Year of the Boar- Tica

by Heather Heffner

  The others had finally realized what was going on. Aolani mouthed What’s wrong? at me, but I just shook my head. This was another storm that needed to spend itself.

  Lono turned his ire upon me. “Fuck this. You talk stink, too?”

  I puffed out my chest. “Eh yah man, I’m one crazy buggah. I almost messed up my friendship with Aolani because I didn’t take the time to talk to her. So why don’t you lay down your arms, cuz, before you become like me?”

  Lono stared at me for an instant, and then he broke out laughing. “Ho, tita, your pidgin’s awful.”

  I elbowed him playfully. “I learned it all from you, brah.”

  Unclenching the pride from his face, Lono slowly turned back to Mason. “If Saint Tica says she’s not right all the time, then go ahead, man. I listen.”

  Mason laughed ruefully and gazed down at his hands. “Look, Lono, there is one reason I put off telling you for so long: I felt like I had already told you…through Kai. He was the first person who ever knew. That kid must have been only ten years old when it happened. He was there when this barista dude was flirting with me. Maybe it was a word he picked up at school that day, but Kai straight out asked me if I was gay. And I just looked at him, and there he was grinning back at me, no malice or political agenda beneath his words, and that was the first time I ever really allowed myself to think…maybe it would be okay.”

  Lono gazed out toward the ocean, and the smallest of smiles tugged at his lips. “Young punk never had any manners. No wonder the sea wanted to teach him some.”

  “No wonder the sea wanted him indeed,” Mason said softly, and then hesitantly reached out to place a hand on Lono’s shoulder.

  I grinned, nodding and flashing a thumbs up to the others. Aolani and Ryoko clapped and waved back. Paul enthusiastically wound up his horseshoe and chucked it. The glittery horseshoe skipped off a rogue piece of driftwood and hit Lono’s knee.

  “Motherfucker!” Lono dropped to one leg, swearing, and Mason and I hurried to see the damage.

  “Lono, are you okay?” Mason asked frantically.

  Lono cracked one eye open and jabbed the skinny redhead in the chest. “Bro, your boyfriend is gonna die.”

  I smiled. Tonight I would definitely feel comfortable leaving all of them together—while I entered Eve alone. I glanced toward the trees, through which I could see the chain link fence encircling Bellows Air Force Station. I could also see two black boars snuffling around the bushes, in the dirt track where the soldiers did their conditioning drills. My heart twisted. The boars were here, but would my father be among them?

  Chapter 18: Shifting Shapes

  ~Tica~

  I stole across the shadowy sands, leaving my friends’ tents, the candle doorway, and my sleeping body behind. The silver waves roamed restlessly on All Hallows’ Eve, coagulating into anamorphic shapes and then bursting. I saw a pair of black wings cross the face of the moon and froze. Then I realized it was a three-legged crow spirit. Shaking my head, I hurried toward the tree line.

  A small bristle-furred boar charged out from the underbrush. I tensed, but then I realized it wasn’t attacking me. It was running away.

  Suddenly a shadow streaked out of the trees so fast I couldn’t see its face. I did, however, catch a flash of metallic-tinted hair.

  The familiar vampyre ascendant hoisted the small, protesting boar up by its tail. He snapped off one of the pig’s tusks and rammed it straight through its chest. His glittering topaz eyes rose up to meet mine.

  “Hungry, Tica?” Nik asked softly.

  Crap. I sprinted for the forest, but Nik blurred and reappeared in front of me. The boar’s severed head swung from his fist tauntingly.

  “Go ahead.” He grabbed my forearm, dragging me closer. “You want to become one of us, don’t you? That is why you let the Crow Prince drink from you. Becoming a vampyre is the only thing that will stop your imminent death. So drink.”

  He shoved me to my knees. The rotting stench of the boar’s head pierced my nostrils, making me so dizzy I couldn’t see straight. Then Nik shoved my head into the spurting red flesh.

  “Drink!” Compulsion underlined the command, angry and laced with bitterness. Still I clenched my teeth tight and turned my head to the side, blood staining my cheeks.

  “Don’t think the Crow will save you,” Nik said quietly. “I know you’ve lost his favor. Poor cancer girl. You’re too much of a self-righteous prude to be a vampyre, aren’t you? Or maybe you’re just being nice and letting me eat first!” His head bent close to mine so I could see his grisly stained fangs, the crimson veins spider-webbed across his eyes, and the blood splattered in his gelled hair. The smell of rancid meat stung my eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” he breathed. “I’ll dine later on your sweet little friend…Aolani, wasn’t it?”

  Suddenly he arched up, cursing. I tumbled out from his grasp and saw none other than Ryoko of all people standing behind him, staring grimly at the rusty old horseshoes stake she’d planted in his back.

  “Ryoko?” I whispered in disbelief.

  She hunched her shoulders stubbornly. “Rafael told me to follow you no matter what you did. No matter where you went. When you bedded down next to the candles and the plates of food, I…saw something. Your spirit departed through the candles. So I did the same…”

  Staring at her, I realized that only Ryoko had commented upon the eerie green of the fake Jinho’s eyes. Her grandmother had instilled in her the importance of tending to her ancestors’ graves. On some level, my best friend had always believed in spirits, too.

  Nik ripped the stake from his back and swiveled around, fangs gleaming. His spine made sickening pops as his gray skin stitched itself back into place, while the silver tips of his hair began to smoke. He was good and pissed off now. Yet he still managed to laugh.

  “Excellent!” the vampyre cried, one of his long arms whipping out to spear Ryoko through the palm with the stake. She gasped, falling to her knees. With tears soaking her eyes, she struggled to free her impaled hand. Her blood gushed freely like a geyser. Nik grinned, shoving me in front of him. He held both of my arms tightly behind my back so I couldn’t get away.

  “You have such a cute array of loyal friends willing to give up anything for you, Tica, my dear,” his hot breath hissed in my ear. “They say you’re a fast learner. So why don’t we skip the animals and go straight to feeding on your own kind? Think of how happy it will make your precious Crow Prince!”

  “And think of how happy you’re making me by forgetting something,” I said through gritted teeth, my left shoulder prickling.

  “Oh? What’s that?” he whispered, leaning against my captive fists.

  “I only have one arm.”

  Nik jerked back to stare at my bound hands, but by then it was too late. The moon passed out from behind the clouds, and my left arm shimmered and reappeared as a three-foot-long boar tusk, staking him straight through the heart.

  He toppled over like a felled tree, his fiery hair shuddering and then going dark. I darted forward, carefully retracting the stake from Ryoko’s palm.

  “Thank you!” she gasped. “But, Tica—how did you do that?”

  I wrapped her wounded hand in leaves and applied pressure. “Kamapua’a the boar god is my father,” I murmured. “He is a notorious shape-shifter. I figured that if I’m in spirit form, then I can do it, too.”

  She was able to stand, so I grabbed the rusty horseshoes stake and dashed back to Nik’s fallen form. The boar tusk I’d created was fading, so I staked him again.

  “Is that thing…dead?” Ryoko asked uncertainly.

  “Well, half of him is,” I said awkwardly. “We’re in the spirit world, Eve. His body is still ‘alive’ in the waking world, but no mind will come back to it.”

  She gulped. “So if we die here…”

  “We become comatose vegetables in real life.”

  “My grandmother would kill me.”

  I laughed and grabbed her elbow. “
Let’s get you out of here.”

  She drew back defensively, forgetting her wounded hand. “Not unless you’re coming, too.”

  “I can’t,” I argued. “I have to find my father and warn him about the vampyres’ plans for Kuaihelani.”

  Ryoko shivered as the temperature dropped. “Well, great, let’s do it. I’ve always wanted to meet your dad. Hey, why is it so cold in the spirit world?”

  I stared at her again, wordless gratefulness bubbling up inside. “You’re my best friend, Ryoko.”

  “And you’re mine, when you aren’t keeping secrets from me and running rampant around a bizarre-o ghost beach. Seriously, is it snowing?”

  “Oh, shit.” I watched blue ice creep across the sands, crystalizing palm trees and freezing the ocean in mid-motion.

  Laughter broke the icy stillness. I whirled around, but it was only Ryoko, spinning under the ghostly glow of the moon as the stars began to fall like snowflakes. Her lips cracked in a smile. “It’s kind of pretty.”

  Poli’ahu touched down upon the ice amidst a blizzard of flapping winged mo’o. “Well, at least you have one decent friend,” the snow goddess said.

  Chapter 19: Nightmarchers

  ~Tica~

  Ryoko shifted to stand behind me, away from the penetrating stare of the stoic ice maiden.

  “She looks like she wants to kill us.”

  “Poli’ahu has tried, in the past,” I muttered back.

  “Who? Just how many enemies have you made here?” she hissed.

  “Too many.” Poli’ahu held a small ice sculpture of a boar in her hand and then shattered it with a single breath of frost. “Really, Tica thinks the cancer will be what kills her.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Leave us, Poli’ahu. We’re here to speak to my father.”

  “Do you see any giant man-pigs rolling in the mud anywhere?” She looked at me flatly. “Forget it, child. Your father is like Pele—their desires change with the wind. Only I am the patient and unchanging guardian who remembers, who endures despite rising temperatures and the selfish greed of your kind. I thought your vampyre friend ‘Jinho’ was like me.” Fissures momentarily surfaced in her glacial mask.

  Ryoko elbowed me frantically. “Jinho’s a what?”

  “I promise I’ll explain.”

  The snow goddess snapped her fingers. “Yes, later. Priorities, cancer girl. Tell me what those cursed undead have been up to before you croak.”

  Ryoko immediately stepped up to my defense, but I shook my head. I didn’t want to explain to Ryoko’s grandmother that a humorless snow goddess had turned her granddaughter into a snowman. Perhaps Poli’ahu was more like her fire rival Pele than she liked to think.

  “Jinho interpreted these weird shark skin manuscripts I stole from Crispin’s office. Crispin and the Plague Lords used them to summon Nanaue from Kuaihelani. Crispin also had a dead coral prison that could turn mo’o dark, and an old Hawaiian legend about finding Kuaihelani.”

  Poli’ahu stood so still for a moment, I thought she’d turned into an ice sculpture. Abruptly, she blinked. “I see. Thank you.”

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  “I must spread the word to the other gods,” she said quietly. “We need to prepare for war.”

  “Please, tell me,” I begged, running after her. “That’s my father you’re talking about.”

  She hesitated. “When Crispin and the Plague Lords summoned Nanaue back to the earth from Kuaihelani, it was not pretty, you understand. Nanaue’s teeth tore a hole in Kuaihelani as he passed through. Kuaihelani is the cloudland, the bridge to the beyond. The land of the gods is now vulnerable.”

  “But why Nanaue?” I pressed. “Why now?”

  “Remember what I told you,” the ice maiden replied. “Nanaue is in many ways like the vampyres: he feeds on his own kind. Before I called Jinho to imprison him, I found Nanaue prowling around a certain controversial hotel project off of Fiji.”

  “Kalani Resorts,” I realized. “The launching spot of their notorious underwater hotel.”

  “One of the rooms is made entirely out of ‘dead’ coral.” Poli’ahu nodded grimly. “It is large enough to hold thousands of mo’o. Or the supreme Mo’o matriarch herself, who lives in Kuaihelani: Mo’oinanea…the Dragon.”

  “A shape-shifting guardian like Mo’oinanea would make a powerful soldier,” I whispered.

  “One powerful enough to change the tides.” Poli’ahu gazed out at the horizon. “If she were to turn dark, then she would sway the allegiance of the remaining mo’o. Hawai’i would no longer be safe from the Vampyre Queen’s shadow. Dark spirits would flood our part of Eve. And the Twelve would be that much closer to returning to plague the waking world.”

  “Poli’ahu,” I asked timidly, “who are the Twelve?”

  She paused, black ice eyes scanning the trees. “We have no time to speak of them safely. You must return to your bodies swiftly, children. I see dark mo’o coming for them…and for your mother, Tica.”

  My heart seized up in my chest. “I have to get back to her!”

  “I will make the winds blow hard and cold for as long as I can to hold them off.” Poli’ahu extended her arms to the skies, blackness swallowing up her eyes completely. “Run. Get back to your bodies. I will send help soon.”

  Ryoko put out her hand, and I grabbed it. Together we pelted back across the sands, legs pumping furiously. Our campfire appeared, dreary and gray a veil away. We dashed through the candles and reentered our bodies—but my spirit sight gave me no rest.

  Poli’hu’s icy winds died, and rain began to fall, so dark and heavy that we couldn’t see the others. I saw the creeping shapes of many dark mo’o advancing toward Ryoko and me, and my heart despaired.

  But suddenly, chanting breached the darkness. A great host of torches approached: a hunting fire, unquenched by the torrential rain or shadows. Ryoko and I stared at each other, petrified. I knew she couldn’t see the torches, but she could smell a dank odor and hear the call of the conch shell. Poli’ahu had not sent friends—she had set the huaka’i pō, the Nightmarcher warriors, upon us.

  However, at the sight of the torches, the dark mo’o fled in terror. The chanting grew exponentially, vigorous shouts of hunger and joy that raised my spirits and urged my eyes to look upon the ghost army. My fingers locked in Ryoko’s, and I stared hard at the ground, desperate not to fall for their trick.

  A battle-scarred finger tipped my chin up. I realized that the Nightmarchers had surrounded me like an escort, making no move to attack. Their leader smiled and nodded toward the east, back toward Kaimukī. Back to my mother.

  I returned his smile.

  “Tell the others where I’ve gone,” I told Ryoko.

  “Um—what the hell am I supposed to say?”

  “That I love them.” I squeezed her hand one more time and let go. “That I love you all.”

  I saw two shapes draped over one another on the moonlit beach as I stole by in the company of the Nightmarchers. It was Aolani and Lono, her head resting on his shoulder. I blinked, eyes wet, and flashed them the shaka. Good will and the best to them. I hoped one day I would see them again.

  Chapter 20: The Ritual

  ~Tica~

  I was carried through the night on the chants of the huaka’i pō. At one point, we soared high above the islands, and I could see the island chain in its entirety: living, breathing, becoming. The Nightmarchers’ song reached up into the stars, until time and space bent back down to earth. We fell with the rain, through a cloud so dark I couldn’t see. Whistles and drumbeats pounded in my ears.

  My hand flailed frantically for anything solid, and I thudded onto the back of something hard and bristly. The gigantic black boar laughed at me as he cavorted amongst the clouds.

  “Daughter!” Kama’s voice boomed. “Isn’t this fun?”

  My fingers knotted into his coiled ruff. “So much that I might pee myself.”

  “I think you’ll forget your bodily worries in a moment,�
�� the boar god replied, and then he launched himself off of the cloud. We went spiraling down toward the earth surrounded by the glow of the Nightmarchers’ torches, and I called upon my stump to entwine with my father’s stubbly bristles so I wouldn’t fall off.

  “Happy Birthday!” I heard Kama shout.

  Everything finally refocused on a familiar concrete block lit by fluorescent lights.

  Ahead of me was our drab little apartment. I could see the TV screen flickering with the late night news behind the sliding glass doors of our red-stone lanai. One of Mom’s potted yellow hibiscus flowers had toppled over in the rain. The smell of soil mixed with the scent of slick oil on the street filled the air.

  The Nightmarchers began to disappear one by one in the torrential downpour. Soon only their torches winked in and out around me like fireflies. I smiled at them, at my father, and maybe at Poli’ahu, too: “Mahalo.”

  The door slid back, and my mother came running out into the storm. “Tica?”

  “Mom!”

  I slammed into her, hard, and I felt her arms spring up to enfold me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I cried into her chest. “I said all of those horrible things to you. I didn’t realize how sick I was. I was seeing things that weren’t real. I was trusting a boy who was a demon.”

  “Jinho is on his way over here,” my mother said calmly.

  “What? No! Why?” I pulled her inside and slammed the door shut. Our hair dripped on the hardwood floor. “Mom, we need to revoke his invitation to enter our home! He’s evil! His vampyre venom made me into a monster, just like him!”

  The storm quieted. Lowly thunder echoed, but it was far away, already moving on. In its absence, the stench of gasoline grew stronger, seeping into the damp earth like rot. Suddenly I became aware of the candles surrounding us and the dragonfruit left out as an offering.

  My mom smiled and walked to the window, leaving her hair thick, wet, and uncombed. “It wasn’t Jinho who brought the cancer relapse upon you, Tica. It was the Plague Lords.”