The navigator and the sk.., p.1
The Navigator and the Sky, page 1
July 1, 2012 Volume 2 No 9
The Navigator and the Sky
by Ian McHugh
ONE
“Sing, Kio Lea! Sing!” Tapa O heard his wife urge, even over his own exhortations to his nephews and grandsons to paddle.
The young men bent their backs. Sluggishly, the big double-hulled canoe moved out of the harbour. Huddled on the platform that joined the twin hulls, a pile of shadows beneath the platform’s roof, the men’s wives tried to quiet their crying children. The sail hung slack, dyed orange by the light of the fires ashore, its turtle motif half-hidden in its folds.
Kio Lea’s voice rose at last. Tapa O put a hand to his chest, feeling the song in his heart and lungs, the pulse and breath of the world. His granddaughter’s voice belonged to the days of the ancestors, he was fond of boasting, when mankind still had one foot in the realm of the gods.
The Wind arrived, the goddess leaning into the sail as she inhaled Kio Lea’s song. The canoe surged forward. The young men gave a ragged cheer, the sail with its painted turtle filling out proudly above them.
Tapa O hauled on the tiller, bringing the canoe around. His eyes roved the heavens, mapping the tracks of the stars without needing to check the brass cylinder of the star compass at his feet. The Wind was a slight thickening of the air around the sail, distorting his view of the constellations directly overhead.
He looked back. The fires they’d set in the houses had spread to the palm trees near about. Jiro Inu and O Saa were in the midst of that conflagration, Kio Lea’s husband and her father – Tapa O’s son – stayed behind to battle her would-be kidnapper and cover the clan’s escape. Surely, they must be dead by now, had no chance of surviving against a god, even if the Sky had put aside the great part of his power to set foot upon the domain of Earth.
As Tapa O watched, one of the burning houses exploded up and out, a vast fan of sparks. Another followed. A glowing silver-blue figure raged about in the flaming ruins, then launched into the air. For a terrible instant, Tapa O thought the Sky would dive after the fleeing canoe, but he soared upwards, an ascending comet, heading for his palace in the heavens.
The Earth is our mother, Tapa O thought, watching him go, but she cannot defend us on these scattered specks of land on which we live. Grief threatened to overwhelm him. His vision blurred. Tapa O turned away.
Inside his head, behind his right ear, he felt the faint, familiar ‘rightness’ of his navigator’s sense, that told him his course to the island of his wife’s kin was true.
Nona Lupe herself was by the mast, on top of the platform roof, where Kio Lea had sat herself to sing to the Wind. Lupe was bundling a blanket of feathers and woven palm fibre fussily about Kio Lea’s shoulders. She straightened, holding the mast for balance, and looked at Tapa O.
Her face wrinkled in a sudden smile, sad and relieved. Even at a distance and in the dark, Tapa O could tell that her eyes were full of tears.
Daylight touched the sail. Tapa O looked over his left shoulder, to where the sun had crested the horizon. He took one hand off the tiller to rub his tired eyes. Through the soles of his feet, he could feel the flow of the waters beneath the double hulls as they rode evenly over the steady swell, stable with their heavy load. They were running before the Wind, still, the goddess driving them along, enthralled by Kio Lea’s song.
The stars were lost in the pale blue above. Only the Morning Star remained, not yet outshone. The palace of the Sky lingered in the firmament. One edge of the silver disc on which it rode was lit, the rest in shadow. Tapa O frowned. It seemed higher in the heavens than its proper place for this time of its cycle.
The Sky would be there, looking down on them. Tapa O could imagine him standing atop the tallest tower of his palace that pointed towards the world, his midnight face upturned. His pale eyes would be fixed on the tiny speck that bore the object of his obsession. On the Sea’s domain, Kio Lea was safe from the murderer of her husband and father. But they could not run forever.
Tapa O looked to his granddaughter. He could see her lips move, but her song no longer reached his ears. The Wind kept it for herself. Kio Lea was the only singer alive who could captivate the goddess so thoroughly.
White feathers poked through the dark strands of her hair. Tapa O chewed his lip. He wanted to get the family to Nona Lupe’s kin as fast as possible, but Kio Lea could not keep singing. Grieving as she was, he feared she would give herself over entirely to the spirit within her. If she allowed the breath of the world, her song, to take shape in her body, then she would inevitably take wing. And if that happened, the Sky would swoop down and pluck her away in an instant, and Tapa O would be powerless to stop it.
He turned his head to speak, was momentarily confused to find his O Saa’s habitual place on the running board empty. The place near Tapa O’s feet had been his son’s since the very first time O Saa accompanied him, at the age of five. O Saa had continued to sit there on every voyage they took thereafter, even as a mature man with grown children of his own.
Grief struck all over again.
Nona Lupe was perched at the near side of the canoe platform, where the cane wall screens had been left rolled up. Her eyes were on him, observing the direction of his gaze and the fall of his expression, divining from these his turns of thought.
She was already shrugging her blanket and climbing nimbly up on to the roof before Tapa O could think to call out to her. He watched her scuttle across to Kio Lea by the mast, and recalled when his wife’s legs had not been nobbled sticks, when her back had not been bent, her bosom not descended all the way to her waist. When her hair had been sleek and black, not unruly, brittle and yellow-white. Nona Lupe had been a fine woman in her day, though never so beautiful as Kio Lea, and she had always sung liked a squawking gull. A smile tugged the corners of Tapa O’s mouth.
Still able, though, he thought, watching his wife argue with their granddaughter. Still hale. And somewhat wise, now, the two of us.
Ah, but have we the strength, anymore? What lay ahead should have been O Saa’s quest, or Jiro Inu’s. Not a task for an old man like him. Tapa O’s gaze went to the turtle on the sail. How long since he had the courage to delve inside himself and immerse himself in the spirit of the navigator that resided there? How long since he had permitted himself more than the faint brush of his navigator’s sense?
Movement caught his eye, beyond the sail. A star fell from the shadowed disc of the Sky’s palace.
The sail luffed. The canoe tilted, its motion changing sharply. A face solidified in the air, cheeks puffed with alarm. The goddess hovered above the mast, staring wide-eyed at Tapa O. Then she fled.
For vital moments longer, Tapa O’s warning cry stayed strangled in his throat. Kio Lea and Nona Lupe looked up at the flapping sail in surprise. On the platform below, other clan members called out confused questions. Tapa O lurched away from the tiller, leaving the waves to carry the canoe on their back where they willed. He pointed frantically at the falling star, now pulling out of its dive and skimming above the surface of the waves.
At last, his voice came, “It is the Sky! Get her inside!”
Nona Lupe and Kio Lea looked about wildly. Tapa O scrambled up to them as nephews and grandsons tumbled from the platform into the open hulls on either side, spears and harpoons in their hands.
Growing nearer, the star resolved itself into a bright, silver-blue nimbus around a robed figure. Nona Lupe grabbed at her granddaughter, trying to drag Kio Lea to the edge of the roof. Too late, Tapa O thought. He planted himself in front of Kio Lea, painfully conscious that he had no weapon in his hand. Nona Lupe gave her a further shove back and stood up beside her husband.
“I will drown before I let him have me,” Tapa O heard his granddaughter spit.
And then the Sky towered beside them, the silver fringe of his robe trailing level with Tapa O’s chest, his starlit hair billowing around. Tapa O stared up into the god’s cold blue gaze and dark, scowling features. With a sneer, the Sky opened his fingers and flung something that clattered on the roof at Tapa O’s feet. Nona Lupe wailed. It was the shards of two broken spears.
“Wherever you run, Kio Lea,” the Sky said, “I will come and take you. Submit to me.”
“She will be safe from you in the domain of our mother, the Earth,” said Tapa O. The god bared his teeth. He held himself clear of the Sea’s domain, Tapa O realised. The Sky had set aside none of his power this time. He could kill them with a flick of his hand.
The Sky raised his hand now. Tapa O’s chest hurt.
He felt the presence rushing up from below a heartbeat before the surging waters cannoned into the bottom of the canoe. Women and children screamed as the vessel was bounced fully clear of the waves and crashed back down again. A column of spray burst up into the air, twisting and spinning to resolve itself into a second gigantic figure.
“This is not your domain,” said the Sea, with cold calm. “You may not intrude here.”
The Sky snarled. Tapa O thought he would lunge at his brother, that they would be trapped and crushed between the clashing gods.
But the Sky retreated.
“I will have my way!” he cried, accelerating into the distance. Then he was a shooting star once more, arcing back up to his palace in the firmament.
Tapa O fell to his knees before the Sea and bowed, his legs about to give way anyway. Nona Lupe lowered herself more slowly.
Tapa O felt the weight of the god’s gaze.
“Father of us all,” he said
The Sea’s hair and beard rippled in waves that crashed white upon his shoulders and chest. “So long as your courage holds, Tapa O,” said the Sea, “I will not permit him to assault you in my domain. But it is your strength and hers, Navigator, that will decide Kio Lea’s fate.”
“I am old,” said Tapa O, “and at the end of my strength.”
“Courage, Navigator,” said the Sea, already sinking.
Then he was gone.
Tapa O remained kneeling, too drained to stand. Nona Lupe watched him, the skin around her pursed lips a nest of wrinkles.
“Must it be you?” she asked.
“It must,” he replied. Though I fear I do not have the strength, added the traitor voice inside. He picked up the broken head of O Saa’s spear. “O Saa and Jiro Inu are dead.”
“Take some of the young men with you,” she urged.
He shook his head. Meeting her eye, there was no need to say that he did not know if he could bring them back.
“But you cannot alone!”
“I will save myself,” another voice interrupted.
A strong hand gripped under Tapa O’s arm, lifting him. He looked into Kio Lea’s dark eyes. The breeze pulled black hair and white feathers across her cheek.
“You can hold the Wind,” he said, “but you have not the Navigator’s skill to find your way.”
He caught Nona Lupe’s hand, balancing her as she rose too, and looked at them, the pride of his heart and the love of his life, side by side. The one in the high flush of youth’s power and beauty, the other with a lifetime’s wisdom and experience and an intimate understanding of him. That he must choose the one over the other was a crushing weight. Kio Lea met his stare with clear eyes, Nona Lupe’s were misted with tears.
Tapa O had to look away.
Out over the horizon, he spied a tinge of green on the underside of the scattered clouds – the reflection of an island, their destination.
Waves curled, hissing, over the island’s barrier reef. Within, the waters of the lagoon lapped serenely at the beach. Tapa O walked with his wife’s brother, Te Amoa, past ranks of beached canoes. Tapa O’s canoe was anchored out on the lagoon, as close to the reef as was prudent, with Kio Lea still aboard.
They went slowly, in deference to Te Amoa’s crippled leg. He had walked with a stick since before Tapa O had known him. But he had not always had liver spots on a bald scalp, nor had his skin sagged from muscles gone ropy-thin. And neither had mine, thought Tapa O.
They shuffled past big double-hull trading canoes like Tapa O’s and long outrigger war canoes, broad enough to be paddled by double rows of warriors with archers standing in between.
“Will they be safe here?” asked Te Amoa.
Would Te Amoa and his clan be safe with Tapa O’s family here, was what he really meant, thought Tapa O. He answered, “It is Kio Lea he wants.”
“The Sky is petulant,” said his brother-in-law, “and prone to fits of temper.”
“I cannot take them with me,” said Tapa O. “I regret that I must return responsibility for Nona Lupe and the children of her blood to you, but I must. Take them home, if they wish it. The danger there has passed.”
Te Amoa stuck out his bottom lip. His eyes roved the untidy ranks of fishing and racing canoes further up the beach. He gave a dissatisfied grunt and gestured with his stick that they should turn between the crowded boats. “Defying gods is a young man’s game,” he said. “Even you cannot outrun the Sky forever.”
“Not forever,” said Tapa O, examining the vessels ahead of them. “On the mainland Kio Lea will be safe under the Earth’s protection. The Sky will not be able to reach her there.”
Te Amoa halted and looked at him gravely. “No-one has made that journey in our lifetimes. Perhaps you will reach the dominion of Earth, travelling with the currents. But can you return?”
Tapa O lifted his chin, holding his brother-in-law’s gaze.
Te Amoa continued to stare at him for a time in silence, then nodded. “Does Lupe know that this is your plan?”
Tapa O felt a small, acute pain behind his breastbone. “She does.”
Te Amoa puffed his cheeks and turned to resume walking. Tapa O thought he stabbed his walking stick into the sand with more force than was strictly necessary.
“Here. This is the best I can offer you.”
Tapa O looked the vessel over, a narrow-hulled outrigger racing canoe that would make several times the speed of Tapa O’s double-hull trader. It would be hard in such a small craft, over such a distance, but the canoe would be manageable between the two of them.
“Thank you, brother,” he said.
Parting from Nona Lupe was hard, though they said little. She was kneading cassava flour into dough when he came to tell her it was time. Her eyes darted about, following the children playing outside her brother’s house and avoiding looking at Tapa O for long.
“Come back to me,” she said.
He wanted to promise, couldn’t, and so remained silent, watching the motion of her hands, turning, smacking, pressing.
“I don’t want to grow old alone,” she added.
He laughed, briefly. At length, he said, “I will try.”
Nona Lupe bowed her head, falling still for a moment, eyes closed, then went on with her kneading.
TWO
Sunset painted the western horizon pink. Tapa O marked the places of the early stars. Their course pointed them towards the part of the horizon where the constellation of the turtle was just rising. He hoped it was a good omen. His navigator’s sense was centred above his right eye, where it should be when they were tracking wide to starboard of the departing sun. The brass cylinder of his star compass rested across his thighs, mapping the islands of his people along the tracks of the stars. Somewhere, far beyond the world it recorded, lay the great realm of the Earth.
Kio Lea faced him, her back to the mast. Her hair was all black. Across her lap, her hands resting softly on the broken shafts, were the spear heads of her father and husband, all she had left of them.
She had barely spoken in the two days and nights since they left their family behind. Tapa O refused to let her sing, with the canoe already rushing along faster than the ocean current, its outrigger high, barely slicing the top of the swell. Sitting as she was now, her head turned to the side, his granddaughter’s profile and the lines of her neck reminded him acutely of Nona Lupe in her youth.
He had a sudden, powerful memory of her, striking the same pose, sitting in another racing canoe in the light of another sunset, many years before. He couldn’t recall the occasion. Taking her home, he thought, from the island of her family to his.
He came abruptly back to the present. Kio Lea had spoken. “What?”
“Will the Sky pursue us still?” she said, with the last of the sun lighting a dull halo around her head.
“He will,” said Tapa O, and felt the weight of those words press down. “Perhaps you were a passing fancy. But now we have defied him and his brother the Sea has humiliated him. He will not abide that.”
She nodded, looking away once more, and Tapa O said, “You should sleep. I will need you to take the tiller later, while I rest.”
“You should let me sing”
He shook his head. “No.” It came out sharper than he’d intended. “Grief brings the spirits within us closer to the surface. If you gave yourself to the albatross…”
“Do you think I’m a fool?” she snapped, glaring at him. Her fingers tightened around the broken spears.
“You almost sang too long on the way to your grandmother’s kin,” he said, seeking refuge in sternness.
“I know myself better than that,” she said. “I’m not a child.”
He subsided, conceding the point. Ah, granddaughter, he thought, when you have held your child, their body no longer than your forearm and hand, and then years later, held their child, then you will understand. When you have seen, too, your own father and brother, in grief, embrace the spirit within them and never return… His father had been near the end of his long life when Tapa O’s mother passed away, and his father forsook the human world. But his brother had been barely older than Kio Lea, the death of his wife in childbirth too much to bear. Kio Lea’s gaze strayed up, to where a fat silver crescent marked the location of the Sky’s palace. Tapa O wondered what mix of anger and hate, sadness and fear lay behind the mask of her face.
