Afterglow (Wildefire) by Karsten Knight Read Free Book Online

following me, Tangaroa? Have you been . . . watching me?”
    Tangaroa purses his lips. That’s never bothered you before , his eyes say. “I didn’t need to follow you. Do you think an outlander could drift through my seas to my shores without me knowing about it? When it comes to the waters around these islands, my eyes see all.”
    The others are watching silently, but Tane lets out a giggle. “If that’s the case,” he says between bites of his fruit, “I hope you’ve looked the other way when I’ve gone swimming with a few certain girls on O‘ahu.”
    Tangaroa growls at Tane to silence him. Before he canlaunch more accusations at you, Rangi speaks, his voice as deep and tremulous as thunder. “There is an elder on Kaua‘i, a blind man who has achieved such stillness in body and soul that he can stand out in the water and snatch a fish from a passing school with his hands. He is also a seer. He has told me many stories, not all of which have come true . . . but there was one a few years ago that I never forgot: a prophecy about a Driftwood Stranger, a man from another land who would come and bring ruin to us all.”
    You tilt your head back to the sky in frustration. A cloud rolls in front of the sun. “I have met that blind man before. He also tells stories of a man-eating tortoise and a sea lion that steals babies from the arms of their sleeping mothers. And this Driftwood Stranger? He’s probably thinking of that white man who tried to kidnap the king years ago—you know, the one they stabbed to death in the water? Some dangerous visitor he was.”
    “No,” Rangi says, unmoved by your argument. “That man, Cook, came on a ship with many others. The Driftwood Stranger, the elder foretells, will come alone . . . and he’ll come without a ship.”
    This makes even Tane pause mid-bite. You can’t deny that the circumstances of the stranger’s arrival make you uneasy. No shipwreck. No signs of starvation on his filled-out body. Not even a sunburn.
    And he knew your name.
    “He is my prisoner,” you say sternly. Your eyes burnred when your gaze finds Tangaroa’s again. “No one touches him until I find out who he is and why he’s here.”
    “And if he proves dangerous?” Tu, who had remained silent until now, asks. “How will you handle him then?”
    “Then I’ll drop him into a lava pool on Kilauea,” you reply, “and find out if the Driftwood Stranger burns like driftwood.”
    “And for those among us who don’t spend our days lighting fires, Pele,” Tane says, “how does driftwood burn?”
    You try to sound as merciless and uncaring as possible when you say the next word, so that they’ll trust you to handle the stranger on your own:
    “Slowly.”

    The cove where you left the stranger isn’t far from the bamboo forest, and ordinarily you’d run back after the Council meeting, drawing strength and energy from Haleakalā, the quiet volcano. But Tangaroa could be traveling by sea to “visit” the stranger himself, so you explosively gouge out a section of the air and pass through the narrow portal.
    Only, when you step into the cave, the stranger is gone.
    It hasn’t been more than an hour since you left him for the tense meeting with the other gods, so he couldn’t have gone far. You try not to panic, and you let your eyes take in the heat within the cave. As you concentrate, the color fades from the world around you until the cave and the light filtering through its opening have muted to mostly shades of gray and sepia.
    However, the hollow depression in the stone glows a soft orange, where the stranger’s body heat lingers on the pebbles. Unfortunately, the water cooled any heat trail he might have left on his way out, so you return to the mouth of the cave.
    As you stand beneath the magnificent sea arch, you worry that you may have lost him for good. The sea and stone together are just a cool variety of grays, with only the sun lighting up in vivid red.
    But when you