Chapter 9
Ishould have answered. Mihauna knew I owed Kye my gratitude. Probably an apology, too. But appreciation was the furthest thing from my mind as I pushed to my feet, my thoughts numb and my veins burning with cold blood.
Kye had stooped to pull on his pants, and my eyes swept the trees, certain I’d find someone watching us. The jellyfish, the reaper spider, the mulapo seeds—someone was trying to kill me.
With the dead chicken in the water, I knew who it was.
“Hey.” Kye’s voice carried softly behind me. “Are you alright?”
I barely heard him over the rush in my head. My feet bore me through the palms and ferns, my arms throwing branches aside as I ignored the trail, cutting my own path through the dense foliage.
Anger led me like a compass to Kimo’s house, vaguely aware Kye was tromping somewhere behind me. I spied Kimo as I neared his yard, standing with Nola, Naheso, and a few other islanders around the mound of stones that made his underground oven. They stopped speaking on my approach, their eyes widening as it became clear I aimed for them. Kimo turned to face me fully.
I shoved him.
His feet caught him mid-stumble, his gaze snapping to meet mine, full of sudden thunder.
“You foul, murdering—” I wasn’t prepared for how strong he was. Kimo struck back, his hands and arms like bolts of iron as he rammed into me, sending me crashing into the compact dirt. Whiplash lanced through my neck, a crack sending pain into my tailbone, but I clawed back to my feet as he thrust forward to push me again.
Kye caught him by the shoulder, though Kimo’s neck craned around Kye’s arm, his face flushed red with fury. “Have you gone mad, witch?” Kimo spat.
I had gone mad.
Anger swelled within me as I stalked forward. Hands caught my arms, stopping me in my tracks. “You tied a bucket of fish to my boat,” I snarled, wrenching to escape the grip of whoever held me back. “You threw a dead chicken out from my beach!”
“My chicken is there,” he shouted, pointing to his smoking oven.
“You liar.” I wrestled, realizing it was my uncle Naheso who grasped my arms. “I saw you plucking it in the water!”
“Maren,” Naheso’s voice murmured softly in my ear.
Kimo growled with his entire body in an attempt to shake Kye off. Knuckles white over Kimo’s shoulders, Kye angled his head just enough to watch me, his face like a closed trap over whatever thoughts loomed inside.
“My chicken is baking in my oven, demon!” Kimo shot back. Giving up against the hard wall of Kye, he took a step back, though his muscles fizzled with unspent energy.
“I watched you pluck it where I keep my va’a,” I said, though a certain smell of baked chicken roused my attention, the air tinged with the promise of something crispy and oily as wisps of smoke rose from Kimo’s oven.
The thought triggered a memory, one I”d been too caught up to consider until now. Kimo had been plucking his bird when I’d seen him on my beach earlier; it had been nearly devoid of feathers by the time I’d left him. The rotting thing in the water just now had been nearly intact—feathers and all.
Naheso’s fingers loosened as I dropped the tension in my body. I stood staring at them—every islander in Kimo’s yard, as well as countless others who had heard my shouts and wandered over. They gaped at me, their open expressions shocked and disturbed.
My eyes bounded from one face to the next. Kye’s voice reached me under the wild current in my head, saying words like shark and canoe and knife, his hands still holding Kimo’s shoulders, though the tension had released from his arms.
My anger hadn’t ebbed; it was blinding. It flared through my skin, crawling under my pores and into my bones as my gaze shifted around the growing number of islanders, searching for a face that showed less surprise than the others.
Kimo gave a humorless laugh. “Should have just let it eat her.”
Murmurs of amused agreement floated in.
Naheso’s hand pressed into my shoulder, warm and weighted, but I lurched out of its grasp. “Maren,” he said again, his voice soft, almost pleading. I ignored him. Eyes tracked me as I waded through the crowd, passing my father and Akamai, winding the trail back to my own house.
No one followed.
I stood alone on my veranda facing the water, watching the aftermath of the altercation, unable to quench the smoldering fire within me.
To my father’s credit, he watched me in the minutes that followed, his fists on his hips as he spoke with Naheso, my uncle’s hands weaving through the air as he recounted what had happened. Kye wandered back to the beach, a small group of islanders trailing him. They surrounded the dead shark on the water’s edge, and soft whooping cut through the trees as they congratulated Kye, though he stood with his fists on his hips, cutting glances between my ruined va’a and the bucket.
“I warned you you’d rile the sea.”
My aunt stood at the bottom of my stairs, a knowing look in her eye.
I turned my attention to her without speaking a word. My inner fire had died away, but the coals still lay within me, hot to the touch. I”d spent my burning ire already, and I wasn”t ready to lash out again. I”d wait for solid proof.
She watched me with sharp calculation, waiting for my response. I raised my chin, winding my gaze away. My aunt turned and left, and I let my eyes flicker back to her.
If only anger was a thing that could be bottled. Corked in glass and stored on a shelf. I’d sell all of mine at the markets. I’d make a small fortune out of wrath and scorn and bitter vindication.
But anger cannot be bottled. Not unless you count the glass jar where my heart should”ve been. That had only ever been filled with loathing. It had been stoppered so long I didn’t know how to uncork it without it rising up my throat, choking me with the sweet taste of my own poison.
Word spread that Kye had come face-to-face with a shark and killed it. The islanders of Leihani celebrated by branding him with a tattoo, angular lines and sharp triangles like sharks’ teeth that wrapped over one shoulder and stretched down to his elbow.
He’d taken to walking through the fields without his white shirt, chest bare like an island man.
The islanders had grown fond of him, though they cautioned him when he tried to speak with me, which he often did in the morning as he joined my father on the fishing boats. I avoided him. For some reason, the only shame I felt at my outburst towards Kimo was that Kye had watched it. I didn’t want to share any conversation with him about a shark or a bucket. Or what I’d seen that had set me off.
A week faded in and out without the Naiads present on Neris Island. I’d never gone so long without seeing them. The island was quiet without them there.
Peaceful—but the kind of peaceful that lingers after an islander dies and the village bids them farewell from their departing pyre. The ashes remain, but the soul is gone, sent to walk the shores of Perpetuum.
Peaceful. But eerily so.
And then, at the week’s end, the Naiads were there.
They’d beached themselves when I wasn’t looking. Kneeling in the sand, gathering my buckets to head home, I stood and started at the sudden sight of them. A cascade of cool prickles fell down my neck.
“And where have you been?” I demanded, though a stroke of relief unfurled within me at the sight of them.
“It is time, creature,” Olinne said, her lavish silver tail curling under the waves. “To claim that which you seek.”
A springy weed hanging from my fingers, I glanced at Nori, waiting for her to rescind the words. But the red-haired Naiad sat up higher, eager for my reaction.
Nori tilted her head. “Do you not remember? To create life, and to preserve it. You’ve worked every day to take a place among the Stewards. Planting seeds, filling roots, feeding birds and bats.”
I looked between them again. They’d coached and trained me for years, but I’d long since abandoned the idea that Nori and Olinne were Stewards of any sort, or that I could be as well. “Why now? How does it work?”
“You must meet her.”
“Meet your queen?” I’d always known there was a colony of Naiads nearby, along with some kind of queenly figure, but I”d only ever seen the two of them.
A smile shadowed Nori’s lips, though it quickly melted away. “Are you ready?”
“Where? Here? On Neris Island?”
“In our home,” Olinne said, gesturing to the sea.
I followed the curve of her arm to the dark-blue water. “In the water?”
They simply stared at me.
I swallowed. “Is it safe?”
“Nothing is safe, little creature,” Nori said.
The sun was low; I needed to get back with my clams. The tide was building, and I’d come here in my father’s canoe. Its outrigger wasn’t as balanced as mine had been.
“There is danger in all things. How do you know the safer path is the one in which you do not meet her?” Olinne said, trailing my glance at the sun. “You’ve worked your whole life to become our third. Do not hesitate now.”
“Can’t she come to the surface?” I asked, navigating around their lithe bodies to my father’s va’a. I set my buckets inside and turned to face them, releasing a slow breath.
Nori pulled herself straight over the edge of the rocks. “She does not come to you.”
Olinne nodded. “You will come to her. When the moon is full.”
Glancing again at the sea, I scratched my neck. Mihauna, the full moon, was just over a week away. “In deep water?”
“In deep and dark water, yes,” Nori said. “At night.”
Growing up under the Naiad’s instruction, I’d witnessed plenty of eeriness from them. A smile too forced, words darkly cast, concealed looks shared between them, as though they hoarded secrets too ominous for a human’s ears. I’d always dismissed their antics as Naiad tendencies—they were a different species, after all.
But under the weight of their stares, I couldn’t help but feel like there was something they purposefully kept from me.
I reached a blind hand, groping for the canoe. The Naiads watched it bob, flicking their eyes back to mine. “I’m not Naiad. I can’t breathe underwater.”
Olinne smiled. “We will breathe for you.”
Biting my lip, I stared at the sea.
I’d never feared it before, but I also hadn’t strayed below where light filtered through the water. Waves churned in the distance, hard and unforgiving. How deep did it go? How cold was it where sunlight didn’t wander?
The Naiads watched me in a way I didn’t recognize. A certain hunger pulled at the corners of their eyes, tugging their smiles tight.
“When the moon is full,” I said, pulling my feet into the wooden vessel and sinking safely in my seat. I wondered if that meant I wouldn”t see them again until Mihauna.
Strangely, I wondered if I even wanted to.
They didn’t answer, but their heads rotated as they watched me paddle away. I propelled myself out enough to turn from them, the hairs raising on my arms as the incoming tide pressed me toward my beach.
Ahead, the water grew so deep, I sat over nothing but a blackened shadow. My stomach churned with foreboding, and I forced myself to not look down.
When I glanced back, the Naiads were gone.