PoraBora

Chapter Fifty-Three

It was over.

Pe sunk onto the eel's railing, feeling sick from head to brass toe. Oil still covered the surface. Light still came through. Noikoa's looking glass rolled out of her fingers and down the deck.

She had seen him. She was sure. Nobody else looked like him.

Pora had flown off with Maye.

Noikoa's crew still marched from one task to the next. Keasau had never grabbed their ship, but still there were wounded, oil splashed onto their faces and making boils of their skin and screams in their throats. Pe had an idle, automatic thought about what had happened to Hui's.

She had seen him too, through the monoscope, shouting at the fowl god from the deck of the white-tip. That was before Makaia's men had taken him onto the hammerhead.

Could she get back to it? Could she get to him, the next time Noikoa met with Makaia and the rigsman?

"Akoni is dead," said Noikoa, arms crossed, as he stared over the oil at a flashing message.

"Good," growled Ikaika, reading the same message.

"I told Makaia I wanted him alive."

"No doubt Akoni brought it upon himself," said Ikaika. "He's overestimated his plans for the last time."

Noikoa shook his head solemnly. "I should tell his wife."

"Please, allow me."

Pe glared at them both. They'd failed to capture Keasau, but none of them mentioned it. The crew only dragged water from beneath the surface to wash the deck and oil to refill their motor well.

Makaia's ships started first after their nets were drawn back from the sea and the shape of Maye wasn't even a speck on the horizon. Noikoa's weren't too far behind; once their oil wells were topped off by the god's gift, they thundered in chase.

Keasau had gotten off the hook, but they hadn't given up.

Neither would Pe.

"Is that a bird?"

Pe glanced over to the warrior who spoke, pointing to the bow.

It was a bird. It was a sandpiper. And if Pe thought she was crazy enough, she might even say it was the sandpiper. Tota.

She looked up to where Pora had disappeared.

"We must be close to land," said another warrior, climbing back up to the skeletal frame for his favorite seat. Perhaps to look for islands that might have invited it.

It wasn't islands, she thought. It was the boy. And if Pora and Tota were here, she expected Bora wouldn't be far behind.

Pe gripped her leg. She could still get it. Makaia and Noikoa be drowned, she was still going to get her shark.

#

Pe was woken by a gunshot. She bounced out of her sheets and nearly exposed her still waiting tools as she tried to figure out what was going on.

Wheet wheet wheet!

"You missed!" shouted a warrior.

"The firelock missed!" returned another.

There was a flapping of wings and Tota landed just opposite Pe and the warriors.

"Quick, Tota!" said the warrior with the firelock, its tip still smoking. "Get out of the way. We're going to have real bird for breakfast."

"Not shooting it like that you won't!" Pe was quick to her feet and behind their line, knowing nowhere else was safe from the weapon. "The bird will pop like a sea grape and the only thing you'll be having for breakfast is another chore."