Karsten Knight - Afterglow

At the edge of the clearing, where the bamboo forest gives way to a short cliff and the ocean pools below, something hisses like water turning to steam. Tangaroa rises up from the pool below, supported by a geyser that carries him to the cliff top. Once he steps off, the plume collapses behind him.

His eyes usually regard you with warmth and affection, but there’s something wrathful in them today. He didn’t even look this furious when you out-wrestled him a year ago. “Who is he?” he barks at you the moment his feet hit solid ground.

You frown. So your secret, secluded beach isn’t quite so secluded after all. “Have you been following me, Tangaroa? Have you been . . . watching me?”

Tangaroa purses his lips. That’s never bothered you before , his eyes say. “I didn’t need to follow you. Do you think an outlander could drift through my seas to my shores without me knowing about it? When it comes to the waters around these islands, my eyes see all.”

The others are watching silently, but Tane lets out a giggle. “If that’s the case,” he says between bites of his fruit, “I hope you’ve looked the other way when I’ve gone swimming with a few certain girls on O‘ahu.”

Tangaroa growls at Tane to silence him. Before he can launch more accusations at you, Rangi speaks, his voice as deep and tremulous as thunder. “There is an elder on Kaua‘i, a blind man who has achieved such stillness in body and soul that he can stand out in the water and snatch a fish from a passing school with his hands. He is also a seer. He has told me many stories, not all of which have come true . . . but there was one a few years ago that I never forgot: a prophecy about a Driftwood Stranger, a man from another land who would come and bring ruin to us all.”

You tilt your head back to the sky in frustration. A cloud rolls in front of the sun. “I have met that blind man before. He also tells stories of a man-eating tortoise and a sea lion that steals babies from the arms of their sleeping mothers. And this Driftwood Stranger? He’s probably thinking of that white man who tried to kidnap the king years ago—you know, the one they stabbed to death in the water? Some dangerous visitor he was.”

“No,” Rangi says, unmoved by your argument. “That man, Cook, came on a ship with many others. The Driftwood Stranger, the elder foretells, will come alone . . . and he’ll come without a ship.”

This makes even Tane pause mid-bite. You can’t deny that the circumstances of the stranger’s arrival make you uneasy. No shipwreck. No signs of starvation on his filled-out body. Not even a sunburn.

And he knew your name.

“He is my prisoner,” you say sternly. Your eyes burn red when your gaze finds Tangaroa’s again. “No one touches him until I find out who he is and why he’s here.”

“And if he proves dangerous?” Tu, who had remained silent until now, asks. “How will you handle him then?”

“Then I’ll drop him into a lava pool on Kilauea,” you reply, “and find out if the Driftwood Stranger burns like driftwood.”

“And for those among us who don’t spend our days lighting fires, Pele,” Tane says, “how does driftwood burn?”

You try to sound as merciless and uncaring as possible when you say the next word, so that they’ll trust you to handle the stranger on your own:

“Slowly.”

The cove where you left the stranger isn’t far from the bamboo forest, and ordinarily you’d run back after the Council meeting, drawing strength and energy from Haleakalā, the quiet volcano. But Tangaroa could be traveling by sea to “visit” the stranger himself, so you explosively gouge out a section of the air and pass through the narrow portal.

Only, when you step into the cave, the stranger is gone.

It hasn’t been more than an hour since you left him for the tense meeting with the other gods, so he couldn’t have gone far. You try not to panic, and you let your eyes take in the heat within the cave. As you concentrate, the color fades from the world around you until the cave and the light filtering through its opening have muted to mostly shades of gray and sepia.

However, the hollow depression in the stone glows a soft orange, where the stranger’s body heat lingers on the pebbles. Unfortunately, the water cooled any heat trail he might have left on his way out, so you return to the mouth of the cave.

As you stand beneath the magnificent sea arch, you worry that you may have lost him for good. The sea and stone together are just a cool variety of grays, with only the sun lighting up in vivid red.

But when you turn around, back to the cliff, you catch just the slightest hint of color among the rocks. In fact there’s a staggered trail of fading embers leading up the cliff face, where hands and bare feet have recently touched.

He must have scaled the nearly vertical stone wall.

You don’t have the patience to climb it yourself, so you carve a new rift in the air and step out onto the top of the cliff above.

He’s sitting close to the edge, with his knees bunched up against his chest. He flinches, momentarily startled, when you appear next to him and the sea water that leaked through the portal splashes into the grass, but he doesn’t appear afraid of you. “Aloha,” he greets you.

You skip the pleasantries. “Who are you, and where have you come from?” you ask him in his own language.

“You . . . speak English?” He actually looks more surprised by this than when you stepped out of a hole in the air moments before.

“It is the language of your missionaries,” you say indignantly, “who flock to our islands like bats to a nest of moths.”

“They are not my missionaries.” He points toward the eastern horizon. “They came to my lands, unwelcome, the same way they did to yours . . . although,” he adds with a smile, “my lands are so vast it will be some time before they’ve conquered them all.”

Against your better judgment you sit down beside him, although an arm’s length away, as though he might be rife with sickness. Out in the water a humpback whale surfaces, then another. They’ve always seemed just as fond of this bay as you have, though they never come close enough to admire the lava rocks.

“My name is Colt,” he says.

You open your mouth and laugh deeply. The gathering thunderclouds chuckle with you. “They named you,” you say once you’ve caught your breath, “after that strange four-legged creature that those haoles like to ride on?” You laugh some more.

Colt doesn’t look offended. In fact, after a hesitation, he laughs along with you. “What? Colts are dependable, powerful, and fast, with an energetic, masculine spirit. They can travel for miles.”

“As have you,” you say, spreading your arms out to the ocean. The laughter stops. Neither of you is watching the whales anymore. As he studies your face, you’re struggling with the sense of instant familiarity you feel with him. He just washed up on shore. You can tell he’s holding back something, like he doesn’t know how much to trust you, how much to share with you.

“I wish I could tell you how I got here,” Colt says at last. “One moment I was falling asleep at the base of a dune, back on the mainland, letting the sound of the tide carry me into slumber. . . . When I woke up next the tide actually was carrying me away. I couldn’t even see the shores the waters were so choppy with storm waves. The current dragged me under a few times.” He shook his head. “I have no idea how long I was floating out at sea before I washed up here. Under the heavy sun, and without fresh water, I plunged into delirium for many days.”