Coiled Snake (The Windstorm Series Book 2) (11 page)

I wake up with a jolt, and it takes me a long time before I can forget the sounds and smells of the fire. It takes me even longer to shake the feeling that it was somehow all my fault.

In the morning, we return to the bunker and to the hateful Quil. Eventually, I get sick of writing down numbers and begin to doodle. Birds soaring on the swirling wind. Flowers that transform into faces with moko. Ocean waves that turn into flames.

“How’s it going?” Paika asks.

“The same.”

He walks over and looks at my paper, and I feel a stab of guilt. But he doesn’t say anything about the pictures. “Have you thought of trying words?” he asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you can make words out of numbers, especially on a keypad.”

“Paika, that’s brilliant!”

After that, hoping to make up for my casualness, I throw my energy into making a list of all the four-letter Kohangaere words I know, with some input from Paika. But soon that list is followed by some choice four-letter words in English.

The next several days are a slow hell. Every morning, we go straight to the bunker, where Ana and Mik offer coffee and pastries and then hover on the fringes, only succeeding in making me nervous. And every afternoon, Jian stops by to check on us, making me even more nervous. As each day comes and goes, I see the stress show more visibly on everyone’s faces, and I feel it growing on mine. The longer I fail to unlock the Quil, the more certain Paika’s death becomes.

“Do you think any of the words you’ve thought of are promising?” Jian asks during one visit.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “They’re pretty random. Just like the numbers.”

He traces his chin with his fingers and looks down thoughtfully. “Maybe a name?” he suggests. “Something specific.”

“Like what?”

“The Riki’s maybe? Or Matoa’s?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know the Riki’s name, and the captain’s name is five letters, not four.” I press my head into my hands. “This is impossible!”

He pats my head, says something that’s meant to be encouraging, and leaves.

As time passes, I sneak glances at Paika to see how he’s holding up. Incredibly, he never looks the slightest bit frazzled, unlike the others, and I’m not sure if his composure makes me feel confident or frustrated.

One day, there’s a knock on the bunker door, and Ana lets in Miri.

“Can I borrow my granddaughter for a lunch break?” she asks.

“Sure, why not?” Paika says, ignoring Mik’s protests and getting up from the chair on which he was lounging. “I could go for a break myself.”

“I’ll bring her back by 12:30.”

“No worries. Take your time.”

“Come on, then,” Miri says to me.

I follow her gratefully into the hallway. When we get to the tunnel that leads to the dining hall, I turn to go down it, but she stops me.

“No, this way,” she says, turning into a tunnel I’ve never been down.

I trail after her as she leads me down multiple sloping passageways. The further we go, the darker it gets, until finally the torches along the walls disappear and she stops to light a candle. The darkness is oppressive, hovering threateningly at the perimeter of the glow cast by the small flame.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“You’ll see.”

We continue onward, and after several minutes, the sound of running water tells me we must be near the underground river.

Miri directs me into a low cavern that smells like salt and limestone with pools of water scattered throughout the floor. She sits cross-legged on a flat stone next to one of the larger pools, shadows slipping across her face from the light of the candle, and beckons for me to sit across from her.

“It’s time for me to teach you how to sing.”

“What? Right now?”

Instead of answering, she blows out the candle. Immediately, the darkness rushes in on me, so thick I can taste it. The sensation is overwhelming, paralyzing. I’ve never experienced such a complete absence of light. Fear and panic begin to crawl up my throat, telling me I’ll never escape, that I’ll be buried in this mountain forever.

“Can you feel the wind?” Miri asks.

“What?” I gasp.

“Can you feel the wind?”

“What are you talking about? Of course I can’t! We’re inside a freaking mountain.”

“Try.”

Forcing myself to obey, I reach out with my mind, but the darkness is too stifling, and I can’t see anything, let alone a ripple in the air.

“I can’t.”

“Don’t look for it. You have to feel for it. Forget your reliance on sight.”

Taking a deep breath, I try again, closing my eyes, focusing inward. To my surprise, after a second I detect a faint breeze, so faint I doubt I would have ever noticed it. There must be an opening somewhere to the outside. With this realization comes a surge of hope.

“I feel it!”

“Wonderful. Now walk on it.”

“That’s impossible. It’s too weak.”

“Then be still and listen.”

It’s then that I realize I can hear water dripping from the ceiling into the pools. Some of the drops make a loud plop while others make a quiet drip. The water falls at different times, the sounds overlapping. Plop, plop, drip, plop, drip, drip, plop.

We listen to the water for a few minutes, and then Miri quietly begins to sing, weaving her rich voice around the drops. “Ngoi,” she sings over and over, varying the length, frequency, and pitch of the note to sometimes match and sometimes oppose the falling water. Her voice dissolves into the damp rock walls, making the sound deep and earthy.

“Wairua,” she sings more loudly. “Ngoi. Ngoi. Wairua.”

Plop, drip, plop, plop, drip.

As the volume of her voice increases, I sense the darkness recede. I open my eyes and almost gasp when I realize she’s floating above the pool of water, the relit candle in her hand. Instinctively, I feel for the breeze again, but it’s still as weak as it was before.

Miri continues to sing, and as she sings she spins slowly above the pool of water, her voice sinking into the cavern in a powerful wave. She spins faster and faster, singing louder and louder. The light bounces wildly around the room.

And then suddenly the singing stops, and, slowly, slowly, she lowers herself back to the ground.

“How did you do that?” I gawk.

“I strengthened my connection with the wind.”

“By singing?”

“Yes. The power of your voice can release a great force within yourself. Now you try.”

“I can’t. I don’t know how.”

“Start by choosing a word, or several, that has special meaning. Ngoi means power, and wairua means spirit, that’s why I used them here. But you can channel your energy into anything you want.”

“I’m not good at singing.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s about release, letting your power flow.”

“I’ll try.”

I close my eyes and feel for the breeze, listen to the water dripping. What should I sing? I can’t think of any words that have special meaning. Finally, I settle on the chant Paika taught me. I think he said it meant something about being united. Of focusing your mind on one purpose. I could use some focus right now.

“Tā,” I sing hesitantly. It comes out flat and pathetic, but I try again. “Tātu. Tātu e.” I sing it several times, trying to follow the tempo of the drops, but I don’t feel anything change. I just feel ridiculous. I look helplessly at Miri.

“Keep trying,” she coaxes.

I inhale deeply and try again. “Tātu e tātu e.” I focus my mind deep inside myself, concentrating only on the words emerging from somewhere within my chest. Be one. Focus.

“Tātu e tātu e.” I reach out to the wind. I can feel it, but it’s still weak. Come on, focus.

Nothing.

“It’s useless,” I say with frustration. “I can’t do it.”

“Don’t worry,” Miri says. “It takes some practice. We’ll try again later.”

She stands up, and I follow her out of the cave, back up the tunnels to the dining hall. After we eat, she drops me off at the bunker.

Mik lets me in, but I stop short when I see who else is inside: it’s Mokai.

“What are you doing here?” I ask testily, realizing I haven’t seen him since right after the trial. When he called me a selfish idiot.

“I came to see if you’d made any progress.”

“If there had been progress, you would have heard about it!” I snap.

“Calm down, Kit,” Paika says.

“I’m just sick of everyone asking.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re trying your best,” Mokai says.

His words are infuriating. “Of course, I am! You think I want Paika to die?”

“Sorry, Kai,” Paika interjects. “You should probably go. Clearly, we’ve got ourselves a stress case here.”

Mokai raises his chin. “I’ve got training to supervise anyway.” He turns toward the door. “Best of luck, Ara,” he calls over his shoulder before leaving the room.

When the door closes, I feel suddenly abashed. If I fail, Mokai will pay the price as well. I can’t blame him for wanting to know.

“I didn’t mean to yell at him,” I say to Paika. “He just has a way of getting—wait! What did he call me?”

“Ara,” Paika says, quirking an eyebrow. “It’s the nickname we gave you when you were a tyke.”

I sit down in my chair slowly, arms shaking. I guess it makes sense. Everyone shortens Mokai’s name to Kai, why not shorten mine the same way? But to be called that name again, her name …

I picture Aura’s dead face. The purple blood. Remember Jeremy mistaking me for her because we looked so similar. Giving his life for me because he thought I was Aura. Rye taking me to the Wakenunat because he thought I was Aura. Protecting me because he thought I was Aura—the chief’s daughter.

“Holy crap!” I shout, sitting up straight.

“What?” Paika asks.

“The Riki’s daughter. Her name is four letters!”

I snatch up the Quil and navigate to the keypad. Then I punch in the numbers that correspond to the letters in her name and hold my breath.

It doesn’t work.

I curse and slump back in my chair, fighting the heat building behind my eyes. I thought for sure I had figured it out. To be so close …

Paika puts his hand on my shoulder but doesn’t say anything, just squeezes it and walks away, giving me space.

I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t the Riki have used his daughter’s name? It seems like the most obvious answer. She was his only child, the thing that he loved most.

I sigh and drop my head in my hands. I haven’t consciously thought about Aura in a long time, but now I can’t get her out of my brain. Remembering her, remembering being her, makes my lungs constrict and my shoulders heavy. All that time with the Yakone I was a slave—a slave to her name, her life. But for two months, I’ve been me again. Kit.

Now her name is part of my name, and when they kill Paika and make me a real slave, I’m never going to forget that. I’ll never be able to stop thinking about her. She’ll haunt me forever. Even now I sense her ghost, teasing me with the answer but pulling it away from my grasp at the last minute.

On the other side of the room, Paika is talking to Ana. I listen to their conversation, hoping to drive away her apparition.

“Next we go to the beach, of course,” Ana says. “And when we get back, we eat supper and open presents, sing a few carols.”

They’re talking about Christmas, I realize, and the pressure behind my eyeballs grows. Kava! I have to figure this out, or Paika won’t live to see Christmas.

“My old man’s birthday is on the twenty-fifth” Paika says, “so we always have cake and Christmas pudding.”

I’d never thought about Paika’s family before. My tears build as I picture him in a cozy living room standing next to a Christmas tree and singing “Happy Birthday” to his father.

Birthday … I hold perfectly still as an idea forms in my mind. Aura’s father didn’t use her name as the password, but could he have used her birthdate? I squeeze my eyes shut and try to visualize her license. I particularly remember looking at the birthdate on the fake I.D. because I wanted to know how old I was supposed to be. Joe made her two years older, but he always used his clients’ real birth month and day. Aura and I were the same age, so I know the last two numbers. I just have to remember the first two.

June 7. I think that’s it. Palms sweating, I open the Quil and return to the keypad. Then I carefully enter the month, the day, and the last two digits of the year.

It doesn’t accept it.

I slam my fist on the table as tears leak out of my eyes. That was it. My best shot. I’m never going to come up with a better guess. I’m so sorry, Paika.

I return the Quil to watch mode and put it on my wrist. It’s all over for Miri and Mokai too. The three of us are going to be slaves for the rest of our lives. I look down at the screen and slide my finger across it until it shows me the date: 15 December. Our last day of freedom.

Blurry-eyed, I continue to stare at the screen. Something about the date seems important, but I can’t figure out what it is.