Karsten Knight - Afterglow

But this dead man is something else altogether. His hair is cropped close to his head and bristly. Unlike Tangaroa and the others, his skin remains untouched by tattoos. He’s muscular, from his thick neck down to his tapered torso. You can learn a lot from a man’s skin, but this corpse’s flesh is a blank canvas. No scars at all to suggest he’d ever been to war; no calluses on his open palms to suggest that he was a fisherman or, for that matter, had ever worked a day in his life.

It’s not unusual for dead men to occasionally wash up on these shores, but their bodies are usually bloated, or rotting, or covered in sores from where they’ve been nibbled away by fish.

This stranger, however, must be newly dead, because he shows no sign of decay, or of being fish food. On a whim you lean over and press your ear to his bare chest.

You hear the beat of his heart at the same time he springs back to life.

The stranger bolts upright and throws up a mouthful of briny vomit that you barely dodge in time. His eyes are wild, and he flounders in the water, frantically patting around his body to make sure that he still has all his limbs and all his flesh. His crazed, wide pupils finally focus on you, crouched in a defensive position on a lava rock, and one word escapes his mouth, a word you’ve heard the missionaries use before:

“Angel?” he mutters.

Then his eyes roll back into his head. He collapses back onto the lava rocks and loses consciousness once more.

For a few moments you gaze down at him, expecting him to stir again. He remains unmoving, but his chest moves up and down with labored breaths.

You glance around the beach, as though you might not be truly alone. There is only the wind and the lapping tide. The Council has a strict rule when it comes to outsiders: They are not welcome here. Many foreign explorers have sailed past these shores, tried to give their own new names to things that have had names for many years. Missionaries visit your islands to bring word of their god . . . without realizing that there are many gods already walking these shores, down among their people, where they belong. You’ve used your storm powers yourself to send lightning bolts down on unwelcome ships, ruffled the ocean with swells to ward off foreigners.

There’s something magical about this one though. He’d somehow survived the elements, possibly drifted for days or weeks, from somewhere far beyond the horizon, and still arrived here unscathed.

So you make up your mind: You must hide him from the Council until you’ve had a chance to speak with him, to learn of his past.

You know just the place too. You scoop him up in your arms; he may be larger and heavier than you, but your strength is unparalleled on these islands. Then you carry him down the shore to the sea cave.

You often come to this cave to reflect. It’s concealed under the shadow of a magnificent sea arch—a monument of stone carved away by the ocean that protrudes from the cliff face above like a sea giant’s elbow. You’ve always loved the sound of the tide as it echoes down the tunnel; it’s almost like a poem whispered to you by Tangaroa, the sea god . . . although Tangaroa is just a fleeting thought right now, with a strange man cradled in your arms.

You wade through the waist-high water until the tunnel ground rises up to a patch of sand that’s safe even from high tide. You place the stranger down on the smoothest area you can find, far enough from the water that he won’t accidentally roll in and drown while he’s still unconscious.

His eyes flicker half-open for a few seconds. He looks delirious and as if slumber will drag him down again any moment, but there’s a brief flash when he gazes up at your face with complete clarity. His hand touches the side of your cheek, and while instinct tells you to pull away, you let his smooth fingers cup your skin. A deep warmth flushes your face where his palm lingers.

Then he says five words to you, four of them in the language of the missionaries, but one of which is all too familiar and sucks the warmth right out of your cheeks.

“Thank you,” he whispers, blinking twice. “Thank you, Pele . . .”

Before he can explain how he knew your name or that you were the legendary volcano goddess, he’s dragged down into the murky dark of a feverish sleep.

You want so badly to wait beside him until he wakes again. However, it is the morning before the new moon, which means the monthly Council meeting will start shortly. You must not arouse the suspicion of the others if you’re to keep this a secret for now.

So you reluctantly wade back down the tunnel. You cast a final look at the sleeping stranger before you tear open the air and step through a portal into a forest not too far from this sea cave.

But suddenly, everything seems too far from the cave and the human heart beating within it.

You hate when you’re not the last one to arrive. Life on the islands has bred patience in the other gods that you distinctly lack, and so you make a point of being a little late so you don’t have to wait for anyone else to lazily straggle in. This time, though, everyone seems to be tardy—and there’s no real excuse, since there are no clouds to block the sun’s progress across the sky, marking the time of day.

You’d know because they’re your clouds to put there.

Instead, when you emerge from the portal into the bamboo forest on the eastern end of Maui, at the base of Haleakalā, only Rangi—Father Sky—and Papa—Mother Earth—await you. Rangi and Papa are both older than you and the others. You call them the elders, even though they’ve only seen five more years than you have. Still, there’s a sternness in the couple that the other three lack.

The bamboo shoots in the clearing rustle as the portal seals closed behind you. Both Rangi and Papa offer you a nod and an “Aloha kakahiaka.” You nod back to Rangi, who has his arms crossed, and say, “Ka makani ‘olu‘olu,” to thank him for the delicate wind that’s threading through the trees. It’s a refreshing breeze that certainly didn’t come from you. He shrugs off the compliment and mutters, “He mea iki ia,” as though anyone could change the fervor of the wind with a flick of their hand.

Tu, the god of war, is the next to arrive, on foot instead of through a portal like you. Just about every inch of his body is covered with intricately patterned tattoos. Strangely, no needle has ever touched his skin. He was born this way.

Soon after, the stealthy Tane slips out from between the bamboo shoots, which didn’t even tremble as he moved through them like a wraith. He spends so much time among the leaves that his bare chest and arms always maintain a greenish stain, and his legs remain powdered with soil. Today he has an even wider smirk than usual on his face when he arrives, and he’s chuckling the way he always does. You’ve never seen him in a bad mood.

“New missionaries came ashore on O‘ahu,” he explains without so much as an “aloha” first. “I found the highest branch that I could and perched there, making terrifying sounds. Then I woke all the bats to attack them from above. They thought I was some sort of forest spirit haunting them and warning them to turn back.”

You snort. “But you are a forest spirit.”

“Yes, but spirits to them are evil red creatures, enemies of their god.” Tane reaches under his kapa loincloth and pulls out a green fruit with a furry coating. You don’t want to know where in his malo he was storing that.

“Do those even grow here?” you ask.

He takes a big bite out of the fruit, and the juice dribbles down his chin. “They do now. I ask the trees, and the trees listen.”

“With some help from the earth,” Papa adds.