Drowning in Fire

TWENTY-FOUR

Keko had to shut her eyes when Aya enveloped her uncle with her magic and the earth swallowed them both. She knew all too well how paralyzing a feeling it was—of being smothered and crushed and blinded without actually dying. You had no control over your body or your movements. You could not scream.

Come to think of it, it was similar to being encased in Griffin’s water bubble beneath the ocean, except when Aya’s magic had released Keko, she’d not been on an island beneath the sun with Griffin fighting at her side. With Aya, she’d been spit out into a deep, dank cave lit only by scant glowing rocks and filled with only the thinnest amount of air. Sight without true seeing, breathing without truly living. Down there, the sounds were unnervingly foreign, the comings and goings of the half-formed Children even more so. Sustenance had been a chalky block of tasteless nothing, meant to keep her body functional but nothing more.

What had been almost three days Aboveground had felt like three years Within.

Keko had endured it because she believed she deserved it. She’d endured it because she’d resigned herself to her fate and wanted to spare Griffin the blame.

Until the moment when Aya had finally come to her, after being left so long alone in the dark, and told her that the chief wished to take Keko’s place.

At first Keko had refused, but then Aya had told her something extraordinary and confidential. “I want nothing more than for Griffin to lead the Senatus,” Aya had said, “and he needs you by his side to gain his seat.”

“He doesn’t need me for that,” Keko had replied. “He told me his goals have changed, that he wants to rethink things.” That had been difficult to realize, even harder to say. “And they won’t let him in now anyway.”

“The new Air delegate is progressive and open. I belong to humanity above the Children now, and I support Griffin’s ideas for integration. If your uncle is no longer the chief, if you return Aboveground and take his place, you will send him to serve his own punishment for the way he sabotaged you. You will also be able to help Griffin achieve what he wants by you leading the Chimerans, which you’ve always wanted to do anyway. As Senatus delegate you can vote Griffin in. Can’t you see? He needs what you can do for your people, Keko. He needs you.”

So with Griffin as the carrot, and her uncle’s shocking turnaround, Keko had finally agreed to the exchange.

Coming back to the surface, she didn’t know which was harder: the physical, claustrophobic travel within the Children’s magic; walking through the sea of her kinsmen and sensing their awe and wonder; or witnessing her once-beloved uncle being dragged Within, into hellish imprisonment.

She wondered if she’d ever find the strength to enter an enclosed space again.

When the sounds of the earth magic silenced and the shocked cries of the Chimerans died off, Keko finally opened her eyes. Her uncle was gone. So was Aya.

Griffin stood at the top of the terrace steps, his love in his eyes. He bore many new injuries, and she wondered and feared what had happened. She longed to go to him, but there were greater things she had to address first, and she reluctantly gave him her back.

Every single one of her kinsmen stared at her. Expectant. Unsure. Frightened. Hopeful. Wonderstruck.

When she’d risen from the earth, the Source magic had been returned to her, and again burned lovely and hot and immense in her chest. She’d missed it, and now it seemed to be responding to the gathered presence of her people.

The string attached to the Queen’s rock dug into her fingers, though the thing was not remotely heavy. She’d only ever looked at the rock, had never touched it, instead waiting for the day when she could wrap her hand around it as ali’i and feel its little sharp edges scrape the skin on her chest.

Lifting the necklace now to eye level, she let it dangle, looking into the cause and price and reward of her quest. Her day had finally come.

A Chimeran man, buried somewhere in the crush of the crowd, called out, “Ali’i! My ali’i!”

Someone else picked up the cry, then another, until it was one big long word being volleyed about from one end of the field to the other—a demand from her people to drape the necklace around her head and take what was hers. A unanimous show of support. She had not issued a formal challenge in the Chimeran sense, but in their eyes she’d already earned the position.

The necklace had been granted to her, her uncle had admitted to his wrongdoings, and she was Aboveground again. With Griffin.

Turning, she slowly went up the steps, the gown swaying against her lower legs. She trapped Griffin’s eyes with her own as she ascended toward him. She saw the pure emotion on his face and heard the echo of the three massive words he’d said before the earth and Aya had taken her away.

Stretching out a hand, she touched his face, fire against water. Her power sparked blue-white against his skin, and the crowd gasped. Griffin gave her a beautiful smile and reached out to touch her in return.

His cool palm pressed over the glow on her chest, and the Source inside her hummed from the counterpresence of his magic. She smiled back at him, for all her people to see.

Then she stepped away and went to the balustrade, to the spot in which her uncle had stood so many times over the years to address the people. The cries of “ali’i” only got stronger. She had expected this. And since she’d been eleven years old, she’d wanted this.

So it was in a sort of dreamlike state that she raised both palms to the crowd and said into the ensuing silence, “I am Kekona Kalani. And I am not your ali’i.”

A rumble of confusion swept through the Chimerans, which quickly shifted to a thunder of near outrage. Griffin stood too far to one side and she couldn’t see his reaction, but she knew without having to witness it how those thick eyebrows she loved so much were drawn together. How he was probably positioning himself closer to protect her from an angry mob.

There would be no need.

Lifting her palms and voice even higher, she added, “I am Kekona Kalani. And I . . . am your Queen!”

This time the response came on a delay. A delay filled with a great gush of air, the collective intake of breath, followed by a rousing, deafening roar. The space above the Chimeran heads became dotted with bursts of jubilant flame, and the earth seemed to vibrate again, this time from the force of thousands of stamping feet.

One person remained still, however, and it was to her brother she turned. Bane wore the same reverent look he’d given her on that rainy coastal road when he’d first seen the Source inside her. Only now it was paired with a smile. When she nodded to him, he gave her a deep bow in response.

“I bear the Queen’s treasure,” she said when the whoops and flames had died down, “and I share it with you. I am Chimeran, made of powerful blood from across the sea and magic gifted from the heavens. I am Chimeran, and I know honor, for I’ve lived under its rules all my life. I know what it means to be worthy, and I know why we fight for such recognition every day.”

A new set of cheers went up.

“I can picture myself standing among you, either in the front line as your former general, and also at the far back, as someone who once misled you and had to pay the price. I have been in every place within Chimeran society. I know what it means to abuse power, to fight for yourself, to accept punishment, and also to learn from it. That is what I bring you. An eye and a mind shaped and formed by each and every one of you, and I promise you that because of this, I will forever be accessible.”

Another cheer, this one loudest in the far back. She looked but could not find Makaha.

“The truth is,” she went on, “we all have weaknesses. We all have strengths. But our mistakes are our own. It’s my wish that as I take you into a new age of Chimeran culture that we accept that, and try to find new ways to evaluate how we judge others.” She lowered her arms at last.

“I can picture myself standing among you right now,” she repeated, “staring up at this house at someone who challenged death by going after the Source and returning with such ancient, pure magic. I know what I would feel. I would look up here with the same awe as you are now. I would shout in the same way. And even though I would look upon the glow of magic with a stab of jealousy, I would recognize that that Chimeran is not a deity. Not infallible. I would know that she was given this gift to help her people grow, not to snatch governmental power and take over the running of this valley.”

A few people glanced at each other questioningly. Bane folded his arms across his chest.

“I said that I am not ali’i, because I am not. But I do think we need one. I think we need someone to lead this particular clan and make important decisions I cannot or will not. My goal is to help all Chimerans, to bring the islands together and better our way of life, and I can’t be the Big Island’s ali’i for that. We need someone to guide our warriors and be the emissary between clans on the other islands. Someone to counsel me, and someone I can counsel in turn.” She thrust out the lava rock necklace over the balustrade, the stone swaying in the wind. “Who wants it?” she cried, scanning the crowd. “Who is worthy of it?”

Two men came forward.

Bane immediately pulled out of the front line, shoulders thrown back, to the chorus of enthusiastic support from his warriors and most of the population. That was to be expected, though Keko had deliberately not looked at him as she’d made the call.

Then, from his place all the way in the back, parting the crowd with a gentle hand so he could get through, came Makaha.

He looked beaten up, but also empowered and confident, and she finally figured out the reasons behind Griffin’s new cuts and bruises. It had been a fair challenge, it seemed, and her Chimeran friend now felt vindicated for his disfigurement.

Keko let her lip quiver, let her eyes glimmer with happiness and pride for the friend she’d once been forbidden to talk to—the disgraced friend now vying to be ali’i.

Bane and Makaha came to stand side by side just below the terrace, and Keko looked down on them without judgment. She knew the people were expecting her to choose one, that as Queen she held that kind of authority. Maybe she did, but there was something to be said for upholding the old culture while adapting it to new thinking and modern ways. She had every right, for instance, to send the unworthy Makaha back into the crowd.

Instead she lifted the necklace high into the air and declared, “There shall be a challenge!”

The people’s voices surged in support. Bane and Makaha turned to one another, Makaha looking pumped and ready, Bane perhaps even more so. When Makaha thumped his chest in a salute to his competitor, he used his stump of an arm. Bane gave it the sparest of glances, as if to say he would give no quarter for a disabled warrior. Makaha smiled as if to say he was glad for that.

Keko raised her arm to call for silence and the Chimerans obeyed almost immediately. “Tomorrow,” she said. “Tomorrow at sunrise on the meadow the challenge to be ali’i will take place.”

Bane and Makaha separated and went back into the crowd.

Keko entwined the stone necklace around her fingers and moved slowly to the staircase opening, pondering her next words. She could not look at Griffin. Not yet. There was so much to say to him, and just as much for her to hear. But not here. Not now.

When she got to the top of the steps, the whole of the population could see her, head to foot, wearing the strange, enchanted gown Keko had insisted upon and that Aya had created Within. The gown made of not one, but thousands of little lava rocks.

She stood there, silent, until she commanded the attention of every single Chimeran on that field. With a meaningful glance at the bulge in the dirt where her uncle had last been seen, she lifted her chin and began a speech she hadn’t realized she’d needed or wanted to give.

“If I am to be your Queen, there will be no lies. No disguises. No cover-ups. I give you myself, faults and all. I want to tell you something, and if after I tell you it changes how you feel, whether or not you want me as your Queen, I will accept it. Because I am Chimeran above all and I understand you.”

At last she turned her head to find Griffin. His eyes were filled with such high regard she was sure that even if her people physically threw her out of this valley, she would find a refuge with him, a place where she would always be welcome.

He gave her a barely perceptible nod and it infused her with confidence.

“I carry a part of the Source within me,” she said, facing her people again, “but I did not go alone. Griffin Aames was with me. Though I found the Queen’s prayer as told in the legends, I am not the one who deciphered the Source’s location. Griffin’s knowledge of the stars guided us there.” She licked her lips. “And I am not the one who dove into the earth and touched the Source itself. Griffin did, using his water magic. He risked his life to bring me the power that would cure my uncle. Because if I’d gone in—if any Chimeran had gone in—that volcano would have been a thousand times worse. And I would not have come out.”

Complete silence fell over the crowd. Absolute stillness. No one so much as blinked or glanced at their neighbor. All eyes were upon her and she couldn’t read a single one of them.

“I am telling you this,” she said, “because I see the way you look up at me, like I am the old Queen incarnate. I am not. I am not perfect, and I did not complete a perfect quest. I did not challenge the earth and the Source, and I did not win a terrible battle with my own two hands. I had help from someone who believed in me and my purpose, and I could not have found the cure without him. I am not ashamed of this, because I think to admit you need someone else and accept their help is the greatest vulnerability and the most admirable trait to have.” She cleared her throat and edged her toes toward the very top step. “If you do not find me worthy to lead anymore, if you do not want me to be Queen after knowing this, I will understand.”

She knew her people, and she fully expected that to happen. So she held her breath and waited.

A man in the very front row went to one knee. He was an older warrior, one aged out of the ranks but still well respected, and it took him a little while to do so, but he finally got his other knee to bend and shift behind his body. When he was on both knees, he thumped two fists to his chest and spoke the old Chimeran word for Queen.

The name hovered over the meadow, glittering like diamond smoke.

Keko stared at this man, blinking over and over, until the vision of that one man shifted to a hallucination of hundreds more Chimerans doing exactly the same thing. With a shake of her head she realized it was no hallucination. It was real. Thousands of her people followed suit, their knees hitting the ground and Queen a reverent whisper on their lips. An ocean of Chimerans rolled away from the ali’i’s house as they all kneeled.

Every single one of them devoted themselves to her. Every single one stated their belief in her . . . and her connection to her Ofarian.

Then Griffin was behind her, his hands sliding up the length of her arms. He pressed a kiss to the top of her shoulder. Forget the sight of thousands of Chimerans showing their fealty, that kiss was true love.