Afterglow (Wildefire) (13 page)

You lose yourself over the next few weeks. You stop showing up for Council meetings. After all, what function do they serve anyway? So Tane can brag cheekily about his latest exploits? So Tangaroa can scathingly ignore you? If anything, it’s just a formality to maintain a bond between six people with nothing in common except for their mutual godhood and shared heritage.

For true passion and friendship, it took an outsider.

You’ve even started sleeping in the sea cave with Colt, instead of the crater atop Haleakalā where you used to curl up most nights before you met him. You wake up in his arms every morning, greeted by the cool breath of the tide and the warm breath of your lover. You spend your days hunting and fishing, showing Colt every tiny islet he’s never seen before in the archipelago, gleefully sprinting through the bamboo forests. He may be mortal, but he always keeps pace with you.

He never seems to get hurt either, which is something you can’t even say for your godly self. Even when he lost his footing on a climb up Kīlauea and tumbled a hundred feet down the hillside, he just brushed himself off and stood up. Not one bloody scrape or scratch visible on his body.

Somewhere in his home lands, the gods are still smiling upon him.

One morning you wake up to a sound that your sleepy brain can’t make sense of at first. It’s a deep and distant musical note, and the echo of the cave tunnel distorts it. . . . But after you’ve gathered your senses, you realize what you’re hearing.

Somebody’s blowing into a pu conch shell in the distance. And not just any conch—this shell is among the largest ever found, with a deep sonorous note that you were forced to memorize.

It is the Council’s horn, blown by Rangi’s deep sky-wielding lungs so that its sound will carry to any of the islands. The conch is only to be blown in the event of an
emergency meeting when the immediate gathering of the gods is imperative.

Colt stirs next to you. “What . . .?” he mutters.

You’re already on your feet, but you kneel back down and press your lips to the short, bristly hair on the top of his head, the hair that he never cuts but it still never grows. “I must obey the shell’s call and gather with the others,” you say, as the conch lets loose another deep blast. “I’ll be back in time to fish with you on the banks of Lāna‘i, as I promised.” You carve a portal into the air and you’re gone.

In the bamboo grove Rangi and Papa have already assembled as usual. The other three are nowhere to be seen. Rangi holds the conch shell to his mouth, ready to blow a third time, but he lowers it when you appear in front of them.

“What is it?” you bark. “Why have you blown the horn?”

“Patience, Pele,” Papa says in her soothing alto. “We shall explain when the others arrive.”

You squint at the two of them. They’ve summoned you here at dawn with the utmost urgency, and even their normally stoic façades betray the faintest signs of nerves. Now they want to linger around and await the arrivals of the other, slower gods when you could already be taking action?

Minutes pass. Something is off. While the others may not be able to move instantaneously through portals like
you, traveling between two places miles apart as though they were side by side, they can also travel lightning-quick when necessary by calling up their various elements. So where is Tangaroa? Or Tane? Or Tu?

Then you notice an even more chilling detail: Rangi is no longer sounding the horn. The rules say that he must continue to blow into the conch until the others have come to the Council in case, for instance, Tangaroa should miss the initial call while swimming deep around the reefs, as he often likes to do.

Instead Rangi holds the horn half-cocked at his side, while his other hand keeps tightening then relaxing, as though he’s prepared to use it. Papa, too, maintains a defensive stance, subtle but tight in her legs.

“What have you done?” you say finally; then in a harsher voice that sends tremors up the slopes of Haleakalā: “What have you done?”

“What needed to be done,” Papa says, circling around to the other side of you. “Let them do what they must with the Driftwood Stranger and then come back to us. Peace will be restored.”

“The time for peace is over,” you growl.

You feel the sky breathing in as Rangi circles his hands, preparing to flatten you with a harsh gale. Unfortunately for him, lightning moves faster than wind—you thrust out a hand in his direction, and a bolt forks down from the heavens and spears him through the chest. He crumples to his knees, and his face slumps into the dirt.

You spin and grab Papa by the neck before she can run. She wheezes as you lift her off the ground and hold her up over the short cliff. The water in the pool below looks too blue and serene for a place where they’ve forced you to spill blood.

“Please,” Papa gasps out. “I always thought highly of you, Pele.”

Your fingers tighten around her neck. “I always thought you were boring.” With your free hand you fire an explosive burst into her chest, and she sails into the pool below. When her body resurfaces, it’s facedown and unmoving.

With no time to lose you gouge another portal in the air and lurch through it. You pop out beneath the sea arch, where the waters had been calm when you left.

Now they’re frothy and angry with a raging, stormy tide. The waves pound against the cliff wall, and the tide has risen so high that the entrance to the sea cave has completely disappeared below the surface.

“No . . .,” you breathe out. Then you inhale deeply and dive into the maelstrom.

Tangaroa’s deadly tide batters your body as though you were a minnow as you try to flounder your way into the underwater cave opening. Each current that pulses through the water slams you against the jagged walls of the cave, tearing into your skin. You still press on, guided by dread that you may be too late to save Colt.

Finally, just as your lungs are burning and the rush of
the water around your ears is starting to fade, you breach the surface into an air pocket. Ahead you discover why both Tangaroa and Tane are missing. Colt lies where you left him, only he’s very much awake. The waterline has crept nearly up to his head. In any other situation he might have been able to lift his mouth clear of the water and retreat to an air bubble, but Tane has summoned vines out of the rock to tether Colt firmly in place. The two gods aren’t in the cavern, but they can’t be too far off.

You swim to Colt, but not before a sharp stalactite bites into your shoulder. With your burning hands you easily shear through the vine bonds holding Colt down. The plant matter withers and retreats into the stone, singed and blackened with fire.

Up the slope, at the dead end of the cavern, you cast a new portal into the air. You push the half-drowned Colt toward it, and he catches himself before he goes all the way through. He spits up more water onto the ground, then holds out a hand for you to join him.

“No.” You shake your head. “I’m sending you to Ni‘ihau,” you say, pointing to the vision of the arid cliffside floating in the air. “It has no forests for Tane to track you in, and Tangaroa won’t be able to sense you unless you go into the sea.”

He tries to protest for you to come with him, but you have one more Council “meeting” to attend. You push him through, and the portal snaps shut before he can scramble back to you.

Eventually, Tangaroa and Tane must sense that they’ve lost their prey. The storm tide recedes and the waves flatten out, until you can see back through the cave entrance ahead.

It isn’t long before Tangaroa and Tane arrive. They wade through the now-placid waters but stop when they see that you’re alone. “Where is the mortal?” Tangaroa barks at you.

Tane tilts his head back and sniffs. “I can still smell him. He hasn’t been gone long.”

You hold out your hand, letting an explosive orb hover over your palm. Fire laps around it as it grows bigger until it’s twice the size of your head. It needs to be big for what’s going to happen next. Tane and Tangaroa shrink back toward the exit, but ultimately hold their ground.

Once you’re certain it will do the job, you spin and wing it down the cave tunnel. Tane and Tangaroa both dodge to the side, clinging to the cave walls as it zips past them.

“You would try to maim me?” Tangaroa cries out, beating his chest.

You smile. “It wasn’t meant for you.”

The orb completes its trajectory through the cave opening and slams into the base of the sea arch outside. The cave trembles, and the tremendous sound of cracking stone echoes down the cave walls. Tane and Tangaroa turn to flee, sensing all too late what you’ve intended.

They don’t make it to the entrance in time. The sea arch collapses over the mouth of the cave, and as the enormous mound of stone blocks the last of the exit, the cave falls into pitch blackness.

But not for long. Your eyes flicker red, glowing through the dark just enough to see the terrified expressions of the two men in front of you. Even gods and forest spirits know fear.

The ground trembles again, this time behind you. The stony surface where you’ve slept for the last month splits open as magma bubbles up through the surface. The molten lava flows around you, lapping at your legs, but of course you’re impervious to it—you could swim in an erupting volcano unscathed if you wanted to.

You are Pele.

Tane and Tangaroa stagger back toward the blocked cave entrance. “Stop this madness,” Tangaroa orders you. The lava rolls down into the water, which slows it down at first. But as the shallow pool turns to steam, new lava starts rolling right over it. With gruesome certainty it boxes in Tangaroa and Tane.

They’re still close enough for you to see the sweat dripping from their brows, and it’s not just from the intense geothermal heat rising off the lava.

“Please,” Tangaroa pleads in the missionaries’ language, his courage evaporated just like the water. He huddles next to Tane as the lava starts to eat up the last of the cave floor. “We were like a family before the stranger came here.”

“Yes!” Tane agrees vigorously. “You were our cherished sister!”

With a tiny detonation behind you, you carve a new portal in the air, to Ni‘ihau, where Colt awaits. “Cherished sister?” you echo. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I’m an only child.” You hop through the rift in the air onto a barren cliff on Ni‘ihau. For a few seconds two tortured screams sear through the opening before the portal closes behind you.

It won’t be long before the cave fills in completely.

Colt waits nearby like you expected . . . and so does Tu.

You immediately take a defensive stance between the war god and your lover, but Tu holds out a hand for you to stand down.

“I mean the Driftwood Stranger no harm,” Tu offers. “I was not part of the plot to destroy him.”

“Yet you knew about it, didn’t you?” You try to be fierce with him, but after destroying four members of the Council you’re exhausted, and your anger sounds weak. “You could have warned me before it turned to this.”

He indicates one of the many tattoos that cover his body. It’s made of many triangular strokes and waves, but you recognize it as a spear wrapped in kapa leaves. “Sometimes,” he says ruefully, “being a good god of war means knowing which battles are not your own.”

Colt steps up behind you and rests his hands soothingly on your shoulders. You press your back into
his chest but keep your eyes on Tu. “So you’re not here to avenge the Council?” You want to believe him, but it’s hard to trust anyone after the four people you knew best in these islands just conspired against you.

Tu shakes his head. “What the Council sought was murder. What you just accomplished was justice. And I believe in justice.” After a pause Tu adds, “I also believe in prophecy. The Driftwood Stranger may not have intended to bring destruction to Hawai‘i, but just as the prophecy foretold, he has. So for the good of our people, I ask you to leave these islands.”

From his tone it’s clear that there’s no “asking” about it.

“Where will we go?” you ask.

“Somewhere you’ll find peace, I hope,” Tu says. The irony that he’s a war god offering this advice must not be lost on him, because his lips form a stiff smile—it may be the only time he’s ever smiled. Then he wanders off down the beach.

You’ll never know how he predicted where he could find the two of you after the Council’s mutiny . . . or that you’d emerge alive at all.

Colt spins you around and holds you tenderly by the elbows, drawing you to him. He rests his head on yours. “I would never ask you to leave your home for me, Pele. Say the word, and I shall swim away from these islands, the way that I came.”

“My home is with you now.” You look meaningfully
to the east, where the sun lingers over the blue horizon. “Wherever we may go.”

“You’re willing to put your faith in a man you barely know, who washed up into your life without invitation,” Colt says, somewhere between gratitude and confusion. “Why?”

“Because . . .” You swallow. “Because . . . I love you.”

It’s the truth, but not the words you didn’t have the courage to tell him. Not the words that have died on your lips every time you’ve tried to say them this last week.

Because
, you had wanted so badly to tell him,
I’m carrying your child.