Pupo stands beside Kina and Motua, looking out at sea. The three of them stare, transfixed, at the flotilla making its way across the shallow water toward the Teeth. Kina can make out at least two dozen canoes of different sizes, shapes, and speeds, all clustered around the great war canoe of the high priestess herself.
“What is that?” Pupo asks in a hushed voice.
“It’s them,” Motua responds. “It’s the burning warriors.”
“How can that be?” Pupo asks. “I thought you said you lost them!”
“We did,” Kina says. “They were far behind us. Maybe they are tracking us somehow?”
“What in the name of the Father and Mother did you do to them?”
Motua shakes his head slowly. “Nothing. We escaped.”
“We did more than that. We took their pahi.”
“But,” Motua asks, “why would they chase us halfway across the ocean for that hunk of rock? Can’t they perform their cursed rites without it?”
Kina says, “They’re coming pretty fast, but I don’t see how they’ll get past those sandbars.”
“There are ways through,” Pupo says. “The sailors of Keli`anu are said to be master navigators. It won’t take them long to find their way.”
“We have to go,” Kina says. “Maybe if we head south, they won’t see us.”
“We can’t leave!” Pupo says. “We don’t have any supplies. The closest island to the south is No`okewa. There’s nothing between here and there but open ocean. It would take us a couple of weeks to reach it, even if we wanted to go there. But that place is doomed and everyone knows to stay away from it. Come anywhere near the shore and the wretched scum that live there will swim out and rip you from your own canoe, cave your skull in with a taiaha, and sail out of there on your stolen canoe.”
“Then where?” Motua asks.
Pupo shrugs. “Maybe you can head east. But there’s nothing that way. Just empty ocean until the world ends.”
“Aren’t you coming?”
“I can’t go anywhere. `Imu`imu will find me if I get too far away from my decoy.”
“Well, we can’t go back to your hut now,” Motua says. “They’re too close. There’s no way we’ll be able to gather supplies in time before they notice your bridges.”
Kina looks at Motua, her eyes wide. “What about the pahi?”
“Mother Ocean, what was I thinking leaving it behind?” Motua balls his hands into fists. “We should have brought it with us. They’ll get it for sure.”
“No,” Kina says. “We can’t let that happen.” She is already heading toward the staircase when the others call to her.
“Kina, where are you going?”
“To get the pahi!”
Motua rushes behind her, coming down the steps. “There’s no way. You’ll be caught.”
“I’m quick. Besides, there’s no sense in putting all three of us at risk.”
“And what will you do with it when you get it? Without supplies, we we’re useless.”
Kina has almost reached the bottom of the steps. She can make out the filtered light of the cavern below.
“I can get supplies, too,” she says. “You and Pupo be waiting for in the canoe beneath the hut. I’ll drop down whatever I can find. Then you can find a place to hide.”
“And what will you do?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
The canoe is still tethered in place, bobbing on the slight waves. Kina unlashes it from the roots, gives it a shove, and leaps on board.
“Wait,” Motua says. “I can’t let you do this. They’ll kill you for sure.”
“It has to be done. Now get in!”
Motua and Pupo climb over the sides of the canoe and push off, turning the canoe back through the narrow valleys between the islands.
After some time, they finally see the tall pinnacle where Pupo built his hut. The sun is starting to draw lower to the horizon, though sunset is still an hour or two away. Motua points to a spot on the southern side of the island.
“I’ll wait down there.”
Kina nods, and jumps out of the canoe into knee-deep water. Before long, Motua has disappeared from view around a rock wall and Kina is approaching the jetty. She climbs up out of the water and dashes through the arch to where the rope ladder dangles against the cliff.
Not much more than a couple of miles away, one of the flotilla’s vanguard canoes is maneuvering around a sandbar.
Without wasting any more time, Kina takes hold of the ladder and scrambles up it as fast as she can. At the top, near the first of the bamboo ghost traps, she drops to her haunches and ducks behind some undergrowth. Ghosts flit in the traps beside her. When at last she feels confident she wasn’t spotted, she moves across the the rope bridges, taking the wobbly walkways as quickly as possible.
At last she arrives at Pupo’s hut. Kina approaches the southern edge of the island, close to the moaning decoy made of a dead shark, and looks down to make sure Motua is there. He sees her and gives a furtive wave.
Kina returns to the hut. Starting with weapons, she takes Pupo’s favorite spear, selecting another for her own use as well. She pulls the mat aside and finds the pahi and leiomano and heads back out to the edge. She chooses a spot away from the waiting canoe and drops the two spears, which sink into the sandy water, then lets the pahi fall behind them. Motua heads toward the weapons and Kina dashes back to the hut for food and water. She makes two more trips, tossing down gourds, coconuts, dried fish, skins filled with fresh water, and anything else she can scoop into her arms.
On the way back for a third trip she freezes. A conch blows from nearby, loud and long.
Cutting through the brush on the far side of the hut, she hides behind some coconut palms and looks down. The war canoe is close, standing in slightly deeper water while the smaller craft cut across the shallows toward the trio of islands that are home to Pupo’s bridges and hut.
They’re coming up, she realizes. There’s no time to escape.
At almost the same time she thinks this, she sees several burning warriors moving around on the top of the first island, approaching the rope bridge.
Kina races back to the far side and looks down. Motua is still there in the canoe, though Kina can see Pupo gesturing in an agitated manner, obviously begging him to go. He looks up and sees Kina.
“Go!” she yells down to him.
“I can’t leave you!” he shouts back, barely audible over the wind.
“Hide in the temple,” she shouts, and just so he won’t be tempted to argue with her, she withdraws from the edge of the island and heads back toward the hut. She hopes he has followed her instructions, for his sake and for Pupo’s.
By the time she returns to the hut, she sees the warriors starting across the second of the two bridges.
There isn’t any time to plan. Quickly she thinks through her options. No way to climb down from here, too many of them to fight directly, nowhere to hide. Or was there?
Keeping low to avoid being seen, Kina crawls back into the hut, letting the flap back down gently. Inside it is hot and stuffy, smelling strongly of cooked breadfruit and Pupo’s old hand-made cloth. Kina fingers the smooth wooden handle of her leiomano, tucked into the waist of her skirt. It’s comforting to know it is there, just in case. She pulls aside the mat of the floor and finds Pupo’s secret earthen hole, now empty of kulu. It looks just big enough for her to fit, if she curls up into a ball.
It is tricky pulling the dirty old mats and blankets back over once she is inside, but Kina gets them in place and tucks her knees up to her chest. The leiomano teeth prick her thigh but she is actually grateful for the slight pain, as it keeps her focused.
Footsteps outside the hut. Several men, talking in loud voices. Kina can hear them discussing the hut, how old it looks, the food growing in the cleared patch in front. One of them draws aside the door flap and there is a long silence. Kina hears only her own breath and hammering heart.
“What do you see?”
“Nothing. Whoever lived here must have fled when he saw us coming, though,” the warrior says. “It still smells like food.”
“There’s no way it’s them,” another one says.
A third one agrees. “This has been here far too long. They couldn’t have built it.”
“How do we know they were even here?”
“The kupuna says they’re here. That’s good enough.”
“Maybe they killed whatever wretch lived in this hut and stayed here, eating his food until it ran out.”
“Well, let’s make sure they don’t come back. Burn it down.”
Kina can hardly contain her reaction to these words. She is breathing too fast, on the verge of panic.
“Could be something useful inside.”
“Then loot it, first. And you. Cut down that hideous thing, will you? I can’t stand the noise it makes.”
From above comes the racket of Pupo’s remaining tools, weapons, and food being dragged across the floor and tossed out of the hut. Kina waits, ready to spring in case the mat is thrown back and her presence revealed, but after a couple of minutes she hears the looter step back out of the hut. Then, something hits a wall above and seconds later she hears the unmistakable sound of crackling fire.
Kina knows she only has a couple of minutes before the dry thatch of the hut will be engulfed in flame. She wonders if somehow she can survive unscathed if she is buried like this, but soon she finds herself panting. The fire is sucking air out of her hiding place!
There’s no time to waste. She bursts out from under the mat, tugging her leiomano free. Searing heat and smoke meet her. Most of the hut is on fire. Without thinking, she dives through the door flap onto the weedy dirt, rolling to make sure none of her tapa skirt has caught fire.
“Look!” one of the warriors shrieks. They are near the edge of the little island, cutting down the shark decoy.
Kina doesn’t wait around. She is up and running, racing across the open ground and along the path toward the bridge. She takes the span faster than ever, ignoring its bucking and pitching and trying not to think of her exposed back.
The burning warriors reach the end of the bridge. Risking a look back, Kina sees some of them are armed with slings, and they are readying stones. “That’s her!” one shouts, and orders them to kill her.
Stones rain down around her as she scrambles into the brush just past the end of the bridge. One of the stones connects with her thigh and she drops to one knee for a moment, tenderly reaching around to feel where it split her skin. Her thigh is slick with blood. Kina rises. The wound hurts badly, but it looks superficial and she thinks she can still run on it. Perhaps not as fast she could before.
There’s no way she’ll make it across the next bridge. Leiomano in hand, she rushes back over to the rope bridge. The warriors are coming across fast, though too many are on it at once and the thing is bucking wildly, impeding their progress. They look up when they see her and a couple of them try to fit more stones into their slings.
Grabbing hold of the rough cord, Kina saws the razor-edged shark teeth across it a few times, watching it fray. When the rope goes, the warriors tumble and cling to the remaining ropes, howling in rage. She cuts away another, and as it drops slack, the combined weight of the men is too much for the remaining ropes. The lines snap, dropping the warriors to the sea below. Kina watches them come down in the knee-deep water, their bones breaking from the impact.
She turns and runs toward the other bridge. There won’t be much time. She runs past the downed bamboo pole, with all its smashed cages lying about in the weeds, and hastens across the other bridge. When she is more than halfway across, she stops. More voices. These ones seem to be coming from the rope ladder. Is it already too late?
Kina redoubles her effort, reaching the other end of the bridge and rushing to the stakes that anchor the rope ladder in place. As she feared, there are several more warriors climbing up. Three more await by a pair of canoes at the base of the cliff. From her vantage point, Kina can now see the rest of the armada, over a score of canoes zig-zagging between sandbars and fanning out among the pillars of the Teeth.
She is out of time.
The lead warrior is only a few feet down and spots her. He cries out to the others below, but falls silent when he sees her crouch to cut away the peg.
“You’re outnumbered,” he says. “You can kill me, but Nakali will have your skin.”
Without reply, Kina uproots the stake. The rope ladder sags, supported by only one rope, and several of the warriors plunge toward the earth.
She contemplates pulling up the next one, but looks back toward the bridge. She has another idea.
Leaving the remaining burning warriors to struggle up the rest of the ladder, she runs back to the bridge and saws away one of the cords, leaving only three to span the distance, taking care to hang on to the severed end. She tucks her leiomano back into her waist and wraps the rope around each fist a couple of times to make a good grip. Her heart is pounding as she gazes down toward the shallows and the far cliff, hoping her effort won’t result in death.
“Great Father Sky, if you can lend me aid, I would be grateful,” she says, but is cut off when she hears the first of the warriors reaching the top of the rope ladder back through the trees. There is no time for a full prayer, so she takes a breath and slides off the cliff.
For a moment she feels like she is free-falling. Wind rushes through her hair. Then the rope goes taut and begins to swing her toward the far cliff. Kina struggles not to spin around, trying to keep her legs straight out before her. A gust of wind twists her round so that her feet are once more pointed toward the wall, then suddenly she is there, slamming into it with a force that nearly knocks the wind from her. The impact is like jumping from a high platform onto the ground, and it leaves her legs singing with agony. Much farther, and she is sure she could have broken them.
But now the water is a short drop beneath her. Letting go, Kina plunges into the shallow water, spreading herself out to spread the impact. When her feet finally manage to get purchase in the sandy sea floor, she is drenched, stunned, and barely able to swim. Her entire body is afire with agony. She begins to wonder if preventing the burning warriors from regaining the pahi was worth it. Why didn’t she just let them find it, return it to their high priestess, and sail away? Maybe she and Motua would be forgotten, or considered unimportant, left behind as the fleet headed back to Keli`anu?
But no, she tells herself, the Cult of the Ebon Flame will only use it to kill more prisoners and make more of their infernal drums, and then what? Build an armada even larger than the one they have and sail it against the peaceful nations nearby? Enslave Ku`ano`ano and make drums of its populace? Where would it end?
She paddles until she reaches the dripping wall of rock forming the first island. The jetty is here, and she climbs up onto it, rolling onto her back to catch her breath. High above, the warriors have reached the damaged bridge and Kina can hear them arguing about how to cross it, convinced she is waiting on the far side. Perfect. Now, while they are looking elsewhere, she can make her escape.
A part of her wants nothing more than to remain here on this jetty, let the sound of the waves lull her to sleep. But she turns back over and gets to her feet. There will be time for rest when she’s dead.
She crouches and enters the archway. Just on the other side are the warriors, the ones standing guard near the canoes. Some of the warriors who fell from the rope ladder are still alive, and they are gasping and crying out in pain.
Kina draws her leiomano and slinks through the archway until she sees them. The warriors are helping their brethren, a couple of which have shattered legs and are draped across the stones.
Moving swiftly, Kina sloshes out of the archway and takes hold of the prow of the closest canoe. She flings herself in it and takes up the paddle.
“Hey!” one of the warriors shouts, and she turns around to see them springing to action.
Kina poles at the sandy bottom, propelling the scout canoe away from the others and around the curving wall. She hears spears hit the water behind her. The moment she is out of sight, she rises and yanks the sail into place. It luffs, catching the wind.
Rounding the island, Kina passes beneath the burning warriors who are trying to cross the rope bridge. One of them spots her and they try to hurl sling rocks down, but their precarious and unbalanced perch ruins their aim, and the rocks plunk harmlessly into the sea nearby.
Keeping close to the flank of the islands, Kina points her stolen canoe toward the dense inner maze of the Teeth. Her legs are shaking from fatigue and the spot on her thigh where the sling stone hit is still bleeding. She tenderly runs her hand across it, feeling the split skin, the blood, and the raised lump that is forming in the tissue. It burns from sea water. Kina considers ripping a piece of her tapa skirt to tie around it, but at that moment she hears, far back behind her, a terrifying sound.
The drums.