Voices hung over her, whispering fearfully. "Do you think she's dead?" one of them asked quietly. The voice obviously belonged to a child, much younger than Makani.
"What? Don't be foolish," said a slightly older girl who sounded a few years younger than Makani. "Didn't you see her shift her arm just now?"
They fell silent and Makani dared to open her eyes.
The little boy shrieked slightly and the girl gasped, "Oh!"
The boy was about six or seven years old, with long, shaggy hair that was held back into a ponytail. He was dressed in nothing but a loincloth. The girl was very tall and skinny and had large eyes so that she looked slightly like an insect. Her hair was short and rugged, barely falling to her chin. She had a hairband pushing the tangles out of her face.
Makani yawned and sat up. "Hello," she said, throat hurting. She turned and rummaged through her supplies until she had found a flask of water. Once she had drank enough to parch her thirst, she tried again. "Hello. I am Makani, granddaughter of Moana. May I speak with your chieftain?"
The children exchanged an awed look. "You're the granddaughter of Moana?" the little boy asked incredulously.
Makani sighed in relief. These villagers obviously knew how to respect her gramma. "Yes, I am. I need to speak with your chieftain."
The boy and girl exchanged another look. The girl cleared her throat and introduced them: "I am Lulani. This is my brother, Akela. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you can't speak with the chieftain."
"Why not?" Makani asked, heart sinking. Was this another strange island with a chieftain who thought themselves near a god?
"He's very sick," Akela explained. "Has been for days."
"We have a bad disease on our island, and the adults are all in the village trying to fight it. The children live down here," Lulani explained further as Makani clambered to her feet. "Only one child got infected, and he's in the village with the adults."
"How long has this disease been going around?"
"Ever since one of our coconut trees got sick. The coconuts are poisoned, and once you're sick, the sickness is transmitted by touch."
"I'm sorry. Um, where do the children live?"
"Right here, in the forest along the beach," Lulani said matter-of-factly, gesturing to treehouses that Makani had been unable to see in the dark. "These used to just be our playhouses, but now we live here."
Makani looked around the beach for the first time. She saw that it was filled with children, playing in the waves, wrestling in the sand, or caring for each other. A few were even readying a boat and fishing equipment.
"We don't have very good fish to catch here," Lulani shared, "but we have no choice. We are not good at telling which coconut trees are infected."
Makani felt her spirits sinking lower with every word. It seemed like she wouldn't be able to get more supplies from these children, which would put her behind two days where supplies were concerned. And she wouldn't get very much rest - if she got moving now, she could make it to the next island by the afternoon. But what if they all had something wrong with them? When they were making this plan, Makani and Gramma hadn't counted on something being wrong with ever island, but so far, that was the trend.
Makani was so busy worrying about supplies that Akela had to repeat his question twice before she heard him. "Makani! Why are you here?"
"Oh!" In her thoughts, she had completely forgotten why she was truly doing this. "I am looking for someone very important.
"I am looking for Maui the demigod."
Akela was chattering endlessly as Lulani led the way into the forest and toward a hill in the middle of the island. "I can't believe you're looking for a demigod! Hey, Lulani, he could get rid of the disease, couldn't he? He could save our island! Ooh, maybe, Makani, when you find him, you can bring him back here first and make him get rid of the disease for us! It's nice living on the beach, but it gets kinda boring after a few days, and it's been a lot longer than a few days. It's scary, too, because you don't know how bad things are in the village. You'd think - just don't touch the infected people, right? But it's hard sometimes to tell when people are infected at first. That's how the chieftain got sick. He hugged his son, but his son's the only kid that got the disease, he just wasn't showing it yet. But then..."
Makani struggled to block out the child's chatter. While at first he had been quietly in awe of her, now he just wouldn't stop talking. "Lulani," she asked, interrupting Akela's stream and sending the child into a pout, "what does Maui have to do with that hill?"
"You'll see," the preteen responded mysteriously, leaping over a fallen tree. Makani scrambled over it easily and winced as her feet bit into a particularly large pebble. Her feet were incredibly calloused from her life on her home island, but she didn't have to trek through strange, painful forests daily. She noted that Akani and Lulani were barefoot as well, and their feet were covered in cuts, bruises, and scabs. What a painful way to live.
The trio walked for another hour or so before finally reaching the hill. Lulani led the way to a mossy side of the hill and stood proudly in front of it. "Here we are!"
Makani stared confusedly at the moss. "It's a mossy wall."
"Nope! More than thak!" Akela piped up from behind her.
Tentatively, Makani reached out and felt the moss. It gave slightly and she pushed farther, stumbling into a cave hidden by the plant.
She gasped at what she saw in the faint sunlight that trickled in.