Chapter 4: Legion of One

The castaways called him "the smoke monster," although the insane woman who had brained his mother with a rock had named him Samael. After the madwoman's years of lying, after she had killed everyone Samael had cared about, he had put an end to her. Good riddance, even if his dim-witted brother Jacob hadn't seen it that way. Still didn't.

Sometimes Samael agonized over what his brother had stolen from him. Other times it could be fun, in a degrading sort of way. This was one of those moments.

He hovered above the trees like a thundercloud, watching Hugo and Libby retreat. Sometimes Samael spied on pairs of castaways as they coupled in the forest, if only to evoke the long-distant memory of what human flesh beneath him felt like. With that fat fool it would be a waste of time, though. Samael suspected that no matter how patiently he waited, that lump of lard wouldn't wind up in the bushes with the lean woman anytime soon. Talk about watering a dry stick.

Never mind. Given what Samael had in mind for Hugo, women would be the least of his concerns. It was one thing for Samael to whisper in Hugo's ear; another entirely to create something that he could see. Concentrating as hard as he could, Samael pushed out a shimmering lump of ectoplasm onto the jungle floor.

He hated the process itself, even if the outcome was often amusing. It was perverse to have to split off a part of himself off like an amoeba. (He had learned that word from the French biologist whom he'd absorbed decades ago.) He couldn't just leave his extrusion to flop about like a beached jellyfish, either. He had to midwife it like the stillbirth it was, then animate it and give it form. There was no other way, if Samael wished to show himself in the guise of another.

On the jungle floor, the lump of etheric matter writhed and struggled. Samael let it dry out in the sun for awhile, then got down to business.

When the squirming mass had formed itself into a crude human shape of head, torso, and limbs, Samael said, "You owe me."

The mouth was always the part to form first. "For what?" the creature said, in the voice of Hugo's friend Dave.

"For creating you, you disgusting golem. Now listen up, I've got a job for you."

Dave had been born out of Samael's own essence, but formed from memories pulled from that clown Hugo's mind. The creature oozed into Dave's form: squat, bald, big-nosed, with a sneering expression. As soon as it became aware of its own body, it tried to launch itself into the air to fly, but instead landed on the ground with a thud.

Over the centuries, Samael had learned that the more he treated his projections as alive, the better they would represent the original. So he seized the Dave thing with an iron grip and slammed it up against a tree. "This is the deal. You already know what makes that fat, stupid fellow tick. Get Hugo to kill himself somehow, any way you like. Blow me off and I squish you like that pond peeper back there."

Dave cowered, then decided to try flattery. What did that say about Samael himself, that his creations first tried to escape, then groveled? Best not to speculate right now.

Cheeky as it was, Dave was one of his best simulacra. Its ectoplasm was barely dry, and already it was asserting its independence. Time for the carrot, instead of the stick. "You might even get her back," Samuel wheedled. "Elizabeth, isn't that her name? Learn a few new tricks, and perhaps you'll even hold her attention this time."

"Fat chance. She didn't marry me for my looks."

"Nonsense," Samael went on in an oily voice. "Your form is actually considered quite fetching these days, with that shiny pate and fine strong nose. Don't judge yourself by the limitations of one disgruntled woman."

Dave's disgusted snort sounded like a freight train whistle. "If you want him dead, go kill him yourself. Anyway, I kind of liked the dude. He was fun to hang with back at the hospital."

That was it. Samael couldn't take it anymore. He dealt his creation such a mighty blow that Dave flew apart.

Slowly the pieces pulled themselves back into Dave's form with long ectoplasmic shudders. Regretting his loss of temper, Samael said, "Don't be stupid. You know the rules."

"I do? What rules?"

Samael had almost slipped this time. If the creature suspected that it was simply congealed bits of Samael himself, it would fly apart like milkweed in the wind. The more it believed in its own existence, the better the outcome. Samael pulled his last remnant of control together and said, "You first met him in the madhouse, correct?"

Dave beamed, his expression smug. "He said I was the sanest guy in the place."

"I'm sure you were. That's why it shouldn't be too hard to talk him into killing himself. His sanity's already started to crumble. Tell him some outrageous lie, such as that he's sleep-walking and that jumping will make him wake up. Trick him into cliff-diving by showing him how it's done. You're an ingenious fellow and I have every confidence that you can lead that big dumb ox right to the slaughter. Just remember that by the time the moon goes dark, I want him gone."

Dave gave a mocking salute, then capered off into the jungle, the skirts of his plaid bathrobe flying.

The dusky green bird-girl named Rima crouched beneath the jungle understory, hiding until the smoke creature and its companion had gone. Soon she should be roosting, but she didn't want to run into either of them, especially after dark.

Clutching her feather mantle to her breast, she was about to resume her bird form, when from behind a thicket of coffee cherry bushes she heard a voice singing, harsh and a bit rusty.

Rima pushed through hanging creepers for a better look, then heaved a sigh of relief. In the middle of the clearing, a little old woman squatted by a small eucalyptus grove. Grey-haired but straight-backed, the old woman waved her hands over the ground, which seemed to move of its own accord at her touch. Before long she'd made a wide trench, five or six feet deep.

She lifted her ti-leaf skirt, making a loud sprinkle as she piddled onto the bare earth. Then the old woman leaned back as if pulling with all her might, and almost fell over onto her scrawny buttocks. Just as she was about to topple, a great gush of living water sprung up from the pissed-upon earth. She laughed, a crowing, raucous sound, and sat back on her haunches as water from the geyser filled the pit, making a bubbling pool.

Now that the old woman's work was done, Rima felt brave enough to venture forth. "Hail, Haumea."

The old woman nodded in greeting.

Rima asked, curious, "So, you're making a spring. What's this one for?"

"Come the next dark moon we're going to have company from that camp down by the beach, and they'll need water. Kamapua'a will send them boar, and the trees will swell with fruit. The birds' nests are full, and all these fallen trees have made the grubs fat and juicy."

"Enough to feed them all?" Rima said.

"There's a storm coming, and they'll be safe here. I care for my own, unlike some I know."

"You mean Jacob."

"Every year he grows more weary and longs for death. But what of your task, child?"

"I tried to tell Hugo, to warn him like you asked me to. But he couldn't understand me."

Haumea shrugged, as if it didn't matter.

"Samael..." Rima spit on the grass as she uttered his name. "Samael's made one of his things again, and now it's on the loose, lying in wait for Hugo. Oh, I know you charged me to watch over him, but I've muddled this hopelessly. It's going to try to trick Hugo into following it off a cliff, or to hurt himself some other way. And I don't know what to do."

Her last words came out in a long wail of distress. Other night-birds picked up the call, weaving it into their evening farewells.

The old woman rocked back and forth on her scrawny haunches and laughed from deep within her belly. In a scratchy voice she said, "Let it jump. In the last instant before it crashes into the surf, it will know that it was lied to, and its screams will ring in my ears. Kill it before it breeds, I say."

"Speaking of which," Rima put in. "The people who are coming to this new-made spring on the next dark moon... What's going to happen if one of them gets with child? What about your curse?

"What of it?"

"These human women on the beach, they don't deserve this."

Haumea gave Rima a stern look. "Child, twenty-seven years ago humans shed the Island's blood, and you know that blood is only satisfied by blood. But a new day fast approaches. Soon, very soon, the wound to the world's Heart will be healed, and the curse will lift."

Rima stopped to consider this for a moment, then said, "What about Hugo, and that thing out there?"

"The Island knows its own, Rima. Don't fear for him. Just watch over him. Love him."

"I do," she whispered. "Too much."

Haumea raised her wrinkled face, brow furrowed in warning. "He's not for you, child. You knew this from when I first picked you from your flock and gave you the gift of a woman's form."

"Sometimes it feels more like a curse."

"With a woman's body comes a woman's heart," Haumea said. "It can't be helped. But seven years' service you promised me. Afterwards you may take all the lovers you like, from Tahiti to Hawai'i, and on this Island, too, if any please you. Just not this one, darling. He's for someone else, if she'll have him."

"Seven years? Will it really take that long?"

"I hope not." Haumea draped Rima's green-gold feather-skin over the bird-girl's shoulders like a grandmother buttoning up a child's coat before sending her out to play. "And don't spy on him when he bathes. You're just making it worse for yourself."

Rima flushed the color of the jungle in deep shade, even as her face stretched out into a beak and became covered with feathers. When her bird form overcame her completely, she spread her wings and flew northwards towards her eyrie, followed by the rest of her flock.

A great boar trotted through the greenery, breaking bushes left and right. Haumea scrambled up onto its broad back, her work in the clearing done.

Some day, her daughter the Lady of Volcanoes would return to the Island. She would bathe her feet in liquid orange flame, and the mountainside would shake from her union with Kamapua'a, the wild Boar King. Then, at a great feast under the stars, the Lady would anoint the new Protector of the world's Heart, and on that night the mountains and the seas would rise up and be glad.

Long had the good creatures of the green wood waited. It was about time.

(the end)