They had traveled far east across Uluka‘a, well into Pele’s domain, until Namaka had little doubt where her sister led them. Past the volcano where Pele held her court, and on, to the higher peak on the easternmost point of the island. Mount Halulu, where bird-men feasted upon man flesh. A place their father had forbidden them from ever going.
Because he knew Kāne’s Waters of Life lay there? Could Kū-Waha-Ilo have truly intended to keep the secret spring from the sisters? Could its power have been the secret of his long life?
All these questions plagued Namaka’s mind, but she refused to give voice to them.
Their father had beaten and abandoned them, Pele probably worse than Namaka. With all that had happened, perhaps their loathing of the man ought to have unified her and Pele, but Namaka had never been able to rekindle the bond they’d shared as children. Kū-Waha-Ilo had sent their lives in very different directions.
Pele, clearly, had already considered the spring’s import and had never deigned to raise those concerns to Namaka. Well, Namaka would hardly be the one to change that. Pele was her little sister, after all. There was an order to things.
Hi‘iaka, they had left in the care of Lonomakua, though the girl claimed to need no caregiver. In actuality, she was likely not far from the age in which fostering the girl with a mo‘o—perhaps even Milolii—would behoove them all. Not that Pele was likely to agree to any such plan.
They passed through green valleys and crossed a half dozen streams before reaching Halulu’s slopes. Far up above, through the mist, Namaka could just make out the snow line. Up there, the snows never melted.
“There are peaks like that on Vai‘i,” Aukele said, staring up at the mountain above them.
Namaka wasn’t really sure whether he was talking to her, to Pele, or to himself. Maybe he wasn’t either, because he started trekking upward without waiting for a response.
Hesitating, Namaka cast a glance at Pele. Up a mountain, farther from the sea, Namaka’s powers would weaken, though she’d never admit to that her sister. It would make this whole endeavor more … distasteful. Still, she had sworn to Aukele to help Kana, and she meant to keep her promise.
A slight smirk crept onto Pele’s face, as if the woman had guessed at Namaka’s trepidation. Milu damn her for that. Without a word, Pele began the climb herself, following behind Aukele’s surprisingly sure footsteps.
* * *
They passed the night just below the snow line. Aukele had gathered a bundle of foliage and Pele placed a hand to it, causing it to spark into a pleasant campfire they all settled around. Aukele, as had proved his wont during most of the trek, immediately set into a tale, speaking of Nightmarchers, ghosts of dead warriors he claimed haunted Sawaiki, hunting souls to carry off into Pō.
“You hear them, long before you see them, you know. Their drums, like discordant heartbeats, announcing their arrival. Next comes the stench of death fouling the air. If you have not hidden indoors by then … it’s probably already too late. For if they find you out at night and look upon your face, they shall come to claim your soul and feast upon it.”
“Lapu? Wraiths?” Pele asked, speaking of ghosts corrupted by hatred or sorcery, darkened by Pō.
Namaka sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, saying nothing. Her education in things relating to Pō and beyond probably didn’t match Pele’s, but it wouldn’t do to admit that. Lonomakua seemed to know more of such things than Leapua, though. He knew too much, maybe.
Aukele shook his head. “Not lapu. Some say they are the court of Milu, come hunting prey. Some claim they come from some darkness beyond even Pō.” He shrugged. “Who knows? It is said the ‘aumākua might protect their descendants, if properly invoked. Except in such cases, I know of no one who saw the Nightmarchers and lived to speak of it.”
Namaka settled down onto her side. “We should sleep now. It’s a long climb tomorrow.”
Pele grunted. “We need to take turns staying up this night. The bird-men are most active at night.” Which probably meant they too came from beyond Pō, creatures of the fathomless darkness. “I’ll take the first watch.”
Namaka nodded at her sister and shut her eyes. Still, after considering they might face bird-men out of Pō, sleep did not come easy.
* * *
The ground trembled beneath her.
The shifting of rocks jolted Namaka awake an instant before the shriek pierced the night. A bird’s cry, perhaps, but not like any bird of the Earth. Rather, a ululation of Pō, of the dark.
Namaka flung herself aside even as the shadow descended upon her, the wind of its approach buffeting her. Then it was among them, a flurry of feathers and slashing talons and horrendous cries. Its talon lanced Namaka’s hip, scraped over bone, and shredded flesh, ripping her pa‘u off in the process. She screamed, even before the pain hit her, gaping in horror at the bloody gouge exposing her bone.
And then the pain did hit.
An ocean of it, all-encompassing.
Screaming and screaming, as the bird—it had the head and torso of a man—pranced about around her on hideous talons. The campfire exploded into a column of flame so tall, so bright it left spots dancing before Namaka’s eyes and she could make out little else.
For a moment.
Just the stench of burnt flesh, of smoldering feathers. Otherworldly shrieks.
Blinking, she caught sight of Aukele, his stone axe falling again and again on one of the bird’s wings. The blade tore through flesh and hollow bone. Screaming himself, Aukele planted a foot on the bird-man’s back and ripped the wing free. The creature pitched over sideways. Coils of fire spun around and dove into it, further igniting its plumage.
Through a haze of pain, Namaka looked up to see Pele moving to kneel beside her, flames engulfing her left hand. That blazing palm descending at Namaka.
“No!” Namaka blurted.
“Hold her down.”
Then strong hands forced her onto her side, exposing her ruined hip. Namaka thrashed, bucking against Aukele’s strength.
Pele’s palm touched her flesh.
The ocean of pain became an endless maelstrom. Until she no longer knew where the screams ended and her thoughts began.
* * *
“She’s kupua, and very strong.” That was Pele’s voice. “She’ll recover, though the Waters would certainly help.”
“Should we press on without her?” Aukele. They were both still here. “We can come back when we have the Waters.”
Namaka’s hip felt like it was still on fire. She opened her eyes and blinked against the blinding light of the rising sun. Here, upon this slope, the view of it stretched on forever. Almost enough to make her forget the agony of her wound. “You’re not leaving me.”
Pele turned to her. “You cannot possibly walk.”
Namaka grimaced. “You underestimate me.” Teeth clenched to avoid crying out, Namaka forced herself up to her knees. Enough Mana let you fight through pain. Of course, she’d have been much stronger closer to the sea, able to absorb its power.
Far below, at the base of the mountain, lay the ocean. Her salvation. But Milu could have her soul before she let the two of them leave her lying here like an invalid. Grunting, she struggled to her feet.
Pele folded her arms across her chest and stared, while Aukele rushed to Namaka’s side and drew her arm around his shoulder.
“Is this wise?” her husband asked.
Eh, probably not. But she damn sure wasn’t about to admit that. Instead, she motioned him to lead on, up the slope.
* * *
Close to the summit, they came to a ridge, beyond which lay a gaping maw down into the mountain. Almost like a small volcanic shaft, hollowed out at irregular angles, leading to some darkness far below. Snows blanketed the slopes up here and crunched under Namaka’s knees as she crawled to the edge of the hole.
On the ledge, Namaka peered down there, but couldn’t see far. “I feel water, far, far down there.”
“On the edge of Pō,” Pele said, and Namaka looked to her. “A transitory space between our Realm and the next. A place where the Waters of Life bubble up and sustain both Realms.”
“If this was here,” Aukele said … “If this was here, why did Maui not come to Uluka‘a instead of traveling all the way to Sawaiki?”
Pele shrugged. “He may have led the migration before deciding to find the Waters, or maybe he felt he could not claim the Waters here. Who knows.” Despite the woman’s feigned nonchalance, Namaka knew better. Few things interested her more than the Firebringer’s exploits, his reasons, and his untimely demise.
The first pyromancer … how could the Flame Queen not idolize him?
Namaka did not bother to say so, though. Instead, she peeked again down the shaft, shivering in the cold mountain wind. “There’s rough handholds, it looks like.”
“I imagine there has to be a way down,” Aukele said. “Even Kāne would have wanted the ability to access the spring from time to time, yes?”
Namaka exchanged a glance with her sister, wondering if Aukele was right. Without another word, Pele lit her hand aflame and began to lower herself over the side, feeling around with her feet, cautious in her attempts to find footing.
Nor did Namaka much look forward to trying the same with a wounded hip.
“You could stay up here,” Aukele suggested, as if reading her thoughts off her face.
Namaka cast a withering glare at her husband. She would not be left behind while they found the Waters of Life. Instead, she swung over the side, and began a slow, painful climb downward.
They’d managed a few dozen feet down before Namaka was huffing and panting, cold sweat running down between her shoulder blades. Her hip felt like it would snap off, as if the flesh had become brittle as dried bark. Her thigh twitched, trying to give out and send her plummeting into the darkness below.
And would she fall into Pō itself, as Pele had implied?
Dammit! She clenched her teeth and pressed harder against the shaft wall.
“Namaka?” Aukele asked. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she snapped. A queen did not show weakness. Not even to her husband. And especially not her sister queen. Even if all she really wanted was wrap herself in a blanket and curl up by the fire, sipping awa until the pain faded into a blissful haze. She would sleep, listening to the break of waves on the shore and held in the sea’s hypnotic embrace. She would …
With a huff, Namaka caught herself against the wall. Focus. Stay alert.
Before long, their only light came from below, from Pele’s torch-hands, crackling and flickering and casting dancing shadows about this shaft. As if the place did not seem close enough to Pō as it was. The sudden trepidation of that, of pushing toward the ghost Realm, it hit her like a blow and stole her breath, leaving her faltering once more.
Kupua or not, none of them belonged on this threshold, did they? Did coming here violate a primal tabu, something that ought to have bound even those like Namaka and Pele?
But there was water down there. The Waters of Life? Was that what she felt, niggling her mind from far below, teasing her with its blessed embrace? They called to her like a song, or a mele, just loud enough to hear without being able to make out the words. A chant inside her head, beckoning her forward, urging her to ignore all sense.
It was not as though she would turn back in any event. Not after coming this far. Not after promising to help Aukele save Kana.
And so … down and down they went.
* * *
Eventually, the shaft turned into a slope, one that allowed them to walk rather than climb, albeit hardly much faster considering the steep angle. Hands braced on the wall, Namaka now followed just behind Pele.
Her sister paused, though, at a break where the path split in two directions.
“That one,” Namaka said, pointing to the left. The waters’ pull on her mind had only grown more intense, the chant a mighty chorus now.
Pele glanced at Namaka, shrugged, and started down the left tunnel.
Aukele eased up beside Namaka. “How are you holding up?”
The sudden urge to admit to him that her hip was agony, her heart was racing, and she needed to lie down, it struck her. She opened her mouth to say it, but the words wouldn’t form. A queen didn’t show weakness, after all. No matter how much she might have wanted to, she couldn’t tell him. “I’m fine.”
With Pele and the light up ahead, Namaka couldn’t make out Aukele’s face. Without asking, he slipped her arm back around his shoulders and eased the weight off her hip.
Namaka knew she should object … But the relief was so sudden and intense she couldn’t go that far. So maybe she couldn’t admit needing his help, but at least she didn’t have to turn it away.
A long ways more they descended down, until, oddly, the stalactites hanging above their heads began to look more like roots from some massive tree. Just ahead, Pele paused, holding up her hand so as to take in the strange growths. In fact, now that she held the light closer … it almost seemed as though the entire ceiling was shot through with bits of fiber. But no such tree could have grown on these slopes, so where did the roots come from?
Aukele cast a look Namaka’s way, mumbling some invocation to his gods, before scrambling onward.
Yes, they had clearly drawn very near to the edge of Pō. The rules of the World had begun to break down. The thought of it had her skin tingling, but they were so close now.
Around another bend, the tunnel lay half flooded with dark, slightly turbulent waters that lapped against the stone.
“Is this it?” Aukele asked.
“No,” Namaka said, kneeling beside the waters. “This is saltwater from the sea. I think there’s an underwater connection from here into the ocean. The spring we seek is further ahead.”
“And if the tunnel has flooded completely?” Pele demanded.
“We swim.”
“I cannot keep a fire burning underwater. We’ll be swimming blind.”
Namaka couldn’t quite suppress a grin at her sister’s obvious discomfort, even if she did have a point. Glowering, Pele tossed aside her pa‘u and slipped into the water, holding both hands high overhead to keep the torches clear of the splash.
After discarding her own clothes, Namaka followed, trailed by Aukele. Settling into the water immediately eased the pain in Namaka’s hip. This might not have been the Waters of Life, but it was close enough to the sea for her to pull in more ambient Mana.
“Can you tell how close—” Aukele began.
And Pele screamed, suddenly disappearing beneath the waters with a splash, plunging them all into total darkness.
“What the fuck?” Aukele shouted.
Namaka fell back, flailing about herself, but could make out nothing. Milu damn it all!
She heard Aukele splash down, going under, but had no idea what went on. Her heart had begun to pound through her temples, pulse racing. Breath short. She had to do … something. But what?
Backing up, she reached the water’s edge. If only she could see what …
The water’s edge. Roaring in frustration, Namaka swept her arms to both sides, pushing the water with her Mana, shoving it to either side of the tunnel and holding it there, suspended.
A flicker of light filled the chamber as Pele’s hair struggled to catch flame. A he‘e—larger than a man—had wrapped its arms around Pele and was crushing her to pulp. Its shifting skin tone made it hard to get a clear look at it, but already Aukele was atop it, repeatedly stabbing with his knife.
One of the octopus’s arms snared his ankle and flung him from his feet.
Pele’s flames dwindled to a tiny spark. She was dying.
Namaka snatched up Aukele’s axe from where it lay with his malo, then charged at the he‘e, shrieking. The axe blade squelched as it struck gooey meat, and a spray of gore washed over Namaka’s face. Aukele used the creature’s distraction to ram the knife in its head and jerk it down, carving through flesh and spilling a putrid torrent of brains and stomach contents over Pele.
Even with it dead, Aukele gasped with the effort of pulling those legs off of Pele, while Namaka focused on keeping the waters from collapsing back in upon them. Her sister’s flame winked out, but Namaka could hear Aukele dragging Pele back toward the shore, and followed them.
* * *
For a time, they sat there, in the dark, Pele groaning faintly. The quick glance Namaka had gotten of her sister’s skin showed sucker marks all over it.
“He‘e venom can paralyze a man,” Aukele said. “We’re lucky she’s alive at all.”
“She’s strong,” Namaka answered. Nothing could happen to Pele. Nothing would. She’d be perfectly fine.
She … had to be.
* * *
Tiny embers sparked in Pele’s hair first. An incandescent glow while she tried to push herself up off the ground. Aukele reached a hand for her shoulder but jerked it back, no doubt singed.
Namaka snickered at that. “Glad you’re back with us, sister.”
Pele rolled over onto her back, deepening the shadows as her hair lay beneath her. She groaned.
After a moment, she rubbed her thumbs and forefingers together, and sparks began to form. Then, flames leapt up around her hands, finally returning some real light back to the tunnel.
“Are you all right?” Aukele asked.
Pele didn’t answer, though she pulled herself into a sitting position and prodded at the sucker-wounds around her neck. “What …?”
“A he‘e,” Aukele said. “Perhaps a servant of Kanaloa left to guard the Waters of Life?”
The thought made Namaka squirm a little. To speak of the lord of the deep in such definitive terms, to attribute a direct servant to him … it unsettled one’s sense of place in the World.
She was the Sea Queen.
But not even she wished to challenge Kanaloa. Milolii had always called the akua the greatest power in the ocean.
Unwilling to let such thoughts fester, Namaka pushed back into the waters and threaded her way forward, slowly, leaving time for Aukele and Pele to follow. They did, Pele’s light showing the way forward.
The flooded tunnel continued for a hundred feet, by the end of which Namaka had to walk on her toes to keep her head above water. Finally, though, the path began to rise up again, until the waters were waist-high, then ankle-high. When she reached dry land, she paused to let the others catch up.
Here, the roots had grown even thicker and a great long chunk of one poked through the ceiling and ran the length of the tunnel going forward. It looked almost hairy, with bits of fiber sticking out at odd angles. More, this close to it, she could feel Mana pulsing through the tree root. Power, though she could not absorb it.
Namaka pushed onward, over a slight rise, and then down into a bowl-like depression, above which jutted the dangling end of that root, hanging just over a spring bed.
A dry spring bed.
“No,” Aukele said. “No … no. Where’s the Waters?”
Namaka dropped to her knees and crawled along the bed. It was damp, yes, but she didn’t see any sign of … Wait. She’d felt the Waters’ power. So there had to be a little left.
Pele’s light reflected off something further along the bed and Namaka scrambled over.
Yes, a tiny puddle, a few sips really.
“This is it?” Aukele said. “The Waters of Life that Maui died trying to find?”
“One of the three springs,” Pele answered.
Namaka cupped a palmful of the Waters—muddy—and sipped them, letting the delicious coolness dribble down her throat. Immediately, she felt it seeping into her bones, working to accelerate her kupua healing. She’d need time by the sea to convalesce, but this should dramatically reduce that time.
She beckoned to Aukele. “It’s still potent. Fill your gourd and we’ll take it to your nephew.”
* * *
Back in Milolii’s cave, Aukele emptied the contents of the gourd into his nephew’s mouth, tipping it up and allowing the young man to drink slowly.
Already, Namaka felt much stronger, and she had no doubt that in a few days Kana would wake and become strong enough to begin healing. Pele had left them back in her own domain, hardly having spoken since her encounter with the he‘e.
As for herself, Namaka needed to return to her lagoon and tend to her wound. Swimming and surfing for a month would have her strong as ever. After kissing Aukele, she left him to tend to Kana, and began the trek home.
Those Waters worked a miracle in that cave, she knew.
She could see why Maui had tried so hard to claim the Waters’ power. She could see why Kanaloa would have stolen it from Kāne.
A shame no more remained.
The dragon nodded to her, then plodded along beside her, giving Namaka a shoulder to lean on while making her way down to the lagoon. “I am proud of you.”
“For getting the Waters?”
“That, yes, and more.”
Namaka chuckled. Maybe Milolii meant that, for the first time since they were children, she and Pele had worked together and achieved some good. Maybe it could be the beginning of a new friendship between them, one she would not let their parents spoil again.
She bent down to kiss Milolii on the top of the head. “I don’t know if I ever told you how grateful I am for all you’ve done for me.”
A pleasant rumble passed underneath the dragon’s skin, her only answer. Maybe the only one Namaka needed.