Afterglow (Wildefire) by Karsten Knight Read Free Book Online Page A

turn around, back to the cliff, you catch just the slightest hint of color among the rocks. In fact there’s a staggered trail of fading embers leading up the cliff face, where hands and bare feet have recently touched.
    He must have scaled the nearly vertical stone wall.
    You don’t have the patience to climb it yourself, so you carve a new rift in the air and step out onto the top of the cliff above.
    He’s sitting close to the edge, with his knees bunched up against his chest. He flinches, momentarily startled, when you appear next to him and the sea water that leaked through the portal splashes into the grass, but he doesn’t appear afraid of you. “Aloha,” he greets you.
    You skip the pleasantries. “Who are you, and where have you come from?” you ask him in his own language.
    “You . . . speak English?” He actually looks more surprised by this than when you stepped out of a hole in the air moments before.
    “It is the language of your missionaries,” you say indignantly, “who flock to our islands like bats to a nest of moths.”
    “They are not my missionaries.” He points toward the eastern horizon. “They came to my lands, unwelcome, the same way they did to yours . . . although,” he adds with a smile, “my lands are so vast it will be some time before they’ve conquered them all.”
    Against your better judgment you sit down beside him, although an arm’s length away, as though he might be rife with sickness. Out in the water a humpback whale surfaces, then another. They’ve always seemed just as fond of this bay as you have, though they never come close enough to admire the lava rocks.
    “My name is Colt,” he says.
    You open your mouth and laugh deeply. The gathering thunderclouds chuckle with you. “They named you,” you say once you’ve caught your breath, “after that strange four-legged creature that those haoles like to ride on?” You laugh some more.
    Colt doesn’t look offended. In fact, after a hesitation, he laughs along with you. “What? Colts are dependable, powerful, and fast, with an energetic, masculine spirit. They can travel for miles.”
    “As have you,” you say, spreading your arms out to the ocean. The laughter stops. Neither of you is watching the whales anymore. As he studies your face, you’re struggling with the sense of instant familiarity you feelwith him. He just washed up on shore. You can tell he’s holding back something, like he doesn’t know how much to trust you, how much to share with you.
    “I wish I could tell you how I got here,” Colt says at last. “One moment I was falling asleep at the base of a dune, back on the mainland, letting the sound of the tide carry me into slumber. . . . When I woke up next the tide actually was carrying me away. I couldn’t even see the shores the waters were so choppy with storm waves. The current dragged me under a few times.” He shook his head. “I have no idea how long I was floating out at sea before I washed up here. Under the heavy sun, and without fresh water, I plunged into delirium for many days.”
    It was impossible. You know from the pesky missionaries who come here that the mainland is a long ways to the east. It’s a far journey even for a boat with sails. . . .
    It should be an impossible journey to survive for a man who simply floated over .
    “What are you?” you ask him. “And how did you know my name?”
    “I can’t answer your first question,” he says. “But as for the second . . .” He swallows and runs a hand over his short, cropped hair. “Pele, I’ve been seeing you in my dreams. Every night . . . for the last twenty years. Only . . .” This time he summons the courage to look back into your eyes, and you see your reflection in them. “Only I don’t think they’re really dreams at all.”

THE NIGHTMARE MISTRESS
    Thursday
    Ash knew that Modo was supposedly the Greek god of the forge, but he snored like a thunder god.
    After his near death by