Moho (Part One: Rise of a Symbol) (13 page)

Lee opens her mouth but Yo-Yo puts his hand on her shoulder. She looks at him and he shakes his head in silence and so she closes her mouth again. Lee definitely knows something she wants to share with Maya. Something that is so serious that she endured all those insults and waited until now. But Yo-Yo seems to think Maya cannot know. And Maya doesn’t even register it.

"You can become whatever you want to become," Yo-Yo assures her.

"And I will. I don’t even know why I granted you a visit at all. Most Islanders don’t ever spend time with the people they used to live with," Maya snaps. I can see how she is getting calmer now. She considers the fight to be almost over and she understands that it is going nowhere.

"Are you saying you are doing something better now?" Lee asks.

"I’m clearly doing something better than you," Maya answers.

"I didn’t say that," Lee points out correctly.

"You know what? Yes, I do think I’m better than you! Is that what you wanted to hear?" Maya asks. "Because I don't mind being honest. We all know the truth anyway."

"No. I was talking about what you’re doing, not what you are. None of us would say what you are," Lee says. "You know, Maya, it's contradictory that you are so good at connecting to matter and animals and yet you are unable to connect to other navees. Why is that?"

Maya wants to leave but there is one last slap for everyone she has to hand out.

"Oh, I’m so sick of you people! How did I ever manage to spend any time with you anyway? And now you, too, Maha? You of all people doubt my abilities? The other nominees are a joke. They don’t stand a chance against me. Oh, you all just watch and be awed, because I will get summoned! I will show you! I will show all of you!" she shouts. For a short moment she just stands there and looks at them. Then she leaves. I reach out my hand to keep her but she is already out of reach. My eyes follow her as she storms up the hill until she disappears between the Glowing Stones in the darkness of the night.

I’m left alone with all
the offended strangers. I look around, trying not to look at anyone in particular. I want to leave as well but I feel like I should say something before I do, but I don’t know what. And it doesn’t take long until Lee breaks the silence and I get her wrath.

"Don’t think that she won’t do to you what she has just done to us. Once you served her purpose, she will drop you like a hot fruit. She chooses fame over anything and anyone. And one day you will be one of her victims," Lee predicts. She isn’t even looking at me. Instead she is looking somewhere above me. She carries her nose high up in the air. Somehow she reminds me of Cosmo.

"Maya and I will be fine," I assure her.

"Maya will be fine. You’re not the first she
has brought to this dinner. She is only spending time with you because you are famous. For absolutely no reason at all, I should add," Lee snarls.

"I’ll be fine," I assure her once more. She still isn’t looking at me. So I wave my hands above my head and say, "
Woohoo… I’m down here."

She immediately looks right into my eyes. Her eyes are dark, awake
, and piercing. Then she asks Enyo a question without letting go off my eyes.

"Enyo, what happened to this other friend Maya once brought home?" she asks.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maya has never had any friends," Enyo responds. She is playing with the stone again.

"Except one. I’m talking about the little Springworker she used to know. With that ape. You certainly haven’t forgotten about her only friend. Ever," Lee says, her eyes still fixated on mine. I want to look away but I can't. It’s like she has paralyzed me.

"I’m not sure what happened to him," Enyo says, now looking at me, too.

"That’s right. Because he was never seen or heard of again," Lee says with a vile smile.

Suddenly Enyo squashes her cherrystone with one hand. Three dark-red pieces drip to the ground. At the same time Lee bites into an apple and forcefully chews for a painfully long time. I can hear the fruit cracking in her mouth. Then she swallows it loudly. She keeps eye contact the entire time and I try not to blink but eventually I look away first.

In the night after this terrific dinner, I have a terrifying dream. Before I see anything, I hear birds chirping above me and crunchy eating noises in front of me. I feel the fluffy moss under my bare feet and I smell the sweet scent of roses all around me. I open my eyes and see old, thick tree trunks everywhere.

"Come to your mommy," a woman says to me. "You must be starving after all the games you have played with your cousins."

She is stretching her arms out towards me and I want to run into her arms but I can't. I'm not in control of my body. Everything feels like a memory. Or a dream I know I'm dreaming but can't influence. I'm merely a viewer.

There are four other adults sitting next to her on the forest floor in the small clearing. They appear to be two couples because there is a little toddler with the one couple and a teenage boy with the other couple. My mother is by herself.

"No. I want to play right now! I want to play hide-and-seek," I demand.

"We've played enough for our age today, my dear. You and your cousins go ahead if you're still not hungry," my mother says.

"No… that's not fair… you all have to play. Hurry and hide. I'll start counting down right now," I insist and cover my eyes with my hands but leave a little slit to cheat. My persistency pays off and soon all of them have disappeared into the thicket of the old forest.

"Ten, nine, seven, six, five
—" I start counting.

"You forgot eight, my dear," my mother says and laughs. Now I know her hiding place.

"Six, eight, five, four, three…" I count and start moving around. "One! I'm coming!" I shout. Wow… interesting counting technique.

The toddler chose to hide right in the openness of the clearing. 'If I can't see you, you can't see me' must have been her reasoning. She sits in front of a fallen trunk and presses her fists against her forehead. Her hair is stuffed with flowers so that she looks like a bouquet of flowers forgotten in this forest. I'm granting her a few more minutes of illusion and walk deeper into the forest. My mother is easy to find and the other adults didn't put much effort into the choice of their hideouts either. The teenage boy is still missing, though. The adults help me
search for him and it's not until now that I realize how small I am. Even their legs are taller than I am.

Eventually, I find the boy. He is kneeling behind a bush, his forehead touching his knees.

"Gotcha!" I shout in excitement and poke the boy into his back.

Instead of turning around, the boy falls onto his left side. His body is stiff, his eyes are closed.

"Ah!" I scream. The teenage boy, who was lively and young a few minutes ago, now looks like an old man. His skin is wrinkly and laced with dark spots. His hair is grey and dry. He is dead.

The adults run over to see the unexplainable faith of the boy with their own eyes. His mother starts sobbing,
and his father refuses to believe his eyes.

I rush back to the toddler in the clearing. Why hasn't the toddler moved since I left the clearing?

"Gotcha…?" I mumble but the toddler doesn't respond. I carefully touch the toddlers arm and she tips onto her side. The flowers in her hair fall onto the floor around her. Now I see her hair for the first time - and it's grey. She has suffered the same faith as the teenage boy. She is dead.

"Mom!" I yell in horror.

My mom hurries over to me and hugs me tightly.

"Moho! … Moho, wake up! You've been sleeping all day. How tired can one person be?" a male voice asks from afar.

I blink and see the outline of a tall, energized young man walking past my bed. Must be Kai. But I don’t care. I’m tired and I have a headache. So I roll over onto my stomach and hide my head under my hands.

"Get up, you’re missing the finale!" he says. It is Kai, definitely. There is giddy excitement in his voice. He is that thrilled about the fight and his fanatic enthusiasm is kind of cute. I have to smile into my bed. In contrast to Maya, he clearly loves Holo Holo Nalii. 'Holo Holo Nalii'. After that dream, I had almost forgotten about
those words. Who had come up with that? It sounds so weird. And it isn’t descriptive in any way. I have to laugh a little at the thought of it and see how my breath fogs up the Nightstone bed I’m resting on. I push my left cheek deeper into the bed so that my eyes are closer to the core of the Nightstone. I can see through the translucent stone. There is dim glow and warmth coming from its core. I love Nightstones. Actually, I don’t. Nightstones are rather ugly. I love sleep. Actually, I don’t know if I do. I’m not awake when I sleep, so how can I know if I love it? I love the moments before and after sleep. Yes, that’s true. Like right now. I’m a bit dozy and don’t care about anything. I’m awake but not aware of anything. I don’t think about Maya and me, Lee, Pax… ugh… great… now I do! But I don’t want to. And so I stretch out my forefinger and poke into the wobbly surface of the Nightstone below me. I wonder who makes all those Glowing Stones. Why do some float in midair? Why do they glow? And for how long do they glow? Why do most of them emit warmth? And how long is it until they turn cold? Or maybe they never change?

I lift my head and look through one of the many holes of the cottage. I see The Spring glowing in the distance, the two moons, the calm ocean, the thousands of Glowing Stones scattered across the backyard around the pile of Hotstones and the now empty seats. A couple of birds appear on the left. They are huge and remind me of the bird Aleeya and I used when we traveled to Cosmo’s Islands. There are people on those birds as well. My eyes follow them as they
fly across the sky until they disappear behind a mountain on the right. It’s almost dark already. Even for me that was a lot of sleep. But I’m still tired. Or I’m tired again. Too much sleep always makes me extra sleepy. I wonder why that is.

I lower my head back onto the Nightstone and feel Victor’s Springstone pushing against my rib. Victor. I had to think about him last night after Lee’s prophecy. I didn’t know that all Springworkers had apes. I still miss him but I don’t think I made a wrong decision. I
didn’t like leaving him but I do like being with Maya at Cosmo’s Islands along with Vijay and Aziz. Ravi? Not so much.

Anyway, there are so many questions… In general I find Persadia, or well, I actually only know Cosmo’s Islands, to be an odd place. I wonder who came up with all of this. It’s like someone grabbed small islands from different climate zones and mixed them together in the middle of nowhere.
Well, that isn’t true actually. They are located right in front of Fogmountains. Fogmountains… where does all the fog come from? Is the fog hiding something? And what’s the Dark Forest Ravi mentioned? Dark. Navees love the word 'dark'. The Second Dark Time, Mass Darkening, Dark Forest. Why doesn’t the Dark Forest let anyone out once they entered?

"I don’t know but I’m gonna make you find out if you don’t get out of bed right now!"
Kai thinks.

I jump up all of the sudden and look right into Kai’s smiling face. He was listening to my thoughts the whole time. I was so dozy that I forgot to put my thoughts behind my Wall
of Secrets and published them on TNOP instead!

"And you still are,"
Kai thinks.

"You’re kind of nosy," I say lightheartedly and laugh.

"And we’re kind of late. Reem, Maha and Enyo are already at the arena. Let’s hurry. The finale is not gonna wait for us," he says.

I still like him, despite what he said about Cosmo's Islands last night. I’m also still hungry because the dinner yesterday was rather short. But I feel like asking him to wait so I can have breakfast, or dinner really, would be testing his patience too much. So we leave the cottage. To Kai’s surprise, Enyo isn’t at the arena. She is sitting in the grass next to the cottage and is playing with a new, small Glowing Stone.

"Come on," he says to her. Enyo stands up and comes with us but she doesn’t look at either of us and she walks a fews steps behind us. I ask myself what’s wrong with her but Kai seems fine with her reclusive behavior and so seemed everybody else last night. Plus, I don’t really know any of Maya’s folks well enough to ask them about each other. So I don’t.

Kai, Enyo
, and I hike to the arena, which is the crater of an inactive volcano. I find the idea of walking into a crater a bit scary considering there are other active volcanos in the area. Kai assures me there has never been an eruption in the area they live in and I want to believe him. But I had also seen lava dripping in the ocean from their backyard and I smelled sulfur. I just hope the volcano we’re about to enter does’t change its mind and stays inactive for tonight.

On our rather lengthy walk to the arena, we cross several small, shallow rivers by ourselves until we reach the jungle that is covering the ground between the mountains and volcanos. There is only one broad path and people are lining up to let the path guide them through the jungle. Most aren’t even walking
; instead, they ride on horses, elephants, camels, ostriches and there is even a little girl riding on a cassowary. Although the people and their animals look like they come from all over Persadia and are wearing all kinds of different clothes, all of the clothes are either blue or orange.

"I didn’t know that I had to dress up," I say to Kai
, as we are finally entering the jungle.

"You don’t have to. Your uniform is fine," Kai assures me.

"So why are you wearing blue?" I ask.

"Blue represents Trainer Nux and his snake Nonga," Kai explains. "Trainer Zaha and her lion Cryos chose orange."

"So all of those people came to watch a fight between a snake and a lion?" I ask in disbelief.

"Technically, yes. But Cryos isn’t your typical lion. And calling Nonga a snake is a bit of an understatement," Kai says. "You’ll see."

The other people are almost as excited as Kai is and so it's quite noisy in the jungle. And all the animals sound pretty excited as well.

"So are all of those people animal trainers?" I ask.

"Not necessarily but most of them probably are. The arena holds only about a hundred thousand people and there are at least a couple hundred million animal trainers on Persadia. Getting a ticket to the tournament, especially the final, is super difficult," Kai explains.

"But I don’t have a ticket," I admit. Kai laughs and rests his hand on my shoulder. Something is funny but I wonder what.

"You don’t need one. Lee and Yo-Yo host the event. We will find a place for you. Don’t worry."

"Do you train any animals as well? I didn’t see any at the cottage."

"Sure, several. All of us train every day," Kai explains. "Nearby the arena, we’ve founded a Holo Holo Nalii Training Center where we teach people from the area how to connect with their animals. There are countless places like that all over Persadia."

"So did Yo-Yo and Lee invent Holo Holo Nalii?"

"In its current form, yes. But not really. Navees have always used their ability to communicate with, and in extreme cases control, animals. Before The Second Dark Time, there were no guidelines on how to train animals and so people did whatever they wanted. Which was fine in the vast majority of cases. But there were some extremely violent exceptions. Humans took advantage of their control of their animals and constantly exhausted them."

"How is that different from today’s fights?" I wonder out loud.

"There is a big difference between misusing one’s power over animals and working, training with the animals in a way that both the navee and the animal enjoy. That is Holo Holo Nalii. Anyway, the line between torture and Holo Holo Nalii was blurry until recently. Animal torture was very common among humans during The First Dark Time. So Lee and Yo-Yo came up with a set of guidelines on how to train animals and how competitions are to be held. For some reason almost every animal trainer on Persadia adopted those and now Holo Holo Nalii is a huge part of a small but passionate minority of navees. There are countless regional tournaments, many continental tournaments and then there is the global tournament, The Grand Holo Holo Nalii Tournament of Persadia."

"So the winners of the smaller tournaments get to compete in the
final today?"

"The many winners get to compete in The Grand Tournament. This tournament has been going on for several weeks now. Today is our last event and tomorrow we will repair the arena and start to prepare
for next cycle’s tournament. It’s an operation that lasts all cycle."

"You are involved too? And does it always
take place here?"

"Me, Reem, Maha, Enyo, Yo-Yo
, and Lee are only a small part of the organizers of the Holo Holo Nalii League of Persadia. The tournament takes place at the home of the reigning champion. Lee has won the very first and the second tournament and since then no one has won more than once. So for the entire seventeen cycles that the league has existed, the Grand Tournament has taken place right here."

"Must have been easier to win when the sport was new," I remark.

Kai laughs and nods. "Yes, but don’t say that in front of Lee. She is extremely proud of her achievement. Today, however, this would probably be impossible to achieve. The winner of the last final didn’t even make it into this cycle’s Grand Tournament. The competition is incredibly hard and there are hundreds of millions of trainers whose only goal it is to win this tournament. Even all the trainers who simply get to compete in The Grand Tournament become instant legends in the Holo Holo Nalii community. They have millions of fans. Nux and Zaha, today’s finalists and their animals Nonga and Cryos are already famous all around Persadia and their fight hasn't even begun yet."

We approach the end of the path and leave the jungle. The arena lies right in front of us and it doesn’t look or sound nearly as empty as it did from the other side of the jungle. All people wearing orange walk up the volcano on the left and we walk up the volcano on the right with all the other people wearing blue. One after the other, people get off their animals and walk on without them. Apparently animals aren’t allowed to watch their own sport. The closer we get to our entrance, the more zebras, yaks, llamas
, and water buffalos block our way. It’s very loud and very, very smelly. When we reach our entrance, which is basically a tunnel in the wall of the crater, birds land between the walking animals and block our way. Thousands of Holo Holo Nalii fans decided to arrive by bird. They really have to work on their transportation system. I’m tempted to share my thought with Kai but I can’t assess if he would consider this an insult of his organizational skills.

"Hey, I didn’t know you would be here," someone says and throws his arm around my neck. It’s Vijay!

"Hi! Good to see you!" I say. "What a surprise!" I’m happy to see him and I’m happy to not be the only one any more who is wearing our uniform. The uniform does feel odd when no one else is wearing it.

"Hey, I’m Vijay," he says animatedly to Kai and Enyo. Kai and Vijay hongi but Enyo ignores Vijay.

"I’m Kai and -" Kai begins.

"I know who you are! Who doesn’t?" Vijay says. He is so happy to meet Kai and Enyo. They seem to be quite famous themselves in the Holo Holo Nalii community.

"You never told me about this sport," I say to Vijay.

"I don’t know. It just never came up. Anyway, I’m a huge fan! And I’m so excited to be here."

"And your brother?" I ask.

"Well, you know, there are things between us
— "

"That are better not said out loud. Got it," I say. I’ve learned to appreciate this mantra since Vijay first mentioned it in Crystal Cave, especially with Maya. "But how did you get a ticket?" I ask him.

"I won it at an AS meeting, you know?" Vijay says quietly.

"I see," I respond.

"And you are here with Maya?" Vijay asks and looks around.

"Yes, but you won’t find her. She isn’t coming... She prefers to watch it on MNOP instead," I answer.

"Well, that is what I had to do all those cycles. But not this time! Come on, let’s go inside. I’m so pumped up!"

And he really is. This means so much to him. Vijay is generally very upbeat but today is unusual, even for him. He is adorable and his excitement is infectious. I get the feeling that I will like this sport a lot myself. Vijay introduced me to the AS and I loved that, too. So I may end up liking this sport just as much.

Hundreds of people line up in front of our entrance which is only one of many. Some of them are cheering for Nux and Nonga already. They sound very optimistic about their chances of winning tonight. I notice that there is no one checking if the fans actually have tickets. And none of them seems to have an actual ticket.