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It was time. Pulling away from Trina's embrace was harder than anything he'd ever done, harder than leaving home, even. She took a shaky breath but didn't speak as he tied on the maro and tātua the artisans had woven for him. He tucked his club into the tātua, then grabbed a staff. "I know you don't want to do this," she said.
"I don't," he replied. For months, he'd gone along with the practices and the drills and the consistent beatings, but he had no interest in waging war in this utu his cousin demanded in response to Pou’s injuries. Regardless of whether or not the Kaqtukaq's Thunderbird blessed this plan and protected them in the battle to come, there had been nothing done to require retribution from the Whakamanu. Margot had fallen in love, and now she was going to be punished for it. "But I don't have a choice."
That was the hardest part. He understood so well now how another person could draw you in, become the center of your thoughts, your hopes, your dreams, and his person still lay on the mats in all her natural beauty. The thought of anyone else loving her, kissing her, making her body sing ... for that, his heart would demand utu. But he wouldn't be able to fight Hapa and win. There was no way to know if they'd even win against the wolves.
"I know you don't," she admitted. "I'm sorry, Pou."
"So am I." He sighed. "For what it's worth, I'll do my best to keep your sister's wolf out of harm."
Trina smiled sadly. "She'd appreciate that, I think."
The irreparable distance between them threatened to widen yet again. She drifted further away from him as the thread of their opposing duties tightened into the universe's design. He'd keep this time with her in a special place, crystallized in his heart like their Solstice feathers. A perfect design no human hand could replicate. A perfect moment he could share with no other.
"I never thanked you for the gifts," she said. "I know the flowers and the swan carving were from you."
Ah, yes. His cousin couldn't have given her gifts she deserved without his help. He had found the citrine in the artisans' lodge, a perfect chunk of raw stone for carving. "You deserved to see yourself the way I saw you when we first arrived."
Trina worked her jaw and squeezed her eyes shut, but a couple of errant tears slipped out anyway. "You have no idea what it's been like to be invisible next to Margot. You're the first person who's ever truly seen me."
Fighting tears of his own, Pou knelt down and lifted Trina's face to his. He wanted to capture her image in his memory. If he died tonight, her face would be the last thing he conjured. "I will keep seeing you, Trina Huxford. For as long as I live, I will see you, no matter what the spirits bring to us. My hope is that you'll start to see yourself." He kissed her, sealing the promise, sealing the hope. "You are so much more than Margot's sister or the saqamaw's daughter."
"Come back to me," she whispered.
He pressed his forehead to hers. "I will never leave you."
Outside, the other warriors had gathered. They were a small hapu, maybe thirty altogether. Trepidation flitted through the group, but Hapa stood at the head, proud and ready for the fight he'd craved since that first night. "Finally decide to join us?" he taunted.
Instead of answering, he took his place among the Whakamanu warriors in front of their Kaqtukaq soldiers. Hapa called out in their language and together they squatted and began their haka.
It was hard to be afraid when performing a haka. The war dance emboldened their spirits and enlivened their souls. Each slap of the thighs and the chest was a battle call of its own, but chanting together created a kind of magic that filled Pou with pride. "The wolves will see us this day and tremble!" they chanted. "The wolves will see us this day and suffer! Today, I die! Today, I live! The sun shines upon me! An upward step, another ... the sun shines!"
In his heart, Pou hoped the wolves heard them and left. The wish of a child.
Those who carried spears struck the earth with their poles. Those who carried short weapons slapped them against their hands. A wild chorus rang out among the full hapu, a sound like nothing he'd ever heard before. And peeking out from the artisans' workshop, Trina.
Their eyes met one last time.
I'll come back to you; I swear it.
***
The plan was to set off one trap. The woods were already filled with the scents of swan warriors to confuse the wolves and create the perfect setup for an ambush. It still wasn't clear how many wolves were fighters—if the Pack they'd encountered those months ago was all of it, or if there were more acting as a rear guard. The warriors scattered throughout the forest while their chosen lamb, a quick boy called Cal, stepped on the tripwire. As expected, a noose snared his foot, and he tumbled to the ground. They only had a few minutes before the wolves would converge on them. Cal cut himself free with a sharp knife and hid the frayed edges of rope out of sight so he still appeared captured.
Moments after the alarm blared, another, higher-pitched sound rose through the air, sending chills through Pou's body. Gooseflesh rose on his arms and legs, but he held tight to his staff. He'd do his best to keep his promise to Trina, but if the gray wolf or any others attacked, he'd be forced to defend himself. Dying never bothered a warrior, but dying foolishly? That was a whole other matter.
Pou's blood rushed in his ears. Leaves rustled in the underbrush and sticks snapped. The woods were sparse this time of year, but the wolves blended in. The Kaqtukaq had created outfits that kept them hidden even among the bare branches. The Whakamanu stuck out, beacons to draw the wolves further into their trap.
A snarl from behind was his only warning. He rolled out of the way as an enormous black wolf leapt at him, fangs glistening in the fading light. Another wolf snapped its jaws. Pou scrambled to his feet, staff in a defensive position. A third wolf joined the others.
Then the Kaqtukaq emerged and all hell broke loose.
So far, the swans outnumbered the Pack, but the wolves were masters of deception, able to scatter at a moment’s notice, disappear, and then reappear in a different area. The way they darted through the underbrush made them almost impossible to track. Once the first swan fell, morale started to break. After the sixth, it all but shattered.
Pou had yet to press a single attack or land a single blow. The wolves weren’t responsible for what had happened. There wasn’t a reason for the swans to be here, on Pack territory. Pou blocked a snapping jaw and dodged a leap, but they weren’t trying to hurt him. Only make it look like he was fending them off, keeping him busy.
Hapa's scream of pain and rage reverberated through the trees.
The wolves scattered again, and Pou took off toward the sound. Four wolves surrounded his cousin, including the gray that had to be Margot's lover. Hapa swiped at them with a bloodied dagger, but he was fading. Pou moved forward to help, but the trio cut him off. A furry barricade with sharp teeth and sharper intelligence. The swans had made a fatal mistake.
Yes, the wolves were animals, but they were also human.
They were more clever than natural wolves. More cunning. More forgiving.
A yelp drew Pou's attention back to the fight. Hapa had just killed a wolf, the largest of them, and the exertion drove him to one knee. The others didn't hesitate.
Hapa was dead.
The three wolves before Pou waited for his reaction. He looked at them each in turn, at their human eyes and human emotions that had no place in a wolf's body, and said, "I'm sorry." Not that they could understand him, but the sentiment was there all the same. He backed away. The wolves stood firm. Behind them, a wolf the color of smoke nuzzled the fallen one, then let out a howl so full of grief and heartache that turned the tide of the battle.
All around them, the wolves turned vicious. The ones who’d been guarding Pou bared sharp fangs. Violence filled the air. They pressed in, and Pou stepped back. “I don’t want to hurt you. I want you to go back to Margot and love her the way she loves you.” Behind them, he spotted the silver wolf. She met his gaze with watery eyes. Then she retreated with the smoky wolf.
Without their leaders, the wolves attacked. Pou fended off one, but they were strong, heavy. The rust-colored wolf pounced and knocked him to the ground. In moments, they were on top of him, sharp teeth only centimeters from his face.
Then Matā was there. He shoved the wolf off Pou’s chest and blocked another attack. “Go!” he shouted.
Pou scrambled to his feet and grabbed his staff just before the rusty wolf jumped at his face. He knocked the wolf aside and it crashed into a tree with a yelp. The other two distracted Matā by snapping at his legs, driving him toward their partner waiting in the shadows—the enormous black wolf that had almost mangled Pou’s arm. The wolf was too focused on the others. Pou crept over, traded his staff for the club, and bashed the wolf in the eye. A guttural howl of pain filled the air, and the wolf turned to him, teeth bared. It easily weighed twice as much as Pou.
He swallowed hard and set his stance.
The wolf leapt.
The wolf.
Hit.
Matā.
“No!” Pou cried.
Matā protected his face, but the wolf went for his stomach. Before Pou acted, it ripped a chunk of flesh and hopped back as Matā screamed.
Another ear-splitting howl called the wolves back into the forest. Just like that, they were gone.
And the swans were decimated.
***
Days passed before they could retrieve the dead. The village was in shock; even while they tended the wounded, the Kaqtukaq acted like they'd been stunned. The Thunderbird had blessed the plan, had it not? How could they have failed so spectacularly?
Of the thirty Kaqtukaq warriors who'd left, only a handful returned. Carney had retreated to her room after Cal didn't and Pou wished he had the words to comfort her.
They'd killed one of the Alphas, though. Hapa ... had killed one of the Alphas. What did Hapa’s death mean for the agreement? Would the saqamaw and Tane renegotiate again? Or would the Whakamanu return home in shambles with nothing to show for their year-long trip?
It had been a disaster no one anticipated, not even Pou. Matā had suffered deep, horrible wounds he might not survive, wounds meant for him. There was something poisonous in the wolf’s bite, something that hadn’t seeped into Pou’s. The few Kaqtukaq who’d returned required intense treatment and surgery, and the wolves had ample reason to retaliate.
His only comfort was that Margot’s wolf escaped without injury. Perhaps Margot might soothe the wolves, keep them from coming after the Kaqtukaq.
The allure of revenge was strong, though. It tempted with ideas of closure, of sealing wounds, of taking back power from the offender, but it only perpetuated the cycle that had plagued both tribes for hundreds of years. And considering the saqamaw's desire to annihilate the wolves, this war would continue until one side no longer existed.
Pou hated the despair. He hated the weakness, the sorrow, the fear, and he longed to take both Carney and Trina away from all of it. Were things perfect at home? No. But the sisters deserved so much more than what this life had given them. They needed a new start away from the chaos and the horrors they'd experienced. They deserved the opportunity Margot had seized for herself.
A few days later, the argument about how to care for the fallen Whakamanu filtered through the village. They had their own traditions, but no way to carry the bodies home. “We will treat them as our own,” the saqamaw had said, but the Tane countered that they were not of the Kaqtukaq.
Pou couldn’t care less. As he sat at Matā’s bedside, pressing cold compresses to his friend’s feverish brow, he cursed the saqamaw. Lies had carried them to this path like tides, drawing them farther and farther from the truth. Worst of all, the saqamaw acted as though the staggering losses tore at his heart, but it was an act. The Kaqtukaq would not find peace until that man was gone.
The only time Pou left Matā was to attend funeral rites for the fallen. Without their shaman, the Tane refused to touch the bodies of Hapa and the others, so there was no choice but to treat them as Kaqtukaq. Alongside the medicine men of the tribe, Pou wrapped his cousin and the others in strips of skins, with their knees against their stomachs and heads resting on their knees, as if returning them to the womb. The way they would have back home.
As he worked, he hummed a song he'd heard on the radio, something about love being a battlefield. He'd likely never hear that song again, but he thought it fit, in its way. The love between the swan maiden and Abenaki wolf had created a battlefield that stretched maybe twenty miles between the Kaqtukaq's village and the wolves' compound, and each subsequent battle took more and more lives, brought more and more people into the war. When would it be enough?
Two days after wrapping Hapa's body, he placed the final skins over Matā.
He wept over his friend. He wept in Trina’s arms as they lowered Matā into the ground. If Matā had been at his full strength, he might have survived the poison, but his body had given up on him long before that last battle. “Why did you do this?” he’d asked during one of Matā’s few moments of lucidity.
“You’re meant for more,” he’d replied. “This is what the gods decided for me. A warrior’s death.” He’d brought his fist to his chest.
“May your path along the Spirit Highway be smooth,” Pou’d whispered.
After the ceremonies came a feast he had no interest in attending. Instead, he retreated to the artisans’ workshop and found a sturdy piece of wood. No picture came to his mind, so he let the knife choose the way and simply guided it along. As chunks of wood clattered to the ground, he breathed deep and let the losses wash over him. Hapa had his brutality, but there had been goodness in him. Pou thought about what to say to Matā’s family, who had added a son months before they left for Windsor. What stories would they share with Pou? Would they even let Pou near him?
What would his family say?
As the Solstice approached, he grew more and more tense. Trina tried to comfort him, drawing him into her bed as often as possible, but he wanted to go home, deal with the inevitable, and figure out what moving on looked like.
The days turned from chilly breezes and the last vestiges of snow to rainy spring, and the village still hadn't recovered. He pitched in where he could, fixing leaky roofs and working alongside the artisans as they wove the glass thread from the Solstice feathers into incredible tapestries to sell at markets. Carney had stopped speaking to him and Trina, which made him feel even more of an outsider and all but devastated the woman he'd fallen in love with. The wolves had gotten what they wanted without even plotting—the Kaqtukaq were fractured, defeated, broken.
Some days, he spotted Rosa wandering through the village like a ghost, pinkish hair glowing redder in the light of sunsets. Others, he saw Carney, still in her black mourning clothes. Some of the families who had lost the most continued wearing theirs as well. The time leading to Solstice was always a busy, joyous time among the Whakamanu, but they would enter into their time of mourning once the contingent returned without some of their most key members.
He still didn’t know what to say to Matā’s wife.
Gods, this entire journey had been damned from the start. Without Trina by his side, he might've succumbed to the same pervasive feeling of loss that permeated every single thing the tribe did.
The week before the Solstice, a hint of merriment rippled throughout the dining hall as they all gathered for a meal. It had been a while since the full tribe—well, what remained—had joined for dinner, but the empty places at family tables speared Pou's heart. Trina took his hand beneath the table and squeezed, offering a small smile. Any moment with her was a balm. And he feared those moments coming to an end.
The saqamaw sat across from them, but Carney had joined the table of Cal's family and ate with them in silence, except for a few words. Pou watched her without trying to be obvious. He was worried for her. Carney had welcomed him, had talked to him like he belonged with them, had shared their customs and stories when he was confused. She needed a friend then, and she needed one now. But first, Trina wanted to speak to her father, and she wanted Pou there for support, though he had no idea what she intended to say.
Before she spoke, her father placed his fork on the table and fixed her with the stare of a leader as he had so often done before. Not a father, but an elder prepared to make judgment on a young woman. "You're leaving with them," he said. A statement, not a question.
"Yes," she replied.
Pou's heart leapt into his throat, and he squeezed her hand. She was coming with them? The gods had blessed him more than he deserved.
"Good." The saqamaw nodded once. The matter was closed, and he returned to his meal.
After, Trina led Pou to the pond. A gentle breeze brought with it the scents of the water and sweet flowers and musty earth. They sat where they had that first night, this time close enough to touch. "Did I make a stupid decision?" she asked.
"The decision you made is all I've been praying for," he replied, "so I may not be the best person to ask. Have you told Carney?"
"She won't talk to me."
"Maybe she'll listen, though. She should be angry at me, not you. I could have helped Cal."
Trina sighed. "She hates the wolves more than ever. I don't know if anything will change that. There isn't much we can say to her at this point, Pou." Then she said, "I'm abandoning her."
Pou pulled Trina close and kissed the top of her golden hair. "You're making the decision that the spirits have guided you toward. If they're pulling you away from your tribe and into mine, they'll provide for Carney. We have to have faith."
She chuckled. "'We,' huh?"
"Is that not ...?"
She pulled away and kissed him. Then she took his hand and placed it on her belly. "It's definitely 'we.'"
Pou stared at his hand splayed across her stomach. Tears pricked his eyes at the gift he'd been given. A gift he couldn't wait to share with his mother and sisters.
"Do you think they'll like me?" she asked.
"They'll love you." Lifting her chin, he pressed his lips to hers. Another promise he intended to keep. "You have a warrior's heart, the respect of those around you, and ..." He paused. Once he said the next part, he wouldn't be able to take it back. But she gazed at him with such affection, such desire, that he continued despite the twisting in his stomach. "And my love, if you want it."
"Pou," she breathed. "How could I not want that?" She traced her fingertips along his jaw, across his lips, down his chin to his neck, finally stopping at his heart, which raced like a wild horse. "And how could I not give you mine in return?"
He pulled her in for a kiss that began as chaste and quickly turned to fire between them. Every time he was inside her, he experienced a sense of completeness he’d been so terrified to lose. And now, as she lined his prick with her entrance and sank down on him, electricity filled the air around them, as though she truly were born from the Thunderbird.
She rode him slowly, and he savored her weight on top of him, her nails digging into his shoulders. Each night together had been fraught with desperation to forget the tragedies that had befallen them, but this time ... this time was to celebrate the love blossoming between them, the future they might have. He kissed her again, and she moaned against his lips while she moved her hips faster until they were both panting toward that animalistic release. She scraped her nails over his shoulders. The bite of that pain only intensified the pleasure they gave each other.
Gripping her hips, he met her pace. She pressed her forehead to his. Beads of sweat dotted her skin. Her pussy tightened around him, and she ground down hard. He held on until she came, and then he followed with his own release.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you, too,” he whispered back.
And once they returned to Aotearoa, he planned to make her his wife.
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