by Matt Larkin
With Makua dead, that left only Kamalo and Lonomakua here to offer such prayers.
She slipped inside the palace. Naia had risen now, a poultice tied around her face, but at least she had some strength back. She turned to see Pele and, for the briefest of instants, she smiled.
Pele embraced her new sister, no longer caring about tabus.
The former queen returned her hug stiffly, then pulled away, obvious concern on her visage. Only then did Pele realize a new form slept on the mat now, shivering.
Naia followed her gaze. “Milohai has a fever. He rushed out into the night looking for you and fainted not a dozen steps from the palace.”
Pele held up a trembling hand to stop Naia from saying what she knew would come next. Milohai, her newly chosen brother. How long before he became one more flame, one more pyre in the evening?
This could not be happening. Pele caught herself actually growling in defiance of reality.
Her new brother was young, strong. Maybe he had a chance.
Pele knelt by his side. “Milohai?”
He grunted, turning toward her, but his eyes seemed vacant.
“Fever dreams have him,” Naia said. “He keeps trying to talk to you, calling for his ‘sister.’” She offered Pele a gourd of water.
Pele drank deeply, finally sating her thirst. In fact, the water sent her stomach rumbling.
Naia must have heard it, for she ordered a slave to bring a plate of poi. “We’ve all started storing extra food to get through the long nights.”
Pele accepted the food and ate, not taking her eyes from her brother as she dug her fingers in the paste. ‘Aumākua, was this her fault somehow? Or Makua’s? She longed for someone to blame. Maybe Kū-Waha-Ilo. She could blame him for the ghost haunting them, though he claimed not to have summoned it. But he could have stopped it.
“Sister …” Milohai.
Pele tossed aside the plate and scrambled to Milohai’s side. “I never had a brother before.”
“It meant so much to him,” Naia said. “When you chose him as a brother, chose us both like that.”
For all the good it had done. Pele clutched her brother’s hand, but he was looking at something far beyond her, mumbling nonsense. The fever had hit him hard, already apparently brought him to the threshold of Pō. She would not lose her new brother. There had to be some way to save him. But everything she had tried had turned to ash.
Surely Lonomakua would be coming now. He’d have seen her eruption.
She ran low on allies. Moho dead. Makua a traitor. And Hi‘iaka, blessed Hi‘iaka …
“I’m sorry,” Pele mumbled.
“This isn’t your fault,” Naia said. “You didn’t bring this lapu.” So, the other queen knew what they faced. “It haunts the night, angry, looking for someone to blame for its death. A victim of the taniwha, I’m sure, or of Poli‘ahu. Either way, you’ve done more than anyone to make things right.”
Never enough.
Milohai’s fevered breaths sent up clouds of frost in the air. The poor boy was fighting for his life and all she could think to do was hold his hand. She couldn’t break a fever. He shivered. Maybe she could have warmed him, but her extra heat might only make things worse.
She shook her head. Could Kapo help him? Could Lonomakua? Both were so focused on attending to Hi‘iaka and her time was running out, too.
Maybe she never should have let Namaka leave like that. Maybe the mermaid could have done something.
“You should rest, you look exhausted,” Naia said.
Yes. She was exhausted, and she should rest. But she’d find no sleep this night, not with her brother like this. Not knowing that because of her a kahuna was gone. Whatever Makua had been, still the houses now stood even more defenseless against the angry ghost without him. And if they reached morning at all, tomorrow night the lapu would surely return.
That was, assuming Makua had ever really done a damn thing to keep the ghost at bay.
And what should she tell Naia? The truth would frighten people, but they could not hide from it. Perhaps all of Puna could flee to the nearest neighboring village, find shelter there. Pele glanced over her shoulder.
“What happened out there?” Naia asked, her breath, too, icy. She was rubbing her arms as if cold. “Why the eruption?”
The cold didn’t really bother Pele much, but now that she considered it, it should have been warmer in here.
When the ghost had been near before, it had chilled the air, as if its darkness sucked out light and warmth …
The kahuna’s prayers no longer protected the houses.
There was a presence inside, wasn’t there?
Pele leapt to her feet, flames immediately springing into her hands. She spun. “Where are you? Show yourself!”
No answer was forthcoming.
“Sister …” Milohai moaned.
Pele glanced to him, but he wasn’t even looking at her.
“Sister …” The boy thrashed. “Her sister …”
The hairs on the back of Pele’s neck rose.
A soul visited with sufficient pain could lose itself. Become a lapu whose purpose was to share its torment with all around them. Especially those responsible for its plight.
And Milohai, his brain baked in fever dreams, already lay on the edge of Pō. Was it possible he saw into the Astral Realm? Seeing the ghost who had haunted them all along?
Pele didn’t want to believe it.
But what if he wasn’t calling Pele his sister. What if he was calling out to her sister?
The ghost was female … Pele had seen enough to be certain of that.
Her sister. Namaka was alive, so far as she knew, and if Hi‘iaka’s soul had departed, Lonomakua should have known. But there was another …
How was this possible? How could a sister dead for decades appear two thousand miles from the site of her death, across the Worldsea? Had Namaka’s tides brought Pu‘u-hele here?
Or was Pele’s own guilt now manifesting, leading her to delusions?
Coincidence, or design?
It is wroth … and you have its attention.
Moho had told her that much.
Kū-Waha-Ilo claimed the ghost had not come for him. Which implied he knew who the ghost was here for.
This could not be. Caught in the rush of fear, her mind conjured shadows to send her scampering, playing her like an audience caught in the throes of the greatest of mo‘olelo. And yet …
“Pu‘u-hele?” Pele asked. “Are you here?”
Naia blanched. “What are you …?”
Pele’s gaze silenced the woman. Maybe she began to understand. Certainly, it was possible Milohai was merely delirious. The lapu could have been anyone. But it had appeared soon after Pele’s arrival in Puna.
Drawn here by her presence? Had it sensed her now, finally within its reach after so many decades?
“Pu‘u-hele?” she asked again.
A fell whisper seeped in through the walls, permeating the house with otherworldly anger.
Naia gripped her hand. “You know this ghost?”
“There’s never any certainty with Pō.” Lonomakua had tried to teach her that, over and over.
“What do we do?”
She had no idea. Even if the ghost was Pu‘u-hele, she was already dead, and now consumed with rage. Justified rage against Pele, which she would unleash against all those Pele cared for. And worse … as her brother weakened, he became a perfect vessel for the lapu to possess.
And what was she to do about such a thing? She would not allow her brother to be taken.
Pele swallowed. She was powerless to stop it. She pulled Naia down to the ground, the both of them kneeling. “Pray to the ‘aumākua.”
That was all she could think of. A desperate plea to their ancestors. And fire. Fire kept away the spirits of the dark and shades of Pō.
Pele released Naia’s hand and lit both of her own aflame. She would have to keep those torches burning all night long.
>
All around her, she felt the ghost’s presence. Her breath frosted the air even on the warm night.
Dawn was near when someone pushed the tapa aside. Lonomakua slipped inside, obvious concern on his face. Pele’s legs ached from sitting for over an hour, keeping vigil with torches to ward against the ghost of Pu‘u-hele. And she could feel it, lingering on the edges of the light, clinging to the shadows. Waiting for the chance to possess her new brother.
The swell of frustration, grief, and regret finally broke on seeing her teacher, and she rose. For a moment she hesitated, then extinguished one of her flames and threw that arm around Lonomakua. The other flame she kept lit to ward off the ghost. “Thank the ‘aumākua you got my signal.”
“It was hard to miss. But I had to send for Kapo to attend to Hi‘iaka before I could come, and she was off in the woods.” The kahuna turned his gaze to Milohai and mumbled some prayer or invocation under his breath. He knelt by the boy’s side, put a hand on her brother’s head.
“Can you do anything for him?”
The kahuna frowned. “I don’t know.”
Pele scowled. As the kahuna tended to her brother, she recounted her suspicions about the ghost. Lonomakua nodded as she spoke, but didn’t take his eyes off Milohai. The tension in his shoulders told her he couldn’t do much. Of course, he couldn’t. Why would he be able to do what every other kahuna had failed to? Even kāhuna didn’t know everything and if they tried too hard to learn the unknowable, they paid for it.
“Damn it,” she mumbled. Heat coursed through her face as her hair lit with flame. She didn’t bother to extinguish it, though Naia and Lonomakua both turned to stare, her sister with fear and Lonomakua with an unreadable expression. “Damn it!” Why couldn’t things ever work out properly? Why were so many people suffering and she, their queen, helpless to aid them?
The fires from her hair caught in the grass roof, sparking it aflame in an instant. Pele extinguished those fires with a wave of her hand and stormed outside. She wanted to unleash the great volcano. Wanted to bury her problems in immeasurable tons of molten rock. The mental image set her chest trembling, a rumble that surged through her legs and into the Earth, bringing up another quake.
The village would be terrified, just as her sister was. Let them fear. She, daughter of Kū-Waha-Ilo, was not their savior. Oh, she had tried. But she had nothing to give these people. Nothing but fire and destruction.
A firm grip on her arm stilled her. She turned to see Lonomakua shaking his head. “Are you giving up so easily?”
“Easily? I tried to force Kū-Waha-Ilo to help us. I tried to force Makua to help. Every time ended in disaster. The prophet was serving Kū-Waha-Ilo all along.”
A faraway look came over the kahuna then, a distress so profound it snuffed the fires in her hair and left her feeling a pang of guilt for her outburst. She couldn’t say exactly what it was she had done to so disappoint the man, but she’d have given almost anything to take it back. He was right—Puna had suffered enough without her further terrifying its people. At last he shook his head. “No matter how bad things get, you cannot give up, Pele.”
She shut her eyes and blew out a long breath. There was no giving up. Not while she lived. There was no surrender, no submitting to inevitability or defeat.
Kū-Waha-Ilo, Poli‘ahu, even this lapu were that same banyan that had defeated her long ago. Taunting her, frightening her into inaction and undirected anger at the world and herself. She opened her eyes to see Lonomakua watching her. It was like he knew what she’d decided. Kāhuna saw things even a queen could not, she supposed.
Lonomakua released her arm, but put his hand on her shoulder. “I believe you are correct. This ghost suffered so much she forgot herself. She is drawn to you, but maybe she doesn’t know why, so consumed with her torment.”
“Can you banish her?”
“Maybe. There are no guarantees with such things. But there might be another way—if you could find a way to make her remember herself … remember the life she should have had and let go of the pain inflicted on her.”
“You mean the life I stole from her. The life Namaka and I took away.”
“Only you can really answer that. You need to shock her from her agony. To take steps that force her to confront what is past and cannot be changed.”
“I’m already here,” Pele said. “She’s been looking at me.”
“I can only assume that failed because it was too familiar to be a shock. Memory is a funny thing. The resurgence of a forgotten moment can bring a strong man to tears, if it is the right moment.”
So Pu‘u-hele needed something meaningful, but removed from her everyday life.
The problem was, they murdered a newborn.
Her sister had no joys to remember. No life to harken back to. All she had was mourning for a future that had never unfurled. The loss of that potential was unforgivable.
How then, was Pele to ask forgiveness?
How could she claim to share Pu‘u-hele’s suffering when she had stolen everything from one she ought to have loved?
Pele turned to Lonomakua. “You’ll watch over Milohai.”
Lonomakua nodded. “I’ll keep your siblings safe while you do what you must. It’s close to dawn. You rest now. You cannot do whatever it is you decide to do in daylight.”
Oh? But, exhausted as she was, how was she to sleep knowing what lay ahead?
A reckoning at long last for her misdeeds. The beginning of all that had twisted her life into a torrent of rage broken by bits of peace. An action that had torn her apart from Namaka and cost her another whom she owed her love.
The realization settled upon her then.
The only appeasement for such a crime must be to share in the victim’s fate.
The only chance to save her people here, her kin and chosen family, might come from choosing to join Pu‘u-hele in the darkness.
To die in agony and truly understand the suffering she had wrought.
21
Days Gone
For another twelve years, they travelled the length and breadth of Uluka‘a. They walked the shoreline, making a full circumference. They took canoes out to Kahiki, and Lonomakua taught her to fish. They visited the courts of chiefs and kings on neighboring islands, often in disguise so men would not know her.
They climbed every mountain, swam in every lake, and spoke on every topic that she could think of. He told her of legends from before the Deluge, when Old Mu warred with some other lost land called Kumari Kandam, a place renowned for its spell songs. He spoke of the breaking of the world, when the continents sank and the oceans rose and the Worldsea began.
It was in those days, Lonomakua told her, that Kanaloa and Kāne came unto the world, and Kū and Lono, all the old gods. Often, she asked him for tales of Maui, the first pyromancer.
Or they would talk of Pō and the ghosts that haunted its shadows just beyond their sight. Sometimes, he even spoke of the unknowable realms beyond. She asked him, once, to explain those realms where gods dwelt.
“What are gods?” he asked.
“The akua. Ancestors of the kupua.”
“Yes, but what does that mean?”
Pele snorted. “Can I not just have a straight answer?”
The kahuna held up a finger, then slipped into a house a chief had loaned them. He returned a moment later with a gourd filled with water and offered it to her.
Pele took a sip, then passed it back. The man drank deeply, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Finally, he held the gourd out to her again. Pele frowned, glancing down at it then back at Lonomakua.
“I’m not thirsty.” She was a bit, perhaps, but that wasn’t the point.
“This water is what most people understand of our world and the world beyond it.” He set the gourd down, then led her over to the side of the hut so they could look down on a pool of water near the village. It was filled by a series of low waterfalls pouring from the mountains and eventually drained into th
e ocean. He pointed at the pool. “That is what the kāhuna know.” Then he turned his gaze out to the ocean. “And that … the endless Worldsea, is what kāhuna don’t know. How far does it reach, princess? Fifty thousand leagues from here? Five hundred thousand? More? How deep is the sea? Who can say?”
Perhaps it was the chill of the evening wind, sweeping over the mountains, accompanied by a light drizzle of rain, but the metaphor made her shiver. Never before had she heard a kahuna admit to ignorance on so vast a scale. To not even being able to imagine how pale and insignificant their knowledge stood in the face of eternity. And if it was all true, then the common people—the people she wanted to protect—were able to live their lives precisely because they remained ignorant of the depth of their own ignorance.
And to hear it from this kahuna, who seemed to know mountains more than any other, it left her speechless.
“People want to think we have all the answers,” Lonomakua said. “It helps them to feel safe, secure. And we do have a few more answers than them, for certain. Mostly, though, we just have a better idea that nothing is quite what it seems. That beyond the human realm, the Mortal Realm, lies something ancient, ineffable, and unknowable. Beyond Pō lies the Spirit Realm, the worlds of the akua, where we cannot walk and cannot truly understand reality. And beyond that lies a greater, darker mystery, where all we think we know falls away.”
Pele did not sleep well that night. What dreams she had were haunted by visions of monstrous, unseeable entities wallowing in fathomless darkness. Waiting, just beyond the edge of sight, lurked eldritch horrors at best indifferent to her. At worst … they saw her. They were looking for a way in.
“The Veil protects the Mortal Realm from the Otherworlds,” Lonomakua said in the morning. “But it is a gossamer shroud, hardly impenetrable. And every time a sorcerer punches a hole through it, he—or she—risks letting in more than expected.”
