Ho Stabbed a Fish at the Lagoon When He Heard It

CHAPTER ONE | HO STABBED A FISH AT THE LAGOON WHEN HE HEARD IT

It began with a rumble.

Thinking it was his stomach, he ignored the sound until it grew and deepened into a tearing above. A giant hole had peeled open over his tiny island.

“Auē!” Ho marveled at the wounded sky, “Would you look at that?”

A void gaped wide. The dying moi at the end of his spear mouthed with it. Breakfast. After so many days of waiting.

“Rā stains the ceiling of heavens warmly, as always. The familiar sail of dawn marks the dividing line between night and day.” With his free hand he fingered round the wound in the sky adding, “but something has torn open up there.”

Another rumble, this time it was his gut. Ho slid the fish down along the body of his favoured companion, the spear Kalapa, until a weak hand gripped the tail. It flapped angrily, jerking his arm. Even while his strength was low as ebbtide, the fish could not break free. Nor did Ho shift his gaze from above.

Then what was one became two. Another opening, born from nothing.

“Auē!” Ho repeated. “Is this real?”

In his starved and ruined condition, he could only believe the dawn god Haronga had opened his eyes to witness the day it birthed—or was it staring at him? After all this time, he thought.

For there were many gods familiar to Ho, named for the parts of the day and night and even the different stages of darkness, or the epochs of time taken for Io the supreme to create life, responsible for the immediate moment bleeding into one: day, night, earth, sky, land, mountains, rivers, forests, all living creatures—all atua including his favoured sea god Takaroa, who spoke only in waves, each of whom he’d acknowledged equally—and so why now was his veneration repaid with observance by a god barely considered?

Haronga, dawn god? Who might occupy a rear position only, never leading the fleet of atua. Am I cursed now for even thinking it?

Auē, I am hungry, his drifted mind concluded.

Reeling in his thoughts, he waded east to get closer to land, but stopped after a step—blinking, bewildered by what he saw. A layer of starlit sky replaced the whites and flesh of the eyes.

“Night, lodged in dawn?” Waist-deep in warm, shifting blue, he called up to the god, “Haronga, are those your starry eyes?”

Silence.

Ho waited for a reply.

A fly buzzed the dead moi.

Blood spilled from its wounded head and dripped into the pool, pinking the water.

More silence.

Another fly, hungry to spoil his meal.

Swatting at it, Ho shifted his stance. Then he called again into the hush, “Is it only you, god—or are the others coming? Must I share this fish?”

Wading a little farther, he asked Kalapa, “Or have I finally lost my mind from all this hunger and loneliness?”

The spear remained silent but as they neared the shore an understanding struck him: “I’ve smashed my gourd somehow. It’s leaked out. That must be it!”

A bright laugh broke from Ho.

Up went his companion. “Kalapa! I have lost my mind! This cursed island has scooped out my hua—now I’m only the shell!” Ho stabbed at the sky and cried, “We are one and the same brother—brainless!”

BOOM!

A fiery, egg-shaped rock shot through the nearest hole, trailing smoke and thunder. The ground quaked.

BOOM!

Another blast from the other tear followed. Out shot a second brown egg, striking a sailing ōtaha that crossed its path. All but feathers were left in the wake of the collision.

“Perhaps not eyes.”

Turning to follow the line overhead, Ho reconsidered. “Looks more like you’ve been pierced twice and your guts are leaking like a burst dam.”

And because he was still holding up Kalapa, scratched at an itch through the ropes of matted hair with its tongue, while the two long threads of cloud bled down from the torn sky curling towards the northern edge of island.

Beneath his feet, he felt both impacts. Dirt and rock burst above the distant palm line and his slow wade turned urgent. A wave of heated air rushed over the lagoon. Then another. It left bitter grit on his tongue and the stench of rotting eggs, and with it his worry: the breath-smell of volcanoes.

Lowering and twisting Kalapa into view, he asked, “Perhaps Takali Foto has finally blown Kafiki apart?”

The spear, smoothed by years of loyal service, quivered in his grasp. And those eggs fragments of its shattered crown?

Ho nodded, lingering on the eastern horizon. If the volcano god made good on years of grumbling threats, destroying his homelands entirely, it also meant an end to his self-exile. Stealing away any chance to balance by absence, all the negative, all the darkness, his reign of blood as Champion of Kafiki rendered over the years. Any chance to prove to her he was capable of peace, now gone. Something beyond hunger rippled inside him, a new pain. It would mean she was gone too.

Turning again to the east, past the lagoon where Tokoroa frothed in broken waves against the atoll sea wall, Ho searched the line of horizon. A stretch held in memory—without need of cloud or star or any other marker—came into view: the expanse of water where his homelands lay. Far beyond sight, hidden by sea and morning haze, he squinted for a break. A plume. A wisp. A single curl of smoke.

There was nothing.

Clouds spread too far, veiling everything beneath. The horizon held true. No sign.

Kalapa sighed in his hand. I was a bit worried there, chief.

“If not Takali Foto then perhaps some vengeful spirit or taniwha?” Ho looked down at himself. “Arms stripped of muscle, chest hollowed by hunger. Legs, thin and trembling. I’m more like some ancient tohunga makutu than a warrior. If what lies ahead is a fight,” he confessed, “I am in no shape for it.”

And poorly armed, Kalapa added.

A voice deep from beyond the lagoon rolled in. You should be careful, son.

“Tokoroa! I hear you!” Ho stood staunch. “I acknowledge you—my ocean god!”

The sea rose: Stay sharp, boy!

Kalapa again urgent in his grip. Like me!

Those two eggs might hatch; the surf swelled in warning. And the Champion of Kafiki could represent nothing more than a trophy.

“Something to be hunted. Or worse.”

Like this fish. A meal. Kalapa finished.

Ho eyed the spear, then the ocean. “Is that all?”

Wave after wave came the response. Pay attention!

Stuck in the shallows, slowly sinking, Ho held the counsel of Tokoroa in his mind. After Kafiki, the ocean found him alone upon the stolen waka—too vast for titles, too ancient for human deeds. Its broken swell replaced the affairs of tribes with a single command: Pay attention. A god’s permission to live without drifting into past or future. Upon his little rock, when he heeded it, Tokoroa surfaced and spoke. In time, so did others—sky father, earth mother; wind, trees. The fish. The birds. The crabs. Even Kalapa, once a face carved and a name given, found its voice. The chorus lived within him. It kept him human, and not alone. Ho cursed the sea accusing Takaroa of emptying his lagoon of fish on purpose—a cruel test. That was a year ago. Since then, the god had gone quiet. Hearing Tokoroa’s commands again released something long trapped.

Don’t cry, my son. I never left you. Tears ran quick through his moustache and into his beard. Pay attention. Even your tears hold my presence.

He wiped his face, tasting salt on his lips. Relief sharpened his senses. A warning from Tokoroa after so long, meant something. Then his stomach spoke again: a growl, a twist, fourteen days of hunger. “Quiet, all of you,” Ho urged, his mind beginning to cloud. “I need to think.”

Again his eyes were drawn east, and unease came with it. A sense of being watched. That old feeling. A champion expected to perform. I’ve forgotten what to do, he confessed—then flinched.

Don’t let them hear that, a voice cautioned.

“It’s because I am weary,” he pleaded. “Because I am starving.”

Ho glanced at Kalapa, and the crudely carved face whispered back, Brother. Nobody watches. Eat the fish we speared.

Grateful, he raised the moi and bit deep chewing through scale and skin and bone. It cut his mouth raw. Chewing through the pain he savoured the blood. When finished, nothing remained in hand but Kalapa.

What now, chief?

“Now we run.”

Ho splashed out of the lagoon and sprinted the path through a thin stand of pandanus north. The first dunes rose beyond the trees. A sandy brow with a ridgeline running east to west across his island. By the time he hit the thinly grassed slope his lungs were already burning. Midway he folded over into a coughing fit, then forced himself on. Underfoot were forgotten steps of half-buried coconut palms, and he dug in and hauled himself up the last few to the top.

Ho crouched and rested, facing the north shore. Below lay the thickest stretch of jungle on his island, separating the inner lagoon from the foreshore. Beyond the trees, he could now see the second set of dunes. They rose lower and followed the shape of bay, blocking his view of the beach and whatever waited ahead. That was where the two eggs had crashed. Ho slid most of the way down the far side and charged into the shade.

In silence, he moved from tree to tree, relieved by the cooler air. Pressing himself against each palm, Ho imagined he was blending into bark like a vokai lizard. But while thin from hunger, Ho’s shadow spread well past the width of the oldest trunks, and he quietly cursed his enormity.

Ahead, the path widened. Miro spread in thick stands between sandy patches. Dry grass caught faintly at his ankles as he passed. Kalapa became slippery. Sweat beaded off limbs, staining the open ground. Aware he was becoming a target, he moved lower between palm and fern, soft-footed along the trail. The deep blue of Takaroa showed again in glimpses through breaks in the green and brown of the jungle. Weary, he began to search for the giant flying eggs.

When he reached the bush edge where the big crabs used to burrow, bickering voices rose from the beach, carried on a strong southerly.

“You dumb brat! Why should I help you?”

“Because you’re my cousin—and I’m stuck! And hurt!”

“You lie! You’re only saying that because you lost. You’re a sore loser!”

“But you are family!”

Ho dropped to his knees, then crawled to the edge of the dune. He lay flat on his stomach and shuffled forward until he could peek over the ridge and down to the beach below. Two wide hollows pitted the sand where the figures stood. Female-shaped. Almost his height.

“I didn’t lose, Loha!” The larger one snapped, cradling her arm. “I broke my wrist when I landed. It hurts!”

Loha, the smaller uninjured one, folded her arms, arched her back, and rose onto her toes in triumph, smiling. “Exactly. That means you lost, weakling. Being stuck in that pit means I win. Having such an ugly face your whole life means you’ll always be beneath me Arahuta—forever!”

Arahuta, the broken one, screamed. “Just help me!”

Loha snorted but crouched and yanked her cousin out of the hole by her hair. “I’m still telling Aunty.” Grunting, “Can’t wait to see her face!”

From the ridge, Ho observed in silent awe. Their skin lined with tattoo, gleamed in brilliant coral blue. Patterns coiled over limbs, glinting in sunlight. Ho was reminded how Rā could spear his light into Takaroa’s depths, scribing it on the body of the reef. Gods of some kind, for sure. In human form. Bundled hair, leaf coloured, flowed to ankle and foot. Maybe demigods? Dazzling atua rangatahi, offspring of mixed descent.

Arahuta brushed sand off her thick forearms and thighs with her good arm, scowling. “Loha! Please, don’t tell mother! We’ll both be punished. We’re not even supposed to be here!”

Loha took a few steps towards the dune, unknowingly closer to him, then turned back. “Exactly. He could already be watching.”

Ho listened, alarmed. They are looking for a man.

Arahuta tested her wrist. “Aē. You should heal me so I can fight.”

From his ridge he could see the break clearly. Bone skewered skin. Ho winced. She says it hurts, yet she scarcely flinches. I would be crying. A gust swept across the beach, lifting seaweed, driftwood, and sand in small spirals stirred by Loha’s pacing.

“No,” Loha said. “I’m not wasting mana. If he’s as strong as they say, I’ll need it. I can’t rely on you now.”

“But if you heal me, I can use both arms,” Arahuta reasoned, pleading.

“And for what?” Loha smirked. “He’ll probably snap both off like twigs.”

She strode ahead, laughing. Ho watched fury replace shame in Arahuta’s darkening eyes before she fell into step behind her cousin. He dropped back down, pressed to the dune, heart a battle drum. They were getting closer—twenty feet at most. Instinct stirred awake.

Breath. Calm the heart.

He needed to see them clearly—to read their posture, measure the threat, and eased his head over the ridge like the prow of a waka. Below him, Arahuta had drawn up beside Loha, eyes narrowed, sidelong. He gripped Kalapa, ready to rise. But before he could, Arahuta drove her heel into Loha’s knee.

Crack!

The joint snapped inward as easily as driftwood kindling, kicked in half for the fire. Loha screamed and collapsed. She clutched her cousin, dragging her down. “You bitch!” Loha cried.

Both scrambled in the sand, clawing for each other’s throats. Arahuta spat into her face. “You’ve gone too far today!”

“Good! Now you know your true value. You are useless to me!”

Arahuta screamed and they rolled and fought. Sand and spit flew. Fingers hunting for eyes. Ho could only watch. The wind stilled. He felt the air change, unused to violence after so many quiet years alone.

Do they mean to kill each other? Cousins? Children of gods? Clouds cleared. Ranginui hung above them, suspended, waiting for him to move. The stirring of his world, gods manifested, all signs pointing towards action. Ho started to rise—then shame burned his cheeks and he sank back down, cursing his feeble memory. Fool. You are naked too.

Unaccustomed to the company of others, let alone atua, Ho had taken to living without his maro. Is it too late to retreat to the hut for a loincloth?

Another scream blew up from the beach. Enough. If all of them stood bare beneath Rā, then so be it. If shame was the price of stepping between two cousins who meant murder, he would pay it. Atua or not, they were both badly hurt. They both needed help.

Ho rose and began to climb down the dune, announcing himself. “I am Howaru, son of F-!” Another buried log caught a foot, and he tumbled over and down the remaining slope. The cousins kept scrapping in the sand, his hoarse call for attention ignored, lost to rage.

Ho recovered and tried again, arms wide and welcoming. “Hear me, children of the gods!”

In his right he held Kalapa flat and balanced, level with the horizon. “Please. Do not fight each other. You are relations. If you draw your parents’ wrath upon one another, it will fall on my island too.”

Only when he reached the foreshore did they heed him. Both turned at once, eyes wide, contemptuous, and unafraid. They broke apart with a shove and sprang from the sand. Loha leaned into Arahuta for support. Arahuta shrugged her off.

Loha hopped once on the spot and spoke first. “Who are you, human?”

“You can’t spy on the actions of atua!”

Then, gesturing from head-to-toe Loha added, “Your eyes aren’t worthy of this glory!”

“Ho. I—I am Howaru.” Fourteen days of starving had hollowed his courage and blunted what little cleverness remained. “S-son of Feke.”

Both glanced at each other and smirked in unison. “S-son of Feke?”

“Āe. My home is Feke, off the coast of Kafiki.” Ho paused, realising he’d not spoken to a soul in almost ten years, then pushed on. “From the waters of Takaroa. From what used to be Lapita. I saw you sail across the sky! Are you offspring of Ranginui or something?”

Arahuta raised an eyebrow then spoke through clenched teeth. “Not in the slightest.”

“Carry on, human,” said Loha.

“I was a hero once, but no longer. This is my home now. Where I choose to stand. I have been alone for ten years, and my speech is clumsy. Forgive me.”

“No, fool.” Loha’s lip curled. “Tell us your true bloodlines. You claim to be a son of Feke, that rotting sea-beast your village is built upon. But we must hear the rest of your genealogy. Who is your father?”

“Yes,” Arahuta added, circling. “And who is the most renowned woman in your line?”

Heat climbed once more to his cheeks. I don’t know. Ho dropped his gaze to the sand. Some say I am born of gods; others whisper I am nothing more than a slave child of captives.

“I know nothing of my lineage,” he admitted. “No one ever told me.” Tears leaked again. Curse this ruined state. Unable to master his shyness, he stayed downcast. “I am of no importance to the spawn of gods unless by way of service. I can see you are both hurt—”

“Auē! He weeps like a baby!”

Nose running, Ho swiped it away and re-found his grip on Kalapa, turning the spear in his hand for comfort. A habit picked up over long years alone.

One of them snorted. “Listen to him. He thinks one thing and says another. He doesn’t even know himself!”

Arahuta echoed him in a false, wailing voice. “I was once a hero! Auē-auē-auē! I’m lost and alone and afraid!”

“And I have no mana!” Loha piled in.

Ho returned to his dirty feet.

They carried on mocking. “Can’t even look a pair of beautiful goddesses in the eye.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

He heard them giggling.

“Patu gone patu, aye?”

The laughter stung. It whirlpooled in his ears, stirring a pride long dormant—shaming him the way only women could. Why must they always mock me? Why be so cruel?

Loha spoke up again, her voice the harsher of the two. “So that’s how it is? Some hero you turned out to be. Are you the only one who lives on this little rock, or have we sought the wrong warrior?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the face of Kalapa staring up at him. It’s okay, chief. Finish what you were going to say. I believe in you.

Ho rubbed his eyes and swallowed. “Aē. I was known. A hero once, it’s true. I became tainted and unstable, so I sailed to this island—this beach—the place where you fell.” His voice grew in confidence as he turned a slow circle, motioning to the land. “I cultivated what I could and made it mine. I remain here until I am balanced with Io again.”

He heard a snigger, but still unable to match their brilliance and regard, he searched instead to the ocean. “And with the blessing of Takaroa, one day I will return to Kafiki purified.”

Ho spread his arms, and a giant gust blew onto the beach, guided by the ocean. The breeze smelled of Takaroa, filling him with spirit. Finally able to acknowledge the demigods, he returned their cool stare and declared, “Over three thousand warriors I’ve slain. I am Howaru! Champion of Kafiki!”

Eyes went wide. Arahuta lunged. Loha stumbled behind, limping towards him.

“Then you are the one we’re looking for!” Arahuta cried. “A son of Feke! Captive child of Takaroa!”

Before he could move, Arahuta leaped and drove him into the sand, pinning him down. Ho barely resisted, stunned by the words. If true, it would make me kin to gods too, and their equal. Yet even as it occurred to him—captive child of Takaroa—he felt the press of her body against his chest, a current passing from her to him. Something eternal between woman and man. She is riding me like some overturned waka!

“He must die, Arahuta!” Loha dropped to her knees beside them and shouted, “Do not fail again, cousin!”

Spellbound by their mana, Ho caught himself grinning. Admiring the pair instead of readying for the attack. Eyes wide-set, unlike his, the colour of the deepest part of Takaroa one could dive. Skin more like hard scale yet empty of flesh, iridescent in the light, something between shark and jellyfish. Arahuta, the one straddling him, had traces of yellow flashing under her skin, while Loha throbbed with streaks of green. Spiritual power pulsing through their bodies.

Raising her good arm, Arahuta bared her teeth and struck. The first blow landed under his ribs and pain erupted through him. Her fist hit heavier than any man he’d fought, like falling moai. Then another blow, across his throat. And another.

“Please,” he choked, “I don’t want to fight.”

Ho twisted beneath her, arms raised, Kalapa held fast in guard. He was caught in the clutch of her thighs, still under spell. A shocking vision entered his mind: Arahuta joined by Loha, riding him the right way up. Auē.

Helpless, his eyes roamed over her, lingering on all the parts of Arahuta that weren’t trying to kill him: strange freckles in the soft dent of her nose. My own snout, broken and bent, must disgust her. Hair a forest, thick and long and straight, unlike my bird’s nest. She smells of heated coconut, with ocean and volcano threaded through it. Her eyes were so much larger than his and he breathed in her image and the rightness of her shape. Again, he pleaded, “Arahuta, we shouldn’t fight.

Pushing at Kalapa to get a clean shot, the demigod slid down his torso stopping at his hip. “Don’t worry, Champion of Kafiki,” she spat. “You won’t be fighting.” Then she slammed her fist into his jaw, “Not through all your dying.”

More punches rained upon him, this time to the head, where she’d gained an opening. She is set on killing me, and I feel no urge to repay the imbalance or defend myself. He wondered where his warrior spirit had gone. Their mana sits on my chest like a net; extending outwards before tightening over my body. I’m trapped. Yet some spirit remained. A tidal pull of energy between them. Heat, like the rub of hika to mahoe, built at the join of their hips. A fiery slick licked and rose, drawing his attention. The same ancient friction between Papatūānuku and Ranginui, birthing the flame of life itself. Something dormant, deep inside, had been exhumed and ignited by the demigod atop him. Ho wondered, it feels like some deadly spell of mana depletion. Threading its way from the womb of mother earth, it rooted him to the spot, piercing up through the belly, weaving into Arahuta, yearning to reach the sky. “Can you feel Papatūānuku and Ranginui inside you too?” he asked, disbelieving. “You’re all wet!”

Arahuta’s eyes widened, before the blows quickened. “I am not!”

“Disgusting creature!” Loha echoed.

Arahuta attacked so fast and viciously that her fists were a blur. Ho blocked as many as he could with Kalapa, but his senses soon broke apart. Blood pulsed in his skull, and he could no longer feel his body except for a tugging under his skin towards Ranginui the skyfather. Is that my spirit wanting to escape again? he wondered.

Lightning split the sky, then something cracked inside his face. His nose—his jaw—obliterated. Blood sprayed in bursts across his vision. I can taste it. She’s doing real damage. “Why me?”

Loha leaned in and answered:

“Your name has been pulled from the shadows, Howaru of Feke. A payment to balance Kafiki’s blood debt. Takali Foto demands a son both of gods and human slaves. The underworld has determined the Champion of Kafiki. The prophecy must hold. The highest of the lowest ranked first.”

A bolt of lightning struck the beach, blasting sand into the air. Ho saw past Arahuta’s gleaming face as a third tear opened in the sky, drawing cloud and swallowing the light. Day turned to night.

And from the void a voice thundered, “A blood sacrifice has been requested. That of a son of God and slave.”

“No,” Ho gasped, barely able to speak. “I was born of woman and man only. Unknown captives. I am sure of it.”

The voice roared louder:

“AS I AM WĀTEA—ATUA OF THE COSMOS—CHILD OF IO, SO ARE YOU: SON OF TAKAROA!”

Ho could not deny the truth of the declaration any longer. At last, he had an answer to his whakapapa. Anger to all who had wronged him dissolved. Resentments replaced by peace inside his heart. The unknowing unravelled, and with it the pain and confusion of the last twenty-seven years of his life.

I surrender to it. Let my spirit rise into the light of the heavens, to be cradled in peace by Io for eternity.