PoraBora

Chapter Twelve

It wasn't even morning before they woke Pora up and dragged him out of another cold room and onto the largest ship in the bay: the whale shark, a creature Pora knew would never eat him because the biggest fish in the sea primarily ate plankton.

There were dozens of people already aboard, but fewer them than cannons. They lined the rails and poked out of the hulls, and Pora believed what Samuelu had said about being able to take any fleet Pora's village could put together.

Mostly, his village didn't have a fleet. Twenty men promised they would be the first to defend their island. Three of them, recently returned from their island pastures, trained themselves between crop rotations with short spears and hooked clubs.

And that was really it.

Like most of the deck, the whale shark's mast was made of koa wood, painted like the hulls to match the ship's visage. Even the giant warriors wouldn't have been able to reach around it. The boom was straight up, the sail folded between them. Rigging crossed down to the gunnel, with different lines for opening the sail, holding it in place, and lowering the boom. The lines crossed over with a forward spar, which was three-quarters as tall as the mast and a third as thick.

Neither of them were drawn. No crewmen dashed from one line to the other to lower sails and angle them for the wind. Nor did they bellow joyously that they were heading out to sea again, a night ashore already too long apart. The warriors, which were most of those aboard, filed in sharp lines like razors of coral. All of them clutched their spears as if afraid letting go would cause the boat to capsize. And all of them looked towards the man who came aboard after Pora.

It was clear immediately he was the chief, thanks to the thick, feathered cape, the elaborate headdress, and the tattoo that was unique among the geometric triangles adorning his warriors. The man walked slowly, as if everyone should wait on him, or perhaps only because the opposite would lose him his feathered hat.

He was too young, was Pora's first thought. He would have barely returned from his pastures. The elders would have chastised him for posturing and struck him for thinking he could pass judgement. He didn't have a chance for a second thought as his doorwatchers pushed him into a cage with bars of steel, hanging off the starboard side of the ship.

Pora clutched the bars in his hands while his legs slipped through the bottom, dangling over the water.

"I only want to get back to my island," said Pora.

Nobody listened. Nobody understood. Samuelu was way back on the stern with the captain, and even if he hadn't been, Pora doubted he would have answered him.

The ship was enormous. Hatches opened above the hulls and men went in, six at once. More came back up. The crew, Pora guessed, because they carried a barrel across the deck and poured it into a motor well as deep and large as his cage.

Then it began chugging. Pora watched warriors on the pier pull off bow lines (there were two), stern lines (three), and lines along the middle (four). They moved with a cold efficiency, never scrambling, never running, only untying, every movement attuned to the knot. The warriors on the boat dragged up fenders, each one thicker than Pora. One of the warriors on the pier gave a shout, and a man with a ring of grasses on his head (Pora decided he must have been the captain) shouted back, sharply, and the motor roared like a distant volcano.

The men on the dock didn't wave. They only watched as the ship left.

Pora watched the ocean below as they departed. Along the steel, the water rolled as if crashing upon a tide pool's walls. He could see the reef when they were still in the bay. What lived was vibrant in color, smeared green by surface water but otherwise warm with oranges and purples. What didn't left only holes. The reef continued a streak of color until it was broken, like an uncovered skull, a perfect specimen until, there, a missing tooth, and there, a crack, just above the eye, and suddenly there was no lower jaw, and a missing slab left a hole through the cranium, and then there wasn't a skull left at all, but a piece that might have belonged to the femur of another creature entirely.