by Matt Larkin
“You’re all right, My Queen?” Leapua asked.
Namaka nodded absently. “Have Lonomakua taken inside and fed, but kept bound. And away from fire. Far away from fire.” The last thing any of them needed was the kahuna trying to free himself and lighting half the camp aflame.
A hand on his shoulder, her kahuna guided Pele’s away, while Namaka plodded over to where Upoho was helping raising a hut. Even in daylight, the wererat had more than human strength, and could heft logs that would have otherwise taken two men to lift. Upoho glanced in her direction as she approached and flashed a toothy grin at her. “Did you get her?” As usual, the wererat didn’t bother with formalities or titles.
Another man she would have had sacrificed for such a breach, but Upoho was kupua, like her, and more, he was … just about all that remained of her ‘ohana after losing Pele and Hi‘iaka. The wererat and the dragon. What a family.
“Unclear,” she said.
Upoho shouted a few instructions to the men before joining Namaka in a walk. Though he existed outside the normal ranks of society, neither commoner nor ali‘i, the wererat had earned authority among the warriors through his prowess during the war. By now, she suspected everyone knew he was kupua, even if few realized his true nature as a shapeshifter. This war had always really been between the kupua, with normal humans just caught in the middle.
Her and Pele, Aukele and Kana, and Upoho … they could push themselves farther than others could dream of. They were heirs to glorious mana. Especially herself and Pele. Lonomakua was right about that—they had both destroyed Uluka‘a. But Namaka had only ever responded to Pele’s violations of tabu, her crimes, her violence. What was a queen to do?
“So you captured her kahuna,” Upoho said. He’d have scented the man, even if he hadn’t already seen him.
“Hmmm. Have you made contact with Milolii?”
“Yeah, she’s resting in the canyon stream. I think there’s some falls up there that attracted her. You know how the mo‘o are.”
Namaka nodded, only half listening in any event. She needed to make things right with the dragon. She couldn’t have her former nursemaid blaming her for what had transpired. That just … it left a hollow pit in Namaka’s stomach. She couldn’t stand the idea of Milolii thinking ill of her.
“I bet you’re a bit drained from fighting Pele,” Upoho said.
“Don’t.”
“Just saying. If you want to step into the bushes for a quick horizontal hula, I’d be happy to share some mana.”
What an ‘ohana indeed. Namaka shook her head, trying very hard not to let a hint of amusement show on her face.
Upoho, though, chuckled, as if he could still tell. Perhaps he could smell her emotions—it often seemed that way. He shook his head after a moment. “The men are asking if we’re staying on this island. Paofai reported seeing local scouts watching us, and I’ve definitely caught some scents. We’re not sure how strong the chief is, but—”
Namaka waved that away. “They’ll have heard about my fight with Pele and should not prove foolish enough to trouble us. If they do, a small army can hardly prove a threat to us here on the edge of the sea.” She didn’t relish the thought of making her point against a village of Sawaikians, but if they forced the issue, she would make that point. She’d allow no one to interfere with her hunt for Pele. Actually … “You know, make contact with the village. Tell them my sister is charged with treason and anyone harboring her becomes my enemy. Tell them if I hear of them sheltering Pele, the sea shall have their village.”
“Oh. Huh. Yeah, that should go over well. I’ll also mention that there’s a breach to Pō and lapu are streaming into the Mortal Realm to devour their souls and steal their children.”
“Don’t mock me, rat.”
Upoho shrugged. “I wouldn’t even know how.”
Overcome by a sudden emotion, Namaka drew the wererat into an embrace. A strange ‘ohana, yes, but her only family.
Upoho patted her on the back. “Are you all right?”
“Mmm.” Was she to admit to him she had lost so many of those she’d cared for? Her sisters, her husbands, and hundreds of others. No, a queen could not admit to such sentimental weakness. Her people needed her strength, needed to see her as unbreakable. The God-Queen.
After exchanging a farewell with Upoho, Namaka headed for the canyon.
A SWIFT CURRENT ran between rocky walls overflowing with greenery. Perhaps Milolii believed other mo‘o would have come here and dwelt in such places. Mo‘oinanea, the ancestress of the mo‘o, whom some claimed was closer to their taniwha forebears, had led the dragons from Kahiki in the days of Maui.
Milolii had stayed behind, along with a handful of other mo‘o. She would not have seen her kindred in an age of the world and must be eager to …
Namaka paused, walking along the riverbank.
From around the side of a boulder stepped a man, very tall, with an unruly mane and numerous tattoos over his arms and chest. His bulging muscles couldn’t help but impress, just a little. Four more men stalked out behind him, brandishing spears.
“See now,” the lead man said. “This here is my shitting canyon.”
“Your shitting canyon?” Namaka glanced down at her feet half expecting to see piles of shit laying around.
“Uh huh. Name’s Kamapua‘a. My men call me Kama.” He snorted loudly. “You can call me Your Royal Egregiousness.”
What the …?
Namaka folded her arms over her chest. “Unlikely.”
Kama looked back at one of his men. “Told you. No one shitting agrees to call me that. You gotta do better.” The man shrugged and Kama threw up his hands. “What was that other word? The one the woman used?”
“Which woman?”
“The woman! The one with the legs!”
“Incorrigible.”
“Right!” Kama pointed a finger at the man. “Royal Egregiously Incorrigibleness. Now that has the sound of a shitting official title.” He looked back to Namaka. “So. Well. You’re here, passing through my canyon, and I have to ask for tribute.”
Now she spread her hands. “I don’t have anything on me to offer.”
“Huh.” Kama looked back at his men again. “Well, you’ve got a camp full of people, right?”
“Yes.”
“And there’s girls there, right?”
All right. Namaka’s amusement had begun to run out with this pompous bandit.
“So how’s about you go to camp with me and find us a pair of girls?”
All she could do was shake her head. “A pair of … I’m not looking for a girl.”
“I know. I meant both for me. Remember, I’m incorrigible.”
“I can tell,” Namaka said and took a threatening step toward him. “Do you have any idea who you’re accosting?”
The bandit leader shrugged. “One of Hakalanileo’s guests. Someone way less incorrigible than me. Now, time to offer us something, or one of my men gets a new wife. What do you think, Makani?” he asked the man he’d spoken to before. “Want to marry this woman?”
So that was about enough of that. Namaka reached a hand toward the stream and called up a tendril of water. This she thrust at one of Kamapua‘a’s men like a spear. It caught him in the temple, hefted him off his feet, and flung him head-first into the canyon wall with a sickening crunch. Slowly, the body slid down, leaving a streak of blood, brains, and bone in its wake.
It took a moment for the men to react to the sudden violence. Then one of them broke, dropping his spear and taking off at a dead run.
“Shit,” Kamapua‘a said. “That … I think that was probably incorrigible. Makani, was that incorrigible?”
Makani was backing away, spear trembling in his hands.
“Allow me to be clear,” Namaka said. “I am the God-Queen Namaka, Mistress of the Sea. Leave my people in peace, or I will kill every last member of your little band of thieves. I will crush and drown you and leave your bodies for the sharks to fea
st upon. You do not wish me as your enemy.”
“Huh,” Kama said. “So you … uh … you want to be my wife?”
“No.”
“Ah. All right then.” Even the leader had begun to back away now. “Well, let me know if you need some, uh … incorrigement.”
Namaka watched as the bandits disappeared into the foliage. A moment later, she felt the disturbance in the stream, as the mo‘o rose, not as a dragon, but in human form, her head alone poking out of the waters, staring at Namaka.
“I’m surprised you didn’t kill them all,” Milolii said.
“Why? You taught me to control my powers. To use them for violence only when necessary. Never wantonly.”
The dragon growled, setting the waters rumbling. “The people of Uluka‘a might question how well you learned that lesson.”
Namaka flinched. Even while she looked human, the dragon’s displeasure seemed to seep into the air, to pollute the water. It became an oppressiveness, a humid sense of disruption in the world that had always unnerved Namaka. At first, maybe there was an edge of fear to that need to please the dragon. Maybe. But now … it was like knowing she had disappointed Milolii opened a hollow inside Namaka’s gut. An emptiness that tried to devour her from the inside out.
As a girl, when she’d done wrong, she’d fall to her knees and plead for forgiveness.
A queen could afford no such childishness, of course, but the urge to do so rose up in her. A desire she could never indulge to beg Milolii to return her to favor.
Always, a sadness held Milolii, and always, Namaka had tried to cheer the mo‘o who had raised her and Upoho.
When the Deluge came and created the Worldsea, the great sea dragons, the taniwha, rose and dominated much of the world. In time, many fell, slain or driven into torpor by the rising mer kingdoms. One of the last great taniwha was Toona, father to the mo‘o progenitor, Mo‘oinanea, Milolii’s ancestor.
Maui killed Toona for attacking his wife, Hina.
Milolii had spoken, in days gone, of the rise of her race as a bittersweet event. The end of the taniwha, savage and destructive, had allowed the rise of the mo‘o, yes. But the taniwha had been glorious, as well, and their time had faded. Milolii had offered it as a warning that even the glorious kupua line of Haumea would have but a limited time on the Earth and then would be gone.
A lesson? Or perhaps a perverse desire to spread her sorrow and temper Namaka’s pride. In any event, Milolii remained an enigma.
“What would you have me do?” Namaka finally asked.
Milolii drifted to the shore and beckoned Namaka to sit beside her. “Let this go. Let Pele go. You have both lost more than you could have ever imagined. There are islands enough among the endless Worldsea that you need never see one another again.”
In human form, Milolii looked more the part of a grandmother, wrinkled and gray-haired. Tired-looking, honestly. How many years would a kupua have to live to get like that? Centuries, in the case of a mo‘o. She must have been young, back then, when Mo‘oinanea took the other dragons from Kahiki.
With a sigh, Namaka settled down beside the other woman. “Pele took everything from me. From the whole kingdom. Uluka‘a is gone forever because of her. Besides, I promised her in sacrifice to Kanaloa. The gods watch us, do they not? How will they take it, should I fail to deliver their sacrifice unto them?”
The dragon grumbled, blowing bubbles in the river. “You focus so much on what you have lost, you perhaps do not consider what you have yet to lose.”
“As if so much yet remains to me.”
“Oh, child. There is always more to lose. That was Maui’s most important lesson to his people … but no one listened.”
Namaka blew out a long breath. How badly she longed for the dragon’s embrace. For her approval. For her warmth. But Milolii didn’t understand what she was asking. There was no going back to the way things were.
Pele had shattered their world.
4
Days Gone
A WARM BREEZE swept down over the mountains of Uluka‘a and whipped the surf into pleasant waves. Much as Namaka would have preferred a challenge—and the chance to show off in front of her subjects watching from the beach—she didn’t see the need to whip the sea into a frenzy herself, least of all with a dozen other surfers enjoying the day alongside her.
Instead, she glided across the waves, letting the others slip away. Letting herself slip away, down into the deep, her mind and soul seeping into the waters. It was a surer worship than any offering at any heiau, for it was a oneness with the akua below and worship of the great Kanaloa.
The people on the beach called her a goddess, yes, and not without cause, but Namaka’s deity was the sea itself, and out here, on her board, she paid it homage. Its power thrummed beneath up through the board, into her feet, vibrating her shins, pulsating all the way to her torso.
Past the beach, the mountains rose in graceful, rolling waves themselves, locked in a moment of cresting, green and glorious. Back there, the court waited for her, no doubt stirred up about some trifle or other, and part of her longed to remain here, hiding from the duties of a queen in the one place no one would dare interrupt her.
But such could not be.
A queen took her reveries and drank them deep, for the court always remained, awaiting her return. Such was the way of things, and all a queen could do was smile in the sun and absorb the sea.
THE PALACE LAY on the edge of a lagoon, encompassed by the arms of the mountains, sheltered, though hardly hidden, considering the stream of commoners and handful of ali‘i flowing about the stone walls around the compound.
Namaka couldn’t say how many villages dotted her kingdom, but she could have sworn representatives from every single one managed to trek to her lagoon on a daily basis. Today, though … she glanced at the sun, already low on the horizon. Soon, it would light the sky aflame, and once the moon rose, she’d have to send all petitioners away.
Lonomakua had assured her the emissary would arrive from Hiyoya within the next few nights. Tonight, perhaps.
The village here was abustle with activity, so perhaps word had spread of the impending arrival.
Most of the village huts sat on the water rather than the beach, stilts lifting them up twice the height of a man. Each of the twenty or so families had their own small hut covered by a palm-thatched roof. Every house stood a single arm span away from its neighbor, and they were all connected by a wooden walkway.
Moela’s barking drew her eyes, as the dog raced down the beach to meet her. Namaka smiled and scratched the animal behind the ears. He panted happily, and danced around, almost bowling her over.
Just beyond the lagoon rested the palace compound. There, her sister’s kahuna was waiting for her beneath the shade of a palm tree within the palace grounds, his strange blue eyes watching her approach. Namaka half suspected Pele kept Lonomakua around out of lust—did the other queen lay with her kahuna?—given the man’s exotic look. For her part, Namaka didn’t much care for anyone who seemed to know more of the Otherworlds than she did. Lonomakua knew more mele than anyone she’d ever met, save perhaps her parents, and his mo‘olelo were tales like no other.
Given how long he’d trained Pele, he was clearly kupua like them, but it still failed to explain the depth of his knowledge.
The kahuna rose at her approach, his manner easy, clad in nothing save a malo wrapped around his waist. Namaka herself wore her feather cloak atop her pa‘u, knowing the eye-catching figure she’d strike thus. The cloak had been handed down from her mother, who had added more feathers with every passing year. Only a few feathers were ever taken from each bird—which must then be released back into the wild—so that the cloak would be made from the feathers of a hundred or more birds. It was the pride of the island, and no finer garment existed in any land she knew of.
Stripping out of all her clothes to surf was refreshing, but here, in the court, a queen needed such affectations to ensure she was recognized
.
“How were the waves?” the kahuna asked. Though his chest remained clean, numerous tattoos covered his arms, more than most kāhuna.
Namaka nodded in acknowledgment, continuing toward the palace house, and the man fell in step behind her. Her personal apartments were tabu for any man, even a kahuna, but the central house where she held court was open to all, even commoners if they pled their case to Leapua, Namaka’s own favored kahuna.
With practiced ease, she kept her stride casual, unwilling to let anyone, least of all Lonomakua himself, see her discomfited by his presence. When the kahuna said nothing else, Namaka cast a glance back at him. He walked with damnable calmness himself, hands clasped behind his back, the hint of a wry smile on his face.
“What is it?” she finally asked.
Lonomakua pointed to the main house, where Leapua was now half running toward her, the other woman’s steps less certain even as she waved her tabu stick around, driving back anyone that might have come between her and Namaka.
Moela barked happily at the other woman.
Namaka frowned. “What in Pō is going on?”
Leapua drew up short before her, close enough no one save herself and Lonomakua would hear. “War canoes approaching from the north.”
“North?” Namaka glanced at Lonomakua. The bastard had known, hadn’t he? Except, where would attackers from the north even be coming from? “A ruse, to disguise their identity. Surely one of the kings of Kahiki has forgotten the lessons of his grandfathers.”
A lesson, it seemed, Namaka would now have to teach them once more.
WHEN SHE’D FIRST COME to power, more than five decades ago, she’d had to enforce her claim as the true heir to Haumea. Not everyone had wanted to believe in her back then. She’d shown them the error of their ways.
Trekking along the shoreline, Leapua beside her, Namaka couldn’t help but remember doing this before. It had taken drowning eight hundred men back then, but the kings of Kahiki—and everywhere else in the Worldsea—had gotten the message.
