by Matt Larkin
“Kamapua’a!” Pasikole shouted from some distance behind.
Kam snorted. Slow ass humans running around on two legs. Huffing, he forced the spirit inside him down, forced himself back to human form.
When Pasikole drew near he tossed Kam the skirt he’d discarded earlier. Stupid foreigners, always afraid of their own bodies. Afraid of letting others see them without clothes. Like that shit mattered.
“We’ve been here before,” Pasikole said, once Kam had donned the skirt.
Kam looked around. He stood on black rocks near the sea, well beyond Puako Village. In the moonlight, the shallows actually looked green, vibrant like the jungles just beyond. Ahead of them rose a steep slope, carved in rough tiers by the ceaseless winds of Paka’a and his calabash. Yeah. Kam had seen this place before. He scratched his beard. “So they’ve doubled back on their own trails.”
“Or you’re leading us in circles.”
Kam frowned. “I’m leading us in circles because they’re going in shitting circles.”
Pasikole spoke to his crew in his own language before turning back to Kam. “They’re wasting our time. Playing with us.”
That was fine. Kam loved games. Playing was a lot more fun than working. Huh. Was it fun in contrast to working? Would it still be as much fun to play, if he never worked? Or would the lack of contrast diminish his enjoyment? The only way to be certain was to stop working for a while—a few years maybe—and see if he got bored playing.
“So, uh, what do you want to do?” Please let it involve food or sex. Please let it involve food and sex.
Pasikole stared over the sea for a time, pretending to be lost in thought. Kam was pretty certain the man was just enjoying the moonlight. The moon was the best thing in the sky, after all.
“I don’t think those people would have acted without their chief’s knowledge.”
“Nope. Probably not without his blessing, in fact. Most people are always worried about doing things proper, following kapu. Eat this, don’t eat that. Be polite. Don’t hunt here. Don’t fart there. You can’t piss on someone just because you don’t like them. So many stupid tabus.”
“The Princess here—”
“Pele.” Kam spoke her name with reverence. That was just the only way to say it. Even the name sounded glorious. Pele. Fiery goddess of love.
“She dismissed us, disdained us. And after that, Chief Tangaloa must have decided we were no friends to his island.”
“Well you did bring diseases that might kill everyone on the Valley Isle.” Actually, that was a horrifying thought. Finding the boat suddenly sounded fairly stupid next to helping Namaka. He sure as Milu’s frozen tits didn’t want everyone he’d ever known to die.
Pasikole frowned and shut his eyes a moment, apparently actually hurt by Kam’s words. Suppose he should watch that. When he opened his eyes he turned back to Kam. “Maybe that’s all true. Pele seems to think this the result of your gods turning on you.”
“Uh. Isn’t that where disease comes from?”
Pasikole shook his head. “Maybe your aumakuas can ward off illness. I can’t speak to that. But they weren’t the cause of it. Either way, Tangaloa made a serious error if he thinks he can steal from me.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We’ll snatch him before the sun comes up and force the natives to give up the boat in exchange for their chief. By then, Inemes should have the sails repaired and we can get off this cursed island.”
Kam scratched his beard again. “Huh. What about Namaka?”
“She doesn’t need our help—she never did. And either way, she has more than a day’s head start on us.”
Well that was stupid. Of course Namaka needed his help. She always needed him. Just because she was a Princess and crazy powerful and now a mermaid, too, she was still his best friend. Why would he let her face all this shit on her own? But Pasikole was a friend, too. And without Kam’s help, he was gonna land himself in a big pile of pig shit.
“I think kidnapping the chief might be tabu.”
“That has never stopped you before.”
Nope. Never had.
10
The foreign captain had known nothing useful, and Pele had no desire to remain near them. Especially not the bizarre, lust-addled warrior the man brought with him. She’d charred the fool and still he thought to pursue her. Imbecile.
Instead, she had returned to her family’s hut. Chief Tangaloa had offered to house her in his own great home, but she’d dismissed the idea immediately. She had to tend to her mother, her family, as best she was able.
She had no idea how to address the issue of the spirit just yet, but she wasn’t going to let it harm her mother or brother. Fire-Keeper had said it hadn’t killed any humans—yet. But given what the entity had done to the bird, maybe it was only a matter of time.
Nor could she go after Namaka until she learned where the Sea Princess had gone.
Her mother had drifted off into fitful sleep as the sun set, her brother sitting by her side. Pele now sat on the threshold, staring at the kapa cloth Milohai had hung over the door.
“You can’t break the curse, huh?” he asked, finally shattering the silence that had settled between them.
“Of course I can.” She tried to force as much bravado into her voice as possible. Her people needed to see her as confident, even haughty. Irrepressible and undefeatable. No matter how helpless she felt in the face of a foe without form. This enemy could not be burned, could not even be seen.
“Then why are you in here, instead of out there?”
Pele favored her brother with a withering gaze and he wiped his nose and looked away. “I’m watching over you.”
“I’m not a child.”
She turned back to the doorway. Outside, the wind was howling, agitated—or hungry. “I didn’t say you were.”
What play went on in the shadows obscured by the kapa? She could almost feel something moving out there, sending her skin crawling. No villager would be out in the night. As far as Pele knew, none of them had yet begun to whisper of Nightmarchers, but that was only a matter of time. They didn’t know what seeped into the village as the sun set, but they knew there was something out in the night. Something angry.
And in her awareness of that anger, it pounded at her temples, pulsed through the land. Milohai was right. She should be out there. Was she lying to herself? Thinking she was here to protect him, her mother, when the truth was she was hiding from a foe she didn’t understand and could not overcome?
“The kahuna said Mother will get better,” Milohai said.
Just trying to fill the silence? He was afraid, too, and her lack of action probably exacerbated his fear. “She will.” Pele rose, not looking back at her little brother. “It’s time.” Make it sound like going out had been her plan all along. Before she could think better of it, she hugged Milohai. Then she lifted the kapa and stepped around it.
Fog had drifted in with the night, creeping through the village and pooling in the spaces between houses. Clouds once again obscured the moon, so with the fog she could see only three or four paces ahead, if that.
“Where are you?” she whispered, edging away from the relative safety of the house. That safety was a facade, most likely. The local kahuna would keep praying, perhaps warding the houses. But if there was a Nightmarcher here, sooner or later it would find its way into a home. Invisible and intangible, it would hover above a sleeper, whispering of fear and damnation. Siphoning off bits of the victim’s life, its soul.
She shook her head, then lit a torch in her hand. What was she doing? Intentionally frightening herself by remembering every story she’d ever heard of Nightmarchers? Fire-Keeper had said the ghost probably had not become that. Not yet. But unless she found a way to send it off, it eventually would.
Passing through the fog was like wading through a nightmare, everything around her twisted, obscured. Seeming too far away. Like huts that should have been a few paces from her sud
denly stood beyond reach, as if she herself had stepped into the Ghost World.
No insects chirped, but there was some sound on the edge of her hearing, something she couldn’t quite make out. She wasn’t certain whether that was worse than the oppressive silence from last night or not. It was like … whispers. Like men whispering far away, their words lost.
She turned slowly, using the torch to burn away fog as she passed. And still finding nothing. It wasn’t going to come to her, especially not with the fire lit. She knew that. A Nightmarcher was a spirit of the Dark. It would not easily cross into light, not even fire light.
Reluctantly, she closed her palm, snuffing out the fire. “All right, then.” Even her voice seemed like a whisper, stolen by the howling wind. Shivering, she spread her arms wide and turned about in the fog. “Here I am.”
Nothing.
Just the wind, the whispers. A scent maybe, coming in off the breeze, like the smell of fish left to rot in the sun. And the intense, ever-increasing thumping of her heart, threatening to climb up her gut and lodge itself in her throat.
Teeth clenched, she willed herself to calm. Shut her eyes for a moment, though the thought of being even more blind left her shaking. One breath, two, to steady herself, then she opened her eyes. Continued to turn.
From the corner of her eye, a shadow, a silhouette, seemed to pass through the fog. She spun to face it. Only the blanket of white, concealing fog. Had that looked like a man? Or was her mind playing tricks? Pele took a few steps in that direction, but nothing was there.
The sensation of a presence suffused the fog, though. Nothing to be seen, nor readily detected with any of her other senses. And yet … she felt someone, something there. Watching.
A scream echoed through the night. Brief, brutal, and all the more shocking for the stillness that had seized Puako. It had come from the beach. Pele hesitated, afraid to know what had made such a sound. She could still find her way back to her mother’s house.
Instead, she relit her torch and hurried down to the beach. Whatever had made that sound had been in agony.
She didn’t want to know. She had to know.
A form lay crumpled there, lying facedown in the sand. The slight form indicated a boy or maybe a woman. Pele knelt by the body and rolled it over. By its size, she’d have guessed a teenage boy, but his face had been so desiccated as to scrunch up with wrinkles befitting an ancient man in his final years. The boy’s eyes were so bloodshot they seemed almost red, and trails of blood wept from the corners.
“Fuck you,” she whispered into the darkness. This thing had killed a person now. A foreigner, by his clothes and pale skin. But still, it had killed a human being on her island.
Men’s voices shouted, and their forms ran in her direction. Pele rose, extinguishing her torch, and stepped back into the fog. Almost immediately more foreigners, bearing torches, rushed over to check the body. Cries of horror went up, followed by a rapid exchange in some foreign language.
A woman looked to be in charge. She could have passed for Sawaikian, though she wore foreign clothes. She pointed back down the beach, and the men withdrew. One of them stopped to grab the boy’s body, first making some kind of sign of warding before touching the corpse.
Pele watched them leave, uncertain what to do. They were not her people, and she had no comfort to offer. The truth was, she had no solace to offer anyone this night.
She had asked the local kahuna, and he too thought they must be cursed by the aumakuas. Maybe she should have killed them all, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that. She would give them the chance to leave in peace. A day, no more. Namaka, though, she had to leave immediately. The Sea Princess must be the source of all the chaos. Every moment she lingered here, things would surely worsen.
Still shaking, she stalked back toward the village. The darkness, the fog, seemed to well at her periphery, scattering whenever she looked too closely. It was out there, watching her, mocking her weakness. Perhaps even feeding off the fear it engendered. Some spirits were like that. If this one fed on fear, it would soon find a feast in this village.
The overwhelming sense of a presence approaching stalled her steps, and she spun to see a silhouette in the fog once again. Damn it. Damn this thing. She took a step toward it, casting alight both hands. This time, the shape did not scatter. Indeed, it moved toward her with obvious intent. Ready for another victim.
“I will burn you to ash,” she said.
“Pele?” the silhouette called from the shadows.
A moment later, Fire-Keeper strode into the small ring of light her torches radiated. His face was awash with concern, although she thought his eyes might have been slightly amused. Of course, it could have only been the way they reflected her torches. “Are you all right?”
“No.” No, she was not all right. “This village is haunted. My father is a monster. And another Princess is tromping around my island.”
“I know. I saw her tracks while I was out looking for Ku-Aha-Ilo. That’s what I came back to tell you.”
Pele drew nearer the kahuna, as if his mere presence might somehow scare away the angry spirit. “I don’t know what to do about the ghost—if that’s what this spirit even is. It killed a boy now. A foreigner.”
The kahuna scowled. “I thought I heard something.” He shook his head. “You need more information before you can do anything about the spirit.”
Damn it. Pele turned about, shaking her head. “Where do the Princess’s tracks lead?”
“I think she made camp in the caves in the cliffs.”
“And my … Ku-Aha-Ilo’s tracks?”
“They lead farther inland, into the valleys.”
The island’s interior was a vast wilderness of volcanoes, mountains, and valleys—all covered in jungle. She had trekked through it with Fire-Keeper, but navigating the wilds was never easy. She shook her head. She needed to find Ku-Aha-Ilo, get him to call off the spirit, assuming he had brought it in the first place. But Namaka was closer, easier to reach. And that could change quickly, once she broke camp.
Pele groaned. “I have to go after her now, while I know where she is. Try to watch over the village, protect them as best you can.”
“You’re going to leave in the night?”
“I have to. I can reach those caves by morning if I hurry.”
The kahuna nodded, placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Be careful.”
She nodded. She was much more worried about the people left here in Puako Village. This spirit grew more aggressive with each passing night. She could only pray Fire-Keeper and the local kahuna might work together to protect the people.
11
A million stars lit the night sky. They reflected off the waters where he stared over them, leaning on the gunwale. It was so clear Pasikole could stare into the blackness of the heavens and imagine gods truly lived up there. Reality, what he learned from all his studies, however, told him deities were spirits living in a whole other reality. A place that was not a place, a realm that could sometimes be felt, but not seen by mortal eyes. And what did that make the stars? Astrologers—pretenders to the Art, by and large—sometimes claimed the stars guided the course of destiny. Pasikole tended to think they had misconstrued the meaning. He had spent years charting a course by them, cataloging the constellations and trying to make sense of them. The beauty of the heavens was immeasurable, but by the same token it forced one to gaze into the infinite and realize just how insignificant a man was. Even here, on Earth, they were plagued by beings older and wiser and crueler than humanity could imagine.
And among the constellations, the Pleiades were the most beautiful to him. Bright stars, almost seeming to guide his course.
He had returned to the Startracer to wait out the night, knowing he should rest, sleep. And knowing full well he wouldn’t do so. Only a few of the crew were awake so late—it had to be almost midnight—and they must have sensed his mood, for none spoke to him.
He’d come to Saw
aiki with ill intent, true enough, but he’d told himself he was an explorer, a scientist. And when things had gone so awry, Pasikole had done all in his power to help Namaka right them. Even now, he’d come to the Big Isle in hopes of finding some mythical cure to illnesses he’d never intended to spread. Never even imagined it possible. His studies were broad, but they had not included medicine, and that gap in his education now haunted him.
Of course, he couldn’t allow these villagers to steal from him. The cutter was an essential part of the Startracer, necessary for any offshore or riverway explorations. Besides which, if he returned to the Royal Trade Society without it they’d take its value out of his hide. His entire crew would likely suffer docked pay at best, if not wind up blacklisted, unable to find more work.
Of course, even if he got the damn cutter back, return to the Society was … complex. While the Queen’s Council might have openly ruled the colonies, the he’e pulled the strings there. And he had to assume the he’e here would eventually send word to those at home of his betrayal. What option did it truly leave him? There was nowhere in the Worldsea the he’e could not find him. Besides, was he also to deny his entire crew the chance to return home? That was impossible. His choices had brought them enough harm, enough death, enough pain. He could not force them into unwilling exile as well. Perhaps if he took sole responsibility for all that had happened on the Valley Isle he could spare them retribution. Either way, his and his crew’s only chance for leniency was to keep the Society as much on their side as possible.
No, letting the locals keep the stolen boat bore no consideration.
He would have to return home and throw himself on the mercy of the Society and of Brine, the human emissary of the he’e on Pier City. Though the night was warm enough, a chill wracked him at the thought. He was likely going to his death, or worse, if the tales of the Art were true. Unless … unless he could find a third option.
