PoraBora

Chapter Fifty-Nine

The battle started without warning, but Pe seemed to be the only one surprised.

Everybody went to their stations. Noikoa shouted commands. Ikaika stared through his monoscope. And Pe didn't waste another moment.

She ran to the stern, grabbed her hammer, plank, and nails, and leapt from one ship to the next. Warriors called. A cannon fired.

She was one boat away. She could see her manta, tied to four surrounding ships, lines from cleat to cleat.

"Hey!" A warrior blocked her way. "What do you think you're doing?"

Pe didn't have to answer, because the cavern shook them both off their feet.

"What in the--" started the warrior.

Eighty feet of a god burst up through the water's surface. Pe gaped at its enormity, at the practical effortlessness it exuded, twisting slowly, flipper extended from its body. It was like no whale she had ever seen. There was no spinal ridge, and its whole body was covered completely in grey-white armor.

It hit the water with such force that a wave as tall as the eel swelled up and out, and the slap sent a shudder down Pe's back.

"Places!" shouted a captain. "Positions! Drive Keasau into the net! Get the bow into those swells!"

That was when Pe saw the boy, drawn up by the crashing god whale, a tiny head in clear waters, a standout shape in the light of the jellyfish. It was Pora. And that...there...could it be? Pe snatched up her things and weaved past the warrior, who was trying to decide whether to stop her or obey commands.

Pe didn't know which he chose, as she slid over the rail and dropped into the water beside her boat.

She went in feet first, the water a cool rush over her skin, and threw a hand onto the manta's hull before she went too far. Too late. Her momentum carried her under it, and even as she snapped herself back above the surface, she could feel the jellyfish in the water with her. She scrambled onto the manta using the port line to help.

The first jellyfish sting hit her with a jolt of hot pain like thousands of tiny spears. She spat and swore and pulled herself up, first her chest, then her good leg, and felt the tentacles drag down her flesh.

She screeched, trying to shake herself out.

It wasn't a man of war, but it hurt as bad as she could have imagined. The bell itself was still in the sea, and most of the entanglement was around her peg leg, but there was enough on her skin.

Idiot, she thought. Salting idiot! But what was the alternative?

It was a miracle she'd held onto the hammer and nails, but she wasn't so lucky with the board. It was with the jellies.

She didn't have a moment to curse again. The swell of the god's landing hit the boats in front of her. She swore anyway, dragging herself onto the boat and bracing desperately as she hoped the fenders would be enough to keep her from being crushed.

The first boat slammed into the manta, pushing it towards the next. If it caught between both, that'd be the end of it. Pe held up her peg leg, prepared to, she wasn't sure, but at least kick back against the crash.

But she didn't collide with the next, all of them carried until the wave passed and the manta retained its shape.

Pe kicked herself free of most of the jellyfish and had to peel the last of the fiber-like tentacles. She breathed quickly as she did so, as if it would help the pain. It didn't.

But she had work to do. She got the hatch board from the water, slipped it into place by her tiller, and raced to hammer it together.

She missed. A lot. But ultimately it held. It won't. It didn't have to forever. Just until she got out of the cave. Just so she could get away. Then she could use any of the wood from any of the islands they had passed, or even strip her own deck, and get somewhere that could repair it properly.

Then it was the knots. She fumbled with them at every cleat, because the warriors who had tied them were idiots who didn't know how to tie an efficient line.

Nobody jumped down after her. Not after they heard her screaming.

That's right, you salting slugs, she thought. I'm just a girl. What can I do? You've got bigger things to worry about. You've always had bigger things to worry about.

She heard the cannons fire and clapped her hands to her ears. But it wasn't at her. She looped her peg leg around the starting cable and pulled it sharply.

Her motor growled, and only sputtered for a moment.

Then she was off. The glow surrounded her, turning her ship into a dark shape on the surface. She squinted into the water, trying to find Pora. She was convinced the jellyfish belonged to him too, because his body wasn't floating bloated to the surface. What he was doing in the water at all was bewildering. The cavern walls rose up like a bowl, but there were still places to hang on or sit.

She still couldn't believe there was coral above the water. It went too high, surely, to be able to survive between tides. But only a fool tried to explain the gods' effect on the world around them.

They'd stacked her ship with supplies. Probably it was from the original decision to send her and Iumili on their way with a full stock, and they'd only never received a command to remove it. Or perhaps they'd expected to keep her boat out of the way, and figured it was a safer place to keep the food they would need later.

It didn't matter why. She thanked their abandoned generosity as she kept her eyes peeled for the boy, or his shark, which she knew she had seen in the water beside him, and decided she might as well make use of it. She pulled chunks of meat from the warriors' supplies and hooked up her line.

She cast.

The hammerhead had made itself well clear of the rest of the chaos, turning deep to the side of the cavern. Nobody hung from it anymore, and it seemed to still be in control of Makaia and his men. Pe would have to be mindful of it, and of Noikoa's ships, and of the rest of Makaia's. She didn't know why they had started firing on each other and didn't care. She just wanted out of the middle of it, because any errant cannonball could sink the manta in an instant.

It wasn't built for a naval battlefield. It was built to catch and carry fish, and travel from island to island, and stay upright during storms. But now it wouldn't be able to do any of those things. She could practically hear the whining of her new steering board as she turned it beneath her.

And then there was the god. The lights below all but vanished, and Pe stared over the edge of her boat. Her heart stopped. It felt like it took a minute for her to pass over it, and the entire time she could do nothing but imagine it rising up, pushing her manta over its back and attracting the fire of all the ships in the cavern.

If it didn't eat her first.

Pe crawled to the center of her boat and braced. The god would pass, she thought, trying not to close her eyes.

It did. The light returned, and she swallowed a sigh, and cannons fired, splashing geysers of blue-white water not twenty feet from her boat.

They had noticed too. How could they not? Its shape filled the water, too great to go near the edges of the cavern, and with the net blocking the way out, it could only swim in slow circles.

It sang, voice echoing against rock and coral, and Pe wished she had waited on the other side of the net for Bora to come out.

Pe moved the supplies off of the central hatch and pulled it open, passing it from peg leg to hand. She was going to need her firelock, and her saw-tooth blade, as soon as the shark was brought to the surface.

She had neither.

Of course. Ikaika and his warriors had taken them. Probably he had taken it as proof that she was up to something, but they were common things for a fisher to carry, if not use, and definitely not for a shark.

Well, thought Pe, reaching a hand towards her peg leg. They hadn't found everything.