43. Maren
Maren
“It’s okay,” I found myself saying out loud—whether to Cebrinne or myself I wasn’t sure. “We knew he might not be here.”
“Nori said he’s been sighted daily on the boats,” she replied, bending down to swipe a finger along the thick dust that covered the floor. She held it up for me to view. “Are you sure they know which islander he is?”
“Yes.” I was certain. I hoped.
The door flap swished as I pushed against it, thrusting a hand through my roots as I thought.
“Maren?” a startled voice asked.
Just off the grass-trodden path, a basket of waxy eggplants resting on her hip, my aunt Palunu stood, eyes wide as if she’d stumbled upon a ghost.
I supposed I was one.
“Mihauna rest the stars,” she said, her voice thick and trembling. Her arms were lathered in earth, soil and sweat stains painting her tapa in soft clouds of white and umber. Of course—the moon was full. I should have known to expect to find islanders working through the night.
My aunt plonked her basket hard enough to make me flinch—eggplants are like little old ladies, easy to bruise—and straightened to clasp her hands in front of her mouth. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” I said, a bit awkwardly. My feet suddenly felt like bolts of wood, heavy and clumsy at the end of my legs.
“Where have you been?”
“In Calder.” I grimaced at the blunt answer, short and dull and ringing like a slap. Behind me, Cebrinne remained inside, though I knew she could hear us.
A thick shine welled in Palunu’s eyes. “We thought you were dead.”
“Oh. Well.” I scratched under the nape of my hair. “Here I am.”
“One second. Don’t move,” she said, already stepping in the opposite direction. “I need to find Nola.”
“Wait—Anake.” I swept down the steps, meeting her at the bottom and ignoring the strangeness of her reception. I’d expected, if I ran into any of the islanders, to be ordered to leave. After I killed Neheso, the island had demanded my blood. Or so I’d thought.
I didn’t know what to make of the shaking, teary-eyed woman before me.
She must have thought my emotions matched hers. That I’d stopped her for an embrace or some poignant greeting. Her hands framed my face, grainy with dirt, and she pressed her forehead to mine, closing her dark eyes and gathering a slow, deep breath into her lungs.
Shock arrived, a stroke of alarm that caught me off guard. For a moment, the long blades of pili grass blurred together, a sharpness behind my eyes. Something bloomed in the darkest cavern on my chest, warm and soft and glowing.
“I’m looking for my father,” I said when she broke away, my voice a bit shakier than it had been the moment before. My tongue felt thick at the back of my mouth, and I wiped the dust from my face with my hands, ensuring my cheeks were dry.
“He doesn’t sleep in that house anymore,” she said, glancing past me. “Says he doesn’t need it. He gave it to Nola and Kimo.”
“He gave his house away?” I didn’t try to hide my shock. “Where does he stay?”
A pang of trepidation struck me—what if, after all this time, I’d brought Cebrinne home to my father to find he’d given his house away to live with one of the islander women?
Love had said a cordae merely fractures when one half leaves the realm of the living. But Cebrinne and Ano were both living again. Their cordae was intact. He wouldn’t have found someone else…would he?
Palunu brushed a lock of hair off my shoulder.
“The mountains, sometimes. The caves. My father’s old boat.
He tried to sail to Calder with it months ago, but the riptide carried him back in.
Traders want a steep fee for passage, and he’s been saving, but a fisherman’s wages are not built for voyaging pleasures.
He’s been building a Hokule’a in the meantime, to see if he can make the journey himself. ”
“He’s been trying to sail to Calder?” I shook my head. “Why?”
Palunu frowned. “For you, of course. Why else?”
A raw burn crept down my throat, then. Inches from me, Palunu’s face swam, tilting back and forth like a rocking ship. I blinked her back into focus, heat prickling the beds of my lashes.
“Oh, child,” Palunu whispered sadly.
I’d swept myself onto the island with faux confidence, burrowing my insecurities under the superiority of a newly appointed Queen, but she’d somehow reduced me to a sniveling child within moments anyway, in a way I would have least expected.
“Do,” I stalled, swallowing the lump in my throat down, “do you know where he is now?”
Palunu opened her mouth. The door flap behind me rustled, footsteps padding softly onto the veranda above. My aunt glanced at the sound.
“Mihauna bless the night,” Palunu said, eyes rolling toward the sky as her lashes fluttered shut. Her knees buckled, tilting her backwards. “I’m dreaming.”
The grass caught her fall in a crash of whispers.
Cebrinne helped me carry Palunu into the house, as we didn’t wish to leave her unconscious in the grass.
Huffing with exertion, we laid my aunt across the dusty floor, then gazed at each other across from her, hands anchored into our hips.
A prickle of guilt needled under my skin.
Palunu would wake to find we’d gone. I wonder if she’d doubt her own memory.
Morning had cast the houses in thin gold when I emerged from the door flap a second time, though with Darkness’s bargain still in my blood, the air was a cool nip against my face.
Across the western sky, the moon had yet to dip below the sea.
Good luck followed when the full moon shared the sky with the sun, I thought to myself.
“Any idea where he might have gone?” Cebrinne asked, dusting her hands.
I edged around my father's—now my cousin Nola’s—house, hesitant to let any other islanders see me, my eyes lifting as I scanned my memories for ideas.
What if the King already has him?
The question burst through my thoughts like a bubble of air erupting over the surface. What if the sailors had taken him? What if there had been a tenth ship sent to arrest him, and I’d missed it somehow, crossing under its keel on my way to the island?
What if he’d been found, killed, dumped—
No. No. I reeled my thoughts in, tucking them tightly in check. Think.
The mountains. The caves. His canoe.
He wasn’t in the boat. I’d have seen him when I laid my cloak across it. My gaze trekked across the swaying palms and ferns that furnished the mountain’s base.
The cave with the dangling ferns, a voice swept softly against the current of my thoughts.
Arms crossed, Cebrinne had flung her glare towards the market, her weight rocked fully against one hip. “Should we have the colony search the island again?”
There’s a cave that delves into the mountain. You can only reach it by sea. When the tide is low.
“Let me check somewhere else first,” I said.