City of Fire (City Trilogy (Mass Market)) (35 page)

And then she stopped and folded her arms, tapping her heel anxiously against Bayang’s side.

Scirye

Suddenly sheets of water fountained upward on the horizon as a gigantic torpedo zoomed toward them. As it neared, they saw a huge dark shape as large as an automobile racing toward them through the choppy sea.

Koko patted Bayang’s side. “Take us up higher! It’s another bad guy.”

“Well, sometimes he’s bad-bad, all right,” Pele admitted affectionately, “but he’s also my husband, too.”

As water rilled downward from his bony fins, the huge fish surfaced like a submarine. Yellow and black stripes streaked diagonally across his silvery sides. For such a giant fish, though, he had a tiny mouth, but small tusks stuck out from either side. His eyes, which were set high up on his head, also seemed puny in comparison to his
body. The fish regarded the bobbing rafts around it, and Bayang and her passengers above it.

“You,” the fish grunted almost like a pig. “Why you bodder me fo’?”

“Howzit?” Pele waved cheerfully. “Long time, Kamapuaa, eh?”

“Not long enough,” Kamapuaa snorted, blowing up showers of water.

Pele indicated the sinking island. “We’ve got trouble.”

“
You
got trouble,” the fish corrected. “I go nap.”

Pele jutted out her chin defiantly. “The island’s falling apart and that’s going to make more tidal waves. How are you going to sleep through all that noise?” She paused and added slyly, “And how are you going to eat, eh? Those waves are bound to wreck the reefs. If they don’t kill the fish, they’ll drive them away.”

The water bubbled as the fish moaned. “You make mess, I clean up. Like always, yeah?”

“I didn’t do this for fun,” Pele argued, and waved a hand below at the Menehune. “I did it for my friends. That bad man Roland stole them so I came to get them back.”

“Hmph,” Kamapuaa said, making waves with every swish of his great tail. “Dat Roland make big island and big noise. Hard sleep. You fix him?”

Leech assumed that eating and napping were the fish’s main interests.

“Not yet,” Pele said, “but soon.”

Eleu was floating on a nearby raft. Cupping his hands around his mouth like a megaphone, he shouted, “We could build a trap that would catch lots of fish for you.”

“See, you could have a luau,” Pele coaxed.

Kamapuaa spread the fins on his sides and back so that they looked like large dark sails. He jerked his snout at Kles. “Maybe chicken, too? I like drumsticks.” He smacked his lips in anticipation.

Kles drew himself up, all eight inches. “I beg your pardon? I am not and have never been a chicken.”

Scirye put a hand protectively on the griffin. “He’s a friend.”

“And besides, he’d be too stringy,” Koko contributed.

Pele put up her hands and patted the air soothingly. “You want chicken. We’ll get you chicken.”

“Yeah, yeah. I help dem.” The great fish fluttered a fin at the Menehune and then at her. “But not you.”

“And I’ll dance, too,” Pele offered slyly. “Just for you.”

Kamapuaa waggled his tail, churning up the water white. “Yeah, yeah. Like old times.”

“So you’ll stop the waves?” Pele asked.

“Yeah, yeah.” The last word ended in a burbling sound as Kamapuaa sank beneath the surface again.

Scirye couldn’t contain her curiosity anymore. “You were married to a fish?”

“Sometime he takes human form, too. But human, fish, we always fight a lot. Still”—Pele sighed, brushing her hand through hair so that the strands curled around her fingers like smoky vapor—”how does he stay
so
cute?”

In Scirye’s many encounters with other cultures, her mother had often informed her that there was no accounting for taste. It just seemed that a goddess’s were much broader than a human’s.

Whatever Scirye’s opinion of Kamapuaa’s looks, the spirit was certainly powerful enough. Even as they hovered in midair, the surface of the sea seemed to be growing calmer by the moment.

“That takes care of the sea,” Pele said smugly, and turned her attention to the sky. “And now the air.”

Streamers of white mist were rolling toward them, and it was almost as if the black cloud cringed, shrinking away and creating a space high overhead. More and more pale ribbons streaked across the sky until they began to wheel about in a circle like the snowy
threads of a giant skein of yarn. Quickly the strands tightened into an opaque, milky ball.

Suddenly ivory creatures began to drop out of the milky globe. They descended so gracefully that at first Scirye thought they were angels. But instead of flying with wings, each stood with one foot in front of the other upon lemon-colored rods, riding them as easily as the surfers had ridden their boards at Waikiki.

Their sweet voices blended with notes played on flutes of bone bleached ivory by the sun, creating a melody as gentle and welcome as a summer breeze on a hot summer day. Like dancers, they wove their way down through the air in time to their song.

The men and women all had dark hair and pale skin and were dressed alike in white tunics and kirtles. In the arms of many were children as lovely as their parents.

Scirye felt her shoulders relax for the first time that day, feeling sure that no creature would go into battle with their children. And the closer the fliers came, the more the winds calmed, until they died altogether and Bayang was able to hold them in one spot with gentle strokes of her wings.

Soon the playful beings were wheeling through the air all about them so that Scirye and the others were at the center of a living, ever-spinning globe.

Pele greeted them politely.
“Heahea
, welcome Cloud Folk. You follow the paths of the sky. You know the secrets of sun and wind.”

All the Cloud Folk bowed low to the goddess, and one man descended lower on what Scirye now realized was a giant yellow stalk of some grasslike plant.

The man’s eyes were as deep and bright a blue as a sky on the clearest day, and flecked with golden sunshine. Around his throat was a necklace of golden disks that were rayed like the sun. “Thank you, my lady, ever-changing and yet ever the same, who knows the heart of the earth. You summoned us?”

“The air’s poisonous.” Pele wrinkled her nose as she pointed at the black clouds. “Will you fix it, Chief?”

The chief glanced at the sky. “It’s not good to have such a thing fouling the air. We can take care of that, but there’s more coming from beneath us.”

“I’ll fix below,” Pele said, indicating the island, “if you’ll fix above?”

“Then consider it done,” the man with the sun necklace said, and raised a hand.

The Cloud Folk shot upward like arrows aimed at the dark clouds, somehow staying on top of their strange craft as easily as if they were standing on solid ground. Faster and faster they sped until they were a blur, but as they neared the clouds, a group spun away at the last moment and Scirye saw they were the ones with children. The rest plunged straight into the polluted mist before the vapor had a chance to draw away.

Soon, white threads began to intertwine with the dark smoke until stripes of white and black wrestled one another like snakes fighting to the death. No sooner did the Cloud Folk seem to be gaining the upper hand than the blackness was reinforced with more poisonous gases and ash spewing from the erupting volcano.

“I’m going to use my
pu
voice now,” Pele warned Scirye and the others, “so cover your ears.” When they obeyed her, Pele began to sing.

Even with her hands over her ears, Scirye could hear the harsh notes explode from Pele like rocks ejected from a spouting crater. At the same time the goddess moved her hands like agile sparrows. There was a sharp contrast between the ugly sounds and the graceful gestures. Scirye barely had time to think about it before the island cracked beneath them and lava spewed upward, falling again in thick, glowing droplets that covered the surrounding black stones with bright red polka dots.

The crevices spread like the threads of a spiderweb, racing across the crust. As lava oozed out of the fissures, the whole island seemed caught in a fiery net. Rifts widened into chasms into which the remaining buildings tumbled in bursts of flame. Suddenly there came a loud, rumbling crash that sent the sea heaving beneath the rafts, and they looked down to see that a huge chunk of the island had fallen into the sea.

The island began to break up like a dry, brittle pie crust. More and more sections splashed into the ocean as the lava fountained upward in gooey, fiery curtains and steam rolled toward the sky with the hiss of thousands of serpents. The earth was reclaiming its own.

The war was being fought simultaneously in the air, the sea, and on the land. Beads of perspiration formed on Pele’s face as she struggled to destroy the island quickly while Kamapuaa tried to stop the destructive tidal waves created as the island broke up. Up above, the Cloud Folk did their best to cleanse the sky.

Finally, all that was left of the black smoke was a bank of fluffy white clouds and all that remained of the island was a great column of steam rising from the spot where the island had once stood to mix with the white clouds overhead.

The sea beneath them sparkled in the late afternoon sun with gilded scales, and the Menehune were already paddling the rafts across the placid surface toward the other islands.

“That’s that then,” Pele said, slapping her palms together in satisfaction.

Bayang swung her head around on her long neck. “Excuse me, Lady, but it’s not finished until we catch Roland,” she reminded the goddess politely.

“True, true,” Pele agreed. “You’re going to Nova Hafnia?”

“I’m afraid my wings would tire before I reach there,” Bayang explained. “Roland said he was going on a ship. He probably had one
anchored nearby so all the dragon had to do was get him there and then sail off safely.”

Pele scratched her cheek thoughtfully. “That figures.”

Despite her desire to catch Roland, Scirye couldn’t help tilting her head back to watch the Cloud Folk’s graceful descent and listen to their contented tune; it filled her heart with ease and delight. Her happiness only increased as the Cloud Folk gathered around Pele once more.

“It was a hard fight, but our homes are safe now,” declared the man with the necklace.

The goddess bowed deeply. “Thank you. But I need to ask one more favor now.” She nodded to Scirye and her companions. “These friends need to go faraway to the ice and snow.” She motioned to the north. “Can you help them get there?”

The chief regarded Scirye and the others. “You have the most peculiar friends, Lady.”

“They will catch the man who made the island and then broke it.” Pele gestured toward the place where the island had been.

“That man did something very evil,” the chief said gravely, “so we will gladly help them.” With a twirl of his wrist, he held a dozen yellow stalks. Soon others were also holding up more so that they seemed surrounded by golden whiskers.

“Now,” the chief said, and threw his stalks into the air. The others copied him until the sky was full of them.

Then the Cloud Folk began to sing a different tune, busy and happy as birds building a nest, as bees gathering nectar from a field. The stalks swirled about, darting toward one another, dipping and bobbing, almost as if in some complex dance.

When Scirye saw the triangle start to appear, she realized the Cloud Folk were weaving the stalks together. The triangle grew in size until it was a huge delta-shaped mat some thirty feet along at its base. Smaller triangles rose perpendicular from the tail and its
belly like fins. Across the top was a large boxlike frame woven from more stalks.

As the notes of their song died away, the Cloud Folk clapped their hands together in delight at their creation. Their applause was enough to shove the air raft about until several men and women caught the sides to anchor it.

The chief gestured for Bayang to rise above the triangle, and when she had done so, he pointed to the air raft’s middle where there were loops to hold onto. “The wind will carry you where you want to go, but you must stay in the center and not go near the edges.” He indicated the frame. “While you are inside here, you will be as cozy as if you are in a hut.” Then he floated over the largest loop. “Use this to steer.”