Chapter Five: Kono

  Kono shot to wakefulness at the tail end of a thunderous snore. Hepthys knelt next to him, shaking his shoulder. “Wake up. The sun is up.”

  Kono blinked sleepily and sat up. The early morning chill wrapped its tendrils around him, and he wiggled his toes to get them warm. The fire had burned down to white ashes in the night. He’d pulled his cloak around him sometime while he slept, and now pushed it down, letting the cool salt breeze rouse him. He smacked his lips a few times and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, then blinked again.

  The sky was still dark, the scattered clouds collecting the light from a sun not yet risen. He turned to Hepthys with an accusation in his eyes.

  “It’s almost up,” she said.

  “Uh huh,” he said. He found a bit of salted fish and fruit hanging over the rack and stuck it in his mouth to gnaw at. He then stood and stretched out his limbs until they each gave him a little pop. “You hungry?” he asked the sky-girl. She was so small, he thought he should feed her more. Occasionally, nationals would escape their homelands to be adopted into the tribes of peace, and though they never grew, their children always ended up towering over them. Pointed to the importance of a good diet.

  “I already ate.”

  “Did you sleep?”

  “Not really,” she said.

  “Plenty of time out on the water.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your ship fell over the horizon. Take some time to get there. Day at least, if the wind is kind.”

  “A day?” Hepthys’s shoulders slumped.

  “How fast you used to going?” Kono asked.

  She shook her head to dismiss the question, and seemed to think he would forget it. “We should get moving, then.”

  With a shrug, he went up the shore where he’d pulled his boat beyond high tide’s reach and secured it to a tree trunk. He untied it, then hauled it down the sandy shore, letting gravity do most of the work for him. Soon, he felt the water under his feet, then up to his calves and knees, soaking the hem of his breeches.

  “Get the bags!” he called up the beach.

  Hepthys nodded, picking up a bag he had been sleeping next to. She frowned. “This is heavy, like it’s full of rocks. What’s in it?”

  “Rocks!” Kono said happily.

  Hepthys’s frown deepened, but she carried it to the boat and threw it in. She went back up the beach and gathered the drying food, put that into the other sack and brought it to the boat. This time she hauled herself in after it. She was clumsy on the water. Clumsier than anyone Kono had ever seen. Maybe it came from her small size, but he reflected, children were small and most of them were fine on the water. Had to be taught a little, but they got it. Could be she was never taught.

  The boat itself was a simple canoe design, with an outrigger for balance, and a single small sail for the open ocean. Hepthys righted herself onto one of the seats carved into the wood of the vessel.

  “Steady?” Kono asked from his place in the water. “This is gonna rock it a little.”

  Hepthys nodded, gripping the sides of the boat. Kono hauled himself in, and the boat indeed rocked, the outrigger coming entirely off the water. Hepthys turned pale, her knuckles going white. Kono righted himself and sat in the center of the boat, picking the oar up off the floor and putting it into the surf. He rowed out of the lagoon into the open ocean. Now he was entirely awake, once again part of the ocean. He glanced over the side, grinning at the fish dancing beneath him as the sweet, as cool air caressed his bare shoulders. Nothing could compare to the feeling of starting a journey on the water.

  When he was out beyond the reef, the swells grew, lifting and dropping the boat about half the height of a man; nothing to worry over. He unfurled the sail and lashed it into place. With a thwack, the wind filled it, and they were out into the sea.

  He turned around and found Hepthys had turned an entirely different color: green. The poor thing was weaving at the swells. Occasionally, a child was cursed with seasickness. Sometimes they could be cured of it. Sometimes they stayed on land.

  “Get round me,” Kono said, beckoning her.

  “What?”

  “Go to the fore,” he gestured to the seat nearest the front. “Breathe the clean wind, and keep your eyes on the horizon. It never move, no matter how much you do, got it?”

  “It helps?”

  He nodded. “Pinch your lip, like this.” He showed her, pinching his upper lip between thumb and forefinger. “And if you up for it, try some lona.” He pulled a fruit from the sack, showing her the striped green-and-yellow rind.

  “I can’t eat,” she said, the words coming out clipped.

  “When you can,” he said. “It calms your stomach. Now go. You feel better up there. Trust me.”

  She nodded and got to her feet, wobbling. The strut of her sails—no, wings, she had called them wings—twitched in their housings, and she winced at the movement. Kono held out his hands, and she took them, using him to balance as she picked her way up the small boat.

  “How do I get past?” she asked him.

  He pretty much blocked the whole way. The boat wasn’t built with more than one in mind.

  “I’m gonna pick you up. Okay?”

  She nodded, but tensed.

  Kono slipped his large hands under her armpits and hefted her, bringing her around and setting her on the forward part of the vessel. Then he turned and continued his trip aft, settling on the rear seat and rummaging in his box of rocks.

  “This is better,” Hepthys said, her voice pinched and nasal.

  “We all born in water. Just takes time to remember.”

  He picked out his shaping stone and the core of obsidian. With a few taps he sheared off a chip of the glass, and replaced stone and core in the sack. He leaned over, catching his reflection in the sea, and carefully shaved first his head, then his face, keeping only the braided shock of hair at his chin.

  “How are you doing that?”

  “Huh?” Kono asked, looking up. He continued to pass the glass over his head, removing every last bristle of his black hair.

  “You’re shaving in this.” Hepthys gestured with the hand she wasn’t using to pinch her lip.

  “This ain’t so bad. You should see when she gets riled up!”

  The sky-girl shuddered. “Is your whole wor...is your...land like this?”

  “Ocean and islands? Yeah. I know you nationals have big islands. Big-big islands you can’t walk across in a day.”

  He watched Hepthys, and she didn’t nod reflexively as he would have expected her to, confirming what he said about her home. He turned his attention back to his shave until the flake was hopelessly dull. Then he tossed it into the ocean, where it sank out of sight. He passed a hand over his head and face. Smooth as polished stone.

  Kono opened the other canvas sack and rummaged through it, removing a few lengths of line tipped in hooks made of bone. He attached a few lures, made of the brightly-colored ribbons of the kalao, woven together to be irresistible to a fish. He could understand why. All the colors he could imagine, in one spot, catching the jewel-like rays of the sun? He’d probably take a look if he were a fish. Might even bite.

  One by one he dropped these into the water and secured them on the small wooden hooks sculpted into the side of the boat.

  “Might get hungry,” he said to Hepthys.

  “We brought food.”

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  “Food that keeps. Keep it for them days where you can’t put hook to water.”

  “How did you save me?”

  Hepthys was now watching him keenly, though the fact that she was still pinching her upper lip made the scrutiny funnier than anything.

  “I told you,” Kono said blithely. “I’m ma’hanu.”

  Hepthys shook her head.

  “You don’t know ma’hanu? You from far away.”

  Hepthys nodded. “Where I’m from, we’ve never heard of your people.”

  “Didn’t think a place could be that far away.”

  “Like I said, far away. What’s a ma’hanu?”

  Kono waggled his fingers. “Someone who can talk to the gods and not line their bellies.”

  “Oh. You can use magic. You’re a sorcerer, then.”

  “You know those?”

  “Sure. Um, court sorcerers and the like. My...home...doesn’t have many. We have more alchemists, like the ones who made my wings.”

  “You come from a strange place, sky-girl.”

  “So do you, sea-boy.”

  The name sent a jolt of mirth through Kono, and he had to release it with a guffaw and a slap on his great thigh. “Sea-boy! I like it!”

  The spent the day sailing on the open ocean. Occasionally, Kono would spot a line on the horizon, a distant promise of land, but it was never much more than a sandbar. Out here, the islands were small, and easily swallowed by the hungry sea. The fishing lines twitched every now and again, and when they did, Kono rolled them in on a polished length of wood. He pulled the fish onto the boat, removed the hooks and placed them in a small bucket sculpted into the boat’s floor that he had filled with seawater.

  After several hours, Hepthys cautiously released her hold on her lip and waited, as though expecting to throw up. She didn’t, though she still spent much of her time staring at the horizon. Kono fed them from the fresh fish, pulling the creatures from the bucket, killing them swiftly, and butchering them with more flakes of obsidian.

  He gleefully ate cuts of raw fish, but when he offered them to Hepthys she turned greener than she had when they first got into the boat.

  “What?”

  “It’s still...twitching,” she said.

  “Fresh! Right out of the sea.” He demonstrated by slurping down another bit of fish. It was cool, and tasted strongly of saltwater. Aged fish could be delicious, but nothing was quite as clean and refreshing as a fish straight from the water and into his gullet.

  Hepthys watched him, but her countenance had softened a bit.

  “You change your mind, you let me know.”

  She changed her mind a few hours later. She took the whitish blob of fish in her hand and slurped it down, wincing as though she expected it to do something horrible when it hit her tongue. Her expression changed somewhat as she chewed and swallowed.

  “Good, right?” Kono asked.

  “Better than I thought,” was her conservative response.

  He handed her another bit, and she took it, so it was better than that. He didn’t blame her. No one liked being wrong, not even people who fell out of the sky.

  They sailed on into the evening. Kono navigated with the moving sun, putting it at their back as soon as it passed its zenith. Now it threw the shadow of the little boat to the fore. Kono pulled the sail down and lashed it securely to the mast. He checked the air and put one hand into the water. They weren’t in a current. They would drift, but not far, and Kono had a reasonable idea of distance and direction. He left the hooks on the side of the boat. No need to cheat themselves out of the possibility of fish.

  Hepthys looked around. “You weren’t kidding.”

  “‘Bout what?”

  “We’re not landing.”

  “Nope. Sleepin’ on the boat. You can do that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

  “You gonna be warm enough? Gets cold out here.”

  Hepthys nodded. She got down onto the floor, putting her back against the sloping section in the front of the boat. Her wings twitched and she winced.

  “I forgot. They aren’t moving on their own,” she said.

  Kono merely watched.

  Hepthys reached backward and pulled one wing, the one that looked relatively intact, around her, using it as a blanket. She shifted a few more times, grimacing, until she found a spot where she was more or less comfortable. The two golden struts now framed her face, and her body down to her knees was covered as though by a fluffy purple cloak.

  “You comfy?” Kono asked.

  “Getting there.”

  Kono lay down on his back, head against the seat he had used for most of the day. He couldn’t stretch out as the mast was in the way, so he spread his legs, dangling each one over the side of the boat. Cool air coming off the water kissed his limbs. He pulled the cloak over his body and settled back himself.

  He watched the sky as sleep came over him. The pinpricks of light stayed constant. None fell from where they were, maybe because he had already caught the last one that had.

  ***

  Kono rose early and was pleased to see Hepthys was asleep. He’d been worried she wouldn’t be able to close her eyes. Exhaustion might have been her ally here. He busied himself working as quietly as he could, checking the hooks for catches, transferring the two fish on the ends of the line to the bucket, and butchering a fresh one for breakfast.

  Hepthys stirred by the time Kono was unfurling the sail. She blinked sleepily. “What time is it?” she asked.

  Kono frowned, looking around at the blue morning light, turning to gold as the sun climbed. “Morning time.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course.”

  Kono grinned. “You slept hard. Good for you. Worried there for a bit, but you did okay.”

  Hepthys offered a small smile in return, freeing herself from her wings. As she returned them to their place behind her, she continued to wince in discomfort whenever they wobbled in their joints. Kono couldn’t imagine the way they must feel. He wished he had a way to put them right, but he wasn’t even certain he would know where to start. He could attempt to call the gods, but healing magic was the purview of the elders, not a beginner like him. Besides, he’d broken the rules once since his short exile. A second time might be pushing it.

  “Is there breakfast?” Hepthys asked.

  “You on the ocean! There’s always breakfast!”

  Kono grabbed a fish from the bucket, striped green and black. It was dead before it had a chance to know it was out of the water, and Kono expertly filleted it with flakes of obsidian. This time, Hepthys accepted the meat eagerly, even taking time to savor it.

  “Good, right?” Kono said.

  She nodded. “I liked this one.”

  “I try to catch you more, then.”

  The boat skimmed over the swells. The ocean was calmer now, but clouds had piled up in the sky. There wouldn’t be a storm today, but perhaps tomorrow. Kono wouldn’t want to stay on the water if the clouds broke. Even one of the little sandbars that were almost gone at high tide would be preferable.

  “What is it?” Hepthys asked.

  Kono was standing, tending to the sails, as he watched the sky. “Storm comin’ maybe.”

  “Then what?”

  “We find land as quick as we can. One time, I was out practicin’. Doing what the elder wanted. Learning the way of the water, how she flow and ebb.” He grinned as the memory took him. “Same thing that let me save you. Well, the sky, she broke open and dumped rain all down on me. Jumpin’ in the ocean would keep me dryer. I’m too far away from Kamo’loa to land, so I pick the closest thing. Not an island. A strip of sand, a couple of trees. I tie the boat to a tree and sleep in it, while the storm eats up what land I had.”

  Kono laughed.

  “It was fun to you?”

  “Oh no,” he said. “Miserable then. Scary then. Now, we got some days between us. Now, it’s funny.”

  Hepthys shook her head. “I hope we don’t have to do that.”

  “Me too,” he said sincerely.

  The clouds didn’t break. In the late morning, Kono spotted the narrow line of land on the horizon to the north. Hepthys’s ship, by Kono’s estimation, would be on the other side, and if memory served him, this island did have a few bays and lagoons, should they need to land. He swung the boat in just outside the range of the breakers.

  “It looks just like the last island,” Hepthys said.

  “Much different. Look at the coast. More rocks, more tide pools.” Kono nodded to himself. “Much different.”

  “I’ll trust you.”

  Kono pulled in the lines, all of which were empty, coiled them up and put them back into his tool bag. He didn’t want the lines catching on anything as he tooled the shallows. The reefs on islands like this could be treacherous, looking for every excuse to rip into the bottom of an unwary boat.

  An expanse of beaches went around most of the south and west sides of the diminutive island, and from what Kono saw, gave way to rocky shores going to the east, and perhaps the north. The interior was thickly forested, the kind of untamed land occasionally hermits sought out to be away from it all. Kono spotted movement in the trees, splashes of streaming color that betrayed the presence of kalao. There was something alluring about these kinds of islands. The call of solitude. Kono could almost understand, but the truth was, he liked people far too much. So no matter how stark and inviting a distant island was, it didn’t have what really made a place habitable.

  Kono caught the wind, and steered the boat around the western edge of the island, and his heart lurched in his chest. Wallowing offshore from the island, beyond the reef, was a warjunk. “Will of the gods,” he cursed.

  “What?” Hepthys asked, following his gaze. “What is that?”

  The warjunk was massive, as big as a village. It sat high in the water on a shallow keel. Its red sails touched the sky. It was made of lacquered wood, but also sported repaired sections of different colors and texture. Triangles of red like the fins of a mammoth lalani, other swatches of tattered cloth, flipped in the breeze alongside the main sails. Men crawled along the rigging like insects, and there were more of them than on any island.

  “A warjunk,” Kono said. It wouldn’t occur to him until later that she should know what it was, but he was too shocked to see a warjunk here to explain. National pirates shouldn’t be this deep into the land of the tribes. They had come on a raid, but must have seen the starfall too. Nothing else here to sate the greed of a national. It was the only explanation.

  People needed to be warned. He checked the sun reflexively—it should be in their eyes, making him invisible to the crew. But that wouldn’t last for long, and someone on that ship would spot him eventually.

  “That’s my ship!” Hepthys exclaimed, pointing.

  Kono didn’t have to follow the line of her finger to know what she was pointing at. The warjunk’s crane had pulled a strange golden shape from the waves, water flowing off it in sheets. Where the sun’s rays touched the vessel, it turned into a second sun, nearly blinding him. He had never seen anything like it. A sculpture, larger than a hut, but far smaller than one upon which a village would sit. The wide semicircular blades on the back he only recognized because of Hepthys. They were wings, sculpted onto the craft. An appropriate detail for a sky-ship. The crane swung around, lowering the golden sculpture to the deck.

  Kono couldn’t see how such a thing would ever fly. Even from the distance he was at, where the men on the rigging could be ants, he could see the crane and rope straining to bring the sky-ship off the sea floor.

  “Who are those people?” Hepthys asked. “What do they want with my ship?”

  “Raiders from the nations. They take because that’s all they know to do.” The simplest truth anyone from the tribes knew how to utter.

  “What do we do?”

  “We have to go back to Kamo’loa. We have to tell them a warjunk is down here.”

  “Kono, no! We can’t leave my ship.”

  He almost spoke, but saw more movement on the warjunk. The crane was moving now, lifting up the smaller boats that would have been lined up along the ship’s spine, boats not that much larger than the one Kono was on. The crane swung outward and lowered the boats onto the water with a splash, one and then another. In horror, Kono watched the freebooters leap overboard, some diving into the water, others climbing down the nets to jump into the boats.

  In moments, the boats were approaching, the men onboard rowing hard.

  Kono cursed. He’d tried to maneuver his boat to keep the sun in the eyes of the nationals, but he’d failed, and he didn’t think he could outrun the two vessels now speeding hard for them. He leapt to his feet to turn the boat. It was slow, too slow.

  They were going to be caught.