Chapter Seven: Kono

Kono got the boat out past the breakers with muscle power. It would have been a lot easier to call a friendly current, or even get the tides to push the other way for a bit. All it would have required was to talk to Kamo’loa. Easier maybe to talk to Mele, but that was another rule. Each tribe stayed to their own, with the secrets of talking to the others lost for good reason. So Kono would talk to Kamo’loa, the god of his people. Bigger than the horizon, and just waiting to wake up and take Waiola to the black days when the gods first rose from the deep. But no, that tremor told him the sleeping god was sleeping mighty lightly.

So Kono used the oar. After being crammed in the crotch of the hihia tree roots, it felt nice to stretch his shoulders out a bit. That had been a narrow escape. By all rights, he and Hepthys should be bound in ropes and thrown into the hold of the warjunk. Taken as slaves back to the nations. They’d been lucky. Beyond lucky, even. Two slaves were hardly worth the effort the freebooters had been taking. He imagined Hepthys’s ship that shined like the sun was the true prize.

He still couldn’t imagine that thing sailing anywhere. There were no sails on it, for one thing. The closest it had were the rigid projections along the top that looked a bit like Hepthys’s own sails, but hers were soft and supple. Those looked as unyielding as bronze. Far more likely was that it was some kind of magic, known only to the people of the sky-girl’s homeland. And Kono was beginning to think that homeland was much farther away than Hepthys had claimed. Though when he tried to think of such a distance, his head hurt.

Once out past the breakers, Kono extended the sail. It would dry quickly in the sun, but it would be heavy until he could soak the salt from the canvas. His boat would lose a little speed and maneuverability—the only two things it had against the skiffs from the warjunk.

Kono knelt, putting his hand into the water, the currents slipping by him, mingling as they moved. The texture of the water was different, the temperature as well. It felt like the places it had been, as the ocean both gave and took in equal measure. The creatures inside, the fish following the northern currents south, or the pali’i whirring to the north, told him where these places had gone, and where they were going to. They were, to Kono, as obvious and as accessible as the game trail through the jungle had been.

He rose, tipping the sail into the wind and watching it bloom with fresh gusts. Hepthys crouched in the front of the boat, gripping both sides of the dugout. She was still wearing her shining greaves, the ornamentation on her hands and arms, the gorget, and her headdress. He wondered if that stuff ever came off, or if it was like her wings, and somehow part of her body. She was the strangest person he had ever seen, and she had only grown stranger in their time together.

Things had gotten rather interesting since she fell from the sky.

Kono leaned on the mast, steering the boat about the leeward side of the island. Kono scanned the horizon. The warjunk was gone from its place just off the coast. He found it as a black dot against the water. They were great, wallowing tubs, but the sheer number of sails meant that, at full sheets to the wind, a warjunk could move deceptively swiftly.

Now that Kono had the right of the wind, the sail drying quickly in the bright sun, he could make up some distance. Kono was careful to place himself between the sun and the warjunk and never to draw too close. This time he would pay closer attention to his cover.

“Why would they take my ship?” Hepthys asked.

“Freebooters don’t need no reason. They take what they want.”

“They can’t use it. There’s no way.”

Kono shrugged, keeping his narrowed eyes on the gradually growing spot that was the warjunk. “Don’t think they thought of it that way. Found your ship, liked the looks, took it.”

They were quiet until the sun dropped into the sea. The sky turned brilliant colors, and the water grew so bright, it looked like Hepthys’s golden ship had been melted, then drizzled along the surface of the ocean. Kono knew the warjunk would be dropping sea anchors. He steered himself out of the current he was sitting in, but didn’t drop his own. He wouldn’t need it, and he didn’t want to let the larger vessel’s drift take it over the horizon. Hepthys had been right; knowing a warjunk was raiding was one thing. Knowing where it was raiding was something else entirely. The massive vessel was far too close to Kamo’loa as it was.

He gathered up the sails, still stiff, and tied them to the mast. Salt came off it in dusty sheets. He turned his attention to dinner, sharing out fruit and dropping the overnight hooks into the water. Hepthys ate, brooding at the dot on the horizon.

“Why don’t you stop them?” Hepthys asked.

Kono’s mind had been home, with his friends, in the village he had lived all the days of his memory. The warjunk threatened all of those things, and the sick helplessness made him feel like a baby in his first squall.

“Huh?”

“The pirates. They come down and take from you. Why don’t you stop them?”

Kono got up on his elbows. “We do. They come down, we drive ‘em off.”

“Why don’t you do something to keep them from ever coming back?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Something.”

Kono lay back. This was the kind of thing he couldn’t tell the strange sky-girl. This was something he had to tell directly to the sky. Even now it was bleeding through with a million holes. No matter how much the gods tried, they couldn’t keep light out.

“I thought about that when I was small. They come down, they take, then they go home. Maybe we could do something. Learn to make boats that big, learn to work bronze and make sea fire. Maybe we go and start taking from them. Maybe we go, burn down their villages. Kill their people. Maybe then they too afraid to ever come back.” Kono swallowed. “But then I think...I think we can’t get rid of them without getting rid of us, too. Who we really are.”

Hepthys was silent. Kono peeked over at her, and she was staring up at the sky the same as he was, though while he felt wonder, Hepthys’s expression was closer to longing. Like the look on a person’s face when they leave a sweetheart behind.

“Your people don’t raid?” Kono asked.

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“Goddess, no. What would we take?”

“People.”

“My people aren’t slavers.” The hatred in her voice was palpable, and made Kono feel a bit better.

“Food then.”

“We have as much as we need.”

“But you’re so tiny!”

“You’re a giant.”

Kono grinned and slapped his belly. “I’m a runt!”

Hepthys had to laugh. “I can’t even imagine such a thing.”

“So, you come from a land o’ plenty far away.” As Kono spoke, Hepthys withered in front of him. She was plainly uncomfortable, but Kono was having a hard time bringing his curiosity to heel. Even without the wings, she looked like no one he had ever seen. And she had fallen out of the sky in a ship made of sunlight.

“Atum-Ra,” she said quietly.

“Right, Atum-Ra.” The name sounded exotic to him. Almost the name of a nation, but not quite.

She nodded.

“Atum-Ra your god then?”

“No, nothing like that. Our goddess is seen through the sun.”

“The sun? No, that’s put there by the tribes. When we hold back the dark.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“The tribes are all different. We have different gods we lull, different islands we live on, but we’re the same. Same sea, you understand? She connects us one to the other. I am Kamo’loa, but every tribe lives in me. That love keeps us together, keeps us safe, keeps us happy. Waiola used to live in the time between day and night. It was the love of the tribes that brought together, made warm and bright, and the first of our elders threw it into the sky. Became the sun. When the gods woke up, they tried to smother it. Wove a cloak of night so that we wouldn’t see our love.” Kono grinned. “Joke’s on them, huh? We got enough love that the night never takes hold for too long.”

“My people believe that the sun is an expression of our goddess’s power. And yes, love.”

“Not too different,” Kono said. “Maybe the sea connects us after all.”

“Maybe,” she said. “There are many suns in the sky.”

Kono fought the laughter. Wasn’t nice to laugh at someone, but Hepthys sounded crazy. “Many suns?”

Hepthys pointed at the sky, where the pinpoints of light the gods couldn’t keep out shined. “There. Stars. Every one of them is a sun.”

Kono wanted to disagree, but she sounded so certain. “How do you know?”

“My people have a way of seeing them. Bringing far objects much closer to the eye.”

“Sounds like magic.”

“It’s a kind of magic.”

Kono nodded. He wondered which gods the people of Atum-Ra used for their powers. This goddess perhaps. It made a certain amount of sense, now that he was thinking of it. If the gods were in the deep dark of the sea, the goddess living on high had a symmetry. Hapua’s favorite quotes from Makaha were the ones about everything being a reflection, and it was in fact these reflections that made life possible. Perhaps Hepthys was right.

***

Kono awakened to a soft splash. He sat up, peering over the side, and a grin lit up his face. He crept across the swaying boat and touched Hepthys’s shoulder. She stirred, opening bleary eyes.

“You gonna want to see this,” he whispered, beckoning her over. She blinked away sleep, following his motion.

At first, in the blue light of morning, it looked like little more than a choppy sea. Some of the peaks of water were more solid than the others, and when they flopped back onto the surface, they did so with a splash. Kono watched Hepthys’s expression deepen into wonder as she stared first at, then beyond the surface of the water.

Thousands, maybe more, shapes flapped through the water, so many that more than a few were pushed to the surface where their fleshy fins broke the surface. Twin trails of lights, glowing a soft purple, ran from their heads to their tails. Their flat bodies undulated, appearing as water brought to life.

“What are they?” Hepthys asked.

“Hahlua,” Kono said. “While the god Hakea sleeps, he dreams. These are his dreams.”

“But they’re beautiful.”

“I think it’s like a nightmare. A person is good, can have a bad dream. Stand to reason a god could have a good dream.”

“Where are they going?”

“Over the horizon. They come up from deep water go to the cove where they born, and they come up on land and spawn. Then back out to sea.”

“Thanks for waking me up.”

“Glad you were happy.”

Kono reeled in the hooks, grateful that none of the hahlua had taken the bait. That would have been bad luck. He prepared breakfast for the two of them and and sailed free of the parade of migrating hahlua, then was back on the trail of the warjunk.

It was headed north-northwest. Not going back to the nations. It was returning to the tribes. Warjunks on a raid hit the tribes, starting at the westernmost, and going as far as their holds still had space and as long they could until the tribes massed to stop them. Only one place this vessel could be headed.

“Mele,” he said. Then, when he felt Hepthys’s confused gaze on him, he said, “That’s where it’s going.”

“Another tribe?”

He nodded. “Neighbors.”

Mele was two days away from Kamo’loa. Less if the wind and currents were kind. If this was part of a larger raid, the warjunk could easily turn and bear down on Kono’s home.

“I’m sorry,” Hepthys said.

Soon, Mele came into view on the horizon. The mountain was first, the black tip poking from the central mass of the island, surrounded in a wreath of emerald green. The fertile highlands, carved into terraces by the farmers, heading down into the village proper. The island’s small bay was last.

The warjunk moved into the bay, becoming harder to see as it grew close to the island. Trees broke up the outline, though its dun colors, flapping pennons, and the massive golden ship hanging from its crane betrayed it. Kono and Hepthys peered toward land as Kono shifted the boat’s trajectory.

He was no longer heading for the island, but across it, sweeping up the southeatern side, where the Mele village was located.

He craned his head, hunting the shore. Something was wrong. What he was seeing didn’t make sense. He struggled to put the information together.

The village was a smoking ruin on the back of their great statue. Not unexpected, but awful, and Kono’s stomach churned in queasy spirals.

The nations hurled their pots of sea fire at anything and everything. What they could not take with them, they would burn to ash. That wasn’t it, though. Wasn’t what stunned him. Destruction from the nation long ago lost its ability to shock.

Then it hit him. What had looked like a perfect line of trees around the side of the village was in fact a wall. Formed from tree trunks and sharpened at the top, it was being put into place by people who could only be Mele. Freebooters oversaw them, clutching whips and bronze blades.

“Building a wall?” Kono breathed aloud.

“They’re fortifying the village,” Hepthys said. “The pirates are building a fort.”

“Why?”

“They want to stay, I think.”

“No,” Kono said. It was preposterous. “The nation never stays. They take, then they go. That’s it.”

“They’re staying,” Hepthys said. “Believe me. I know what fortifications look like.”

Kono couldn’t imagine such a thing—but there was much he couldn’t imagine before he met Hepthys. The realization hit him like a freezing wave. Freebooters staying would establish a port. A town. A new nation. One that was so close to the tribes that raids would be constant and without warning. Raids that would be impossible to defend against, let alone stop. His own responsibility crystallized in front of him, and for once, he didn’t hesitate.

“We have to go,” he said. “Waited too long. I gotta warn my people.”

He leaned, sticking an oar into the water and turning the ship in an arc. He caught the wind and found the current, sweeping back around the side of the island to the south. He never looked to see if the nation had spotted him. There was no time.

“Where are you going?” Hepthys demanded.

“Home!”

“No! My ship is back there! I need to get to it!”

“How?” he asked her. “You hurt. You don’t have weapons. You gonna walk up and ask them for it? I can tell you how that goes.”

“It’s not just me. It’s you too.” Even as she spoke, Kono could see it in her eyes: she knew it was a pointless gesture.

“Sorry,” he said.

“So we run instead?”

“We do what I have to do. I got people at home don’t know a warjunk’s right there waitin’ for them. Maybe comin’ this way next. We go in, we get captured, nobody knows. The warjunk does what it wants, takes more people away, an’ we could have done somethin’.”

Hepthys’s shoulders slumped. “All right.”

Kono wasn’t waiting for her assent. All he could think about was how close the warjunk was and how much damage it could do. In his mind’s eye, he saw the blackened remains of the Mele town lodge, and imagined the one at Kamo’loa, nothing more than charred beams reaching into the air like the carcass of a cooked fish.