by Matt Larkin
“Is that a mo‘o egg?”
Haumea chuckled and patted the egg’s surface. “This is your sister. Hi‘iaka.”
Lonomakua had long ago taught Pele the dangers of greeting unexpected information with disdain. Pele couldn’t help herself. “What … the … fuck?”
Her mother whirled on her with a snarl, a noise deep and bestial, that sounded more like it should have come from something inhuman. The jungle suddenly became twice as oppressive, like a clamp around Pele’s arms and legs. It stripped the air away, choking her. “Have I made a mistake once more, child? Should I have brought this sibling to Namaka? Or are you both still so wretched, so absorbed into the human world you would make the same choice once more as you did with Pu‘u-hele?”
No.
No, no, fuck no. Pele would never do that again.
Lonomakua had told her atonement might be impossible, but she could at least try to learn from her mistake. And she had sworn to herself never again to repeat it.
Still struggling to breathe, Pele knelt beside the egg and laid a hand on its surface. It was rough, coarse as stone, but warm. Incredibly warm, as if a globe of magma lurked within, or some spirit from the flames.
On a few rare occasions, Pele had managed to communicate with such entities. Had felt their raw power, their impossible heat scorching over her mind. Was that what her sister was? Would she become another kupua tied to flame, like Pele?
Tenderly, she hefted the egg into her arms, surprised at its weight. “I will never fail you.”
“You had best not,” her mother said, though Pele had not been talking to her.
Little Hi‘iaka seemed to pulse with extra warmth for a moment, as if in response.
A child. It would not matter what she looked like, or whether she held some monstrous aspect. This child would be Pele’s. She would be the mother that Haumea had never been to any of them, save perhaps Kapo, who had fled across the sea.
No, Pele would never fail Hi‘iaka.
“He’s a mo‘o, isn’t he?” Pele asked Lonomakua, when they sat alone in her palace, after everyone else had gone for sleep.
Haumea had disappeared back into the night, and Pele didn’t really care if another four decades passed before she saw the woman again. Both of her parents had made themselves into something entirely inhuman and incapable of human emotion. Perhaps it was the ages of feasting on the flesh of man, perhaps it was their very nature.
“Kū-Waha-Ilo?” Lonomakua asked.
“Hmm.”
The kahuna sighed. “There are legends, Pele. Old, old stories about him. Maybe the stories don’t all talk about the same man—”
“What stories?”
“A long time ago, there was a great warrior, a disciple of Kū, the war god. He defeated all challengers in single combat. And each foe he overcame, he feasted on the man’s flesh, drank his blood. In so doing, this warrior absorbed vast amounts of mana. He wandered the islands searching for stronger and stronger opponents. Until, at last, no one would accept his challenge.
“And then the warrior began to face the Otherworldly creatures. He killed and feasted upon mer, and later on menehune in Sawaiki. And in so doing, he learned of their secret Arts. Infused with the mana of a thousand victims, he kept himself young for centuries, becoming like a living nightmare.”
“So, you think Kū-Waha-Ilo is the warrior in the story?”
Lonomakua shrugged. “Immortality might do strange things to a man’s mind. If it were true.”
Pele shook her head. The embers of a fire the kahuna had built had dwindled. Pele wakened them with a wave of her hand, then curled up next to the flames, leaving one hand on Hi‘iaka’s egg. “You didn’t answer the question. One sister was born as an … as what I took for a blood-soaked abomination. Another born in an egg. For all I know, Namaka and I also came from eggs. Kilioe called Milolii her mother. These creatures can take human form, so, what would happen if a mana-rich mo‘o sired a child with an heir of Old Mu?”
“Why ask questions to which you already know the answers?”
She had seen Kū-Waha-Ilo, rising from that pool of blood, luxuriating in it even as Pele drank in power from flame and lava. He had called her one of his ‘brood,’ back then. Haumea and Kū-Waha-Ilo were deliberately siring kupua children toward some end, though Pele couldn’t even begin to guess what.
“What do the mo‘o want?”
“They are like people, are they not? To ascribe a singular motivation to a person is to grossly underestimate the complexity of human nature. To ascribe a singular motivation to an entire group of people is to allow yourself to be blinded by prejudices. How then would you like me to speculate on the desires of an entire species? That, of course, sets aside the issue of where the lines of species begin to blur in cases where the mo‘o have sired children with humans.”
Pele ran her thumb over the egg. She would not fail her. No matter what, she would protect Hi‘iaka. “You mean part of our power, part of our volatile nature comes from the blood of dragons coursing through our veins.”
“That seems a reasonable speculation.”
And Namaka probably had no idea. She’d been raised by a mo‘o, taught by Milolii, even as Lonomakua had taught Pele. But did Milolii have some deeper, ulterior motive? Had the dragon wrought the change in Namaka? The coldness? Her sister would bear watching now.
Pele had no way to be sure what Namaka knew or didn’t know, or how she felt about her heritage. One day, perhaps, they could bridge the gulf between them and speak freely of this. Not now. Not until Pele had a better feel for Namaka’s intentions.
The truth was, it didn’t matter who Kū-Waha-Ilo really was or where his powers came from. Maybe he was born a monster, maybe he had made himself one.
“You are not your father,” Lonomakua said, voice soft, eyes sympathetic. The kahuna had a way of reading her, of knowing her fears the moment she felt them.
“People don’t always see it that way.”
The people worshipped her, but they feared her, too. They feared her mercurial nature, her wrath that shook the ground. Her bouts of solitude when she retreated from the court. Her insatiable desires, when she took lover after lover and—on rare occasions—still lost control, leaving her partners with terrible burns.
Oh, Pele knew the things others said of her.
Did her parents’ own tumultuous natures give her an excuse for hers?
“It will be hard for you,” Lonomakua said. “Trying to raise another girl, another kupua. She will be like you, different. Powerful, perhaps in the way your parents hope for. The fires say she will be very powerful. And fragile.”
“Fragile?” Pele shook her head.
No, she would let nothing threaten Hi‘iaka.
This she swore.
30
Hour upon hour they walked, until Namaka could hear Kana’s stomach growling. Her nature meant she didn’t have to eat as often as a human, though she certainly wouldn’t turn down regular meals when she could get them. Her legs ached from walking uphill so much, despite her Otherworldly endurance. It seemed being too far from water drained a mer.
That, and the blasted sunlight had begun to beat on her. A little of the stuff, she enjoyed. Sunning herself on a rock, letting rays soak into her tail—it was luxurious. But sunlight, too, weakened mer, like most all etheric beings. Still, she couldn’t ask Kana to walk in the night—he’d trip and fall to his death no doubt—and thus she found herself limited to only her kupua stamina.
Kana suddenly paused as he crested a boulder, staring at something she couldn’t see. Namaka edged around him to spot a statue of a man, perhaps as tall as her chest. The man—or menehune, she supposed—had a large belly protruding over his carved skirt, and stood hands-on-hips like some guardian barring the way. Albeit one with an over-wide smile.
Now that she paused to look around, she spotted other such statuary scattered around the mountain slope. She wanted to ask Kana what they meant, but something forced her
to silence, as if to utter human speech in this secluded place would violate some tabu more ancient than she could imagine.
The hair on her arms and the back of her neck stood on end. The only noise came from the occasional bird cry, and even those sounded far off, scattered.
Kana must have felt it too, for he pointed without speaking, indicating a gap between two boulders. He trod so softly she couldn’t even make out his footfalls. Trying to do the same, Namaka followed. Beyond the boulders, in the mountainside, gaped a tunnel entrance like the maw of a shark. Vines hung over it and heavy underbrush blocked the way.
She cast a glance at Kana. She might well have searched for days without him and simply overlooked such an entrance.
He led her to it, then hesitated on the threshold. Not that she blamed him. The black igneous rocks forming the tunnel only added to its rather intimidating mystique, and it sloped steeply downward, descending beneath the mountain.
Kana glanced back at her as if to ask if she was certain. He needn’t have bothered. They both had siblings they could not afford to fail. At the look on her face, he pulled a candlenut torch from his satchel and began to scrape flint rocks together trying to light it. Namaka cringed at the sound. It went on for a long time before the man got it lit.
Finally, he rose, torch in hand, and stared into the darkness of the cave. Instinctively, Namaka took him by the hand, his warm touch a comfort, however small, as she led him into the tunnel.
The path descended so deep beneath the mountain, Namaka’s ears popped as though she were swimming on the seafloor. Every few hundred paces stood another menehune stone likeness, silent guardians of a forgotten time. She could only hope they truly marked the way to the Place of Darkness and the Waters of Life. Kana neither spoke nor released her hand, squeezing it with each effigy they spotted. The only sound came from the light pad of their feet on cold stone, and the pounding of her own heart in her ears.
It was, perhaps, unbecoming of a veritable sea goddess to be afraid, but here, so far from the source of her powers, her every hair stood on end. They walked for so long that Kana’s candlenut torch began to dwindle.
“Do you have another?” she whispered. Breaking the silence felt like violating a tabu, no matter how much she told herself it was merely her own fear.
“One more.”
They glanced at each other, apparently sharing a fear of spending even a moment in total darkness—even mer eyes need some light—then he knelt and rummaged through his satchel before pulling out his second torch. Kana held the dimming torch to the new one, sparking a welcome radiance throughout the tunnel.
Focused on the torch, Namaka caught the sound of a faint drumbeat vibrating through the mountainside. She couldn’t say when it had begun. Rather, it seemed to have been building in intensity until it finally caught her attention. A moment later, Kana froze, clearly noticing it as well.
He stood, spinning from one side to another with the torch, as if looking for the source of the rhythm now reverberating all around them. As he turned, the light fell upon one of the menehune statues and Namaka could have sworn it now stood closer to them than it had a moment ago.
Fragments of Nyi Rara’s knowledge of the Spirit Realm tugged at her mind, but she couldn’t quite piece them together. Nyi Rara had not been much for studies, and Namaka’s human mind was simply not adapted to understanding realities beyond the Mortal Realm. Regardless, she grabbed Kana’s wrist and yanked him forward. Some base instinct told her they could not remain here—and worse, that it was far too late to turn back. It must have been the same instinct that had tried to warn her human speech here would violate a tabu. She should have listened to that inclination.
Kana hurried beside her and Namaka pushed on, deeper and deeper, as the drumbeats grew ever louder, until her heart beat in time with them. The rhythm could have filled a festive luau. Could have, in another place and time. Here, an alien anger filled it, an indignation at the presumption of mortals to tread upon forbidden grounds.
“What is that?” Kana said.
“Don’t speak,” she whispered through clenched teeth, glancing at the man beside her. His hand had become clammy.
‘Aumākua preserve them. Guide them from the darkness and back into the sunlight she had so recently disdained. Let her gaze again upon the majestic sea. Let her once again swim beneath its fathoms and relish mysteries meant for her eyes.
As she turned back to the tunnel ahead of her, the torchlight fell upon another of the menehune statues. Only this one moved before her eyes, rolling forward like it was made of the very stuff of the mountain. Its gentle, abstract features slowly sharpened into those of a man, albeit a man much shorter than her, and misshapen. Crooked. A beard and braided hair slithered out of his rocky face, and his skin—while retaining a slate-like color—grew fleshy.
Namaka jerked to a stop and Kana gasped. The menehune held a hand before him, and into it a spear grew out of the cavern floor. In the space of a rapid breath, its tip gleamed like polished obsidian. In fact, his eyes too looked like volcanic glass, reflecting the torchlight in Otherworldly patterns.
Throat too dry to swallow, Namaka turned, looked over her shoulder. More of the creatures had gathered behind them, each pointing a spear. Others lurked down the tunnel. Though she could not see them, she could feel their presence, looming over them.
At once, the drumming ceased.
The menehune before her glared—or she thought it was a glare, though his eyes were impossible to read—then jerked his head over his shoulder. Beckoning them onward. Yes, far too late to turn back. Namaka tried to follow, but Kana stood still as a statue himself, his trembling grip on her hand holding her back. They couldn’t afford to further agitate these beings. Namaka squeezed Kana’s hand, then pulled him forward until at last he followed.
The lead menehune guided them down a long way until Namaka began to feel the soothing presence of water ahead. Eventually she heard it, too, the flow and crash of a small cataract. Or many, a series of falls.
The menehune led them into a wide-open cavern with a ceiling so high she wouldn’t have made it out save for the faint luminosity of fungus growing there. Around them rose and fell a procession of rock outcroppings that seemed at once natural and carefully constructed. They jutted at odd angles and heights that greatly varied, but upon each rested a wide stone brazier lit with great flame. Many of those outcroppings featured huts that seemed to grow right out of the rock. Clear paths—stairs even—cut through some of the platforms, leading onward. More welcome, however, were the half-dozen small waterfalls pouring down into a lake beneath the outcroppings, their flowing energy permeating the cavern and seeping into her soul.
Though it was not the sea, the presence of so much water let Namaka finally breathe easily. Perhaps she remained out of her element and surrounded by other powerful spirits, but at least she was no longer defenseless. Did they know she held a Water spirit inside her? Had they brought her here in ignorance, or as a deliberate show that they had nothing to fear from her? Since there had to be a hundred or more of these Earth spirits, she suspected the latter.
Their guide led them past pillars carved to look like great trees, then beyond into a hollowed boulder the size of a chief’s hut, the walls of which were engraved with a panoramic view of jungle-covered mountains. In the center of the hut sat another menehune, staring into the blade of an obsidian knife as if it might reveal the answers of the universe to him. This being was older, his flesh withered and his hair stark white against his near-black skin. With a flick of his wrist, the knife disappeared somewhere into the vest he wore over his bare chest, and finally he looked up at them, taking each in with a long gaze.
“Well,” he said, his voice deep as a rumbling mountain, “do be seated. Let it not be said I am a poor host.”
At that, their guide stepped away, just beyond the threshold of the dwelling but certainly in easy reach should she try anything. No one overtly threatened her, but then, why would
they need to? Namaka nodded and sat down in front of the menehune chief, pulling Kana down beside her.
When she did, the creature nodded and cleared his throat, a sound that reminded her of the land’s anger before an eruption. “You,” he said, indicating Namaka, “are not human.”
“No. I am Nyi Rara, a princess of Mu.”
The menehune groaned, then shook his head. “Complicated. He is human. We can use him.”
That did not sound good. Not at all. “You are the chief here?”
“Forgive me, yes. I am Molowa, chief of this enclave. And you, Water spirit, are trespassing. Perhaps you did not see the innumerable warnings on the way here?”
His tone made her seem a fool and she didn’t appreciate it. “We thought those were invitations.”
“Do not test me, girl. Stone does not forget, even in the passing of eons. It does not forget the trespasses wrought against my kind in days of old when the world was young. Were you human, I would plant my seed in your belly and watch as a new menehune grew from within. Since that might well produce some abomination, if it worked at all, I will forgo. It does not mean I forgive your presence here. We do not want visitors, human or otherwise.”
Namaka kept her eyes locked on Molowa’s, unwilling to let him see the tinge of fear his words had opened in her gut. The horrid casualness with which he spoke of using humans merely to breed his kind made it seem very likely. But though the menehune’s eyes remained unreadable, something in his voice betrayed a clear hesitance. A nervousness under his bravado and threats. “I’m sure you don’t. But I don’t think you want trouble with Mu either. You want to be left alone? Abducting a princess is not the best way to do that.”
Molowa held up a hand, acknowledging—or at least forestalling—her point. “Him,” he said, pointing at Kana, “we can use. He is human.”
