Year of the Boar- Tica

by Heather Heffner

  Nanaue was so weak from combating the Dark Spirits’ compulsion that his mind melded with mine gratefully. If Jinho had been able to fuse with a shark, then I sure as hell could. And I was going to keep the cool sea hunter’s shape.

  The Plague Lords just had time to see Nanaue’s eyes snap to black, and then we lunged at them.

  The ocean was eager to help. Waves battered the Plague Lords mercilessly, and I stalked them from the shadows. My tail pummeled into Ahalgana’s chest, and my teeth sunk through Ahalpuh’s torso, only letting go because he tasted so foul. Weakened and bleeding, the Plague Lords were torn away on a riptide, out into the merciless depths of the spirit sea. I tracked the scent of their blood to where they thrashed about in the currents overlooking an abyss. Then I rose up from the depths and ate them.

  Later, I returned to prowling the shores of the black sand isle, determined that no Dark Spirit should enter the hole in the bridge land.

  “Tica.”

  I hesitated, comfortable lurking in the drop-off near the coral-encrusted cliff. Nanaue did not wish to emerge, so I finally did, my human feet feeling weird after slashing through the water with my great tail. I found my father waiting for me, along with a host of other gods.

  My father smiled at me, his boar-furred shoulder cape fluttering in the breeze. “Our thanks to you, my daughter. The way is now clear for us to retreat to Kuaihelani until this darkness recedes.”

  “You’re leaving?” I swallowed hard. “But I don’t know anyone else in Eve!”

  “Mo’oinanea is calling us back,” Kama said. “Power flows through the gods in four things: in memories, blood, tears, and land. If we enter through this gash in Kuaihelani, then such power shall follow us and close the hole. All must return except for a few warriors, whom Mo’oinanea has granted leave to guard the islands against the servants of Death. The rest of us must heal our mo’o, heal our land, and heal ourselves. The evil of the Dark Spirits is insidious and has many arms, both seen and unseen. All of us have been touched by them.”

  I straightened up. “Then I’m staying to fight, too. Nanaue needs me for now. I can swim again, Father. I can swim deeper and farther than ever before.” Maybe far enough to see Mom and Rafael again, from time to time.

  Kama rested a hand on my shoulder. “I understand. One day, Daughter, you, too, shall enter the Beyond.”

  “What’s in the Beyond?”

  “Guess,” the boar god said with a devilish smile, as he returned to his place in line. “Then someday, we’ll see if you got it right.”

  I stood aside and let the first returnee, the god of thunder, evaporate and then zap through the hole. A tendril of fog followed him.

  The gods passed me by one by one into the misty embrace of Kuaihelani. I did not see Poli’ahu among them, nor Pele. Kamohaoli’i the Shark God, Nanaue’s father, swam by as a great whale shark. An entourage of remora and pilot fish darted in and out of his long flowing beard. Namakaokaha’i, goddess of the ocean, told me not to eat too many fish in her absence. Little mo’o crawled over her slippers in their anxiousness to go home. Beyond the mist, I could see the monumental shadow of Mo’oinanea shifting restlessly as she awaited her children’s return. The hole grew smaller with every new god who passed through it, the flows of power following inward and threading tighter in an impenetrable weave.

  My father stopped beside me and tipped up my chin. I tried to smile at him, but it was hard because my eyes grew so teary.

  “Oh, Tica,” he said sadly. “Those who die young are the most precious. We are jealous gods, my daughter.” His voice broke. “We want to take you back too soon.”

  “I just want my mother and brother to know everything’s okay now.” I blinked rapidly. “I want them to know how much I love and miss them, but they must go on and be strong. I’ll see them again.”

  Kama hesitated. “No,” he said finally, nostrils flaring. “It is not right that you cannot come with me, and you cannot go back to them. You are stuck in Eve, this place in-between, which is for those departed who do not know where to go.”

  “It’s fine, Dad.” I shook my head, amused. “I will guard this way in Eve until Death’s Shadow recedes.”

  Still the boar god hesitated, and then he stepped out of line. “Kuaihelani pulls me back,” he said. “I am not strong enough to resist for long. However, I shall not enter yet. There is still something I have to do.”

  He left, stampeding over the ocean in the form of a giant black boar and causing tidal waves in his wake. I sighed and shook my head. So that’s where I got my pig-headedness from, Mom.

  The line of gods grew smaller, until I was left completely alone. Of the hole, there was nothing left except for a faint sliver. Thankfully, the sky remained clear of Dark Spirits. The strongest of the Hawaiian pantheon in root and memory were fending them off as of yet.

  When dawn came, I watched as it broke over my childhood apartment from Eve. The veil between our two worlds was so thin that I could almost touch the front door with my fingertips. Perhaps the neighbor’s wife saw me for a moment as she returned home from a graveyard hospital shift; she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and hurried inside so she wouldn’t get caught in the morning showers.

  Me, I stood and let the rain wash over my skin until I felt the tiniest pinprick of a droplet slide down my cheek. Then I smiled. I would never be part of my mortal home in the same way ever again. But I was still a part of it. I had only changed my form.

  Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance as the day chased the clouds away. I soaked up the hot earth through my feet while cool raindrops ran down my cheeks from above. The air smelled fresh and alive with soil and steam. Rain overflowed from the gutters of houses like miniature waterfalls. I stopped and breathed the mist in for a while, until my eyes grew teary under the rising sun and my body began to disappear. Then I called upon Nanaue.

  He responded, eager to return to the spirit waters of Eve. I dove into the ocean and became the shark-woman who guards the way into the land of the gods.

  Chapter 22: The Boar God’s Offer

  ~Rafael~

  Rafael knew who it was when she entered, but he didn’t move from his vigil beside his mother’s hospital bed.

  “Rafael,” Ryoko’s soft voice fluttered over, hesitant.

  “I asked you one thing: don’t let her out of your sight.” A deep fury, like nothing Rafael had ever felt before, stirred inside. He attempted to still it in vain—none of this was Ryoko’s fault, after all. It was His. That stranger had wormed his way into Rafael’s life, befriending his friends, his mother, his sister… Rafael had never known a truly remorseless sociopath until he’d met Jinho. That—thing—had acted so helpless, when really he was a tiger shark lying in wait.

  “I didn’t—” Ryoko tried, and Rafael rose from the bedside of his fading mother.

  “Really? Then how did Tica show up at our apartment when she was supposed to be enjoying her birthday camping trip with you?” Accusation flared wildly in his voice, and this time he let it.

  “Rafael,” Ryoko said in a low voice, “after what you saw in your apartment, I think you know that this world isn’t only made up of what we see. Your mother knew it. Tica knew it. And now you—”

  “Know that we don’t see certain things because they’re evil?” Hate burned his voice away to a mere rasp and set his skin on fire. “My sister is dead and my mother is on her way to join her because of this spirit bullshit!”

  “It’s not all bad,” Ryoko said quietly. “There is great power in the spirit world, too. Power that could be used for good and healing, if you just open yourself up to it.”

  “And die like my sister, leaving my mother alone?” Rafael snapped. “No thanks, Ryoko. Some things you don’t fuck with. You just fuck them up.” He opened his hands and threw down a black feather shaft. The blood-eater’s feathers had cut up his hands, but he’d torn off each one from the shaft with glee.

  Ana Dominguez shifted on the bed, muttering. “Rafael, my
son.”

  He immediately dropped to her side and grabbed her hand. “Mom, it’s me. I’m here.”

  “Why can’t I…” Her voice dropped, and her head folded into her chest. “Why can’t I fight it…for you?”

  That night, Rafael fell asleep while in the hospital chapel. His lips were numb from mumbling prayers and his eyes were dry from staring at the two blinding white candles. One for his mom, and one for his sister. Offerings—crinkled photographs, rosemary beads, and flowers—lay beneath the giant cross.

  In his dream, Rafael thought Tica’s candle flame suddenly leaped brighter and higher than ever before. He caught a flash of curly sun-streaked brown hair in the hospital corridor.

  “Tica.” The name had scarcely escaped from his lips before he was sprinting down the hall at full-speed to catch her. However, he was so intent upon reaching the short brown-haired girl that he didn’t realize the hospital had also begun to change. Geckoes scampered across the ceiling, chasing her alongside him. Doctors looked up at him from their charts, and they didn’t have human faces, but the long whiskers and noses of seals. Nurses hissed at him with their long serpent tongues because he was disturbing a long-bearded man’s departure on a burial canoe.

  Rafael’s breath caught. He plastered himself against the wall, staring about wildly. The clock hands on the wall spun around and around, never settling on one time.

  “Fuck this. I want to go home,” Rafael whispered as a roar shook the operating room. Inky black goo began to trickle out of the nearby door, taking on the dangerous look and strength of octopus tentacles. Rafael cried again, louder: “I want to go home!”

  A sudden magnetic force surged to life in his abdomen, jerking him forward. Rafael pulled up his shirt, startled, and then realized that the tattoo of a compass he’d gotten for his eighteenth birthday had started spinning. It pointed east, back down the corridor. Rafael didn’t question it. He ran.

  However, someone blocked the way between his freaked-out spirit and his body in the waking world. A gigantic hulking shape huddled in the chapel. Upon hearing him, it turned and rose up to a towering twelve feet. The monster had the head of a hog and the body of a man. Bristled black boar hair ran up the length of the boar-man’s spine to his tremendous head, which had a pair of lethal tusks and two boiling red eyes.

  “Rafael!” the giant pig-man boomed. “Welcome, Ana’s son! Do you know who I am?”

  His heart was pounding, but Rafael slowly pulled out his Swiss Army knife. “Get the hell out of my way.”

  The pig-man chuckled. “You are different than your sister, I see. I will forgive you, but you must listen, for there isn’t much time. I am Kamapua’a the Boar God…Tica’s father.”

  “Yes, and I’m a fuckin’ ninja. I already heard this nonsense from Ryoko. If Tica wanted to dream up some fantasy tale to make facing her imminent death easier, then good for her. But she could have cued her real family in instead of listening to some sadistic monster who drinks human blood. I’m done trusting strangers, and guess what: you, her so-called father, who never once showed up to give her a birthday card, qualify as exactly that. So you go your way and I will go mine.”

  The boar god’s nostrils flared, and Rafael worried he’d gone too far. Kama took an earth-shaking step closer.

  “You do not understand, boy. I can bring her back.”

  Rafael paused, his fingers relaxing on the blade.

  Kama sighed. “You do not know of the Hawaiian gods like your sister did. I am the shape-shifter; I am the life-giver. I can bring Tica back from the dead.”

  Rafael still couldn’t move. “I don’t believe you,” he whispered.

  “I am fading; Kuaihelani pulls me back. You must set up the rites, and I will ignite them with my power. Tica will return,” the boar god wheedled. “She has a strong enough spirit to.”

  Rafael swallowed hard, and his vision blurred, wet with tears. The brown-haired girl he’d glimpsed before turned. And there was his younger sister, teasing him with a surfboard tucked under her arm and the sun on her face.

  Tica had told him, she’d promised him that it was still her after the relapse. But it hadn’t been. Not after Jinho had sunk his fangs into her. Now wherever Tica was, whatever she had become, she was free of that. She had herself again.

  “I understand,” he said slowly, “but I don’t trust you, and I don’t trust what you’re planning to do. Leave my sister the hell alone.”

  The boar god’s eyes fumed lava-red with anger, and black fur began to ripple down his human skin. “BOY!” he roared. “You know not what you do!”

  Rafael ducked behind a pew and readied his knife. Kama started toward him, furious, but then he stumbled. His mighty tusks grew transparent, and the fire in his eyes cooled.

  “It is too late,” Rafael heard the boar god say, his voice dim. “I must return. I will tell Tica I am sorry; I failed her. But perhaps you will not. I sense that you are able to change your shape, too, Ana’s son. Maybe one day you will see her again.”

  From far away, Rafael heard the heart monitor issue a shrill warning. He charged through the boar god’s misting form and back into his body. Bursting out of the chapel, he sprinted down the hall to his mother’s room.

  She was gone. Rafael clung to her outstretched hand and wept, feeling terribly frightened. A black hole grew in his heart, sucking him down into it.

  When he left the hospital the next day, he feared no longer. He was dangerous and alone, only eighteen years old, and he wanted blood.

  Chapter 23: Long Shadows

  ~Khyber~

  It takes a special type of monster to be able to seduce a young girl recovering from bone cancer, destroying her and her family in the process. I stood amongst the snows of Mauna Kea and waited. When Poli’ahu appeared, sledding down the slopes on a mamane board, she was alone. Her other three snow sisters had retreated into Kuaihelani with the other gods.

  “You’re still here,” I said.

  She threw up a hand, and a gust of icy wind halted her sled. She jumped down and placed it under her arm. Her dark eyes were challenging. “So is Pele. Someone must stay to fight the fighters. Left unchecked, who knows what that crazy volcano goddess will do to these islands?”

  “Such dedication,” I said bitterly, “and yet you didn’t think twice about sacrificing a young girl with mixed lineage for your cause—the lineage of a mortal woman and a shape-shifting boar god. Tica might have grown into another rival for you.”

  “We thought it over many times. My sisters and I.” It snowed harder, and Poli’ahu’s shoulders slumped beneath the drifts piling on top of them. “The Plague Lords and the greedy vampyre princeling thought they could use Nanaue to do their bidding. The shark god’s son had to be stopped, and it could only be done by changing him. Tica was the daughter of a legendary shape-shifting resurrection deity and a friend to the seas. I believed she would imprison him and take his place, but she proved better. She became part of him, a part that will control his hunger. Nanaue will never be the same again.”

  “Neither will she,” I said sharply. “Tica is dead.”

  A patch of ice-encased bushes exploded to my left, and I sucked in my breath as an icicle speared me through the foot.

  “She was dying anyway,” the snow goddess hissed in her hoarse whisper. “At least this way, she will live on with us. One day she will enter the land of the gods.”

  “All mortals are dying,” I said sardonically. “They die, and we’re still here. You lied to me, Poli’ahu. You said Tica Dominguez would be my death.”

  “She will be.” Poli’ahu slowly looked up at me, and the blizzards that swirled through her hollow eyes blew away all sentiment. She was deadly beautiful and untouchable in her pitilessness. “For her brother, Rafael, will never stop hunting you until you pay for the deaths of his mother and sister.”

  I remembered the evenings spent surfing with Tica’s older brother. He was a king in the small world he knew: popular, humorous, and carefree, with
a kind smile for the stranger he’d invited into his home. Now he would never trust again.

  “I fear him less than his sister,” I growled.

  The snow goddess merely smiled. “Oh, give him a chance, will you? If you freeze something long enough then it will grow hard enough to withstand it. How much of the original thing will be left, well…” She shrugged. “But to give you death, it will take that great of a hatred…and the right moment.”

  “What moment is that?”

  “The moment when you have something to live for.” Her merciless smile grew. “Or someone.”

  Before the snow maiden left, something slipped from her hand: a crumpled moonflower.

  “Khyber,” Poli’ahu said softly, “do not ever presume to play games with a snow goddess’s heart again.”

  I stayed on the slopes a long time after, a lone silhouette with folded black wings illuminated by the moon against a sheet of blue ice. Perhaps I wanted to feel fear of the cold again. My mind drifted to the red mo’o’s warning on Kīlauea so long ago. He was right. There were things out there older than me, and I should have feared them. Fear would have made me more aware of the things they weren’t saying, more suspicious of their pledges to help. In the days ahead, there would be more older things to face.

  I hoped they’d enjoy screwing with me as much as I was going to enjoy fucking up them.

  Chapter 24: The Ice Maiden

  ~Ryoko~

  Months Later

  Rain slipped down the gutters and dropped cold and wet on Ryoko’s forehead. She shifted under the umbrella with Mason as they watched the taxi driver load the rest of Rafael’s luggage into the trunk.

  Rafael walked toward them, his adorable sun-kissed brown hair that Ryoko loved so much absolutely drenched. Nevertheless, he stopped just short of the umbrella, as if the monsoon shower didn’t bother him. Not much did, anymore. Things like rain were necessary to numb the pain.