Faturaki cursed at the clouds

The skies were overcast and a strong southeasterly wind rose against them. In open water, with no stars to guide their course, he would have to read the swells alone—a skill even the greatest wayfinders could lose without the heavens’ lights.

As they set off for Kafiki Island, with the sun at its highest, he asked Takaroa to observe his waka closely and its crew. To assist him in his navigation when he could not rely on the stars. Send your birds and swells as signs, he beseeched the god Howaru most favoured. He should expect a better result now the champion was aboard his waka. Once beyond the breakers and the spiny part of the reef he called for the sail to be raised. If I could tie Ho to the prow I would. Let them all see, he thought. This is my wayfinder now.

“Strong wind brings strong current!” he shouted between the rhythm of the crew’s chants. “Be ready to hold our course against the drift.”

He frowned toward the horizon. And what else waits for us? Will Namaka stir her uri again?

“Just don’t steer these boys into another reef guarded by taniwha, old man!” Ho called, laughter bright in the wind.

Tu‘unaga turned pale, glancing back at Faturaki.

Faturaki only shook his head. “And what if I did?” he called. “It would be good training for you, boy—to kill a prize! Ten years on that island have dulled your edge.” He nodded toward the fish-spear stowed beside him. “You must be sharp—like that obsidian blade.”

“I’m always sharp.”

Ho took the spear and his Kalapa, then leapt from the waka into the green-blue sea.

“Be careful—that spear is a treasure!” Faturaki shouted, half in jest. Good, he thought. Your arrogance is returning. You’ll need it before you’re ready again.

He shifted the steering hoe, forcing Ho to swim harder to rejoin them. The exercise would test his lungs and heart, both soft from years of idleness. Yet what troubled Faturaki most was not Ho’s body, but his mind. Pride I can feed. Strength I can build. But belief—he must find that himself. When arrogance is joined to skill, it breeds champions. Faturaki had seen it through generations, among ariki and commoners alike. Conceit, rightly harnessed, shields the mind from doubt. It lets a child look past his flaws—even those his kin would never let him forget.

KER-SPLUNK! Ho dumped a giant mahimahi into the waka. “See that, au!” Ho spat, treading water with the spear held high. “It was the first one I saw down there.”

“Looks a bit under,” said Faturaki.

“That’s not small, old man,” he replied, heaving himself back into the waka.

“Tufukia caught one twice as big the other day. Aye, Galaiga?”

“Aye?”

Faturaki raised a brow at the warrior while Ho shook the water from his hair.

“Oh, yes, Tohunga, it was a monster,” Galaiga said, playing along.

“Stop talking pig shit Faturaki,” Ho said, before adding, “Where was the leftovers when you picked me up then? I don’t remember seeing any Mahimahi, just some old snapper that smelled like Chief Rakanui’s wife.”

Everyone laughed at the insult to the Autara Chief Rakanui. His wife was made infamous when it was discovered she had been taking lovers behind his back, all famous tohunga from across the islands. Men across all tribes knew the legend of her magical seke.

“You must have been last Ho because when I knew her the seke tasted like puga! Had the same effect too!”

“Be quiet Faturaki. You haven’t bedded a woman in over fifty years.”

“True. But the last one I had wasn’t already fifty. Why you even chased that old trophy is beyond understanding. She was grandmother to twenty by the time you had her!”

“Eh?! Ho went for it as well!” Galiaga, Tufukia, and Tu‘unaga burst into laughter again, slapping each other on the back, pleading for more of the tale. Sinakoa looked elsewhere, disgusted.

“Ho will compete for everything. Even women are a challenge to him. He had to have her so that people would know she favoured warriors as much as tohunga. Isn’t that right son?”

“Shut up!” Ho barked, anger flashing through him. “You sound like dogs in the night. I’m done with this talk. Hoe! Before I throw you all over the side.”

“I’m kaihautū on this waka-ama,” Faturaki called from the stern.

“Then find the way old man!”

Faturaki held the silence, letting the wind cool their tempers. His mind is still too fragile, he thought. Always anger as his first defense, enough to set men on edge, to make them fear their own words. A useless shield for one who means to command when violence is the only way forward. A chief inspires first through service, never by looming over others. A wide cloud is still mostly empty. To measure oneself by the shadow one casts is a dangerous seduction: mistaking fear for influence.

“A wide cloud is still mostly empty, Ho.”

“What?”

“Is this how you intend to lead when we get back to Kafiki?”

“I never know what he’s talking about?” Howaru broke into derisive laugh. “Always in riddles, always nonsense. Right Galiaga?”

Faturaki watched as Galaiaga turned his face away, concentrating on cleaning the fish.

Ho continued, “You Tohunga. You think you’re so clever. Nobody ever knows what you’re saying. That’s all. That’s why we ignore you all. Go back to that volcano you ancient idiot. Leave us all alone. We don’t need your sorcery!”

Disappointed but not surprised, Faturaki turned his eyes to the horizon. Ranginui covered up again by an ugly cloak of gray. Reading the swells instead, he found the sea’s long rhythm, the life force of ocean atua. Then the ocean broke open in spray, and dolphins leapt from the dark water, bearing south.

“Takaroa,” he murmured, “I hear you.”

Taking the omen as a rebuke to Ho, Faturaki commanded his adopted son to take up the steering paddle and set the waka on the dolphins’ path. Chastised, Howaru obeyed and said nothing more, brooding as the day passed and the sea grew calm again.

# # #

“There it is, Faturaki!” cried Galaiga from the bow.

At dawn on the third day, the island’s ridge rose on the horizon. All five of the crew set down their hoe and watched in silence: Kafiki motu, glowing through the morning mist. Ho stayed at the stern to steer while Faturaki moved into position as kaihautū, calling the timing, trimming the sail, and turning the ama inward. Their destination was Feke Motu, the small island off the coast of Kafiki. Feke was home to Ho’s adopted people, known across Kafiki as the Takaroans. It was said the atua Takaroa had guided the giant taniwha Feke, and those riding upon its back, to this final resting place. They were the first Takaroans, and their descendants still lived upon the creature.

When Rā stood highest, the island was plain before them. Yellow sands of the main beach shone beneath the sun. A crowd was swarming, awaiting their hero’s return, still too distant to see any one person. Ho steadied the helm, guiding the waka-ama northward, skimming across the face of the bay as though to pass it by.

“Why are we drifting, Fatu?” called Tufukia.

Faturaki allowed Ho to carry on steering away from land, suspecting the intent.

“Boy, do you know where you are going?”

Ho gave no answer, eyes fixed on the current, the waka nose aimed toward the island’s northwestern flank.

“Hoe hard, boys!” The three warriors’ bit at the sea with their paddles as the westerly wind eased them forward.

Ho lifted the steering paddle out of the water. “Hold!”

A flat patch of ocean shimmered ahead; beyond them rose Kafiki, and higher still, Takali Foto.

“Did you bring the Monoi oil, Fatu?” Ho asked smiling, stowing the dripping urangi.

He nodded at his boy, flashing his eyebrows, glad to see his mood improving. Faturaki mixed the coconut oil with Tiare petals, chanting softly as he poured the glowing liquid into a small clay vessel. Faturaki passed it over. Ho tilted his head, poured the oil into each ear, then rubbed the rest over his nose and mouth. A scent bua blossoms rose in the warm air. When he was done, he swallowed the last of the oil and let the sun set its warmth upon his skin.

Without a word, Ho drew the heavy anchor stone into his lap and met Faturaki’s gaze once more. He nodded his approval. Ho leaned over the side of the waka, felt for the ocean’s pull, and dropped into the deep.

# # #

Ho plunged into the deep blue, cradling the anchor stone against his chest. The water was so clear he could see the shadow of Feke above—the great creature lying dormant, island-sized and dreaming.

Long ago, they said, Feke had been a great octopus upon whose back their Takaroans ancestors built their homes when Kule, the tribal hero, first found Kafiki, thirty generations past. Eight vast limbs stretched below the body—thicker than a stand of Autara forest kauri. Four anchored deep in the seabed; the other four drifted free beneath the waves. Its roaming arms had become massive reefs, feeding his people with an endless supply of fish to trade with the tribes inland.

Ho sank deeper, holding to the anchor netting, the light fading above him. Faturaki’s sorcery was strong indeed; Ho felt no need for breath, and shame pricked him for insulting the old tohunga and his power. My words strike as hard as his fists. It was why he chose solitude more often than company. Faturaki should know this by now. I will ask forgiveness before the day ends, he decided.

A vast limb drifted overhead, dimming Rā’s thinning influence. Ho was truly in the domain of Takaroa now. Beneath Feke’s arm, a tohorā glided by, child in tow, both dwarfed by the giant reach of the ancient, resting taniwha. A current spun Ho in the whale’s wake, yet he pressed downward through the cold green dark, where the sharks swam, resembling spirits. The seabed rose to meet him. Pushing from the anchor, he swam toward a coral mound that rose like a banyan from the floor, each branch a finger curled by age. A school of smaller feke, each large as a man, streaked past toward the mother-island.

Then he saw something.

Not far from the seabed rose a mound of coral shaped like a banyan, branches curled and knotted by age. But something about it made his chest tighten. The colours were wrong. A ring of coral around its base was stained black—so black it looked like a pupil, gazing upward from beneath the ocean.

A great eye.

Just like the wounds in the sky that Loha and Arahuta had erupted from.

A shiver passed along his spine.

He kicked toward it.

As he drew close, he realised the water thinned strangely around the coral. Movement slowed. The light dimmed. A stillness took hold of everything—fish frozen mid-swim, sediment suspended without falling. Only the black ring remained alive, pulsing faintly as though breathing.

“There,” he whispered into his bubbles. “My prize.”

Totokona jutted from the coral, haft-first, as if waiting for his hand. He reached out and grabbed along the body of Totokona. The weapon remained out of reach and his fingers passed through the body of water into open air.

For a moment he saw two realms at once—the ocean around him, and another place overlapping it, like two mats woven imperfectly together. And then his grip was upon something dry. Ho jerked back but his wrist did not follow. Four hands seized it from the other side. And the black ring swelled, turning over, revealing a bulging living eye.

The ocean vanished from beneath him. Ho was yanked downward through the pupil of the sea. He crashed onto solid earth—warm, dry, smelling like the inside of a cave. The coral he had seen was not coral at all, but a small twisted tree sprouting from cracked ground, its branches curling protectively around Totokona.

Two figures stepped from either side of the tree. Loha. Arahuta.

But not as he last saw them—broken, bruised, furious with each other. They were younger and smaller somehow, hairless and with tail. Thick masses trailing to the floor. Both held features of a lizard only with eerily human faces and form. Ho wasn’t sure if he should be disgusted or not. They were even more fascinating creatures now.

Loha tilted her head, eyes glowing in the volcanic haze. “You came for your weapon, Howaru of Feke.”

Arahuta’s yellow eyes narrowed, the same look as before—hungry for a fight. “They said you would not resist the call. We were waiting.”

Ho rose slowly, and once he crossed the threshold, the tree holding Totokona broke apart. He pulled the weapon easily from its dying branches. “Your mother told me you had been banished,” he said, breath unsteady. “She warned me of your mischief.”

“She knows nothing Ho,” Loha agreed. “She can’t see inside this womb.”

Above him the sky was a dome of swirling ash and firelight. He felt he knew this place. Or he knew of it. Like a story told to him long ago by Faturaki, or a dream realm he had once visited but long forgot.

Arahuta moved first—blurring, leaping with impossible speed. Ho swung Totokona up to meet her. The clash shattered the quiet of that strange realm. And the fight began. Ho barely had time to grip the axe haft before the air shrieked with the next attack: Loha. Her claws raked at his face, but he was ready. He sank under her lunge and drove shoulder-first into her chest, lifting her off her feet. As she dropped, he stepped back onto his left foot and unleashed a front kick that caught her in the jaw, sending her rolling end over end until she crashed into the cavern wall. Howaru searched for Arahuta, readying for the next attack.

Above him, Arahuta clung somehow to the cavern ceiling. She descended through the ash-choked dark, limbs splayed, fingers hooked into talons. Ho threw himself into a roll, and the ground shuddered where she landed. Before he could rise, Loha was there, a blur of green scales. Arahuta followed close behind. She struck low, sweeping for his legs. Ho leapt, knees tucked, just as Loha clawed at him. Her talons tore deep gouges along his legs, but they shielded his belly and throat. He landed and sprang back as Loha lunged again. This time she missed. Ho swung Totokona in a tight parry, slicing her wrist before she could withdraw. Shock broke through her sneer, as if no weapon had ever cut her before, as if pain itself were new.

Ho did not let the pause go to waste. He charged and stabbed with the spear end of Totokona’s haft. Loha hissed, bending backward, spine and tail moving with a fluidity no human bones should allow. She was fast. Faster than Arahuta had been on the beach. In this realm inside the sea they held the advantage. Both lowered onto all fours and circled in opposing patterns, their bodies taking on more of the taniwha than the woman, chattering in a language that sounded like grinding stones.

“He is slow,” Arahuta spat, pacing to his left. Her yellow eyes were alight with predatory joy. “He is heavy with meat,” Loha agreed from the right.

They attacked in unison: Arahuta from the front, lunging for his throat, while Loha whipped around his flank. It was a hunting method as old as the lizards they had joined with. Ho roared, parrying Arahuta’s claws with the flat of the axe, the impact jarring his teeth. But the real threat was now beside him.

He felt the wind of the tail before he saw it: a thick, muscular cord of flesh and scale whipping toward his ankles to crush the bones. Ho twisted, drove his heel into the earth, and brought Totokona down in a brutal, shearing arc.

SCHLICK.

The obsidian edge sliced through scale, gristle, and bone. A severed length of tail flopped onto the cracked earth, writhing like a dying eel. Loha screamed, high and terrible, a sound that seemed to tear at the sky. She stumbled back, clutching the stump of her tail, eyes wide with shock.

Then silence.

The scream died in her throat.

Ho raised the axe, expecting her rage to consume her. He readied himself for the killing blow and braced for death.

More silence.

No screaming return attack. Instead, only the smell flowers. It was not the scent of Tiare or Frangipani. It was thicker, heavier. A musky scent of over-ripe orchids mixed in old blood, and of deep turned earth. It billowed from Arahuta’s wound in an invisible plume, slapping Ho in the face. He staggered, his head swimming. The air suddenly felt hot—oppressively, wetly hot. “What sorcery…” he choked out. Totokona grew heavy in his hand.

The cousins had not attacked. But Ho no longer felt like a target, nor did the odour feel like a spell or curse. He steadied himself and faced them as best he could, legs splayed wide to keep from toppling. Loha’s nostrils flared. She turned her head, inhaling deeply, her eyes slipping shut for a moment. Trembling, she lowered her hands toward the stump of her tail. Arahuta leaned back, staring at her cousin’s wound. Loha turned, exposing it to Ho. The flesh did not bleed red. It pulsed with a soft, luminous pink, glowing with inner heat. Loha coiled around to inspect her wound before turning back to face him.

The rage had gone from her face. In its place was a glazed, heavy-lidded look that knotted Ho’s stomach with a different kind of fear. Loha stepped closer to her cousin, tasting the air with a green tongue the length of his forearm. “I am in season, Arahuta…” she whispered, her voice rough.

“Now? Loha… it is too early.”

Arahuta let out a breathy, shuddering laugh. Violet bloomed beneath her green scales, spreading up her neck. “It’s not us, sister. It’s him.”

They both stared at Ho. Their posture had changed. They were no longer crouched to spring. They stood tall now, swaying slightly, their movements languid and loose.

“We could… take his seed,” Loha suggested.

“For the next clutch.” Arahuta nodded, her eyes fixed on Ho. “It would save us hunting for another male.”

“And he has strong mana,” Loha mused, tilting her head. “Godseed. The young would be… formidable.”

Ho took a stumbling step back, his heel catching on a root. “Wait, what?”

Their obscene suggestion broke through the haze for a moment, but then the scent hit him again. His heart hammered against his ribs, not in fear, but in a traitorous rhythm. His blood felt close to boiling. His skin prickled with the volcanic heat, sweat running down his back as the cousins stalked toward him.

He tried to lift Totokona. Defense. I need defense. But his arm would not obey. The muscles had gone loose and unwieldy. A heavy lethargy seeped into his marrow.

Loha stepped over the twitching length of her tail. She moved slowly, stalking, her hips rolling in a lulling gait. “Look, Arahuta,” Loha murmured. “The heat rises faster without the tail to govern the blood. You should thank him.”

Arahuta snorted, a sound half-animal, half-shamed. She followed Loha, the two of them closing the distance. “He broke the seal. He opened the vessel.”

“No,” Ho rasped. He backed into the dead trunk of a tree, the bark scraping his skin. “No! I came for my weapon. I came to fight! Not—whatever this is!”

“You cut the tail,” Arahuta murmured, reaching out. Her hand was scalding hot. “You heated the air.”

“You woke the clutch,” Loha added, stopping right in front of him. Her vertical pupils had widened until her eyes were almost all black. “You cannot begin a ritual and refuse to finish it, son of Feke. Child of Takaroa.”

“I didn’t begin anything!” Ho shouted, though his voice lacked all authority.

Loha looked at him with deep, alien pity. “The body knows what the mind denies.”

Ho tried to shove them away, but as Arahuta’s hand touched his chest, his strength evaporated. Their heat overwhelmed him as fully as the scent, a fever leaping from their skin into his. Loha reached out and gently, almost tenderly, pried his fingers from the handle of Totokona. She tossed the legendary weapon aside as if it were a dry twig.

“Hush,” she whispered.

Arahuta pressed closer, the scent of the wound enveloping him, drowning his thoughts in a red tide of instinct. The strange realm narrowed around Howaru, closing on heat, musk, and the terrifying, ancient weight of obligation. Ho’s vision blurred. The last thing he saw was the trunk of the tree dissolving entirely as the two young gods loomed over him, his vision from the beach made prophecy. He had become the waka both would ride.

***

Returning to the anchor, he grabbed the cord pulling himself up in a slow ascension to the surface. A pulse ran through the axe, alive beneath his hand, the weapon’s mana awakening. Light piercing the ocean depths all around, as if Rā himself were drawing them home. Breaking the surface, Ho climbed aboard. “Hoe!” he called. The rowers took up their paddles and the waka cut through the surf toward the waiting shore. Faturaki stood at the stern, raising his whalebone patu and began the chant that guided their return.