The Seventh of May 1821 - Somewhere in the South Pacific.
Thunder and lightning waged war across the blackened sky, roaring some secret warning. A shiver ran up Kiri’s spine. The HMS Swan’s Flight roiled beneath her fleet. The storm was come with howling winds and lashing rain. The ship would not survive this.
Tāwhiri, spirit of the storm, would not heed her words, just as he had not all that day.
But she was a daughter of the Ngāti Tārahu. Though she had been taken from her people to serve on this pākehā ship, she still carried their pride and strength within her. She would not give up. She could not.
“Captain! Captain!” She cried.
She shared a look with Georgie. His trembling hands were tight upon the rigging. He mouthed a silent prayer.
“Courage, Georgie. We will make it through this,” she said, laying a hand across his.
He shook his head, eyes white and wide.
“Where’s that damned captain?”
“Where else?” He nodded towards the prow.
She grunted a curse, leaned over, kissed him, then hunching down against the storm, threw herself forward, pulling herself along the gunwale. Georgie shook his head and said something, but the wind caught his words and cast them aside.
The Swan’s Flight listed sharply starboard and the deck tilted. Men cried as they scrambled to take hold of something. Mr. Roberts tumbled overboard and was lost.
Somewhere behind her, Mr. Burrows fought against the wheel.
“Captain!” Kiri cried to the figure leaning out over the bow, one monstrous arm draped over the figurehead.
The captain either did not hear or did not heed her.
Kiri scrambled across the fore-deck. “Captain!” Her shrill voice tore at her throat.
Captain Rātua glanced back, dark eyes ablaze, moko-etched face twisted with what could just’ve easily been anger as ecstasy. How a warrior of Kiri’s own people had come to command a ship in the pākehā king’s navy, she could not guess and dared not ask.
“Captain! We need to—”
“Tell that māngere Burrows to fix our course,” Rātua growled. His voice cut through the storm, clear and deep.
“We can’t—”
“And do something about this wind! Can you speak to Tāwhiri or not?”
“I can but—”
“Then speak! We need this wind with us not against us. Te kope iakoe!”
“But—”
“What is it girl!” he spat. His scowl revealed black, rotting teeth.
“These winds. This storm. Tāwhiri won’t listen. Not as enraged as he is. We need to get the ship out of the sky.”
“Do not tell me what to do with my ship. Nākahi is near!”
He pointed with his whalebone taiaha out towards the dark horizon. Far off, a serpentine shape clad in scales of crystal white, coiled amongst the churning cloud. Nākahi, the white sky serpent.
She hesitated, swallowed, then met his dark eyes. “It won’t matter if we’re all dead! This storm will—”
Rātua moved faster than she would’ve believed, grabbing her collar and thrusting her towards the bow. She stumbled, flailing at the sodden railing for some tenuous support, leaning out over that terrible abyss of wind and cloud and rain below.
“Then use your Gift. Kia whai hua koe, e hine!”
Rātua turned and stomped off, unphased by the wind, nor by the ever increasing tilt of the deck. “Where’s that māngere Burrows!” Rātua growled as he made his way aft.
Kiri and Georgie’s eyes met for a moment before Georgie looked away. Kiri’s heart sank.
Lightning’s flash. Thunder’s roar. The lupine wind. The groaning ship.
She leaned forward, and taking hold of her koro’s pounamou, whispered in the secret tongue of the ever-shifting winds.
She willed Tāwhiri and his kin be still and be calm, but the winds howled around her and the rain pelted her face. Tāwhiri would not be quelled.
A sudden, violent gust. The Swan’s Flight shuddered and half-rolled. The deck near vertical. Screaming men fell to their doom.
Kiri slipped, flailing at the deck, at the gunwale, at the rigging, at nothing. The deck slid beneath her. Then Georgie was there, arms around her. She grabbed him and raised a hand towards the terrible sky.
“Tāwhiri kia ata noho!” she cried in the tongue of her sires. The words tore at her throat, at her mind, pulling her will outwards with such force that for a single moment she was one with the wind and the cloud and the lashing rain, one with Tāwhiri and his stormborn kins. She reached up and punched a hole through the storm towards the bright blue vastness of Rangi far above.
Then she was Kiri again, blinking and spluttering, lungs aflame, head spinning. She wiped her nose and her sleeve came back smeared with blood.
All around the Swan’s Flight the storm was stilled. Warming sunlight filtered down through the tenuous column of calm.
And yet just beyond reach, the storm still raged.
Far off, Nākahi faded into the darkness.
The crew cheered. The Swan’s Flight leveled out. Georgie looked upon her in wonder.
“I thought you were dead…” he whispered.
“What?”
“You cried out and then… Then your eyes rolled back. You weren’t breathing. You…” He trailed off. His voice cracked.
“After the beast!” Rātua cried. He grabbed Georgie’s collar and pulled him off Kiri and shoved him back. “All hands to stations. Nākahi escapes! Wind, girl. E hiahia ana matou ki te hau pai. Tere!”
“She needs to rest,” Georgie said. “She’s—”
Rātua’s massive hand caught Georgie’s jaw, throwing him backwards. He hit the deck hard and curled up, whimpering and clutching his face.
“Karekau he wa mo tenei! Mr. Burrows six degrees to port. Hobbs, what are you doing with the sails?”
“They took a beating, sir. Just need a few moments to sure them up.”
“Be quick about it.”
“Aye, sir.”
Rātua spat over the gunwale. “We need a favourable wind, girl. Now!”
Something rippled through the air. A low whispered warning carried on a soft but chilling breeze. A baleful premonition.
“I won’t,” she said though her voice caught in her throat and she failed to meet his eye.
“He aha?”
She swallowed and looked at him. She was of the Ngāti Tārahu. Daughter of warriors. She would not be cowled by this man’s madness.
“I won’t,” she said, clearer this time. “I won’t let you take us all to our deaths.”
He grabbed her collar and pulled her close. He loomed over her. His breath was rank with rotting meat and sour wine.
“Ka mahi koe, kotiro.” His voice was low, dangerous.
“Sail’s ready, sir,” Hobbs called.
Her heart pounded. Her feet were numb with fear.
“Or what?” she whispered in a trembling voice. “You need me.”
Then Rātua smiled. “Her lover,” he growled without taking his eyes off her.
Georgie was hauled to his feet by two brutish sailors. His nose was bleeding and his lip was swollen. The side of his face was already mottled with purple bruising.
One of the sailors bared steel, pressing it to Georgie’s chest.
Kiri and Georgie locked eyes. He was shaking.
Kiri swallowed, then nodded to Rātua and turned back to the prow. Rātua laughed.
From some far off place, the whispered warning reached for her, and of that she was afraid. But she spoke to Tāwhiri all the same, willing a wind behind them. For a moment, nothing, then a breeze picked up, gentle at first, but growing stronger. The sails creaked. The ship slid forward through the sky.
The whispers washed over her, growing louder, but if Rātua or any of the others heard them, they gave no sign. Rātua just chuckled and shifted his grip on his taiaha.
And then the storm closed in around them again, all swirling winds and icy rain and the distant flash of lightning.
Kiri grunted and spurred the winds behind the Swan’s Flight on, faster and faster. Strain pulled at her mind. The warnings grew stronger, carried upon those howling winds. Was this the voice Nākahi? of Tāwhiri? Of both of them at once?
“Where is he?” growled Rātua.
The whisper rose to a sudden crescendo, then silenced, but in that silence was somehow an even greater dread.
“Any sign of the beast?” Rātua called down the ship’s length.
No answer from the ship’s crew. The silence had settled over everyone, everything. Even the wind seemed subdued.
Rātua opened his mouth to speak again when lightning and thunder raged as one. The cry of splintering wood rose up from below.
The Swan’s Flight buckled and lurched to port and all aboard save Rātua stumbled. Many fell.
Kiri hit the deck. The sailors holding Georgie released him and he went down as well, limp and loose. His head struck the deck with a hollow thunk.
The ship bucked, rolled, tipped forward. Lighting and thunder. The rain turned to hail.
Then Nākahi arose to starboard, huge and sleekly serpentine, clad in bone-white iridescence and ridged with fins of pale blue. His body was wreathed in lightning and his cavernous jaw was ringed with fangs the size of men.
He encircled them, calling jagged hail stones to bombard the ship from all sides, tearing at sail and balloon, piercing screaming men, splintering wood. Only Rātua stood strong and defiant, sounding his furious battle cry. Lightning struck the mast, then the deck. The Swan’s Flight caught aflame.
Rātua howled and cast his taiaha.
Kiri crawled to Georgie and took his limp hand. He lay still, eyes closed. Was he breathing? She couldn’t tell. More hail. She threw herself across him as the ice shredded her back. She screamed and beneath her Georgie stirred, eyes flickering.
Georgie’s grip tightened on her’s.
“Georgie,” she said. “It’s going to be alright. We’re…”
He shook his head. “No…”
All around them was devastation. The burning ship, broken and breaking. Torn sails. The screams of the dying. The silence of the dead.
Rātua stood perched upon the gunwale, reloading a musket, bellowing orders to an already routed crew.
Kiri tightened her grip on Georgie’s hand. “No,” she growled. She was the daughter of chieftains, of warriors, of the mighty Ngāti Tārahu. This is not how she would die.
She took hold of her koro’s pounamou and let its power fill her. She roared, calling out to Tāwhiri, projecting her will out into the sky, and as she roared her mind melted into the winds and the skies and the fury of the storm. She was in the sky and she was the sky, vast and infinite and utterly eternal. A blue cloak covering all this world. And amidst that vastness hung the Swan’s Flight, such a tiny, fragile thing. Even Nākahi, proud son of Tāwhiri, for all his power, was such a small part of such a mighty whole.
Kiri took hold of the Swan’s Flight with a hand of wind and rain-soaked cloud and rent it from Nākahi’s grasp. The Serpent roared. Wood splintered and cracked. Men burned and fell and died.
Nākahi gave chase. Rātua aimed and fired. A torrent of blood exploded from one of Nākahi’s eyes. He recoiled and roared again.
Lightning flashed. Rātua screamed. Kiri was thrust back into her mortal shell. She blinked to see Rātua’s smoke-wreathed body flung into the abyss.
Her lungs were burning. She couldn’t breathe. The world spun as the Swan’s Flight plummeted from the sky. Georgie’s arms were around her. He spoke, but his voice was so muted, so distant.
Darkness closed in around her…
***
She woke beneath a harsh midday sun. Her head throbbed and her chest ached. Her mouth was cracked and dry. So thirsty. All was still and quiet save for a gentle rocking and the soft lapping of water on wood.
She groaned and then Georgie was kneeling beside her.
“Kiri!” he said a little too loudly. She winched as her voice stabbed at her brain. “Kiri,” he said again, softer this time. “You’re okay.”
“I’m not sure if I’d say okay,” she groaned, but she smiled up at him, though doing so stung her lips.
She tried to rise but she was too weak.
“Easy,” Georgie said, helping her to a sitting position. “You’ve been asleep for almost twenty-hours.”
“Twenty-hours?”
“Aye,” said Mr. Burrows, sitting nearby. A bloodstained rag was wrapped tight about his head and a smoking pipe was clenched between his teeth. “We thought you good as dead.”
“But whatever you did, you saved us,” Georgie said.
Kiri looked around the barely sea worthy ship. So few of the crew remained. A bare handful of dejected men. ‘Saved’ might’ve been too strong a word.
“We managed to make some repairs to the ship,” Georgie said. “Keep her afloat. But we’ve been becalmed since the storm passed.”
“Figured if you ever woke you’d be able to help with that,” Mr. Burrows said.
“Provided you’re strong enough,” Georgie said quickly.
“We’re running low on food and drink,” Mr. Burrows said. “We can’t just drift out here forever.”
Several sailors murmured their agreement.
Kiri nodded, before clearing her throat. Her head swam. Her lungs burned. But she was of the Ngāti Tārahu, daughter of chieftains. She was always strong enough, always ready.
“I think I can help with that.”
Thank you for your time and attention, it truly is appreciated.
Okay, firstly: fellow Kiwi spotted in the wild. Second: he worldbuilding here is fantastic. Kiri grabbed me immediately, but I have to admit Captain Rātua kept stealing every scene he walked into. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.