Gray screamed. Then he fell to his knees and threw up.
The old woman didn’t have a face.
There were sunken divots where her eyes should have been, and a pinched ridge where her lips were supposed to be. Her skin was smooth and pulled taught over her blank skull.
“The full moon belongs to Kamapua’a,” the faceless old woman hissed.
Gray had no idea where her voice was coming from, and it made his stomach lurch again. He fell down on his hands and pressed his forehead against the wood, desperate to make the room stop spinning. The old woman planted her feet on either side of his shaking shoulders. She grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head up. She brought her blank face close to his ear and brushed her smooth skin against his cheek. He closed his eyes and tried to squirm away, but she held firm. “I will peel your skin and roast it over flames until it crackles, mainlander. I will taste your salt, your blood. You are nothing but rot and food for the mujina Alina.” She wrapped her free hand around his chin and doubled her grip on the back of his head. With a grunt, she twisted his neck.
He heard a crack.
Then there was a thud as the old woman fell face-first to the floor. Gray peeled open his left eye. He saw the back of her head, a slow trickle of blood pooling out of her skull and mingling with the puddle of his vomit. He opened his right eye and rolled his head to look up. Polunu stood over both of them, holding a piece of the shattered wooden shelf in his hand. The crack Gray heard hadn’t been his neck; it had been the old woman’s head when Polunu hit it with the plank.
“Am I dead?” Gray whispered.
“Not yet,” Polunu said. He reached down and hauled Gray up by the arm. The big man swayed a bit and put his hand on the wall for support. The two men stood quietly for some time, taking deep breaths and shaking reality back into their heads.
Finally, Gray pointed at the old woman and asked, “What the hell is that?”
“That,” Polunu said, nudging the fallen woman with his toe, “is a mujina.”
“I ask again,” Gray said, rubbing his stomach and trying to keep it calm, “what the hell is that?”
“It’s sort of...like a faceless witch.”
“I thought you didn’t have witches here,” Gray frowned.
“Well, not really a witch. Just sort of...our version of witch. You know? Very powerful. Very mean.”
“No kidding.” Gray walked in a wide circle around the mujina, peeking at the horror of her featureless face from afar. “Is she dead?”
“I don’t think so. It’s very hard to kill a mujina. They got, like, demon strength.”
“What should we do with her?” Gray asked.
Polunu shrugged. “What you do with witches on the mainland? You burn them, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Gray said, rolling his eyes, “when it’s the year 1784.”
“Well, you wanna light her up?”
Gray blenched. “No. Not really.”
“She’s not a human,” Polunu pointed out. “It wouldn’t be murder, you know? She’s an evil spirit.”
“Then I don’t want her haunting me when she’s actually dead.”
Polunu nodded. “Good point. What do we do with her, then?”
Gray glanced around the roadside shack. Out the back window, he saw a small grove of fruit trees and a few strips of farmed earth where a handful of scrawny pineapple plants were growing. Leaning up against one of the trees was an iron rake and a shovel.
“Well...I have sort of a terrible idea.”
•
The rain had stopped, and it took less than an hour to bury the mujina up to her neck in the dirt. She only regained consciousness once during the process, right after they had dragged her out of the shack and stuck her feet in the hole. She came to as they were lowering her down by her shoulders, and she began to struggle, whipping her powerful arms and screaming at them in Hawai’ian. Polunu let go, and she hit the bottom hard. She tried to claw her way out, but Polunu hefted the shovel and clocked her over the head until she fell silent once more.
“She’s going to have serious brain trauma,” Gray pointed out with a frown.
“She was gonna roast your skin over fire and taste your salt,” Polunu reminded him.
“Yeah. That’s true. I guess if I’m being honest, I really don’t care too much about her brain.”
And now, as they tamped the soil back into place around her neck, her head began to bob, and she awoke once more. She struggled, but the weight of the earth held her still. “Release me!” she screamed from her non-mouth, her voice guttural and shaking with fury. “I will curse you so that your children are born with rotting skin and your grandchildren thirst for the blood of goats! Your fingers will shrivel into claws of bone, and your heads will shrink until your skull bursts through your skin and rips your flesh from your face! The beasts of Kanaloa will find you and unzip your skin and peel your flesh from your skeleton and string it through infinite fields of nettles and thorns! I will pull your nails from your toes with glowing hot tongs and stab them through your eyes so they bleed milk onto your tongue! Your kneecaps will be ripped from their sockets and ground into bread!”
Gray shook his head wearily and trotted back into the shack, picked up a crate full of mangos, emptied it out, brought it back outside, and placed it like a cage over the mujina’s head. Her curses became muffled and dim. Gray stepped back and crossed his arms proudly.
“Guess that’s that,” he said.
Polunu shrugged. “Guess so.”
They headed back into the shack, picked up some of the scattered fruit, and had a quick second breakfast. “What now?” Gray asked, forcing down a last bite of souring mango and stepping out into the parking lot. “If we’re being attacked by faceless witches, that’s probably actually a good sign, right?”
Polunu nodded thoughtfully. “Not surprising Kamapua’a would put obstacles in our way. But it means he ain’t taking no chances. We on the right track, all right. And it’s gonna be a dangerous road.”
“Yeah. I’m starting to think we should’ve asked the all-powerful akua for more than just a fish hook.”
“Like what?”
“Like, I don’t know. A demon-proof vest?”
“Aw, come on, cuz,” Polunu grinned. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Gray put his hands on his hips and raised his eyes to the steep green mountain that rose sharply behind Auntie Alina’s. “You think she’s up there?”
“Hi’iaka?” he asked. Gray nodded. “I don’t know, brah. What does your heart tell you?”
“My heart tells me I should have stayed in St. Louis.”
“Nah. That’s stupid. ’Cause then we wouldn’t be best friends, you know?”
“Best friends?” Gray asked, raising an eyebrow uncertainly.
“And your life, it would still be boring and sad.”
“Um, my life was not boring and sad.”
“It was definitely sad.”
“It’s just been sad recently.”
“And you seemed pretty boring at first, too. I think you were probably both boring and sad.”
“Wow. Some best friend you are.”
“Best friends always tell the truth,” Polunu said, pleased. “Now you ask your heart: is your girl Hi’iaka up in nā pali?” He nodded toward the cliffs that stretched thousands of feet into the sky.
Gray breathed deeply. The mountain smelled of gardenia and dirt. The land was still slick with rain, and a strong must coated the air, weighing it down with a heavy wetness. He closed his eyes and slowed his breath. He reached out to Hi’iaka with his mind, letting his thoughts wander up the slope, searching for her among the hills. But he didn’t feel her reach back. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “This is stupid. I can’t—”
B
ut just then, the wind changed. It blew down from the mountain, and it carried the unmistakable scent of vanilla and coconut.
Gray opened his eyes. “Whoa,” he whispered, his heart thrumming. “She is up there! I can’t believe that just—I mean, I just smelled her! Like, in a good way! Is that insane? She’s up there. I really think she’s up there!”
Polunu nodded. “Yeah. I know,” he said.
“What do you mean, you know?”
“I saw wild boar tracks out back, past the pineapple plants, heading up into the hills. Way more tracks than normal. Like two whole herds, you know? Kamapua’a is definitely up there.”
Gray sputtered. “Then why did you have me reach out with my stupid heart and feel to see if this was the right place?!” he demanded, suddenly feeling incredibly foolish.
“I just wanna prove that you got a serious crush, brah.” He slapped Gray on the shoulder and grinned. “And now we know, yeah?”
“I’m gonna bury you next to the witch,” Gray muttered, walking back toward the car.
“Hey, where you going, haole? We walk from here.”
“Yeah, I figured that,” Gray said, pulling open the back door. He reached in and pulled out Manaiakalani. Even in the dreary light, the great hook seemed to gleam. “But we’re probably gonna need this, huh?”
“Ooooh, yeah, that’s good thinking,” Polunu nodded. “We should definitely bring the one thing that can actually hurt the pig-god.”
“You’re carrying it,” Gray said, shoving the curved piece of bone against Polunu’s chest. “Try not to lose it.”
“You got it, brah. Let’s go find the love of your life.”
Chapter 13
Kamapua’a stood outside the rusty shed and whispered to the trees.
Hi’iaka sat in the center of her little circle, her knees drawn up to her chin. Her dress was stained and filthy with rainwater and mud, and her bare feet were caked with dirt. She was not used to confinement of any sort, and her enslavement to the circle was a torture in itself. As she sat and stared at the pig-god hissing at his kukui trees, she imagined all the ways she would make him suffer when she broke free of the circle and took her revenge.
If she broke free of the circle. If she took her revenge.
It was the day of the full moon; the mahina would shine as a complete circle in the night sky, and by midnight, Hi’iaka’s plight would be over, one way or the other.
How Kamapua’a would manage to steal her mana from her shadow—or even if he would steal her mana from her shadow—was still a mystery...but though the pig-god could be quick-tempered and mindlessly brutal, he was not a stupid creature, and though Hi’iaka showed him a stoic face, she felt a tremor of fear in her heart. If the Lord of Pigs said he could steal her energy, her power, then it was very possible that he had found a way. The Hawai’ian chiefs of old believed that if another man stepped into his shadow, that man would steal his mana, and so it became true because it was so firmly believed. But the idea of stealing the mana of a god...this was unheard of, and if Kamapua’a had devised a method of draining nā akua, then there would be no limit to the power he could accumulate from the old gods of Hawai’i. He would become one of the few truly unstoppable forces in the universe. He would become as powerful as time and as unyielding as death.
He had to be stopped. Not just for Hi’iaka’s sake, but for the sake of all Hawai’i—and maybe the entire world. She prayed that Grayson had received her message. He wasn’t her first choice; he was sweet, and he was kind, and she had stayed on the island of Maui in the hopes of seeing him again, yes, but he was not equipped to do battle with the gods. Trapped in her circle, though, her power was weak, and she could only send her spirit out to those keeping her close to their hearts at that moment. Pele had not been dwelling on her little sister; neither had Haumea, her mother, or Kāne, her father. There had only been Grayson Park, standing alone on his hotel deck and aching for her in his chest. That is how she was able to send him the message through the crabs. She only hoped that he had seen the words...that he had somehow managed to find her sister, that Pele had raised an army capable of fighting a demigod, that Grayson was leading them here, right now, to storm the compound and defeat the sinister pig-god.
It was much to ask of a sad and clumsy mortal from the Midwest. She did not have much hope.
But she did have some hope. Because she decided she must have some hope.
What else was left for her?
Kamapua’a began screaming at the kukui trees, drawing Hi’iaka from her thoughts. The trees rustled in the wind and bent their branches to whisper in the pig-god’s ear, and he was greatly angered by what he heard. He spat on the trees and cursed them before storming back into the shack.
He removed his boar face as he approached his prisoner, appearing once again as the handsome human with shining black hair. “Well,” he said, giving her a small smile that did little to hide his anger, “it seems you were right, Little Egg. Your sister sent a warrior.”
“Of course she did,” Hi’iaka said, relief washing through her chest. She smiled up at the demigod from her seat on the muddy floor. “You could not think she would let you take her sweet sister and not send a warrior to lead an army to set me free.”
“An army, is it?” the pig-god said, and he began pacing slowly around the circle, stalking Hi’iaka like prey. “What sort of army enlists only two?”
“Two?” Hi’iaka said. Her breath caught in her throat, but she fought to retain her composure. “What two are those?”
“My trees tell me we are being sieged by a haole and a kohola...a whale that walks like a man. Is this your sister’s army, Little Egg?”
“Call me Little Egg again, and I will break you like a shell,” she said between clenched teeth.
Kamapua’a smiled. “Yes, wouldn’t that be something?”
“My sister need not send a legion,” Hi’iaka continued, struggling to sound fierce in the face of a sinking heart. “If she sent two warriors, then they are the only two warriors needed to defeat a semi-god like Kamapua’a.”
The Lord of Pigs flushed dark red. He gritted his teeth. “It seems they are not without some skill,” he conceded, his jaw tight. The upturned canines of his lower jaw grew longer, poking out from between his lips. He took a deep breath and managed to keep his animal face subdued. “The kukui say they have bested my mujina.”
“Perhaps the haole carries with him some mainlander magic,” she said. “I see your face starting to slip, pig-god. Do not be ashamed; it is natural to fear what you do not understand. And I think there is much that you do not understand.”
“Alina was weak,” Kamapua’a spat. “They have spared her, but where they failed in that, I will succeed. She will be punished; she will not live through the night. But neither will your army of two. And neither will you yourself...Little Egg.”
Hi’iaka seethed. “I warned you, demi-pig: you will break before the day is out.”
But Kamapua’a was not listening. He whistled through his teeth, and Hi’iaka heard a low rumble in the distance. The pig-god stood at the entrance to the shack, his fists planted on his hips, waiting. The rumbling grew louder, and the ground began to shake. A stampede of boars flooded into the shack. They grunted and rutted excitedly, nudging each other with their tusks and slamming their rumps together. Kamapua’a raised his hands into the air, and the hogs quieted down. Three pigs, the three biggest, stepped forward from the pack. Each one had a large, round rock in its mouth, like a great stone egg. The first pig bowed its head and laid its stone at Kamapua’a’s feet. The second pig set its stone next to the first, and the third set its stone down in turn. Then the pigs backed away, pushing the others out to form a semi-circle around the demigod.
Kamapua’a crouched down above the three stones. He let his human face wash away, leaving the fierce boar’s
head in its place. He lifted the first stone to his mouth and crushed it between his teeth. It cracked in half like an egg. He placed the broken stone back on the ground, and out slithered a fat lizard, green with shimmering purple diamonds spattered across its back. The lizard reared up onto its hind legs and stood at attention before the pig-lord. Then Kamapua’a picked up the second stone and bit it in half, and out stalked a thin, gaunt lizard, with brown scales and yellow slashes across its back. It, too, stood before Kamapua’a, who picked up the third stone and released a strong, hulking lizard, dark green with blue and yellow dots across its back and head, and two short, spiky horns thrusting out from its brow.
“Mo’o,” Hi’iaka breathed. A great chill ran through her. It had been centuries since she had last seen—or even heard rumor of—a shape-shifting lizard demon on the island. She had thought them extinct. Kakmapua’a must have gone to great lengths to mine these three from their slumber in the rocks far beneath the earth. And now Hi’iaka’s blood ran cold, for she knew the great and terrible power of the mo’o.
I have killed Grayson, she thought, trembling. I have led him to his death.
Kamapua’a must have guessed at her secret sadness, for he gave her a drooling, wolfish grin. He snorted once, twice, three times through his powerful snout. The three lizards bowed low to Kamapua’a, and he returned their bows, digging his tusks through the muddy ground. Then he whispered to the lizards in a series of squeals and grunts too low for Hi’iaka to hear. They bobbed their heads in understanding, and in agreement, and then they ran off, scattering through the jungle and disappearing into the brush.
Na Akua Page 12
