Missing Pieces

Apparently, goddesses were sore losers.

Lei sat with Tūtū and Ilikea at the small kitchen table loaded with her favorite foods, pondering her recent life choices that got them stuck here. Here being back at Tūtū’s house in Volcano Village (yay!) with her best friend and ancestral guardian, Kaipo (double yay!), but without the pendant that would keep him safe as an ʻaumakua (quadruple-infinity boo). Lei stifled a yawn as she snagged a pineapple chunk from the bowl in the middle of the table with her chopsticks and dipped it in her poi. The nightmare had come again last night and jolted Lei awake—Kaipo crying out at the hands of Pele and her henchman hawk, ʻIo. It took hours to convince her brain it was safe to go back to sleep.

Served her right. Maybe her tūtū had forgiven her for picking the sacred lehua blossom and angering Pele, the fire goddess, but Kaipo? How could he possibly forgive her after what she did?

Lei stuffed the fruit in her mouth and strained her ears. Nothing but silence from the back bedroom, where Kaipo had been lying the past two days, healing. The poi-covered pineapple piece lodged in her throat. She forced it down, her eyes watering. Laying her chopsticks across the edge of her plate, Lei rubbed her forehead.

She hadn’t meant to get her best friend—and family ʻaumakua—captured when she picked Pele’s flower.

And she definitely hadn’t known that Pele would take Kaipo’s pendant. Now he was an ʻaumakua in distress, his body acting like he was a mere mortal, complete with slow-healing wounds. Lei tried using her moʻo scale, a world-class healing agent from an ancient giant lizard-like animal, but wasn’t able to fix him. No one was sure why it worked for her but not for him.

Worst. Friend. Ever. Lei snapped her hair band on her wrist, punctuating her thoughts. Tūtū gave her a look and Lei straightened her shoulders. The last thing she wanted to do was change Tūtū’s mind on the whole forgiveness thing. She needed to be helpful. She needed to find that necklace.

“What if Makani goes and spies on Pele?” Lei wondered aloud, thinking about her favorite playful wind. “Maybe they’d find out where she put the necklace.”

The wind tugged twice on her hair, clearly pleased to be included in the plan.

Ilikea frowned, the white plumeria behind her left ear bobbing as she forked the remaining chow mein from the center serving dish onto her ceramic plate with one hand. Her other hand fiddled with the new ivory-colored bat pendant hanging from a black cord. It was a gift from the snow goddess Poliʻahu for Ilikea’s role in Kaipo’s rescue—evidence of her graduation to a full-fledged ʻaumakua with the ability to change shapes.

Lei felt herself staring at the girl, searching for signs of her familiar bat form. Her hand movements were a little erratic, her eyes were still black. Her thick hair darkened from a rich golden color around her face to not-quite-black as the wavy ends reached her mid-back, the flower behind her ear where the white patch of fur used to be.

The girl spoke up between bites. “I mean, yeah, cool, another chance to become flash-fried.” Sarcasm wrapped her words. Then she lowered her fork and made her eyes really big, like a genius idea had just popped into her head. “Or, hear me out on this wild and wacky thought, we could all stay far away from that fiery mess and never go up the volcano again. Let bygones be pau-gones.”

“It isn’t pau yet, though. Pele made sure it isn’t over. I’ll go back up myself if I have to. Kaipo isn’t getting better,” Lei insisted.

Maybe it was the lack of sleep blurring away the chaos and making the solution seem crystal clear, like looking through an old scuffed snorkel mask and only being able to see the fish right in front of her. Only, the missing necklace was the fish. And Lei needed to catch it. Get it. Find it. Whatever, her brain was swimming. She just needed to hold it together long enough to get Kaipo back to normal. Then maybe he’d forgive her. Then maybe the nightmares would stop.

“You’re not going up da mountain,” Tūtū said.

Lei flinched at the finality of her tone. “I’ve gotta do something.”

“Pretty sure we all know your chances of coming back alive a second time are slim to nada,” Ilikea said before stuffing her mouth with a final bite of noodles.

Lei sighed. Apparently, Ili had an attitude as a bat and as a girl.

Tūtū patted Lei’s shoulder as she pushed herself up from the chair to get the semi-full pan of noodles. “Eat, eat. Get plenty more.” She scooped more onto the serving dish.

“Here’s da thing,” Tūtū continued, “time is of the essence, yeah?”

Lei looked back at the refrigerator. The calendar hanging from a hook suction-cupped to the side of it showed a vibrantly colored illustration of a large dark-skinned woman surfing above the current month of June. The big red circle around next Saturday that had seemed so far away last week now seemed like it was sneaking up fast.

“I know, I fly out in two Saturdays.”

There were only about two weeks left of Lei’s vacation in Hawaiʻi before she’d go back to Colorado. Back to the life where she was formerly known as “Anna.” This time she’d be stepping off that plane proudly as Lei—her Hawaiian name. Dad’d probably be thrilled she was owning her culture.

“Das not what I mean,” Tūtū said darkly.

Goose bumps crept up Lei’s arms and Makani blew out of the kitchen and hid in the curtains, causing them to billow.

“I went go to da library this morning to do some research on da World Wide Web. Neva found nothing. So I ask da librarian, you remember Mr. Chock?”

Lei nodded. The older Asian man frowned a lot when he was in the adult section but did the best voices for keiki story time.

“He went help me search the ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi nūpepa, the Hawaiian-language newspaper archives. Found this.”

Tūtū pulled a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and smoothed it on the table next to her plate. Tilting her head back and looking down her nose, she held the paper at arm’s length to read the words out loud in Hawaiian, before translating.

“It’s a moʻolelo. The author tells da story that everyone knows about how when there is death to da kino—body—da ʻuhane—soul—separates and heads to da Leina a ka ʻuhane, da leaping place of da soul.”

“Everyone knows that?” Lei wondered.

Ili pointed at her with a chopstick. “The story that when a person’s body dies, their soul jumps from the leaping place? Duh. Maybe if you stuck around more, something might stick in your brain.”

Lei whipped toward Ili, eyes narrowed at the bat-girl. She shrugged in a yeah, I said that way. Guilt gnawed at Lei’s ribs. If she didn’t know the basics, what if she made another mistake and screwed everything up again?

Tūtū glanced at Lei around the piece of paper, pah’d under her breath, then went on. “Da soul, guided by ʻaumākua, makes it to da leaping place, and begins da journey to becoming an ʻaumakua themselves. If an ʻaumakua doesn’t guide it, da soul can become a kuewa, a wandering spirit.”

Okay, that seemed straightforward enough. ʻAumākua guide souls to the leaping place so they can begin their own journey toward becoming ʻaumākua. Without the guides, souls could become…Wait a minute. Lei remembered that word. Kuewa. She peered at Ilikea, who was now very focused on lining her chopstick up perfectly parallel to the edge of the table.

“That’s what you called me! When we met. You said I was a kuewa. A wandering spirit.” She turned back to Tūtū. “Wandering spirits don’t seem too bad.”

Tūtū narrowed her eyes at Ilikea. “Da worst ting dat can happen to one soul is to be abandoned. Wandering alone, without one community? They turn into nasty buggas. Real rotten. Dey not something to mess with.”

Lei swallowed and looked at Ilikea.

Ilikea stuck out her chin, defensive. “Yeah, but had you met you? You were kinda awful.”

That stung. Yes, she was the screwup. They’d already established that over the past week and Lei thought they’d moved past it together, but something seemed off with Ili. She’d been feistier than usual since she’d arrived for dinner. Maybe she didn’t want to help search for Kaipo’s necklace. Maybe now that she had graduated and could turn human, she had to get back to watching over her own family. Lei chewed her lip. She hadn’t thought that she’d have to do this without Ili’s help, but as her mom always said, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.” Besides, if she could survive sixth grade without her best friend Ridley, she’d be able to survive this without Ilikea. She opened her mouth to let Ilikea know she appreciated her help but understood if she needed to attend to her family, but Tūtū interrupted.

“Eh, no matter. Focus.” Tūtū put the paper down. “Da story goes on to talk about how those kuewa start to rot. And as they rot, they mess with people. Best to avoid da places they haunt, but in da article the author’s brother went go look for the spirit of his best friend’s aunty who went pass away small kid time. Da best friend was worried da aunty went get lost and asked da brother for help.”

Tūtū paused, pursing her lips.

“What happened?” Lei asked from the edge of her seat, momentarily forgetting about Ilikea.

“Well, da brother neva came back.”

Lei slumped in her seat. She had a creepy feeling, like cockroaches were crawling on her scalp. “What does that have to do with Kaipo?”

“That’s da interesting part.” Tūtū looked down at the paper again. “Right at da bottom of da article, there’s a mention about da family’s ʻaumakua, who the author said her brother cared for. Being so sad about da brother disappearing, da ʻaumakua rotted—turned nasty and started causing more and more trouble till they had to get one kahuna to come bless the ʻohana and help guide the ʻaumakua-turned-kuewa away from da family. And try look, right here, what happened before he went rot.”

Lei looked where Tūtū pointed. The words hemo ka lei were right above her nubby finger. “What’s that mean?”

“Da ʻaumakua went take off his necklace.”

The poi turned even more sour in Lei’s stomach as she connected the dots. If she skipped past most of what Tūtū just told her, the ending was that the family’s ʻaumakua took off his necklace and rotted. Could Kaipo turn into a kuewa without his necklace? Would he get so rotten they needed to get rid of him? What had she done?

“Can someone come here? This room stinks.” Kaipo’s voice floated down the hall with a whiny edge that made the hair on the back of Lei’s neck stand up.

“Lei, did you get his lunch dishes out earlier?” Tūtū asked.

The drying rack by the sink was full. Kaipo’s green plastic lunch plate stuck up between Lei’s blue one, which she’d been using for sandwiches since she was a kid, and the bowl Tūtū had used for whatever leftovers she’d eaten.

“Yeah.”

“I think something’s gone bad,” Kaipo groaned. “Is anyone out there? Hello? I’m dying here and nobody caaaaresssss.”

Lei was up in an instant. “I’ll go check.”

Lei hurried to his room, her mind a mess of maggots wriggling through bleak thoughts. The blare of canned laughter hit her first, and she peeked around the doorway. Kaipo was sitting propped up against the headboard, the sheet tight around his waist. An old sitcom was playing loudly—or as loud as Tūtū would allow on the small TV they’d set up when Kaipo had started complaining about being bored. But Kaipo wasn’t watching the screen. He was staring at the cream-colored wall on Lei’s right. Nothing on it screamed “stare at me!” to her, so she took a minute to look him over. There were no visible festering wounds, no pus oozing from his orifices. If he became a kuewa, would he rot into a zombie-like creature? Very, very carefully, Lei took a tiny sniff of the air.

Nope. She smelled nothing.

She inched toward the bed, trying to figure out what he was looking at.

Kaipo’s eyes stayed glued to the wall, and he cocked his head as if he heard something.

“Good, you’re here,” he said, louder than normal. “Do you smell that? Something reeks. And I need more water.” He held out an empty glass.

Lei got close to him and sniffed again, a little deeper this time. Then it hit her. It wasn’t superstrong, but it did stink.

“Um…” Heat crawled across the bridge of her nose and set fire to her cheeks. “I think…” Lei cleared her throat and decided staring at the wall as well was an excellent way to handle this. How could she put this delicately? “…It might be time for a shower.”

That got his attention. Kaipo’s eyebrows pulled together as he lifted an arm and smelled his pit. His face twisted, but somehow managed to look semi-pleased at the same time.

“Whoa, I am ripe,” he shouted over the TV.

Lei grabbed the remote and turned the volume down, instantly relieved.

“Need help getting the bandages off?” she asked, taking the cup from the nightstand.

“What?” Kaipo asked, just as loudly as he’d been talking earlier.

Unease slithered through Lei. “Need help getting the bandages off?” she called out. “For the shower?”

“Do I look broken?” he snapped.

Lei flinched at his harsh tone. Was this the start? Was he becoming a…what did Tūtū call it? A kuewa? Or was he just mad at her ruining his ʻaumakua-ness? He was definitely looking better than he had two days ago, but he wasn’t exactly spry and hearty with all the white gauze and the tan bandages many shades too light to ever blend into his dark skin. She shook her head as he swung his feet off the bed and padded to the bathroom.

Ilikea and Tūtū searched her face as she came back into the kitchen.

“It’s fine, he just needs a shower.”

Both sets of shoulders lowered, tension draining.

Lei spun the cup in her hand, thumb picking at the small chip on the bottom. “Have you noticed Kaipo kinda yells a lot now?”

“His ears probably haven’t popped yet after being flown up high with ʻIo, then dropped back home when the hawk returned him,” Ilikea proclaimed. “Chewing caterpillars usually helps me. I can find some for him.”

Lei wrinkled her nose. “I’ll give him some gum, but I’m not sure that was it. He was really focused on the wall.”

“Termites?” Ilikea said.

“Eh, no talk like that,” Tūtū reprimanded as if the mention of the creatures could conjure them up.

The way he was acting seemed familiar, but Lei couldn’t put her finger on where she’d seen it before. It didn’t matter. She knew what was behind it: the missing necklace. If she found it, all would be forgiven and he’d be their ʻaumakua again.

“Tomorrow I’ll start searching around Tūtū’s yard for the pendant.”

Ilikea sat back and crossed her arms. “Yeah? You’re just going to comb every inch of rainforest? That shouldn’t take long at all. I’m sure Kaipo can hang in there for, oh, a zillion years while you check under every fallen hāpuʻu fern and behind every waterfall.”

Lei glared at the back of the girl’s head, then grabbed the noodle platter from the table and took it to the kitchen counter to give herself something to do. Her image reflected in the window: eyebrows pinched tight, dark circles under her eyes, frizzy hair pulled into a ponytail. Her eyes refocused, looking beyond the pane of glass, out to the darkening forest. She could imagine Pele sitting on a throne of lava, stroking ʻIo’s feathers like Maleficent and her raven, cackling over this stunt, knowing there was no way Kaipo would want to be friends again when Lei messed everything up so royally. But Pele had to know Lei wouldn’t just roll over and accept this was Kaipo’s fate. No way was Lei going to lose him again.

There had to be something she was missing.