Chapter 1: The Power of Heart

An eyestalk poked out of the sun-brushed shallows of the oldest island in existence. It twisted around inquisitively, dipping in and out of the warm tide a few times. After a moment of hesitation, a tiny coconut crab scrambled out of the water, slipping a few times on the damp sand. He gazed in wonderment at the sugar-white beach and dense, green forest which lay before him, so focused on drinking in the view that he completely ignored the enormous white object being swung up behind him.

There was a resounding bang, a hot sear of pain, and — scarcely a minute after he had emerged onto dry land — the crab's vision went black.

Te Fiti had been aimlessly swinging from a vine, basking in the vibrant gold-and-greenstone hues of her forest, when she heard the explosion. It came from the direction of the beach, and although she couldn't see quite that far she still had a fairly good idea of its source. "Māui!" she yelled, springing down from her perch and running forward, her feet barely skimming the ground. "Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga!"

Sure enough, she found the boy standing in front of a little crater, hugging his fishhook to his chest and moodily kicking up little puffs of sand. Upon seeing her, his eyes widened and he bit his lip nervously. "I- I can explain!"

The goddess narrowed her eyes. "Good. Go ahead."

Māui looked sheepish. "Well, I… uh."

"I'm waiting," Te Fiti said, trying to look stern. But she was still a young goddess, barely a hundred years older than Māui — and in her human form, she stood only one handspan taller than the demigod. She doubted she could effectively intimidate him, but she felt like she had to try anyhow.

Māui looked at his feet, lip wibbling slightly. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "Honest. I didn't mean to…" He gestured to the crater morosely. "I just got upset."

Te Fiti melted. Sternness wasn't in her nature, anyway. "Is this about what happened with Pele?" she asked, putting a gentle arm around his shoulder and pulling him down to sit beside her.

Māui frowned and kicked at the sand again. "It was just a prank," he said. "She didn't have to ground me for five years!"

"Māui," Te Fiti said, "you do not drench the volcano goddess in seawater as a prank."

Māui groaned. "I thought she had a sense of humor!"

"Hey, it could have been worse."

"How?"

"She could have… set your hair on fire for all eternity."

The boy gulped, one hand drifting to the mass of silky curls he was so inordinately proud of.

"But," Te Fiti continued, smiling, "she let you stay here with me instead."

"That's true," Māui said, returning her grin and leaning in close. "You're my favorite goddess, Fiti," he added in a whisper.

Te Fiti's cheeks darkened despite herself. "Little scamp," she laughed, elbowing him. "You'll be dangerous to the ladies when you're all grown up."

"I am grown up! I'm ten!" Māui said indignantly.

"Of course you are," Te Fiti said. She ruffled his hair, causing him to squawk in indignation. "That was a very grown-up temper tantrum you just had." Glancing at the crater again, she winced at the scorch marks marring the white sand. A flash of dull purple at the center of the depression caught her gaze, and she squinted at it, eyes widening when she noted the minuscule pincers and closed eyes. "Māui!" she gasped, looking horrified. "You killed it!"

Māui peered at it. "It's just a coconut crab," he said, shrugging.

"Just a crab?" Te Fiti hissed, looking murderous. If there was one thing she — the mother of life, daughter of the Earth goddess Papatūānuku — could not stand, it was callous disregard for her creations.

"I didn't mean to hurt it!" Māui said, hastily backpedaling. "If I'd seen it, I wouldn't have… What are you doing?" His expression morphed from panic to confusion as he watched Te Fiti, who had carefully picked up the limp crab and was cradling it in her arms.

"It's still alive," she mumbled, stroking its battered shell. "But barely."

"Are you going to fix it?" Māui asked, craning his neck to observe.

"I'm going to try," Te Fiti said. Under Māui's spellbound stare, she lifted the crab and pressed it against her chest, right on the spot where her pounamu heart pulsed. For a few minutes, nothing happened. Māui studied the goddess's determined, almost desperate, expression, and a wave of guilt washed over him.

"Fiti," he started, but she held a finger to her lips and gestured downward with her chin. Māui looked, and, to his utter shock, beheld a green glow spreading through Te Fiti's skin. There was a brilliant flash of jade light. Māui shielded his eyes — and when he opened them, found himself staring right back into the stormy blue ones of an equally startled, but perfectly hale, little crab. "Whoa," he gasped. "I didn't know you could do that!"

"Neither did I," Te Fiti said breathlessly.

"You can let go of me now," said the crab, and yelped as the goddess dropped him unceremoniously onto the sand.

"It talked!" Māui exclaimed.

"So it did," Te Fiti said, eyes wide.

"Do… all coconut crabs talk?" Māui asked.

"Not that I know of," Te Fiti muttered slowly.

"My head hurts," the crab complained, clicking his pincers.

Te Fiti rubbed her temples. As far as she has always known, humans were the only creatures who were capable of intelligible speech — and yet, here she was, listening to a crab complain about his headache in fluent Māori. An absolutely, stunningly mundane coconut crab, or at least it appeared to be. But when he spoke, his voice carried the distinct timbre of a male child's, perhaps six or seven years in age. Perhaps it has to do with how I revived him, she mused. Or even the hit from Māui's hook…

Māui excitedly scooped the crab into his palm. "This is so cool!" he said, eyes shining with the peculiar thrill a ten-year-old boy experiences when he's just stumbled upon something magnificently novel.

"Put me down!" the crab squealed, pouting. Te Fiti stifled a most un-goddesslike giggle. Never in her existence would she have dreamed up a coconut crab who could pout, much less one who made the expression look strangely endearing.

"Can I keep him?" Māui pleaded.

"Don't ask me, ask him," Te Fiti replied.

Māui held the crab up to eye level. "If you stick around with me, I'll give you lots of food, and a nest made out of leaves, and- and I'll make sure you stay safe from birds and monsters!"

The crab considered this for a moment. "Food?" it finally trilled cautiously.

Māui nodded. "Coconuts! And bananas, and fish, and poi."

"Poi?" the crab repeated blankly.

"It's made from taro root," Māui chirped. "Doesn't look like much, but tastes great."

"Taro?"

A smile crept across Te Fiti's face as she watched Māui animatedly chatter with the still-wary crab. This, she reckoned, might be exactly what Māui needs. Thegreat responsibility that would come with taking care of such a small, vulnerable creature, as well as the companionship of someone close to his own age, would — in the goddess's opinion — do the young demigod a world of good.

"I'm bored," Māui announced, prodding the crackling fire with a stick.

"I'm hot," the crab added from atop Māui's chest.

"You could always sleep," Te Fiti said hopefully.

Māui and the crab fixed her with ridiculously identical looks of indignation. "No!" they cried in unison.

The goddess sighed. "Fine. Then how about you think up a name for him?" She gestured to the crab. "We can't keep calling him The Crab."

The crab twitched his antennae. "What is a name?"

"It's what we call each other," Māui explained. "My whole name is Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga, but no one calls me that unless they're angry at me."

"Which is most of the time," Te Fiti said under her breath.

"Mum called me 'Little Appetizer' when I was a baby," the crab said thoughtfully.

Māui grimaced. "I… don't think that's a very good name."

"It's better than what my brothers call me."

"What do they call you?"

"Nothing. They just try to eat me."

The demigod stared at him. "That's terrible! I won't let them do that!"

The crab lifted his claws in an approximation of a shrug. "It's okay. When I grow big enough, I will eat them."

Māui quickly changed the topic. "You like coconuts, don't you? How about I call you—"

"You will not name me 'Coconut'," the crab said pointedly.

"Bananas?"

"No."

"Fish?"

"You are very bad at this."

"Fine. You can name yourself."

The crab pondered his task, eyes absently swiveling to admire the way the fire threw shadows on his pearl-white shell. "Ātaahua," he said finally, snapping his pincers.

Māui snorted. "You're a vain little thing, aren't you? Alright, you can be Ātaahua. Ata for short, because we met in the morning. How does that sound?" He flashed a dimpled grin at the crab, who, after a moment of contemplation, nodded.

"Well, now that's settled, I really do think you boys should get to bed," Te Fiti ventured.

"But Fiti," Māui whined, "it's still light out!"

Indeed, the island was bathed in an unnatural amber glow. The goddess frowned. She could have sworn that she'd watched the sun set hours ago — that, just a short while before, the sky had been dark and starry. A deep rumble interrupted her thoughts, and a very familiar smell of sulphur wafted over to the trio. Evidently Māui recognized it too, because he cowered behind Te Fiti, one hand placed protectively on Ata's shell.

A tall, sturdy woman whose thick, matted hair was arrayed around her head like wisps of smoke and whose eyes glowed black as obsidian stepped into the clearing. "Tūtū Pele," Te Fiti said, rising to greet the older goddess.

"Te Fiti," Pele said, inclining her head ever-so-slightly. "Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga. And…" Her unreadable gaze shifted to Ātaahua, "…companion."

"Tūtū Pele!" Māui exclaimed, giving her his most frantically charming grin. "I'm really really really sorry about the whole prank thing I swear I won't do it ever again please don't set my hair on fire-"

Pele raised a thick eyebrow. "Silence, demigod. I am not sure where you got the notion that I'm planning to set your hair on fire, but I assure you that is not the case." Turning toward Te Fiti, she added, "I felt it, you know."

"Felt what?" Te Fiti asked innocently, although she already had a glimmering of what Pele was referring to.

Pele fixed her with a stony expression. "You are very powerful, Te Fiti — far more than even you yourself know, for you hold the entirety of life in your body." Glancing briefly at Ātaahua, she added, "Be careful how you wield that power. If I could feel the beat of your heart, all the way on the western side of the ocean… So could others, whose interests are far less benign than mine."

The night was muggy, but Te Fiti felt a chill creep up her spine. "I—" she began, but Pele cut her off with a raised hand.

"There is no need to apologize to me," Pele said. "You did what you believed was right. Now you must face the consequences head-on. I can only wish you luck." She swept around, her smoky hair nearly touching the fire, and made to leave — but, on a sudden whim, turned back. "Oh — little Māui?"

"Yes, Tūtū Pele?"

Pele looked at him from under her eyelashes, lips curling up in a way which made his stomach clench in fear. She snapped her fingers, and he instinctively flinched back—

—Only to be doused, from head to toe, in fine volcanic ash. Māui spluttered, dumbfounded, just his eyes visible under the coating of black. Te Fiti and Ata laughed uproariously, and Pele produced a chuckle like the flow of lava. "Careful who you prank," she said, and with a noise like grating rocks she vanished, plunging the island into darkness once more.

Māui didn't stop flying until he was all the way at the edge of the beach. Gasping for air, he shifted back from hawk form and leaned against a palm tree, wiping futilely at the cold sweat on his forehead and back. "Gods," he whispered, sliding down into the sand.

The day had started well enough. He had been taking a stroll in a hitherto-yet-unexplored part of the forest. Ata was napping, so Te Fiti had offered to accompany him — but Māui was eleven now, and had begun to chafe at the idea of needing a chaperone. So he'd set out alone, armed with a basket of bananas, his trusty hook, and a healthy thirst for adventure.

And, by the Gods, he'd found it.

The place had seemed innocuous enough: a picturesque cliff leading to a series of pools, most of them invitingly green and still. With an exultant "Chee-hoo!", Māui had dived headlong into one of them, face and skin blurring into a beak and feathers moments before he hit the cool water. He had spent an enjoyable fifteen minutes alternating between bird and human forms, eating bananas and splashing aimlessly around, before he saw it: a flash of hot pink in a neighboring pool. Curious, he clambered out of the pool, shifted into a beetle, and crept forward.

That's when the largest and most colorful tentacle he'd ever seen shot out of the water, towering far above the treetops. Māui's six legs has collapsed under him. He'd stood frozen, jaw hanging open, as the tentacle had casually snatched an entire bird's nest out of a tree and pulled it underwater, leaving a few ripples behind.

Māui had only snapped out of it when he'd seen the tip break the surface again, flinging twigs and a few fragile bones onto the bank. With an agility he hadn't known himself capable of, he'd morphed forms and streaked upward, winging it away as fast as he could.

He'd have to keep an eye on this area… if he could ever bring himself to return.

Ata ran. He barreled through the beach at lightning speed, shooting past Te Fiti's feet and ignoring the goddess's bemused greeting. He ran so fast his eyestalks ached and his vision blurred, only stopping when he slammed right into something large, soft, and ten-fingered.

One year into their time together, Māui was still able to cup the crab in both hands and easily carry him around — although that might have had as much to do with the demigod's own size and strength as it did with Ata's diminutive stature. He did that right now, lifting Ata up to eye level and fixing him with a quizzical stare. "Any reason why you were bolting around like a panicky minnow, buddy?"

"Brother," Ata panted, catching his breath.

"Tried to eat you again, huh."

Ata nodded wordlessly.

"Want me to crush him?" Māui asked, brandishing his hook.

"You are not stealing that pleasure from me," Ata said, raising his pincers. "I'm not going to be this small forever, you know. And once I get big enough…" He clacked one pincer shut and grinned ferociously.

Māui couldn't help but laugh. "Hey, I meant to find you. I want to show you something, but…" His face grew serious, and his voice dropped to a whisper. "You've got to promise to keep quiet about it. I don't want to worry Fiti."

"So you're going to worry me instead," Ata groused. "Wonderful."

Māui didn't acknowledge his companion's complaint. "Remember what Tūtū Pele said last time she visited?" he asked, brushing past a few ferns as he ventured deeper into the jungle. "About Te Fiti's heart being in danger?"

"Every word," Ata said impatiently. "Get to the point, will you?"

Māui stopped short at the edge of a steep cliff and pointed at the deep, glossy purplish-black pool of fresh water which lay directly below his finger. "Well, check this out."

"That's water, Māui," Ata said, in the sort of tone one would use to address a small, exceptionally dull child.

"No, wait! There!"

The crab looked again, and immediately reared back. The pool's surface wasn't calm anymore. Rising from the dark water was an unbelievably, impossibly long tentacle. Stripes of luminous pink and crimson stretched across its length, which Ata estimated to be roughly ten times Māui's height. "Holy gods," he whispered, torn between awe and terror.

"This isn't even the weirdest thing here," Māui whispered back. "I've been watching it for the last few months, and I've seen moʻo, shark kupua, taniwha… The works! And you know what I think?"

For once, Ata was too shocked to make a snide comment about his surprise at Māui's being able to actually think. "What?" he asked softly.

"I think," Māui said, pausing dramatically, "that this place is a portal. A portal to…" He stood, sweeping his arms out and nearly shaking Ata off in the process, "Lalotai — the Realm of Monsters! And," he added, his tone ominous, "I bet they're here for the Heart of Te Fiti."