aiaru clung to the fragile hope the trench structure of this city would make it defensible.
