Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
Iwas not a superstitious person.
But there was something strange about this night that made my skin crawl. It was almost as if someone were watching me from the dark bushes, daring me to look into the shadows to find what monster lurked.
An owl hooted, and I shook my head, keeping my eyes on the wet, rocky road. The full moon lit the way, a silvery glow I was truly grateful for, but I still felt as though my shadow chased me.
I’m not being followed, I laughed to myself. It was the dead of night. Nobody would be out and about now.
Except me. I squared my shoulders, held out my lantern, hiked up my skirts with the other hand, and started running.
My black leather boots splashed in puddles of mud from the recent rainstorm, staining my white stockings.
My hair, pulled into a proper bun earlier, now fell out, with long loose strands riding the wind behind me.
Mother would disapprove of my lack of propriety.
If mother makes it through the night. I shook my head and wiped sweat from my forehead. Thinking like that was not something I could afford. With medicine from the local kahuna, the medicine man, my mother would survive another night.
I couldn’t lose my mother. My younger sister, Kiki, couldn’t lose mother.
Mother was the heart of our home, the breath of our community, though in the last year she had hardly stepped foot outside of the home.
It almost seemed inevitable that mother would pass on and go home to Kāne, the god of light and life, soon…
My foot slipped on a root, and I inhaled sharply. Life would indeed be dull without mother’s smiles and kind words, even though Kiki and I hadn’t received such love in a while. Our home felt barren. Cold.
There was nothing left for us here. Especially with my father gone…
Not now, Oli, I told myself. I didn’t need to think about my father. Besides, he had returned to Kāne. Dead for over a month. Worrying about him was like trying to make a pōhaku kōi float. Useless. He was gone, and our family was better for it.
Well. Sort of. At least we wouldn’t have to endure his drunken words and actions, even if I was going to get married off because of my father’s love of alcohol.
The fool…
A coconut frond rustled in the wind, and I slowed down to a walk, hoping to catch my breath. After all the time I spent in the ocean, how could I possibly be out of breath?
But I knew better. It was late, and, tired as I was, there was still something strange about the mist beginning to form around me and the strange breathing sound in the wind. It filled my stomach with anxiety.
Superstitions, I laughed nervously to myself, tucking a loose piece of hair behind my ear.
My boots crunched on the road, one of the few sounds on this silent night. I was so close to the village, where the medicine man lived. My blouse itched my neck, so I pulled at it for more freedom to breathe.
Maybe I’d be able to run faster if all of this did not constrict me, I thought, and glanced towards the sea, wondering if I’d have enough energy to go spearfishing the next day. There was so much to do, and so much money I still needed to earn for my family…
I froze in my tracks as a sound penetrated through the night and straight through my thoughts.
A conch shell. The blowing of the shell rang out true. Every insect, owl, and night creature silenced, emphasizing the noise.
A lump formed in my throat. The conch shell heralded the chief’s arrival.
But that sort of thing always happened in the day, not the night. Unless…
I’m imagining things, I told myself over and over.
A drum beat started, slowly at first, then it built up a rhythm, one that matched the rapid beat of my heart. It was almost hypnotic, a cadence pulsing like the blood in my veins.
I remained on the path; the superstitions running through my mind.
The night marchers frequent paths on nights of the full moon. I couldn’t help looking at the full moon above me and the wet path ahead. Was I on their path now?
The night marchers aren’t real. Those were spooky stories kupuna told their children to keep them in line. My grandmother scared my sister and me to where we wouldn’t go out at night for weeks.
Some people claimed to have heard the night marchers, but nobody had actually seen them. After all, the rule was that when the spectral procession passed, a mortal was to prostrate him or herself and avoid eye contact, praying to Kāne that the ghosts would pass and spare them.
But those were just legends, folktales, nothing more than myths. Surely nobody had died at the hands of the phantom warriors, because they weren’t real… right?
The drumbeats intensified, growing louder by the second. It sounded as though the noise approached from behind me.
I glanced ahead, knowing the village was so close.
There is no such thing as ghosts and night marchers, I repeated in my mind, but then the breathing started, as if someone stood behind me, their hot breath on my neck.
If my grandmother were here, or even my little sister Kiki, they’d drag me to the ground with them. I could just see Kiki’s eyebrows raised in fear as she screamed, “Get on the ground Oli! It’s the night marchers!”
Though Kiki was nineteen, only three years younger than me, she would sound like a child again.
I did not move.
The night marchers? That’s silly. Even as the words formed in my head, I looked behind me at the mist, my eyes betraying me. There seemed to be warm lights bobbing up and down. Torch lights.
They were like the first sparks of a bonfire on the beach at dusk.
It can’t be. My eyes narrowed, and just when I saw a figure step through the mist, every inch of my body went cold. From the crown of my head to the tips of my toes, I told myself this wasn’t real, but it seemed so real.
The figure was tall, with a bare chest and a skirt around his hips. Tattoos covered him–the sort that once adorned chiefs of old. Beneath the gourd helmet that covered his head, his face remained hidden in shadow. Even despite the light coming from the torch.
Impossible.
I should have stuffed my practicality and obeyed Kiki’s screaming voice in my head.
“Lie down, Oli!”
But Kiki was not here, nor was my grandmother.
The figure stopped and, if he had eyes beneath that helmet, he was probably looking directly at me.
I froze in place, as if the roots of the earth below were twisting around my ankles and squeezing them.
My clammy hands trembled as I held my lantern up, casting more light on the ghost-like figure before me.
Run. I turned and bolted along the path. I was quicker than a fish darting to hide when a person swam close to them. Within minutes, I reached the town.
Only when my boots touched the dirt path, woven between the shacks, did I let out a breath and dare look behind me. My face was white as the clouds on a bright day, and the tightness in my shoulders would not go away.
Yet as I searched the path behind me, only the darkness of the night greeted me.
I was delirious; I told myself, but the image of the warrior, dressed in the attire of our ancestors, lingered in my mind.
I’m taking too long, I chastened myself and knocked on the kahuna’s door. Mother needed medicine.
Now.
Whatever specter I saw just minutes ago had to be figments of my imagination.
The kahuna opened the door, his face weathered from years in the tropical sun, his brown eyes wise, and his hair strikingly white. For a moment, he looked impatient. How many times had I stopped by his hut in the last couple of weeks? He knew how direly sick mother was.
Without waiting for me to ask for what I needed, he brought me a small glass bottle of medicine. “Have her take this,” he said, his voice raspy like the crackling of lava. Before I turned, he grabbed my wrist. “And Oli… be careful out there,” he added. “Night marchers roam at this hour.”
My hair stood on end, and my toes curled. But I feigned a smile, hoping he wouldn’t see through my disguise that, perhaps, I had bumped into a night marcher that night… “That’s just superstition.”
The man tutted and shook his head. “Children no longer heed old warnings.” He motioned for me to leave, though he continued to watch, a wary look on his face, as I returned onto the path.
I took a deep breath, medicine in hand.
“Ghosts are not real, and therefore, night marchers don’t exist,” I said, my voice quiet.
But as I ran home to deliver the medicine to my mother, the heat on my neck and back seemed even more intense.
Though I continued to tell myself otherwise, deep down in my na‘au, there was the lingering anxiety that whatever ghost I’d seen earlier, the man in the ancient warrior attire, was not just a figment of my imagination. He was real.