The gods tried to smother the world. They threw a velvety cloak over it, but the weave on the cloak was loose, allowing pinpricks of light to shine through. In the morning, the sun grew too strong, burning the cloak away for another day. Then, it would grow tired, dimming behind the cloak, marshaling its strength throughout another night. Yet even at midnight, when the world was as far from dusk and dawn as it could be, it would never be entirely without the warmth of the sun. It exemplified one of Hapua’s most important lessons to his students: The gods were powerful. The gods were cruel. But the gods were far from perfect.

  Sometimes, one of these pinpricks would streak across the sky in a lambent spear, evidence of the gods readjusting their cloak in the vain hope of blocking out the sunlight once and for all, plunging all of Waiola into eternal night. What they would have done without the ma’hanu to sing them into their deep dreams.

  On the windward beach of Po’i Island, two days from his home, a simple spear clutched in his hand, Kono stalked through the shallows for his dinner. A crash, like bronze striking bronze, echoed through the sky. Two streaks of incandescence burned their way through the clear blue, forming a widening V as they plummeted.

  Kono stopped, straightened, and stared. Two spears of light plunged from the heavens hurtling inexorably to the ocean.

  The sight addled him as he took it in. The gods had been known to throw their cloak upon the world in the middle of the day from time to time, turning the sun into a burning halo. This could be another such awful wonder. This didn’t feel like the gods, no queasy roiling in his belly, no eerie sensation of being watched. He knew the sensations well; any ma’hanu would. He would have felt the hatred struggling to wakefulness beneath his feet, but the gods were still. Their power hummed in the world around him, but none reached for this phenomenon.

  He quickly calculated where they would fall. They were far apart, and only getting farther with every second they fell. One would spear the ocean beyond the horizon. The other would land far closer.

  Never tearing his eyes from the twin spears of light, he tossed his own spear onto the beach and began to follow the pinprick’s trajectory across the shore.

  Only it wasn’t a pinprick now.

  A shape emerged, and even the edges of color, though no features Kono could quite recognize. The glittering black sands of the island ran out on the northern edge, and Kono skidded to a stop, his last few steps splashing in the warm salt water of the ocean. Shielding his eyes with a broad hand, he peered upward at the object falling from the sky.

  The shape looked like sunlight itself, a liquid gold burning more brightly than anything Kono had ever seen. He squinted against it, unable to stop staring at its beauty. He made out a ruffle of purple and white—leaves maybe—his eyes struggling to make sense of the contours of the object. A sail, perhaps, the struts a mast, the purple a sheet. Flashes of white, and gold, and purple, tumbled over and over. It would slam into the sapphire blue water, and from that height, be crushed flat.

  Then he saw the brown of skin.

  The object falling from the sky wasn’t a thing. It was a person.

  In Kono’s mind he knew he should hesitate, a voice speaking to him in Hapua’s measured tones. Think first, Kono, Hapua was fond of saying, and the right current will reveal itself. That Kono never did was the whole reason he was out here in the first place. Sent away from Kamo’loa to meditate, living on lona fruit and the skinny fish and scuttling crabs who called the cove home. Of course, that he was out here was the only reason there was anyone here to save the person at all, so maybe it all evened out. Though they were wary of the gods as any right-thinking person was, no Kamo’loa would leave a person to drown.

  While Kono technically wasn’t supposed to do anything but reflect on his error out here, and certainly wasn’t to wield the power of the gods to his own ends, he felt good and right about saving this plummeting person from harm.

  Kono inhaled the salt air. A wave crashed into his knees. He might as well have been a stone for all it moved him. He placed his palms flat against each other, thumbs touching his bare chest. Then he pushed outward, exhaling in a single breath all he had taken in. His breath would be the wind, his blood the sea.

  This part had always come easily to him. Perhaps too easily.

  He continued the motions. The intricate tattoos on his right shoulder and upper arm outlined themselves in glowing blue, until they looked like the sun glinting off the clear ocean.

  He spoke the words, the prayer to the god Kamo’loa, now slumbering beneath the waves. Through the words, through the gestures, Kono glimpsed the great bulk of the god in the nearly lightless depths, a silhouette bearing no resemblance to anything terrestrial or even in the shallows of the seas. Pieces were intermittently recognizable, but familiarity made the outline even more horrible, the god itself an affront to the concept of beauty.

  Kono continued speaking his words, addressing the god in the secret language that penetrated even its depthless slumber. It was a dangerous game, rousing the gods just enough to get what he wanted, but without waking them.

  Kono’s petition danced along the edges of the god’s consciousness, the words flitting just out of reach, like the minnow dancing with the octopus. He remained centered. His flesh was the sand of Waiola and his blood her oceans, his mind her sun.

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  He felt the world giving into his desires.

  The seas beneath the falling person softened. Hard water spread out, became elastic, buoyant. It stretched, ready to accept the impact with equanimity.

  The reflection spread in his chest. His flesh was softening, stretching, ready to be hit and merely ripple softly, cradling the impact at this center point.

  Then, the hit. Kono felt it above his heart, and he sucked in a heaving breath as his eyes flipped open. After being below, with Kamo’loa, the sunlight was blinding. He squinted, trying to see the point of impact. The fallen person floated in the water, not far from the sandbar, having apparently hit the sea on the strange purple sails on their back. The person now floated face up, washing to and fro on the gentle swells.

  Kono dove into the water—a short swim for him, rather than dragging his heavy fishing boat moored on the sand.

  The water closed over him as he propelled himself forward. First, his feet found purchase on the sea floor, but when that dropped away, he used his big hands and feet like paddles. The water was almost entirely clear until he hit the riot of colors that was the reef. From there, it grew darker and darker blue, like the sky on a stormy day. The shape bobbing in the waves was not far beyond the reef; only a few strokes from Kono’s powerful limbs.

  Fish parted before him as he streaked through the water. Lalani cruised in the deeper depths, their flanks shining with luminescence as they hunted. Kono kept them in his peripheral vision; a lalani wouldn’t often attack a grown man, but that didn’t mean never. He was far more concerned about the shape on the waves. It would be far more inviting prey.

  Kono broke the surface for a gulp of air and immediately dove under again. He barely felt a swim like this. He was used to swimming between the islands of his home archipelago—a short swim outside the reef was nothing. Below, one of the lalani arched its back, clear signal it was ready to strike. Kono upended himself in the water, pausing long enough to watch the creature lash out, pulling a struggling eel from a crevice, and swim away with quick twitches of its tailfin. Kono righted himself, and with one stroke, pulled closer to the shape.

  From below, he could tell it was human. Small, though. To Kono’s eyes, tiny. A child, maybe, but the proportions suggested someone more grown up. She had breasts, hips, muscle definition. She was a girl, even a young woman. Dressed strangely as well, like nothing he had ever seen: form-fitting black breeches and an equally form-fitting white top. Cloth—not the rough canvas he was used to. Her body was covered in a golden metal, sheathing her legs from knee to ankle, running up her back and around her middle, creating a harness around her waist, forming webbing over her hands. More of the golden metal continued all the way up her back to form a gorget about her neck, and a headdress on her head. Then there were the sails. That was the only way Kono could think to describe them. They emerged from her back, anchored to her shoulder blades. Golden metal came from them as armatures. The sails themselves appeared to be formed of layer upon layer of fluffy leaves. The closer to the armature, the darker purple they were, fading out to nearly white at the tips.

  This person was human, but she was unlike any human Kono had ever seen.

  Perhaps she was from beyond the nations, somewhere far enough north and east that they’d never troubled the tribes. He couldn’t imagine a place with such people, but here one was. As he swam up under her and breached the surface, the need to help her was met with his curiosity about where she had come from.

  The metal on her body was ornate, carved in places and set with glittering jewels of crimson and jade. Jewelry was nothing new; he wore a necklace of lalani teeth on a leather thong around his thick neck. Still her adornment was amazing. He had never seen so much metal in one place before, and the metal he had seen was dented and scarred, battered from a hard life of use. Hers was perfectly smooth except in those places that had been purposefully sculpted or engraved. Whoever she was, she was a wonder. Kono was looking forward to asking her…everything. She appeared to be unarmed, so unless her sails were a weapon, Kono wasn’t afraid of a national incursion. Besides, they’d never fallen out of the sky before anyway. They generally used ships so far as he knew.   He hooked an arm beneath hers, drawing her to his side. Her features were strange too. Though her skin was brown, it was a deeper brown than he was used to, an almost shiny mahogany he could only compare to the heartwood of trees from the nations. Her eyes were large and slanted, her lips full, her cheekbones high, and her chin strong.

  Her size was the strangest feature to him. He knew people were smaller in the nations, living as they did, in their huge, cramped villages, deprived of the good diet of the islands, but this was the first time he had seen one of them. He’d always assumed the elders were kidding. “Don’t fear the nation’s freebooters. Even their grown-ups are like children.” Yet some of it had to be true, as here was someone as old as he, but tiny.

  Kono shifted, pulling the unconscious young woman onto his chest. She came easily, her limbs loose, though thankfully not wobbling with breaks. She was, more or less, intact. Kono let out a sigh he hadn’t realized he’d held. The rescue, such that it was, had worked.

  Despite the metal armature on her back and body, she was fairly light. Kono had only ever held a few bronze relics from the nations, and those were far heavier for their size. The sails drifted out on either side as Kono moved through the water. They would have made an excellent sea anchor, but Kono wouldn’t let that stop him. Occasionally checking on the girl as he went, he backstroked back to Po’i Island.

  His heels dug into the sand by the shore, and he righted himself, transferring the unconscious young woman into his arms. Most of the weight came from the sails, both from the armatures and from the water collected in the purple leaves. Once again, Kono was comforted by the fact that she was not overly limp. Her head lolled on her neck, though not outside the range of normal movement.

  He carried her up the shore, to his small camp. The firepit was dark, filled with the ash from last night and a few blackened stumps of fuel. He took her to his hammock, stretching between two trees, woven the previous day from vines. It was sized for Kono, and she looked like a child in it. The armatures folded up behind her, and she continued to drip saltwater. Her bones were fine, but for the first time, Kono noticed the armatures might have been damaged in the fall. They only had one joint, about halfway down their length, and that joint felt oddly loose, moving in three dimensions when it looked like it only should move in two. He was no expert, though he knew how sails were supposed to work.

  Kono stared down at the young woman. Who needed sails on their back? Maybe she came from a place where human beings served as sails? The nations were keen on slaves, and perhaps she had escaped from them. It made as much sense as anything else he could think of.

  He left the young woman to her unconsciousness. He still had to catch his dinner, and, he hoped, dinner for her as well. He turned his attention to the horizon. If this was one point of the falling star, what was the other?