The Burning Princess

by Matt Larkin

  “Tunnels?”

  “Said to be carved by the menehune in times past. Earth spirits. The story is, they lived on Sawaiki before our people ever came here from Kahiki. When humans arrived, the menehune carved tunnels so they could travel the island unseen by our mortal eyes.”

  Namaka shut her eyes, focusing on the sound of his voice telling stories. As Mo-O-Inanea had done so many times. More lost family, and one to whom she had never gotten to say goodbye. What was she doing? Thinking of such things would only bring the tears back. She needed to just hear the story. To let it lull her to sleep.

  “They liked the deep forests and the underground places,” Kana was saying. “Not the bright sun. And then, finally, tired of humans, they delved so deeply into the Earth they reached another realm and never returned.”

  His words blurred and faded, merging with strange memories of Namaka’s other half. Memories of half-sized men carved from stone, crafting, working, digging, digging, digging.

  18

  In the darkness, Kam crept back toward the chief’s hut, once again in boar form. Last night he had tried this with a far different intent. He’d wanted to help Pasikole get that stupid boat back. They’d wanted to avoid anyone getting hurt. Now, hurt was the point. Kam hurt. His heart hurt at the thought of never seeing that stupid yellow-haired foreigner again.

  The Startracer had left. Probably forever.

  Probably the right thing. As usual, doing the right thing stole half the fun out of life. That left him only one option. It was time to be bad.

  He snuck around a small bonfire in the center of the village. A few people remained up, sitting around the fire, telling stories or sipping those spirits Pasikole had traded them. Taking advantage of the generosity of the man they’d murdered. Kam gave them a wide berth. Didn’t want to wake the whole shitting village.

  The chief had stationed a guard outside his hut this time. Kam snorted. Stupid shitter was in for it.

  With a wild squeal he charged the guardian. The man turned toward him languidly, as if underwater, like he couldn’t believe what was happening. Kam yanked his tusks upward as he crashed into the pitiful human. They ripped through the flesh of the man’s abdomen, spilling hot entrails over Kam’s face. The shitter fell with a wet gurgle. Kam jerked his tusks free, pulling the man’s insides out along with them, then trampled right over the dying guard.

  The chief and his woman bolted upright at the sound of the attack. Kam stood in the doorway, staring them down for a moment. The temptation to charge them, do the same as he had done to the guard—it was strong. He was stronger. They deserved worse.

  More fear.

  Instead, he arched his shoulders and slowly resumed his human form. Then he strode into the hut. The chief rose, grabbing a club, then charged him. Kam caught the descending weapon in one fist and used the other to backhand the man. It sent the chief spinning around, tumbling back to the ground. The man lay there dazed and bloody while his woman shrieked.

  With one stride Kam closed the distance to her, glaring down at the woman who had caused all this. Her cries and insistence had brought the kahuna and the warriors. The chief might have cooperated if not for this woman. He grabbed her by the hair and yanked her up face-to-face with him, leaving her feet dangling off the ground. The woman wailed, clutching at his wrist to take the weight off her hair.

  “It’s your fault,” Kam said.

  Killing a woman was wrong.

  He knew that.

  He was just tired of doing the right thing.

  His punch shattered her nose. If she lived at all, she was unconscious. He didn’t care. He flung her into the wall of the grass hut with such force she crashed through it, tangling in the fish net designed to hold it together. Maybe she’d live, maybe not. He didn’t give a pig’s shit.

  Shouts had begun to rise among the village. They knew he was here. Good. Let them all fear Mighty Kamapua’a.

  He turned on the chief, who had risen and was stumbling toward his woman’s still form. Kam grabbed the bulbous man by the throat and hefted him aloft. Chief Tangaloa. Chief Tangaloa who had ordered his people to cook and devour Pasikole. A slow grin spread over Kam’s face, and he trod back outside.

  A handful of warriors had surrounded him, but he halted their advance with a glare. “One squeeze and I pop off his head, you shitters.”

  Tangaloa’s men brandished spears at him, but none dared move in. Instead, Kam slowly walked back toward the bonfire.

  “There’s one thing I want you to know,” he said, his voice low, intended only for the chief. “All you had to do was give back the shitting boat.”

  The chief looked like he might have something to say, though he could form no words with Kam’s hand clenched around his throat. Just as well. Kam no longer cared what the man wanted. He flung the chief into the bonfire. The man fell screaming.

  An instant of profound, total stillness fell over the camp, as if no one could believe what went on before their own eyes. The only movement, the only sound—the flailing and moaning of their chief as he struggled out of the bonfire and collapsed near it. Like a clap of thunder the camp exploded into motion, some racing to try to extinguish their chief, others charging Kam.

  By the sickly sweet scent of his burning flesh, Kam seriously doubted they could save him.

  “Feast on his mana!” Kam shouted.

  Then he took off running, faster than any human could match. He dropped to all fours, releasing the boar spirit within as he ran. Become the animal and run free. He barreled through the legs of a man who tried to block his way, sending the poor shitter tumbling end over end.

  “The aumakuas will curse you forever!” the kahuna shouted at his back.

  Even in boar form, Kam cringed. Killing the kahuna was maybe too tabu, even for him. So instead, he’d left the man alive to spew curses and send ghosts after him. Stupid Kam, stupid. For a moment, he hesitated at the edge of the jungle and considered going back after that kahuna. Finally, with a snort, he ran off into the night.

  He had to find Namaka.

  Day IV

  19

  Namaka woke to a gentle hand on her shoulder, shaking her. She opened her eyes, then squinted against the sunrise. Kana had leaned over her, like he’d been trying to get her to wake for a while. Had he called out to her? It must have all blended into dream.

  She sat up, hit her head on a root, and slunk back down with a groan. She needed about twelve more hours like that and she might feel back to full strength. Not really, of course. Not so far from the sea.

  “You look so young when you sleep,” Kana said.

  For an instant a bout of self-consciousness seized her. She shook herself, then crawled from beneath the roots.

  “Well, how old are you, anyway?” she demanded.

  “Twenty-two.” He crawled free after her.

  So he was five years older. Whatever. “Well, Twenty-Two Man, I’ve got a mermaid inside me, so I’m going to be looking like this for the next, oh forty years or so. So don’t tell me how young I seem.”

  “Forgive me, Princess. I didn’t mean anything … I … Sorry.”

  She waved the comment away. Browbeating him should have been beneath her. It was just the fatigue talking.

  “We need to find water,” he said. “Fill the gourd and—”

  “It’s that way,” Namaka said, pointing to a pool perhaps a ten-minute walk away.

  “I thought you hadn’t been here before?”

  “I haven’t. And water is that way.”

  The look of confusion on his face was so priceless Namaka couldn’t help but smile. They paused long enough to each relieve themselves and to eat the poi he’d brought in his satchel, then they trekked to the pool. They moment they reached it Namaka fell to her knees and dunked her head underwater, sucking in the blessed liquid.

  Kana paused drinking to stare at her as she rose from the pool. “Was that true? About the mermaid spirit?”

  “Yeah.”

 
“You have a tail?”

  Namaka rolled her eyes. “Sure. When I want to. Not especially useful up in the mountains.”

  “Wow. You’re not making this up?”

  She laughed, then shook her head. For a moment, she just smiled at him. Making it up. She couldn’t have thought up a life like this if she’d tried. “I have two souls joined together. It can cause me to feel conflicted about a lot of things.”

  “That has got to be the best justification for mood swings a woman has ever given me.”

  Namaka folded her arms over her chest. “Oh, really? You want to see a mood swing, Twenty-Two Man?”

  He flinched.

  Namaka held her mock glare for just a moment before snickering. “Which way from here?”

  Kana looked around before pointing toward another mountain in the distance.

  Great. They could certainly make it there today, but it meant moving even farther away from the ocean. And more climbing. She shook herself. Hadn’t she used to like climbing? Hadn’t it seemed like a fun adventure? She could remember being that girl, but only just. Like looking at another person’s life. Her memories as Nyi Rara seemed even cloudier. She could pull out images, bits and pieces, remembered feelings. But nothing that quite added up to the sum of a life. Would her own memories—or those of the Namaka who was—would they fade away in time too? Lost in the procession of years as the mermaid spirit sustained her body? The thought soured her mood, like she would somehow lose herself in the process. She’d wanted to join with Nyi Rara to become more, not less.

  “Let’s get going then,” she mumbled, motioning for Kana to lead the way.

  Hours they walked, until she 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.

  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 statues scattered around the mountain slope. She wanted to ask him 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. Kana had been right. She might 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 families 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 statue, silent guardians of a forgotten time. She could only hope they truly marked the way to the Place of Darkness and the Waters. Kana neither spoke nor let go of her hand. The only sound came from the light pad of their feet on cold stone.

  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, 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 hearing 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 been.

  Fragments of Nyi Rara’s knowledge of the Spirit Realm tugged at her mind, but she couldn’t quite piece them together. Either Nyi Rara had not been much for studies, or Namaka’s human mind was simply not adapted to understanding realities beyond the Mortal Realm. Either way, 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 instinct.

  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.

  Aumakuas preserve them. Guide them from the darkness and back into the sunlight. Let her gaze again upon the majestic sea.

  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. 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 unearthly patterns.

  Throat too dry to swallow, Namaka turned, looked over her shoulder. More of the creatures had gathered behind them, each pointing spears. 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 prese
nce of water ahead. Eventually she heard it, too, the flow and crash of a small waterfall. Or many.

  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 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.

  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 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.