A single wisp of cloud broke free and, as one, the lapu turned their blank faces toward the shrouded moon. Heart pounding in his chest, Kaloa fought the urge to pull back into the relative safety of the hibiscus trees behind him. He knew the lapu could not see him so far up, but they could still feel his living spirit—his mana—and they hungered for it. They always hungered for it.

The scars across his face, both old and new, burned as he remembered his father’s words the day he had become Kahuna-moha’i.

“The strongest of all mana is housed in the blood made sacred as it flows through each region of the body in turn. The arms and hands are sacred to the day; the legs and feet to the night; arms for working, legs for running. The chest and groin are sacred to the future and the face is sacred to the past, to the ancestors who see themselves in the features of their descendants. When shed in ritual, it is that blood that draws and binds the lapu.”

Touching one finger to the newest wound across his cheek, Kaloa turned his gaze to the moon, watching it as the lapu watched it, and knowing as they did that, as soon as it lost its battle against the clouds, it would be time to begin the dead’s battle against the living, the battle called by the blood of their descendants.

Deep within his mind, he could sense the others who waited with him: pragmatic Kama Moana, crouched on a steep, rocky cliff on the southernmost spit of land that jutted into the lapu’s ocean territory. It was the farthest and most difficult path to take, yet she never faltered. It was rumored that she could see in the dark, but every time he asked her, she would only smile at him, her pale eyes wide and luminescent, as enigmatic as the sharks her family claimed as ancestors.

His younger brother, Mali Apone-pi’i, restless and unpredictable, waited to the north. Kaloa could almost see him crouched in a stand of wauke trees, tossing a handful of kukui nuts into the air over and over, and reading the ever-changing pattern of omens in their movements to pass the time. Mali, strong and talented, but born too soon and taking too much of their mother’s mana to power his own first breath. Some on Kuai believed that his birth signaled the coming of the final days when the lapu would grow strong enough to steal the spirits of their children as they were born. Their father, brokenhearted by their mother’s death, had believed it, too, and had thrown himself from the place where Mali now waited each night.

Their leader and teacher, Hinohi Maka’aina of the owl family, the oldest of the island’s Kahuna-moha’i, waited to the east, tending the trap they had readied for the lapu, sprinkling the walls of a deep cavern with water and earth mixed with the blood of the people.

And finally, to the west, Kaloa himself, head of the royal mo’o family of Pi’i-ka-lalau who had fought the lapu for the lives of Kuai, century after century. Generations of warrior-chieftains standing as he now stood, staring down at those who had made their own stand against the lapu and, one by one, had joined their ranks in death. If the lapu were not defeated by the time of his own death, he would join them, too, waiting to steal the lives of his own children in his turn.

A light, mist-filled rain began to fall, and he raised his face to the droplets, tasting the morning in their midst. It would be cool and clear tomorrow. A good time for harvesting the ripening kalo plants. Life went on even in the midst of battle. Even in the midst of seemingly insurmountable death. Life went on. But for how long?

The story of their struggle against their own ancestors was an ancient one told each year during Kau-ula—the Days of Storms—when the people gathered in the Pu’uhonua—the highest cave on Kuai—for protection against the rains that could wash them into the sea. Kaloa could remember sitting, wrapped in kapa blankets, safe in his mother’s arms, while his father and the other Kahuna-moha’i stood guard at the cave entrance, barring the lapu’s passage with ki leaf nets tied with kea limu, the rare white seaweed. Seated by the central fire, his scarred face a mask of lines that grew deeper with each passing year, Hinohi would tell the story once again.

“Hundreds of generations ago,” he would begin, “the people of Kuai worshiped the Mo’o God Pi’i-kalalau, whose breath kept the waters of the ocean fresh and clean. Pi’i-ka-lalau protected the people, fathering many of the royal line who ruled in his name. But one dark day Pi’i-ka-lalau was attacked by his greatest enemy, his own brother, Pi’i-ua-awa. They fought for over a century, churning up the bottom of the sea and sending terrible storms toward each other, but—finally—Pi’i-ka-lalau was defeated and Pi’i-ua-awa devoured his heart, entrapping his spirit in an underwater spring.

“Pi’i-ua-awa then demanded the worship of his brother’s people, promising them great power and wealth in return, but Pi’i-ka-lalau’s spirit sent their Chieftain, Queen Kiha Apone-pi’i, a vision warning her that his brother ate the flesh of his own children, and so the people refused. In his rage, Pi’i-ua-awa visited a terrible curse upon them. Climbing upon his brother’s half-eaten body, he breathed a great poisonous breath into the ocean toward Kuai. The waters turned a pale, murky green that withered the sea plants, and the people began to starve. But Pi’i-ka-lalau sent a new vision to Queen Kiha which taught her to throw the morning’s pure surf mixed with the blood of her line onto the waves to sweeten the waters. And so the plants returned to life and health.

“Then Pi’i-ua-awa breathed into the ocean once again, and it turned a sickly yellow. It repelled the fish, and the people starved once more. But Pi’i-kalalau sent yet another vision to Queen Kiha teaching her to throw handfuls of alae salt and blood upon the waves, and once again the waters freshened and the fish returned.

“And so Pi’i-ua-awa breathed upon the ocean one last time, and a line of milky white foam crept in to poison the most sacred of all waters, those below the leinas where the dead leaped into the sea to begin their journey to the underworld. The dead became trapped much as Pi’i-ka-lalau was trapped, and this time it was they who starved and their starvation drove them mad. They came upon land to wrest the mana they needed from the living and so became the lapu, the terrible spirits of Pi’i-ua-awa’s curse. And as the people joined their ancestors in death, one by one, they became part of Pi’i-ua-awa’s army of lapu, driven to destroy their own children in his service.

“No one knows why Pi’i-ka-lalau’s spirit finally failed the people then. Some believe that his spirit was also poisoned by his brother’s final breath and became lapu as well. Others fear it might have been destroyed. But whatever may have become of their god, the people of Kuai refused to despair. When no vision came, Queen Kiha turned to her Kahuna—the priests of craft and magic—for new weapons to fight this terrible army. While the Kahuna-akaku searched in dream and in trance for Pi’i-ua-awa’s imprisoned spirit, the Kahuna-pili taught the people to weave the nets that held the lapu under the waves, and the Kahuna-la’au ground the mixture of olena and kea limu that protected their doorways. The Kahuna-kilo read the moon signs and star signs that determined when the lapu would attack, and finally the Kahuna-moha’i—those who sacrifice—went out each night to lure the lapu into the trap that the Kahuna-pohaku had carved in the deepest caverns below our feet.

“And so we fight and search to this day. It is said that if Pi’i-ka-lalau can finally break free to overcome his brother the curse will be lifted, but it is also said that the fight will only go on so long as all the children of Kuai are born alive. If ever a child is born who joins the lapu before its very first breath, so will all the children of Kuai be born from that moment on, and then all will be lost. So we must always fight and search and hope until one or the other takes place.”

Hinohi would fall silent then, and the people would hold their children tight, listening for the high, keening cries of the lapu as they tore at the blood-strengthened wards which held the rest of their numbers imprisoned below. Kaloa would close his eyes, imagining the dark, dripping caverns—underwater by this time—burning with the pale, milky-white glow of Pi’i-ua-awa’s poisonous breath; the same milky-white glow which illuminated the waters below him now, night after night.

High above, the net of clouds finally passed completely over the moon and a fireball soared into the star-lit sky from the Kahuna-kilo’s watchtower at the mouth of the Pu’uhonua. He felt Mali and Kama ready themselves. Standing, he stepped to the very edge of the cliff and held his arms wide. His living mana surrounded him in a pale, silvery light, the wind shifted, and suddenly he heard the faintest keening on the breeze. The lapu had caught his scent.

Far below, on the deserted black-sand beach, he saw small, dark figures trailing olena vines rise up from the glowering surf. They stood a moment, looking up at him, and he could almost see their cold, shimmering eyes staring into his. The figures glided silently into the trees beyond and Kaloa waited for the space of a heartbeat, before touching the protecting ki leaf tied at his throat, then turning to plunge into the forest himself.

He moved swiftly through the trees, not running, not yet, because that would bring the lapu down on him that much faster, but quickly enough. The path led him deeper into the forest, then began to descend in a series of winding turns. Behind him, he could feel the lapu moving inexorably closer. The air around him turned cold, and the scars on his face began to burn as the image of the ghostly creatures gliding through the trees without disturbing so much as a wauke leaf caused the fear to pump the mana into his veins until his entire body sizzled with it. It made him feel both light-headed and invincible, but Hinohi had warned him many times against giving in to either sensation.

“Never lose your fear of them, but also never let that fear control your actions. The lapu can steal your life in an instant, and one hesitation, one misstep, one rash act of suicidal bravery is all it takes, and your strength will become theirs to use against your people. So run, Kaloa, only run.”

Passing the first of the hanging ipu’olelo gourds that told him he was nearing the trap, he quickened his pace and, as the leaves of the hibiscus trees began to tremble, he ran.

A bone-chilling breeze swept over him, dragging at his limbs like a heavy undertow, mist rose up to obscure his vision, a hideous smell made him gag, and then he saw them: a dozen ghostly figures flickering in and out of sight, their misty features twisted beyond recognition. They reached out their clutching fingers toward him. Their mouths drawn open in a ghastly rictus from the madness brought on by their hunger and fear sent him almost flying into the clearing below the caverns. As he broke from the trees, the others burst into view.

Mali had half a dozen lapu snapping and screaming at his heels. The scars across his own face stood out like angry white snakes, but, as his eyes tracked to Kaloa, he veered deliberately to one side to allow his chief to take the lead. Kama did the same and, together, the three of them raced for a narrow cavern, glowing with fiery symbols at the edge of the clearing. The entrance was tight, barely wide enough for them to pass through, but they hurled themselves inside without pause. Kaloa felt the jagged rock scrape across his biceps, felt a freezing cold wind pass through his hair, and then he was inside the dripping darkness and whirling about to keep the lapu in sight. Mali and Kama rocked to a halt beside him. For the space of a single heartbeat he saw Hinohi raise his arms, then the trap was sprung, and the lapu were suddenly outlined in a terrible red fire. They began to scream, adding their voices to those already trapped inside.

Mali slapped his hands over his ears, hearing as always the tormented voices of their parents all around him. Kama caught him up in her arms, holding him tightly against her chest as Hinohi began to throw handfuls of blood-caked earth against the walls, binding the lapu tighter and tighter while Kaloa stood in plain view to keep them from breaking off the attack until the trap was completely sealed. The lapu fought and screamed, their vaporous limbs writhing like vines, desperate to escape, but, as the clouds covered the moon once more, Hinohi made one final gesture and the struggling lapu slammed into the walls at the back of the cavern, their suddenly corporeal forms hardening into solid rock.

In the now silent cavern, the four Kahuna-moha’i sank to the floor, exhausted, while outside, all that could be heard was the distant lapping of the waves against the shore and a single night bird signaling the all clear.

The entire village was waiting for them when they returned, standing as silent and grim as the lapu on the starlit beach. As they passed the ipu’olelo gourds that warded the central common, Kaloa’s wife, Nalani, stepped forward, a haunted expression in her dark eyes.

“Lilia has joined the lapu, husband,” she said woodenly. “Her birthing troubles began just after you left for the leinas. Her child . . .” she paused, closing her eyes briefly before continuing, “was born dead.”

A terrible rushing noise like the sound of the surf crashing against the rocks at Kau-ula roared in on him. Kaloa felt himself sway as everything about him seemed suddenly far away. He barely heard Nalani speak again.

“And I am also with child.”

Dawn found him standing on the highest rocks above the Pu’uhonua, staring out at the sunlit waters of Kupua Bay. No movement betrayed the presence of the lapu, but he knew they were there, hovering in uneasy sleep just below the surface. Waiting for the times that were now upon them. Lifting his gaze to the eastern horizon, he glared into the rising sun until it blazed across his vision.

After Nalani’s pronouncement no one had spoken again for a long time, the wind feathering through the wauke trees the only sound to be heard. Finally, Mali had sunk to his knees, his eyes wide and staring.

“It’s just as Papi said, then,” he whispered, speaking the words they were all thinking. “The final days of Kuai.”

Murmuring broke out across the common, and Kaloa found himself clenching and unclenching his fists in helpless rage. The image of the lapu rising from the waves filled his mind with despair and would not be banished. Generations of his family had fought the lapu; fought and prayed and sacrificed their lives with the hope that one day Pi’i-ka-lalau would escape his confinement and break his brother’s curse upon the people. Generation after generation lost now with no more to follow. Shaking his head slowly back and forth like a wounded boar, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, but the image of the lapu stood out like a beacon. Finally he opened his eyes once more, staring around him as if seeing his people for the first time.

“No,” he said. “No.”

Nalani stepped forward. “Husband . . .” she began, but he waved her away.

“No. This will not be the final days of Kuai. I will not have it so.”

“Lilia’s child . . .”

“Will be mourned.”

“But . . .”

“No.” Taking her in his arms, he held her as tightly as his mother had held him in the cavern of the Pu’u-honua. “Our child will be born alive,” he said. “We will break the curse.”

All eyes turned to him then, and he could feel a new spark of hope begin to grow within them once more.

“How?” Hinohi asked.

“We will find Pi’i-ka-lalau; we will free him, we will follow him into battle, and we will kill Pi’i-ua-awa.”

“Again, my chief, how?”

Staring at the ipu’olelo gourds swaying backward and forward in the wind, Kaloa bared his teeth in a grimace reminiscent of the lapu.

“With the blood of the people.”

Now, turning his gaze to the west, he looked down at the hive of activity on the beach below him.

Once released, his plan had spewed from his lips like a freshwater spring. Loe, the oldest of the Kahuna-pili, was the first to understand, but the others had quickly followed. Now they directed the people who had once woven the great nets of olena vine to a new labor while the Kahuna-kalai—the boat builders—took their hatchets into the forests in search of the tallest and straightest koa trees on the island and the Kahuna-la’au began to harvest the kea limu in far greater numbers. Every single person had a task to perform—down to the smallest children who collected handfuls of unripened lele fruit with which Hinohi would weaken the bindings on the lapu.

After this aspect of Kaloa’s plan had come to light, Mali had sought out his brother in private, his expression concerned.

“You mean to cease the trapping, then?” he asked.

Kaloa nodded. “Everyone is to have a hand in this,” he said. “Even the lapu. It will return them to themselves and bring them peace at last.”

Mali’s face twisted in pain. “I pray that you’re right, for their sake as much as for ours, brother, but it will be very dangerous to let them walk the island unchecked. It will strengthen them.”

“Good. We need them strong.”

“But the people?”

“The people will move to the Pu’uhonua.”

“For how long?”

Kaloa’s eyes tracked to where Nalani and the other Kahuna-ana were busy preparing Lilia and her child for burial. “Six months,” he answered. “In six months Kuai’s new chief will be born. We have that long to ensure the future.”

“In six months it will be Kau-ula.”

“Yes,” Kaloa agreed. “One way or another.”

The months passed swiftly. Kaloa’s plan had given the people a new sense of purpose, and those not actively engaged in harvesting or fishing labored to bring it into being with an almost feverish intensity. By the time the skies darkened with the approach of Kau-ula, fifteen great double-hulled war canoes lined the western shore. Each one carried a full complement of figures woven from wauke branches and olena vines, decorated with feathers, shells, and flowers, and holding broad-bladed paddles and long, sharp-edge spears in their hands. As Kaloa moved among them, he marveled at how skillfully they’d been wrought before laying a hand lovingly on the small, one-man outrigger canoe he’d fashioned for himself. When Kau-ula came, they would be ready.

The first Day of Storms dawned cold and wet, the waves of Kupua Bay already driving up the beach to slap against the kapa ropes that held the war canoes in place. Standing ankle-deep in water, Mali and Kama argued furiously with Kaloa.

“We should come with you!” the younger man insisted, shouting to be heard over the rising wind.

Kaloa shook his head emphatically. “We’ve already been through this! The Kahuna-moha’i must stay behind to protect the people!”

“You are Kahuna-moha’i!” Kama shouted in reply, but broke off when Hinohi placed his hand on her shoulder.

“No,” he answered. “Today, he is Kaloa Aponepi’i, Chieftain of Kuai, and descendant of the great mo’o god Pi’i-ka-lalau, and tonight he will lead the people against Pi’i-ua-awa and break the curse.” Turning, he bowed to Kaloa. “Come, my chief, it is time to bring the final days into being.”

Kaloa nodded curtly. Turning, he gestured and, one by one, the people came forward, each one carrying an ipu’olelo gourd filled with blood-caked earth strung on a piece of woven pili grass. As they hung them about the necks of the figures in the canoes, the fresh wounds across their cheeks glowed with a silvery light. And after Hinohi had finally bullied Mali and Kama into following suit only Nalani remained. Her normally fluid movements made awkward by the extent of her pregnancy, she came forward to hold her gourd out to Kaloa.

“The blood of our child flows through my body,” she said. “Mingled with your own, it will protect you and bring you back to us.”

When Kaloa made to speak, she placed two fingers against his lips. “You will come back to us, my husband,” she said, a martial light gleaming in her eyes, “or you will not go forth at all.”

Accepting the gourd, he smiled gently. “I will come back to you,” he promised.

That night, crouched on the high, ragged spur of lava rock on the westernmost point of the island, Kaloa pressed the gourd against his chest as he felt for the others who waited with him: Mali and Kama standing guard before the doorway of the Pu’uhonua, Hinohi crouched before the central fire beginning the ancient story of Pi’i-ua-awa, Nalani, the birthing pains that would see their child born to the people of Kuai, or to the lapu, already begun, and finally the people and the lapu themselves, each as desperate as the other for his success this night.

Peering over the edge of the lava spur, he blinked the driving rain from his eyes as he stared down at the raging waters of Kupua Bay. By now the flooding would have reached the lower caverns, bringing the lapu together once again on either side of Hinohi’s binding wards. This year, however, they would find those wards weakened to the point of breaking. The discovery would fuel their hunger and, with the added strength gained in the last six months, it would not be long before they tore the wards apart like so many olena vines.

As the storm grew in strength, Kaloa stood and moved out to the very brink of the leina. The air around him crackled with unreleased mana and he found himself holding his breath. He made himself breathe out slowly and deliberately. It would not be long now.

When it happened, the explosion of power that erupted out from the cavern hit him like a tidal wave. It threw him into the trees, filling his mouth with the taste of blood as his teeth snapped together, clipping his tongue. All around him, the shrieking of the lapu rose up, blotting out the sounds of sea and wind as they came together in a raging mass of hunger. He felt rather than saw the Kahuna-kilo’s fireball shoot into the sky and, struggling to his feet, he pulled his knife, raising it high into the air.

“The blood of the people is sacred to the ancestors who see themselves in the features of their descendants!” he shouted into the storm. “When shed in ritual, it draws and binds the lapu! All the lapu!”

With a single motion he brought his knife slashing down across his cheek, then catching up a fingerful of blood-caked earth from the gourd about his neck, he smeared it into the wound.

The response was immediate. A freezing-cold mist shot up to wrap about his legs like pili grass, the overpowering smell of death sucked the breath from his lungs, and the lapu, stronger and more frightening than they’d ever been before, came streaking toward him like a swarm of ethereal insects, lips pulled back from their teeth in a parody of hideous laughter, their screaming filling him with a mind-numbing terror that threatened to send him tumbling into madness.

Dropping all pretense of bravery, he turned and fled.

Hurtling down the path, heedless of the wind and rain, he raced for the western shore. Sharp-edged leaves and branches scratched against his face and arms, and low lying vines entangled his legs, causing him to stumble over and over again, but he ran on. The lapu were close behind him, their clawed hands catching at his hair and clothes, their icy-cold breath freezing on the back of his neck. A single scraping touch across his cheek where the blood still flowed made him cry out and then he erupted from the trees onto the black-sand beach beyond. The line of war canoes loomed up before him and he put on an extra burst of speed as he plunged between their ranks.

The lapu came flying after him, and then with a new explosion of power, they slammed into the trap the people had set for them. The wards housed within the ipu’o-lelo gourds strained but held as the blood of the people bound the lapu into their new form, infusing the olena vine figures with a ghastly parody of life as they struggled to break free. The force of their battle snapped the kapa lines holding the war canoes in place and shot them forward into the waves.

Kaloa didn’t bother to look back. Leaping for the outrigger, he broke its own kapa line and thrust it into the water. The waves fought him, bucking and jerking the small craft out from under his control, but he bore down, and when he finally dared to turn his head, he saw the armada of lapu sweeping down on him, vine-wrapped hands wielding the paddles with an eerie precision he’d never thought possible. They were already gaining on him and, as they broke free of Kupua Bay, the waves rose up in a fresh torrent, driving them even closer. His own craft nearly went under, but at the last moment the outrigger righted itself and drove on.

The sky grew black, the howling of the wind and rain merging with the screaming of the lapu close behind him. It seemed as if he’d fled from them forever, rising up and slamming down into the waves for his entire life, their desperate hunger for his living spirit dragging at the paddle in his hands, crying out to him to give in to them and rest. He felt the mana leaching from his fingers, but just as the paddle began to slip away, he sensed another’s hunger rise up across the storm, swatting the lapu’s desire away like so many flies. As great and terrible as a volcanic eruption and as familiar as his own breath, it sucked him forward with the power of a massive whirlpool. The outrigger shot into its swirling depths, dragging the armada of lapu behind and, as the ipu’olelo gourds shattered under the force of it, the entrapped spirit of Pi’i-kalalau exploded from his prison, released by the blood of his people. Pi’i-ua-awa rose up at once to meet him and the violence of their impact sent Kaloa hurtling through the air, over waves and cliffs and trees to crash down onto the sodden ground before the lapu’s empty cavern. His own gourd shattered beneath him, the shards driving into his chest. For a moment all he could see and hear was the fury of Pi’i-ka-lalau and his brother, and then everything went quiet and he saw Nalani.

Her birthing pains had reached their climax, her face and body taut and strained, but, as he drew closer, her eyes snapped open to stare into his. They reached for each other, and as their fingers touched, he felt her living mana and that of their child pulsing with one strong and steady beat beneath him. Slowly, very slowly, the spirits of mother and baby separated, then as their newborn son began to cry, Nalani released him. Kaloa watched the Kahuna-ho’ohanau wash the boy with water taken from the morning’s pure, clean surf, then turned as a new sensation drew him inexorably away from his family.

He ran.

Passing his crumpled body without so much as a glance, he raced up the path toward the western leina, then leaped out into the air. For a single instant he was flying, and then he hit the still-raging surf without a ripple. Far below in the inky darkness he saw the shimmering silver line of Pi’i-ka-lalau’s children, most still clutching the ghostly remains of their ipu’olelo gourds, as they made their way toward the underworld. Taking up his own gourd still glowing faintly with the mana of his wife and son, he joined his ancestors at last.