Tides of Mana

by Matt Larkin

  “Never. I’d never let any ill befall that girl. I love her like my own child.”

  “Which is why you have to see I’m telling you the truth. You cannot handle this phase of her growth. Suppose she turned out like Namaka with control over the sea?”

  “Suppose she turned out like me.”

  “If she does, then you can help her hone her gift once she has some measure of control over it. But Mother had access to at least seven Spheres of Creation. There are other, even more destructive abilities that could manifest in Hi‘iaka. We cannot predict it.”

  The worst of it was, Kapo was right. Had they remained in Uluka‘a, in the calmness before the war, maybe Pele could have helped her little sister. But now … she could never give the girl the attention she’d need. And that failure was a spear through Pele’s gut, twisted around and ripping out her insides.

  Pele had sworn to herself never to fail the girl as their parents had failed her.

  “Where will you take her?”

  “Back to Mau‘i. I have a place there.”

  Pele sighed. A whole other island. Hi‘iaka might as well be back in Uluka‘a for the next decade. Chances were, Kapo wouldn’t even let the girl have visitors for years. “Just … just give me some time with her first. I love Hi‘iaka. I love her the way she is now, and we both know …”

  Kapo nodded. “She won’t be the same when she returns. Yes, take a few days with her. Give her your time, Pele. It’s the most precious of gifts.”

  Pele lay down beside Hi‘iaka, as close as she could without waking the girl. It felt like Kapo was stealing a part of her own heart. Like Pele would lose something forever. And she could do nothing to stop it from happening.

  IN THE MORNING, Hi‘iaka was gone, blood stains remaining on the wood where she’d lain.

  Pele found the girl down by the harbor, swimming, no doubt feeling fresher for it. She waited for her sister, resting against a palm tree and watching Hi‘iaka swim, until the girl finally noticed her and climbed onto the shore, pausing only to grab her pa‘u and wrap it around her waist.

  “What happened?” Hi‘iaka said.

  Pele rose and brushed Hi‘iaka’s wet hair from her face. “I thought we’d take a walk toward Kīlauea. We don’t need to climb the summit, just enjoy the slope.”

  Her sister flashed a grin as if to say, she knew Pele was hiding something but she wouldn’t push.

  Hi‘iaka was always sweet that way.

  “I DON’T KNOW EXACTLY how long it will be,” Pele admitted, as they threaded their way through the jungle surrounding the mountain. “Probably a number of years. Most likely, you’ll be free when you’re around thirty. I was almost that age, anyway.”

  “Huh. But I always thought you intended to train me?”

  Yes. Pele always had. So how was she to say she no longer could? That her desire for a kingdom superseded her wish to help Hi‘iaka grow? ‘Aumākua, maybe Kapo was right. Maybe Pele had no temperament for this sort of thing. What a disaster she’d made of everything in recent times.

  “Kapo will prove an excellent teacher, Hi‘iaka. She trained with our mother directly.”

  “She’s a sorceress, isn’t she?”

  “Hmm. Well, I doubt she’ll intend to teach you such Art, but be careful nonetheless. There is no force in this world more dangerous or unreliable than sorcery. Setting that aside, she has a calmness of soul that should help you find your true self. When you’ve done that, believe me, I shall be so very happy to welcome you back to Puna. As far as her kupua gifts, it’s better if she explains herself.”

  Plants responded to Kapo in a way Pele had never really understood.

  Hi‘iaka murmured something under her breath. Then looked to Pele. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s the best thing. But I’m nervous.”

  Pele could only frown at that. She suspected she was more nervous than Hi‘iaka. She threw an arm around the girl and kissed the top of her head. “I love you, child.”

  “Ha, well I’m not a child anymore, am I? That’s pretty much the whole reason we’re having this conversation.”

  “Yeah.”

  She ruffled the girl’s hair. “I bet we’d have a great view from that outcropping.”

  PUNA SEEMED in a panic when they returned. The harbor was half deserted, the rest of the people running about, carrying goods inland, as if fearing an attack.

  “What is it?” Hi‘iaka asked.

  “I don’t know.” Pele hurried for the palace, but Makua and Naia met her before she’d even reached the threshold. “What’s happened now?”

  “Something is coming,” Naia blurted, less composed than Pele ever remembered seeing the former queen. “Something attacking coastal villages to the north! Refugees have begun entering the district from Hilo.”

  From Hilo? Poli‘ahu’s people were coming here?

  Makua grabbed her elbow to pull her aside. Pele’s hand sprung aflame at his breach of tabu in initiating contact with her, but the look on his face forestalled her from burning his face off.

  “What?” she demanded. “Are the mer attacking us?”

  “I know what’s coming.”

  “So speak, prophet. I’ve no patience for games.”

  “It’s a taniwha …”

  A dragon like Maui had slain in the legend of Toona. A myth, come to life after ages.

  Too real, and closing in on Pele’s nascent kingdom.

  31

  N amaka climbed over the rocks by the sea, then settled down into the lowest of the pools, awaiting twilight.

  She had to wait for nightfall. According to Nyi Rara, the darkness would make this meditation journey easier. The prospect of seeing the mermaid’s real world was enthralling, true, but it left her trembling as well. Pō was the ultimate tabu. Only a kahuna of the greatest power could glimpse it while awake, and even then, they spoke of it only in whispers.

  A human could not normally reach the Spirit Realm. It will be easier because I am inside you. I can pull you into my world, if you let me.

  Pull her into Pō. She suppressed another shudder but couldn’t still her trembling breath.

  You are afraid.

  Namaka feared nothing.

  You lie to yourself. Calm your mind. Clear it and focus, just as you would meditate to draw in mana.

  And wait for twilight. It would come soon. Too soon.

  THE MOON GLINTED in the sky above, and still Namaka could not push herself into Pō. She lacked the Sight to see beyond this world, much less to enter another.

  Your body will remain right where it is. Your mind and soul alone will walk beside me. Calm yourself and take my hand.

  Namaka wasn’t quite sure how to take the hand of an incorporeal spirit possessing her body. After mulling it over for a moment, she decided grabbing her own hand was the easiest way to do it.

  Nyi Rara sighed in her mind. Imagine me for a moment as a person like you, walking beside you. See me in your mind’s eye.

  Fine. Except Namaka had no clue what Nyi Rara actually looked like.

  Don’t you?

  Her breath caught as a hazy figure materialized in her mind. Whether it was a trick Nyi Rara perpetrated or a vision drawn from her own mind, Namaka couldn’t say. Maybe it didn’t matter. Though roughly humanoid in shape, the woman who stood in front of her was far from human. She had opalescent eyes as alien as those of the he‘e and, in place of ears, multi-layered fins sticking out from beneath the blue-black hair plastered over her face in wet strands. Fine scales covered her entire body, a faint blue-green sheen to them. She stood on legs, but her ankles bore small fins. The hand she reached out was webbed, her fingers ending in nails Namaka could only call claws.

  Like someone had blended a fish, a shark, and a woman. Beautiful and deadly.

  All around her darkness stretched as far as she could see. There was nothing, absolutely nothing save the creature before her, reaching a hand toward her. Every strand of her being demanded Namaka open her eyes and flee from thing
s the human mind was not meant to see. This creature might be nestled within her soul, but to see her like this made it too real, too inescapable.

  “You asked me for symbiosis.” The woman spoke with the same voice that had so long echoed in Namaka’s mind, except now it sounded like words spoken aloud, coming from outside herself. Was Nyi Rara now outside her, or was her mind simply playing a trick on her? The mermaid frowned, but kept her hand outstretched toward Namaka. “In your world, you tend to think of reality as one thing or another. But once you leave behind the human world, human perception and human logic must be left behind as well. Now. Do you wish to do this? I cannot force you to take this journey, for it is not a journey of your body, but of your mind, your soul.”

  Nyi Rara was right. Namaka had asked for this, had wanted to find a way to reconcile their two natures. And that meant accepting Nyi Rara for what she truly was. It had been so easy to think of her merely as another person talking to Namaka. But Nyi Rara wasn’t a person, exactly. She was something so far beyond human experience that Namaka might—almost—have more in common with someone like Ambassador Punga than with the mermaid princess.

  Almost. But not quite.

  She grabbed Nyi Rara’s hand. The spirit’s fingers closed around Namaka’s arm, her skin clammy and chilled as a fish, rough with scales. Somehow, despite the claws digging into her own arm, Namaka felt a kind of peace holding Nyi Rara’s hand. And as she accepted that peace, the darkness around her began to fill with faint light, like stars viewed through a cloudy night. Slowly that starlight suffused the night enough that she could see around her.

  She sank to the bottom of the pool, the water somehow losing its substance and unable to support her, leaving her standing on sand.

  Color bled from the world, leaving behind cold shades of blue and gray, as reality became a hazy shadow. Pō, what Nyi Rara called the Astral Realm. It was a shadow of the real world.

  Up here, in the Penumbra, it is. The deeper we go, the less it mirrors the Mortal Realm. Reality becomes more nebulous. But time also dilates. In the Mortal Realm, it passes slower, giving us more opportunity to find what we seek.

  Her body remained where she had left it, tail nestled against a rock now far above her, but even that body seemed a mere shadow in this place.

  Movement flickered on the slopes above. Ghosts drifted in and out of view. ‘Aumākua or lapu, Namaka had no idea. Though slightly translucent, the ghosts seemed more real here than the body she had left behind.

  Namaka shook her head. “Is this your world?”

  “No, I told you—what you call Pō is not my world. It’s a barrier, a crossroads between your realm and the Spirit Realm.” Nyi Rara pointed to the pools farther above. Pools where water still seemed to fall. “It’s bleeding in from Avaiki, the World of Water, and thus still holds substance in the Penumbra. And that means we can use it to reach Avaiki.”

  Namaka climbed from the lower pool, then paused, feeling someone watching her. She turned slowly, not certain why she felt so hesitant.

  Behind her, climbing down to meet her, was Leapua. How was she here, now? Shouldn’t she have moved on? Or had she become an ‘aumakua, a spirit to watch over her? Namaka swallowed and motioned for Nyi Rara to wait for her, then trod slowly up to where her old kahuna waited.

  “Leapua?” she asked at last.

  The ghost looked at her with sad eyes, and then, hesitantly, embraced her. “I’m proud of you.”

  Namaka gasped, unable to trust herself to speak, and just held her close. Here, the dead seemed solid. Here, she was not certain it still mattered whether Leapua had become lapu or ‘aumakua.

  “You have agonized for so long over the weight placed upon you.”

  Namaka shook her head. She’d been a fool, perhaps, to allow her rage to consume her. To demand submission from Pele when she knew that could never happen. Ten thousand things she wanted to say to her, but no words would come.

  “Trust yourself.” Her kahuna pointed toward where Nyi Rara waited. She was right. Namaka had no time for a reunion here. Her people needed their queen. As she made her way back to Nyi Rara, she cast another glance at her kahuna, but the ghost had vanished.

  Namaka shut her eyes, trying to block out the world for a moment. And then she felt Nyi Rara’s hand holding her own. The spirit led her and they descended into the upper pool. The water felt off, slightly less wet than it should have, and she could breathe and see normally in it. The riverbed declined steeply, far deeper than she knew it to be in her world. It sloped off into seeming oblivion.

  Nyi Rara continued toward that darkness, swimming now, but not releasing Namaka’s hand—and Namaka was damn glad of that. Nyi Rara was all she had to cling to in this place. They swam on, deeper and deeper, until Namaka’s ears popped.

  She had the vague sensation that they swam in the sky, in a floating river, and that, if she pushed too far to either side, she would fall into a void of an infinite expanse. All around lurked an inimical presence, a sense of hostile intelligence eager and willing to consume her soul.

  Something shifted, and suddenly the water felt cool and wet once more, like real water. Only more so. Wetter than water, though she couldn’t even understand how that was possible.

  Purple light filtered in around her, faint perhaps, yet luminous enough to Namaka’s mer eyes. They had somehow swum into an underwater cave. Nyi Rara’s legs had become a tail, though Namaka’s own had not. None of this made any sense.

  As they swam through the cave, she spied other mermaids lounging about, admiring jewelry of gold, glittering with gems that shed their own otherworldly light. Like Nyi Rara, they were almost more shark than women.

  Namaka was definitely dreaming.

  “In a sense you are, yes. In a sense, we both are.”

  “We’re here now?” She spoke, only briefly considering it strange she could still speak and breathe underwater like a mermaid.

  “This is the World of Water, Avaiki. One of the nine worlds of the Spirit Realm. My world.”

  Whereas Pō, what Nyi Rara called the Astral Plane, had seemed dark, lit only by starlight, this world was vibrant, at least in places. The cavern walls glowed without any apparent source of light. Nyi Rara led her on and on, until at last they breached the cavern and entered into open ocean.

  And nothing could have prepared her for that sight. She had thought the Worldsea endless, but here she gazed out and saw water stretching out forever. Looking up, waters went on and on, with no trace of a surface in sight. Indeed, the ocean stretched forever in all directions.

  “There is a cavern roof far, far above us,” Nyi Rara said.

  Then all of this, the entire World of Water, was contained like some underground sea, like water inside a coconut? It boggled her mind, left her unable to form words.

  The mermaid guided her forward, their path rimmed by a procession of great stone pillars forty paces high. Those pillars were not like something carved on Earth, but at once natural and worked. Nothing was uniform about them, not their undulating shapes or the infinite variety of reliefs carved at their bases, and yet still they seemed wrought with immaculate care. As though the hand of a god had shaped them. They looked … like someone had turned bones into rock.

  Another mermaid swam ahead of them, guiding fish a hundred feet long. Namaka shrank away from the enormous creatures as they passed, but they paid her no attention. The line of pillars continued, making a gradual turn across the sea floor to avoid a chasm that looked deep enough to swallow all Mau‘i. Unable to help herself, she gazed into it.

  The luminosity of the waters did not extend into its depths, but they did, however, reflect off something down there. A pair of eyes—an eel launched itself from the chasm. Mesmerized and horrified, Namaka froze. The monster must have been a hundred and fifty feet long. Nyi Rara flung herself before Namaka and held up a hand that forestalled the charging creature. It spun in a tight arc, its incredible bulk slithering past Namaka’s face so close she could smell its o
ily flesh.

  All she wanted to do was shut her eyes and wait for the terror to pass. It did not. Her heart pounded so hard she thought it would explode.

  “I’m not really here,” she mumbled.

  “Your soul is,” Nyi Rara answered.

  And that had to be worse than being here in body. Anything that feasted on her would devour her very essence as well.

  Nyi Rara clasped her hand as if in comfort. “Come. The city is not too far now. Soon, you will meet the court of Bulotu, one of the seven great mer city-states of Avaiki. Soon you will … begin to understand.”

  Understand what?

  “The connection between our worlds. The truth about your reality. About everything.”

  THE COLUMNS they followed did lead them to a city, one far larger than Mu. Here, Namaka could see the peak of the cavern, for the city was carved out of a massive pillar of rock that must have stretched for miles from floor to ceiling. Its breadth was as thick around as one of the smaller islands of Sawaiki, and all of it was porous, light shimmering from a hundred thousand windows within.

  Other rock columns ringed Bulotu and a walkway, similar to the one leading to Kuula Palace, stretched out, meeting the path they had been following.

  “This whole world is filled with mer?”

  “Among other things. The Elder Deep gave birth to the taniwha, the kraken, and the first mer. To all the creatures of the deep, perhaps.” The mermaid paused to cast a glance at Namaka. As if expecting a response. What response could she possibly offer? “Come,” the mermaid said a moment later.

  Nyi Rara led her toward the lowest opening in the pillar.

  Hundreds of guards patrolled these waters, riding sharks and seahorses, each of which shimmered and boasted features too sharp, too perfect for anything born on Earth.

  They passed through the archway and she found herself staring up through a column that was itself alive. Pulsing, living stone like the gullet of some whale. The walls were smooth, but covered in an endless procession of imperfections, bubbles of stone, arching supports that looked like ribs and made her suspect the mer had grown their city here.