The atmosphere in the grove felt depressurized, as if the air had been sucked out, leaving only the cold scent of old smoke and the bitter tang of salt.
Inside a half-lit bure. Silence.
Tambo and Konto were slumped shapes in the gloom. Their arms were pulled behind the thick coconut-wood pillars.
They sat separate from each other, their bodies looking like broken statues in the dark.
While the others slept with their heads down, Tantei's tears were soft and dry.
He sat pinned against the center post, his side profile turning a flat, weathered gray against the backdrop of the thatched wall.
N-n... n-no... nnn-no... no."
The words came out as a jagged, splintering rattle in his throat.
It was a sharp, pressurized click of his tongue against the roof of his mouth—nk-nk-nk—before the vowel finally broke through as a weak, airless wheeze.
"Nnn... n-n... no."
As he stared at the dirt floor, a memory began to play in his mind like a flickering lamp.
He saw himself as a young boy, tall and lanky, sitting on a thick-matted floor. His back was to the exit, and he was playing with smooth pebbles.
He wasn't alone, a friend his size sat across from him, and the room was filled with the easy sound of their chuckles.
Suddenly, a small-framed boy ran into the doorway, blocking the afternoon sun. It was Kanka.
His dreadlocks were as black as ink and cut short, his face youthful and round. He didn't say a word at first. He just drew his arm back and hurled a small ball of wet clay at Tantei's back.
—THWUT—
Tantei jolted, sitting up straight as the mud hit his skin.
He immediately reached for his back with both hands, his fingers scratching at the mess before he shifted fully to look behind him.
Kanka stood in the light, a mocking grin stretching across his face. "Good for you. Come and catch me! Ah ah!"
Tantei's face became raw with frustration, though his eyes weren't truly threatening. "Ugh! Kanka! Are you nuts?"
Kanka just grinned wider, stuck his tongue out, and sprinted off instantly, his bare feet making a rapid pattering sound as he vanished from sight.
Tantei scrambled up, his heavy stomps shaking the floor as he reached for the door. "Wait till I tell dad!"
The memory snapped shut.
The second memory played, saturating the air, turning the gray bure into a vision of the Rewa delta.
The air was smelling of rich, river mud and the sweet, cloying scent of crushed ginger flowers. It was a humid heat that sat on the skin like a wet cloth.
Suddenly, the silence was shattered by the rhythmic Thud-slap of bare feet hitting the packed earth.
Kanka burst into view first, a blur of energy. His short, ink-black dreads whipped around his face, catching the golden afternoon light.
He sprinted past the Chief's bure, his laughter a sharp, sibilant ring that echoed off the high thatched roof.
Tantei followed second.
Behind him, Tambo ran third.
Konto trailed last, his breath coming in quick, excited gasps, his small hands reaching out as if to grab the trailing shadows of his brothers.
Their joy was a physical force, making the towering palms at the far ends of the clearing seem to dance.
Chief Vakatele sat on the bure's elevated coral stilts, his frame marked by the dark entrance.
He held a half-cut coconut.
He took a quick drink, the water tasting of sweet, cool earth and minerals.
His face was rugged, marked by the deep lines of a man who carried the gaze of responsibility, his receding hair a short, black mat on his head.
He pulled the coconut away. A low, warm chuckle rumbled in his chest, a sound like grinding stones, his eyes softening.
For a moment, the world was perfect.
The air was heavy with the smell of damp earth and the sweet, starchy scent of steaming taro.
The only sound was the Swoosh-swoosh of the wind through the palms, until the world was split by a sharp, hollow
CRACK-SMASH.
At Kanka's feet, the prized Kuro clay pot lay in a jagged cemetery of shards.
The cool water erupted in a silver spray, spilling over his dusty toes and soaking into the dry earth.
The dark, wet patches spread rapidly, smelling of cold minerals and wet clay.
Kanka slowly turned his head back. His mouth was a partially opened gape.
His hands remained extended in a sudden freeze, as if trying to hold onto the ghost of the vessel.
Then, the light was erased.
Vakatele's shadow loomed over him like a rising mountain, that swallowed Kanka's small frame whole.
The shadow was unmoving, smelling of heavy salt and old wood
The memory shifts with another slow, white pulse.
Vakatele's lower body disappeared from view as he walked off.
The silence he left behind was louder than any scream.
Kanka was already sitting on the cold, rough coral stilts of the bure. His face was a map of moisture, slick with the salty tracks of tears and the humid sweat of the grove.
He was inhaling his sobs, his chest vibrating with a clicking rattle as he tried to keep the sound inside.
His hands were folded tight in his lap, his knuckles looking like small, white pebbles.
Tantei approached from the side, his movement a fluid, weightless shadow. He didn't speak.
He sat down beside his brother, his expression neutral, stone-like calm.
Kanka turned his head, his wide eyes searching Tantei's face for a sign of judgment. He found none.
Tantei reached out, his arm a long, protective beam. He pulled Kanka closer, the warm, solid pressure of the hug acting like a blanket.
Kanka's head hit Tantei's shoulder with a soft Thump, and for a moment, their father felt miles away.
In that hug, the world tasted of dried salt and brotherhood, a moment of safety before the world began to disappear.
The sun was a punishing weight, turning the sky into a flat, blue haze that lacked even a single cloud for cover.
On the deck of the Drua, the air tasted of deep salt and the drying timber of the hulls.
Kanka and Tantei stood side by side, their silhouettes sharp against the glare.
Their pupils were darkening, tiny, black pinpricks adjusting to the violent light of the open sea.
Kanka moved with a quick, restless energy. He turned his head to scan the horizon behind them with a sharp gesture.
Finding the line empty, he returned his gaze fully to his older brother.
Tantei's Bati warrior muscles, once thick slabs of power, had begun to Wither.
His stomach was sunken, and the heavy veins of his arms now looked like dry, weathered vines.
He stood with his hands resting on his hips. He was nodding in calculatingness.
He started to speak, then stopped and nodded again.
The memory began again, the blue of the ocean becoming too bright to look at.
Then, the world disappeared into a slow, white flash.
The white flash settled into the lush green of the island.
Kanka leaned in, his shoulder bumping Tantei's massive, rock-hard arm. He kept his voice low, a sibilant whisper meant only for his brother's ear.
"Hey," Kanka whispered, a mischievous glint returning to his dark pupils. "Did you hear Tambo this morning? He was looking at the clouds and talking about the 'Soft breath of the ancestors' pushing our sail."
Tantei's eye twitched. His hands remained resting on his hips, a small muscle in his jaw pulled tight. He kept his gaze fixed on the forward, yet he was listening.
Kanka, his voice thick, his face twisting into a mocking grin. "I told him, 'Tambo, that's indeed the breath of the ancestors—or maybe just coming out of your own mind. If the ancestors wanted to talk to us, they would probably wait till you're weren't around!'"
A sudden, dry Hh-hh-hh sound escaped Tantei's chest, the sound of a man who hadn't laughed in a week.
Then, the memory dissolved into a slow, white-pulsing flash, and Kanka's grinning face faded from view.
Tantei was back in the indigo-gloom, his body pinned to the wood.
As the memory of the island joke lingered, a wet sound broke the silence of the prison.
Tantei was crying, but the sob got caught in his throat. It twisted, turning into a weak, rattle of a chuckle.
His chest hitched—Hh-hh-nk—as the absurdity of Kanka's voice echoed in his mind.
He was a dying warrior, laughing at a ghost.
Then, the Echo came, loud and clear as if Kanka were standing right behind him:
"I told him maybe you need to stop talking wise and listen to your actual surroundings."
The memory of the duo chuckling together on the island vibrated through Tantei's bones.
For a second, he wasn't alone. He could almost feel the warm, braided-rope pressure of Kanka's shoulder against his.
But as the echo died, the chuckle on his skeletal face broke, his jaw trembling with a stutter.
The laughter turned back into a deep, agonizing sob that shook his entire frame. The salt from his dry tears stung the cracks in his lips, tasting of old grief.
Then, the warmth of Tantei's face was violently ripped away, replaced instantly by the cold, heavy weight of the present.
Far from the side of the prison bure, the air was thin and smelled of wet ferns and rotting hibiscus.
The silence was punctured by the sharp Chirp-chirp of crickets hidden in the tall grass.
Tiny sparks of luminous green—fireflies—drifted through the dark like wandering ghosts, their light pulsing in a slow, silent heartbeat.
The view wasn't steady. It lived behind a thick, screen of bush.
The leaves, rough and waxy, scraped against each other with a dry, papery hiss.
Lurching to the side, a shaking, predatory movement that peeped out from behind the branches, the dark wood of the bure's wall visible through the gaps.
Suddenly, a second shape entered the frame.
A new figure approached. It moved with a heavy stealth across the open ground toward the bure where the dirt path was cleared of grass.
Step by step, it closed the distance, its silhouette cutting a jagged hole through the dim light of the fireflies.
Their breath came in thin, frantic hitches.
The figure at the low thatch reached out and gripped the edge of the door.
Standing at its full height, the intruder was a towering silhouette that swallowed the meager light spilling in from the night sky.
They laid there, broken and still, appearing less like the legendary warriors they once were and more like frail, discarded old men.
Tantei's head was pulled back against the rough grain of the pillar, his jaw slack
Beside him, the other two were slumped in a state of total exhaustion.
Konto's head was tucked deep against his chest.
The silence inside was broken only by the Every breath they took.
The figure planting one foot after the other. The legs were soft and feminine, moving with a graceful, desperate quiet.
Then a third step, then a fourth, she was almost to the slumped forms of the brothers.
Suddenly from the dark.
A very sharp Stingray-Tail Dagger—Dried Tail of a Stingray, naturally serrated and coated in a mild Rotten toxin from the sea, was pressed firmly into the small of the woman's back.
She let out a tiny, trapped wheeze, her entire body freezing into rigid-ness.
A whispering, threatening voice broke the quiet, vibrating with a dangerous edge. "Don't move. What do you think you're doing?"
The light caught her profile, she was a young woman, her hair pulled tight into a sharp obsidian top bun.
Her hands went up slowly, trembling against the air.
"Nothing," she stammered, her voice a thin thread. "I was just—"
Before she could finish…
"Get over here!" he hissed.
The woman let out a quick, sharp shriek, a spike of sound triggered by the suddenness of the blow to the side of her head.
The view gave one final, unstable shake, the conscious of the room flickering, and then snapped back into a sharp, terrifying focus.