Warnings - A Ship is Seen - Battle Alignment - Battle

  “The sun is at its highest—we should turn back soon, Ku’mae!” Pai sat in the bow of a narrow but long fishing canoe. His face was oval and flat, the nose a slight rise upon it. He was still young. The sun hadn’t yet done its work to ease wrinkles into his skin.

  Ku’mae was in the stern. “Don’t stress. Isn’t that your bird flying overhead?” Pai looked up quickly, but seeing only the empty sky realized Ku’mae was kidding him. Pai laughed and splashed water on his companion.

  “You think those big oaf hands of yours would be able to hold a bird without killing it? Why do you think you got a crow and the rest of us finches?” Ku’mae splashed him back. The boys laughed harder. Pai forgot his concern.

  “I’ll knock you out of the boat, you sensitive bird.” Ku’mae yelled.

  “You’ll knock yourself out from your weight,” Pai shot back. They both stood up and put their feet on opposite sides of the canoe’s gunwales. Attempting to buck the other off, they rocked the canoe side to side with quick stomping motions. It was a short game. Ku’mae was a block of strength, well over six feet at such a young age, his strength well balanced through his frame. Pai toppled and dropped into the water.

  The water was warm. He opened his eyes under it and saw the blurred threads of sunlight dissipating below. Limp and calm, he floated towards the surface and broke through.

  Ku’mae was in the boat laughing. “Okay then, let’s have you back where you belong before the sharks begin to sense you.” He extended his arm over the hull for Pai.

  Pai treaded water for a moment, enjoying his view. The wind had been with them when they slipped quietly out of the village that morning, and they’d covered a fair distance. Not as far as he’d gone before, but quite far out. The barest outlines of the cliffs that marked the entry points to their village’s bay were visible on the horizon. Further inland was the whisper of a mountain ridge line. Had the boys gone out even a few fathoms farther, the land would be lost and they’d begin to feel the tug of the open sea.

  Pai grabbed Ku’mae’s hand. With light effort, Ku’mae lifted Pai into the boat. They fell back to their seats, dripping and laughing.

  Pai delighted in the companionship of his friend. Within their tribe — their kwa — Pai and Ku’mae were moon-cycle babies. Custom dictated that babies of the same moon-cycle were to be raised as brothers. No sooner did Ku’mae achieve a milestone than Pai achieved the same. Ku’mae always achieved his first, however, for his portion of the moon cycle was the full moon. A fateful difference. Full moon children were promised wealth and fullness. Stronger in mind, stronger in build. So was the belief. But Pai’s birth came so near after Ku’mae’s that he nearly achieved the full moon. And as the boys grew, more than one in the village suspected they split the full moon, where Ku’mae was born with its strength and Pai its wisdom.

  The timing had been a gift, one that almost did not occur. As Ku’mae drummed in his mother’s womb, the midwife assisting suggested the child would not arrive for the full moon. His father, a village leader, called for a surgeon. On a calm night, the surgeon incised the mother’s stomach and lifted the screeching child from her womb. Holding the bloody and writhing child, the surgeon walked with the parents and a shaman to the hut’s deck edge abutting the bay. The surgeon threw the child. A splash, and under the lunar light Ku’mae twisted like some porpoise corkscrewing in play. The viscera of his mother’s body floated off him, nabbed by small fish. The mother knelt on the dock and ladled some of the bay’s brackish water into her palm. Rubbing the water against her wound, she thanked the bay for its blessing. She sank her placenta into it as a final gift. As it filled with water, she took her floating child in her arms and said, “His name will be Ku’mae.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  The shaman said, “Ku, our divine name for this celestial event, Mae, as our mothers have told us in their songs is the rippled form Ku takes when he steps onto Earth to receive our fish. A divine choice.”

  Within the boat, under the sun that turned milky from the humidity, Pai grabbed his oar and remembered his concern. “We should get back.”

  “Disagree. We’re adults celebrating not having to be barked at by elders anymore. And yet here you are, barking at me. Row!”

  Pai followed the order. He leaned forward and dragged his oar. As he rowed, a strange sensation flared within him. He felt dizzy at first, and then beset with a strange neuralgia. It felt as though a current passed in and out of him. Through his appendages, his torso. No matter how much he tried to refocus on his rowing, the ebb and flow of this current became the focus of his attention. It had entered his temple and swirled in his skull, ceasing to leave his body at all, and instead just spinning into a vortex of focused intensity. He had to stop himself from screaming to try to release it. And as the energy became more compact, it threatened to take his hearing. His ears filled with a near deafening static ring. Then, in a relief, Pai heard Ku’mae suddenly yelled out.

  “Stop rowing.” The tone, an urgent one, made the energy within Pai’s body evaporate. “Look at the horizon,” Ku’mae pointed.

  Within the brittle haze, Pai made out what appeared to be the front of a ship.

  “It looks like a squid resting atop the sea. It’s hard to make out its speed, but it’s coming right for us.” Ku’mae said, squinting.

  Yes, a squid. Pai saw that likeness. It had a pointed bow, and a hull that angled sharply out, vaguely reminiscent of a squid’s head. Atop the bow were curved masts and foremasts, sails extended across all of them. Though Pai had never seen a ship of this size, he’d heard village fishermen speak of them. Rarely if ever did they deviate from far-out oceanic lanes to come closer to shore.

  “Now I insist we turn back to at least warn the sentinels.” Pai said.

  Ku’mae turned the boat. He seemed to have lost the frivolity that had steered them to this point. They both rowed. Ku’mae’s strength exceeded that of his lank bow companion. For every five strokes they made together, Ku’mae laid off one. They went on like this for some time. The cliffs in front and the ship behind swelled in size. Neither were close enough that Pai could make out their details minutely. They were just vague shapes.

  Much of what Pai heard as he rowed was the slap of water against the wood hull and the humming sound of sea wind. Once the cliffs ahead showed their faces, the plugs of jungle clear on top of them, Pai heard a faint man-made sound. “Stop paddling, Ku’mae!”

  The boat carried forward and eventually stopped. It floated delicately, pushed by wind, as both boys sat and cupped their ears, straining to hear. “I think,” Ku’mae stopped. When he spoke again, his voice was firmer and resolute, “Blood day.”

  Pai felt himself go cold and a fluttering came to his stomach, like it was falling down a deep cavern.

  “The attackers, perhaps it’s the P’aad’kwa?” Ku’mae asked.

  “No,” Pai said, “It wouldn’t be. Pearls are here. The P’aad’kwa wouldn’t risk harvest.” He continued to think, and the thought that came to him made him begin to shake. “Plu’kwa,” he said.

  Pai saw that this did not have the same effect on Ku’mae as it did to himself. Ku’mae nodded. “Our first Blood day will be our hardest. It seems fitting that our birth year would face such a test. But we are lucky. Brothers of the full moon! It will show us to victory. Paddle now!”

  Ku’mae pointed the bow to a channel of water flowing between two lone spires of limestone, which they’d soon pass and then slalom through the remaining cliffs towards their village. Had either of them turned a final time to watch the boat on the horizon, they’d have seen it hoisted a flag to its highest mast. Pai felt the currents of energy return. But, as soon as the canoe passed through the first spires of limestone, the current released. Soon, the sound of blaring horns was all around him.