"This is where you can stay. I think it's the nicest room, but if you don't like it, I can find something else."
"Oh no, it's fine. Where's your room, though?"
"Room? I don't have one. Well, I had one before the change, but not anymore."
Lana had never heard him use the term before. "What's a change?"
He seemed surprised. "When I stopped being ... human, I suppose.
"So, where do you sleep,?" she asked.
"The water, mostly. It's usually easiest that way."
Lana couldn't hide her disappointment. She supposed that she had hoped that they would be able to share the same bed, but he seemed so nervous and distant.
"We won't ... you don't want to sleep together? Like before?" She wanted to kick herself for sounding so desperate and tentative.
He looked away from her as though he was too ashamed to meet her eyes. "I'm sorry, Lana. I can't, not now. One day I'll explain, I promise, but..."
Lana blushed so fiercely, she felt like her face had caught fire.
"Don't worry," she said, forcing her tone to be light. "I'm sure I'll manage without you. It's kindness enough that you allowed me to stay here."
He winced at her sarcasm, but didn't return it, which made Lana feel very petty.
"For now, I think it's better if you don't go wandering too much," he said. "It's very easy to get lost ... not everything here stays exactly where you left it. I'll have some food brought here later. Normally we can eat together, but tonight ..."
"What is it?" Lana asked.
"Tonight ... I release my father. I'll have his Weeping."
Lana kissed him goodbye on the bridge over a deep lake near her room. He returned it tenderly, but with an edge that made her ache for him. Whatever awaited him down there, he was clearly afraid of it.
"Kai ... what's a Weeping? They always said the water guardians couldn't cry."
He sighed. "We can, but just one tear is a massive sacrifice. A Weeping is what the water guardian does to pass his powers to his successor when he's ready to die. My father ... he's wanted to do this for a very long time. I have no right to deny him any longer."
He leaned over and kissed her left ear, where ugly, ridged scar tissue grew over the place where her earlobe had once been. She shivered.
"I'll be back soon," he said. "You don't have to wait for me."
He closed his eyes and dove over the side of the bridge. This time, he didn't resurface.
Lana sat down with her legs dangling over the edge and began her vigil.
Kai allowed his body to change as he pushed himself deeper underwater. Membranous tissue grew between his fingers and toes, his ears adjusted themselves to the increasing pressure and parts of his skin began to open up, allowing him to breathe underwater.
He ignored the growing gaggle of sprites that followed his deep passage-they could only follow him so far, after all. Only the guardians themselves could enter the ancestors' cave. He used their light to guide him through the underwater maze, but he went through the final passage alone, and in the dark. After squeezing through a tiny fissure in the rock face, he emerged in a huge dark cavern. The walls by the fissure were covered in fading murals, painted by the lost civilization that had first built these underground mazes. He had often wondered about that as a child: how had a whole race with powers like the water guardians been so utterly destroyed that only a handful of people even knew that they existed? He sighed and stepped through the rim of the air seal that surrounded most of the cavern.
Weeks ago, when he felt his father enter this sacred chamber for the final time, he had been furious. Ali'ikai hadn't wanted him to leave; he had dismissed his son's concerns as childish delusions. And then, just when Kai was learning how horribly right he had been, his father chose to die. He hadn't wanted to return, though he had known he didn't have much choice. But then he met Lana, and his whole world rearranged itself. The cranes warned him, he remembered. He didn't know where it came from, this crazed love that had lodged itself in him the moment he first looked at her. It had happened to his father-Aunt Pua loved to tell him that story-but he had always considered himself to be more rational, more controlled. He would never sink into a decades-deep pit of grief over the love of one woman. And yet ... now Lana was with him, and he didn't know what he would do if she ever left.
Even here, on the cusp of doing the one thing he had dreaded all his life, he didn't regret returning. He would do whatever was needed to protect her, even if it meant accepting the power he had never wanted. He thought of how she had last looked at him, with a kind of dogged, sad hope that made him want to beg her forgiveness. Of course, how could he possibly give into the constant temptation before she understood what she would be sacrificing? Selfishly or not, he wanted a little more time with her before he forced her to make such an impossible decision.
His father sat hunched in a tiny crevice above the graves of his ancestors, a desultory white light floating somewhere above his head.
"So, the wayward son has finally returned." His father's voice was cold and oddly distant, as though he was already half-gone. "I had begun to lose hope." He stared at Kai. "You know how long I've wanted this. You know that you were the only reason I remained. Why did you delay? Didn't you think you owed me this much?"
Kai clenched his webbed fingers. "You know why I had to, father. Even if you're too far gone to care, it matters to me what happens in the world of the living."
"Oh, you presume to know me so well?" The listless voice now held a touch of anger.
"I only know who I saw. A man half-mad with grief over a woman I barely even remember. You never were interested in the world, in life ... in me ..." Seeing his father in this state had stirred something inside of him-he wanted to dam the anger and the old pain, but they suffused him.
"I see. So that's what this is really about. You think I loved my dead wife more than my living son. You're probably right." His face crumpled and he looked away. "I was never worthy of you, was I, Makani?" he whispered, his voice scratchy with agony even twenty-five years after the loss.
"Do you know what it was like, Kai? You think you know so much, but you know nothing of grief. Imagine spending days with it tearing at your insides like a maniac with a dull spoon, knowing that nothing short of death will assuage it and that you cannot die. Imagine the mad, terrifying temptation to weep until your very soul drains away and knowing even that recourse isn't open to you. Can you not imagine why I would have felt some resentment toward the one who would keep me in that hellish prison? Can you not even sympathize?"
"Even if that person's crime was merely existing? Merely reminding you of your obligations? Even if you instead chose to give all of your love to someone who could no longer feel it?"
"Don't say that!" And then, a few seconds later, "Why didn't you come sooner?" His father's voice sounded plaintive, almost like a child's.
"Maybe I hoped that if I could find out what had been causing the disturbances, you would change your mind. I hoped I could get to know my own father before everyone I loved died. I hoped..." Kai paused and shook his head. "What I hoped was naive. Selfish. I'm sorry, Father, I should have come sooner. Your torment is over-have your release."
Kai closed the gap between them and lowered his head beneath his father's, so their eyes met.
"It wasn't all torment," his father said quietly. "You have a lot of your mother about you ... your pig-headedness, your smile ... not your eyes, though." He chuckled. "No, those are mine."
He gripped Kai's hand one last time. "May fate protect you from loving a woman like I did your mother."
Kai's voice stuck in his throat, but his mind flitted to visions of Lana sleeping on the rocking ship during their journey to the shrine, her tangled hair falling over her face.
And then, with a cough so delicate as to belie the fact that he was overcoming a lifetime of rigid self-control, his father began to weep.
Kai emerged from the lake many hours later, his
face haunted and his body sagging with exhaustion. She called out his name, but he didn't seem to hear her at first.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, after he finally snapped out of his reverie.
"Waiting for you," she said. He floated on the top of the water, staring like he didn't quite understand what she was saying. She sighed. "Are you coming up? I can't very well go down and get you."
A thick cord of water lifted him from the lake and deposited him on the bridge. He sprawled onto his back, his ice-blue eyes staring blankly up at the starry night sky. His chest barely movedanyone not looking closely might have thought him dead.
She moved closer to him and tentatively held his hand. He looked different, she realized. A second feather-this one a deep, oily black-was now entwined with his hair on the right side.
"Kai?" she said softly. He didn't move. "What happened?" Lana didn't dare speak again, even as the seconds ticked away and he showed no sign of having heard her.
"He's gone," he said finally, in a voice so small she could barely hear it. "Do you know, I remember crying when I was just a baby. It's my first memory-me bawling while my mother rocked me and held her hand over my eyes to try and stop the tears. If my father caught me crying he would roar and hold me underwater until I almost drowned ... I haven't cried since I was four years old. Not even when my mother died ... can you imagine that?" He laughed bleakly. "A five-year-old child not shedding a tear over his dead mother? By the time I had the change, I think I had forgotten how." He turned his head to face her. "Is that what you want, keika? A man who wouldn't even be able to shed tears on your grave?"
What did she want? Him; but was it so simple? She smiled a little and helped him sit up. "Sleep with me again? Just for tonight?"
He avoided her eyes. "Lana, I don't think that's a very-"
"Please?"
He sighed, then smiled ruefully. "Okay."
They walked slowly off of the bridge and away from the lake where, one day, Kai too would gain his ultimate release through tears.
The library was a massive warren of books, scrolls, and clay tablets, accessible only by poled boats and water-taut stairs that Kai would obligingly create so she could fetch something down. The only solid bit of floor was a stone island in the center of the library that held a carpet, a large wooden table, and about five cushioned chairs. Kai was still obsessed with learning more about the death and the strange geas that she had used to save her mother. He had decided to search through his library to see if he could find any other references to it. Perhaps, he said, he had been mistaken and something in the geas itself called forth a projection of the death spirit. He had seemed a little subdued after she first told him of her mother's illness, but she realized that it must have been very similar to the way his own mother died. Most of his books were dedicated to the geas and the art of sacrifice, but a month after he started looking, he still hadn't found any useful information about that kind of binding.
Lana was reading a decidedly plebeian book about daring pirate adventures in the days before the spirit bindings while sitting on the edge of the stone island with her feet dangling in the water. Kai had made it warm for her, which she enjoyed.
Kai slammed his book shut and then sneezed in the resulting little explosion dust. "Can I see that flute of yours again, Lana?" he asked.
Lana swiveled around, a little miffed at being distracted from her reading. "Why? Do you want to play it?"
"No, of course not. I just thought looking at it again might help me see if I missed any other reason why it can work geas so powerfully."
Lana shrugged and fished it out of her pocket. "I told you, it's because it's a self-sacrifice."
"You're probably right," he said, fingering the worn holes carefully. "But I'm not getting anywhere with this other stuff."
He held it up to the light. "How old did you say this was?"
"Oh ... somewhere between thirty and forty years, I guess."
"Really?" he said, still squinting up at it. "I'm not sure, but the bone seems much older. It's so discolored and brittle." He lowered it to his lips and tentatively blew out a long, high-pitched note.
He frowned. "Nothing" He handed it to Lana. "Why don't you try? Blow the same note I just did."
Despite its offhanded, breathy edge, when Lana played the note, she still felt the familiar instantaneous reaction of spirits waiting, anticipating the geas about to be recited. Of course, she didn't recite a geas and the sensation quickly faded away.
Her palms were slick when she put the flute back in her pocketshe knew this meant something was wrong. He sat down next to her. "So it works for you, but not for me ..." He lapsed into silence and she leaned on his shoulder. "You know ... maybe it's the witch. Even if you're using it, it's still her sacrifice, isn't it? Whenever you use that flute, it's like you have the witch's willing sacrifice, but one far more subtle and nuanced than anything I've ever seen before. She must still have control over who can access the sacrifice."
Kai didn't say it, but Lana knew what he must be thinking. If Akua had given her that power, she could just as easily take it away.
The next day Kai handed her a well-worn tome, his expression so intent she suspected she would not be seeing very much of her pirate book over the next few days.
"What is this?" she asked. It looked old and a little mysterious, like the books in Akua's death temple.
"It's a dictionary of fundamental geas principles. Probably more comprehensive than any you worked with. I don't think your teacher was very thorough ... which is strange, because anyone familiar with a geas like the one you recited for your mother must have known them."
Lana frowned. "Fundamental geas ... I thought you just had to memorize them."
He stared at her. "Lana, you must have created some geas if you made it this far. You actually don't know anything about this?"
"I was desperate! It was either make up a geas and hope it doesn't kill me, or don't make up a geas and know it will." She felt vaguely uncomfortable under his disbelieving gaze.
"I wouldn't trust that flute, Lana," he said slowly. His eyes had gone stormy again. "You shouldn't rely on a gift from a witch who never even told you that you could make up your own geas."
She felt strangely panicked. "But ... it was never meant to happen this way. I was just supposed to learn enough to make my living-herbs for sickness, for getting rid of babies or helping them along and the geas that could help. I was never supposed to learn them just to survive, not like this. How could she have known?" But maybe this was part of the game they had played, and Lana had very nearly lost.
He looked like he wanted to say something more, but finally he just nodded. "Just be careful, okay?" He opened up the book and began speaking, his tone positively academic. "So, the basic principles. You should think of it like, say, geometry. Do you know geometry?"
Lana nodded. Well, she had several years ago, and she wasn't about to make another admission of ignorance.
"So, geometry uses a series of statements, one directly relating to another known statement to prove something. Like..." He raised his finger and a small stream of water spurt from it, forming a straight line in the air in front of them. "A line is the shortest distance between two points. We make another line on the same plane," he drew a line above the first, "we have two lines that seemingly have no relationship to each other, right?"
Lana nodded tentatively. She was quickly realizing that she must have spent most of her time in class with Kohaku daydreaming about him and not actually paying attention to the lessons.
"But," Kai said, "what if we draw a line going through them both?" He squirted a vaguely diagonal line. "Now, take your book and go check to see which angles are less than the corner." Reluctantly, Lana stood up and measured the angles, trying not to get the book wet. Both of the angles on the left side were slightly smaller than the paper.
"If the angles on one side are both less than ninety degrees, that means that eventually, these two lines
that you thought had nothing to do with each other will intersect on that side."
Kai waved his hand and the lines evaporated. He turned back to her, a smug little smile on his face.
"Okay, that was ... interesting, but I don't understand what it has to do with geas."
He sighed. "What I mean is that from one simple premise-a line is the shortest route between two points-we proved how two lines can intersect each other. And if I wanted, I could use that to prove more things. It's the same with a geas, only the fundamental principles are less obvious, and the logic behind many of them has been lost. Once you learn them, though, the process of constructing a geas is virtually the same."
Lana cracked open the tome and flipped to the relatively small section in back about death. "It carries a key of lead," read the first short postulate. She looked up at Kai.
"Everyone learns these?"
"Everyone who wants to master geas."
The book was very thick, and the type was very small. Even if she did commit each of these to memory, would it be enough? If she and Akua were still playing their game, would it at least give her a chance?
After a solid week of studying, she had only managed to memorize the first ten pages of postulates. She had decided to start with wind (alternatively known as air, storm, and-most disconcertinglylight), in some sort of defiant homage to its "gift" Often, she wanted to stop and relax, or at least complain loudly, but Kai had buried himself so deeply in his research that she sometimes felt he forgot her presence entirely. His discovery about Akua's flute had disturbed him. She knew it must have revived his earlier concerns about Lana having something to do with weakening the death spirit's bindings, but she didn't understand how the two could be related. He had told her that the flooding on her island had only been one of dozens of similarly inexplicable disasters throughout the islands. And though the threat was remote-the bindings had held for more than a thousand years, after all-the possibility of one of the three spirits breaking free had consumed him. She wanted to help, but given her ignorance on the subject, there wasn't much she could do. So, she bit her lip and trudged through the postulates, muttering them aloud to herself until she could be reasonably sure she'd remember them. "Even the wind can freeze," she repeated, feeling like a temple officiate at solstice. Why hadn't Akua taught her any of this? She didn't doubt that the witch knew every postulate in this book by heart. Quickly, Lana went to the next line. She couldn't stand to think of that for very long.
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