Racing the Dark (46 page)

"Hey, stop that!" she shouted, following him around to the other side of the bridge. His mood was infectious, and she laughed even as he lobbed more water in her direction. His attacks took the strangest forms-delicate flowers, stars, fish that swam through the air toward her face with their mouths open. His rapid, easy movements in the water filled her with envy. How long had it been since she dove? Unthinking, she unstrapped her sandals and flexed her legs for her familiar dive into the water.

She looked down at Kai and smiled, wondering why he suddenly looked so worried.

"Lana, what are you-"

He actually launched himself out of the water, landing on top of her with enough force to almost bowl her over the other side of the bridge. She landed on her back, her wings squashed beneath her and the healing skin on her back pulled painfully taut.

"What were you doing?" he shouted, his voice shaking.

"I just wanted to dive ..."

"Lana ... you can't dive anymore. If you do and I'm not around, you'll drown. Promise me you won't ever try that again."

"But, Kai-"

"Promise me!"

His eyes resembled a fast-moving current, and in their depths she imagined she saw that first mandagah fish, opening its dying mouth over and over again as though it would devour her as well as its tainted jewel. She closed her eyes and wished that his words weren't true, that she would be able to dive again. She had known the depth of her sacrifice the second the wind spirit uttered the words "dark angel." Yet to hear it put so plainly ... there could be no more denial.

"I promise," she said.

He touched her wet cheek softly, collecting her tears on his fingers. When her face was dry, he put his hand to his mouth. One by one, he let the gathered tears dissolve on his tongue as his own eyes danced like the sea in a hurricane.

I'm a part of him now, she thought, overwhelmed-like a tiny piece of driftwood tossed on the top of a vast, stormy ocean.

Eventually they reached a drier part of the vast complex. The water in this area confined itself to a few small ponds with bridges and a stream that ran through all of the rooms. He led her up a small flight of stairs and then entered a room whose only door seemed to be an archway of roots covered by thick, hanging vines. He pushed his way through and she saw that it was some kind of sleeping chamber. There was no roof to speak of, but tall green plants shaded the sun's harsh glare. Nestled between the massive roots of one tree was a bed covered with fresh white sheets. Spaces had been carved in the walls where she could place her belongings.

"This is where you can stay. I think it's the nicest room, but if you don't like it, I can find something else."

"Oh no, it's fine. Where's your room, though?"

"Room? I don't have one. Well, I had one before the change, but not anymore."

Lana had never heard him use the term before. "What's a change?"

He seemed surprised. "When I stopped being ... human, I suppose.

"So, where do you sleep,?" she asked.

"The water, mostly. It's usually easiest that way."

Lana couldn't hide her disappointment. She supposed that she had hoped that they would be able to share the same bed, but he seemed so nervous and distant.

"We won't ... you don't want to sleep together? Like before?" She wanted to kick herself for sounding so desperate and tentative.

He looked away from her as though he was too ashamed to meet her eyes. "I'm sorry, Lana. I can't, not now. One day I'll explain, I promise, but..."

Lana blushed so fiercely, she felt like her face had caught fire.

"Don't worry," she said, forcing her tone to be light. "I'm sure I'll manage without you. It's kindness enough that you allowed me to stay here."

He winced at her sarcasm, but didn't return it, which made Lana feel very petty.

"For now, I think it's better if you don't go wandering too much," he said. "It's very easy to get lost ... not everything here stays exactly where you left it. I'll have some food brought here later. Normally we can eat together, but tonight ..."

"What is it?" Lana asked.

"Tonight ... I release my father. I'll have his Weeping."

Lana kissed him goodbye on the bridge over a deep lake near her room. He returned it tenderly, but with an edge that made her ache for him. Whatever awaited him down there, he was clearly afraid of it.

"Kai ... what's a Weeping? They always said the water guardians couldn't cry."

He sighed. "We can, but just one tear is a massive sacrifice. A Weeping is what the water guardian does to pass his powers to his successor when he's ready to die. My father ... he's wanted to do this for a very long time. I have no right to deny him any longer."

He leaned over and kissed her left ear, where ugly, ridged scar tissue grew over the place where her earlobe had once been. She shivered.

"I'll be back soon," he said. "You don't have to wait for me."

He closed his eyes and dove over the side of the bridge. This time, he didn't resurface.

Lana sat down with her legs dangling over the edge and began her vigil.

Kai allowed his body to change as he pushed himself deeper underwater. Membranous tissue grew between his fingers and toes, his ears adjusted themselves to the increasing pressure and parts of his skin began to open up, allowing him to breathe underwater.

He ignored the growing gaggle of sprites that followed his deep passage-they could only follow him so far, after all. Only the guardians themselves could enter the ancestors' cave. He used their light to guide him through the underwater maze, but he went through the final passage alone, and in the dark. After squeezing through a tiny fissure in the rock face, he emerged in a huge dark cavern. The walls by the fissure were covered in fading murals, painted by the lost civilization that had first built these underground mazes. He had often wondered about that as a child: how had a whole race with powers like the water guardians been so utterly destroyed that only a handful of people even knew that they existed? He sighed and stepped through the rim of the air seal that surrounded most of the cavern.

Weeks ago, when he felt his father enter this sacred chamber for the final time, he had been furious. Ali'ikai hadn't wanted him to leave; he had dismissed his son's concerns as childish delusions. And then, just when Kai was learning how horribly right he had been, his father chose to die. He hadn't wanted to return, though he had known he didn't have much choice. But then he met Lana, and his whole world rearranged itself. The cranes warned him, he remembered. He didn't know where it came from, this crazed love that had lodged itself in him the moment he first looked at her. It had happened to his father-Aunt Pua loved to tell him that story-but he had always considered himself to be more rational, more controlled. He would never sink into a decades-deep pit of grief over the love of one woman. And yet ... now Lana was with him, and he didn't know what he would do if she ever left.

Even here, on the cusp of doing the one thing he had dreaded all his life, he didn't regret returning. He would do whatever was needed to protect her, even if it meant accepting the power he had never wanted. He thought of how she had last looked at him, with a kind of dogged, sad hope that made him want to beg her forgiveness. Of course, how could he possibly give into the constant temptation before she understood what she would be sacrificing? Selfishly or not, he wanted a little more time with her before he forced her to make such an impossible decision.

His father sat hunched in a tiny crevice above the graves of his ancestors, a desultory white light floating somewhere above his head.

"So, the wayward son has finally returned." His father's voice was cold and oddly distant, as though he was already half-gone. "I had begun to lose hope." He stared at Kai. "You know how long I've wanted this. You know that you were the only reason I remained. Why did you delay? Didn't you think you owed me this much?"

Kai clenched his webbed fingers. "You know why I had to, father. Even if you're too far gone to care, it matters to me what happens in the world of the living."

"Oh, you presume to know me so well?" The listless voice now held a touch of anger.

"I only know who I saw. A man half-mad with grief over a woman I barely even remember. You never were interested in the world, in life ... in me ..." Seeing his father in this state had stirred something inside of him-he wanted to dam the anger and the old pain, but they suffused him.

"I see. So that's what this is really about. You think I loved my dead wife more than my living son. You're probably right." His face crumpled and he looked away. "I was never worthy of you, was I, Makani?" he whispered, his voice scratchy with agony even twenty-five years after the loss.

"Do you know what it was like, Kai? You think you know so much, but you know nothing of grief. Imagine spending days with it tearing at your insides like a maniac with a dull spoon, knowing that nothing short of death will assuage it and that you cannot die. Imagine the mad, terrifying temptation to weep until your very soul drains away and knowing even that recourse isn't open to you. Can you not imagine why I would have felt some resentment toward the one who would keep me in that hellish prison? Can you not even sympathize?"

"Even if that person's crime was merely existing? Merely reminding you of your obligations? Even if you instead chose to give all of your love to someone who could no longer feel it?"

"Don't say that!" And then, a few seconds later, "Why didn't you come sooner?" His father's voice sounded plaintive, almost like a child's.

"Maybe I hoped that if I could find out what had been causing the disturbances, you would change your mind. I hoped I could get to know my own father before everyone I loved died. I hoped..." Kai paused and shook his head. "What I hoped was naive. Selfish. I'm sorry, Father, I should have come sooner. Your torment is over-have your release."

Kai closed the gap between them and lowered his head beneath his father's, so their eyes met.

"It wasn't all torment," his father said quietly. "You have a lot of your mother about you ... your pig-headedness, your smile ... not your eyes, though." He chuckled. "No, those are mine."

He gripped Kai's hand one last time. "May fate protect you from loving a woman like I did your mother."

Kai's voice stuck in his throat, but his mind flitted to visions of Lana sleeping on the rocking ship during their journey to the shrine, her tangled hair falling over her face.

And then, with a cough so delicate as to belie the fact that he was overcoming a lifetime of rigid self-control, his father began to weep.

Kai emerged from the lake many hours later, his face haunted and his body sagging with exhaustion. She called out his name, but he didn't seem to hear her at first.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, after he finally snapped out of his reverie.

"Waiting for you," she said. He floated on the top of the water, staring like he didn't quite understand what she was saying. She sighed. "Are you coming up? I can't very well go down and get you."

A thick cord of water lifted him from the lake and deposited him on the bridge. He sprawled onto his back, his ice-blue eyes staring blankly up at the starry night sky. His chest barely movedanyone not looking closely might have thought him dead.

She moved closer to him and tentatively held his hand. He looked different, she realized. A second feather-this one a deep, oily black-was now entwined with his hair on the right side.

"Kai?" she said softly. He didn't move. "What happened?" Lana didn't dare speak again, even as the seconds ticked away and he showed no sign of having heard her.

"He's gone," he said finally, in a voice so small she could barely hear it. "Do you know, I remember crying when I was just a baby. It's my first memory-me bawling while my mother rocked me and held her hand over my eyes to try and stop the tears. If my father caught me crying he would roar and hold me underwater until I almost drowned ... I haven't cried since I was four years old. Not even when my mother died ... can you imagine that?" He laughed bleakly. "A five-year-old child not shedding a tear over his dead mother? By the time I had the change, I think I had forgotten how." He turned his head to face her. "Is that what you want, keika? A man who wouldn't even be able to shed tears on your grave?"

What did she want? Him; but was it so simple? She smiled a little and helped him sit up. "Sleep with me again? Just for tonight?"

He avoided her eyes. "Lana, I don't think that's a very-"

"Please?"

He sighed, then smiled ruefully. "Okay."

They walked slowly off of the bridge and away from the lake where, one day, Kai too would gain his ultimate release through tears.

The library was a massive warren of books, scrolls, and clay tablets, accessible only by poled boats and water-taut stairs that Kai would obligingly create so she could fetch something down. The only solid bit of floor was a stone island in the center of the library that held a carpet, a large wooden table, and about five cushioned chairs. Kai was still obsessed with learning more about the death and the strange geas that she had used to save her mother. He had decided to search through his library to see if he could find any other references to it. Perhaps, he said, he had been mistaken and something in the geas itself called forth a projection of the death spirit. He had seemed a little subdued after she first told him of her mother's illness, but she realized that it must have been very similar to the way his own mother died. Most of his books were dedicated to the geas and the art of sacrifice, but a month after he started looking, he still hadn't found any useful information about that kind of binding.

Lana was reading a decidedly plebeian book about daring pirate adventures in the days before the spirit bindings while sitting on the edge of the stone island with her feet dangling in the water. Kai had made it warm for her, which she enjoyed.

Kai slammed his book shut and then sneezed in the resulting little explosion dust. "Can I see that flute of yours again, Lana?" he asked.