PoraBora

Epilogue

The god swam in the stars. Akoni could only marvel, but he let disbelief trail behind in the slow-moving sea. Was the sky a mirror for the sunken world that showed him Keasau? Was it the reverse? He did not know, and it seemed too impossible to guess. It had been leading the way north, but now the shape that swam between the lights idled, then went south again. Akoni blinked, and the whale shape was back, idled, and went south again, all the way to the horizon where stars were replaced by the dark, deep sea.

Keasau himself had slowed considerably in his escape, holding steady at the surface, where he had remained nearly motionless for many minutes. Akoni wondered if the god wasn't asleep. The creatures along his back were anything but, swaying with the waves and their ritualistic dance and disturbing the water into dull color. Pepu'i seemed far behind, and its jellyfish with it.

There was no oil in the sea around them anymore. Keasau's shell seemed complete again. Akoni put his hand against it curiously, feeling the rough, barnacled texture. A couple of crabs climbed up his arm, pinching his skin to pick their way. He plucked them off and returned them to Keasau. He appreciated what they seemed to do, but did not want a snow-white diving suit crawling about him.

As he watched the crabs, he realized they moved in unison, their bobbing creating shapes as they rose or lowered together. Plateaus rose up and valleys dropped and they moved like waves up the god's back and down its sides. Akoni smiled to think of these mysterious creatures and their coordination, before something shifted in his mind. The movement settled his eyes into a new focus, and he found something familiar in the shapes.

It was a map. A map he had seen a hundred times before, carved in wood in Noikoa's chambers, scrawled on canvas aboard his naval ship, displayed in every great hall among the islands.

It was Taipala. The crabs approximated the sea floor, obstinate atolls, volcanic archipelagoes; even the greatest reefs. Akoni's heart raced as he slid off the whale god and dipped beneath the ocean for another angle, another look. He circled their shapes, trying to see if it was true, trying to believe it could be possible. He passed Kehoa and Li'ili, Nu'ue and Liaou, E'oue and Kenea...

He knew these valleys, these slopes, and he felt it on the back of his neck like a bolt. There was Henoue, where he had been born, where Noikoa's tattered fleet would return empty-handed, if Ikaika gave up his chase at all. And northeast, Akapua, with its great central island and trail of children.

And there, leagues more to the north, under the chin of Keasau, was Loune. Where his friend Chief Miyari looked over a great rain forest and sublime beaches, where Akoni's wife and son circled the reefs on their small boat, waiting...as they always waited. For his return. For his one month in eleven.

Akoni stared at the crabs for as long as he had breath. It was a tired mind, he told himself, or a dream, or a vision, but he had been seeing too much in the stars, and too much of gods, to believe that flaccid defense. As he pulled himself back up onto Keasau's back and laid down, as the crabs crawled over his body to maintain their sea floor, he laughed.

The whale in the stars circled a planet and went south again. South to Loune. South to Akoni's family. And he understood what Keasau was telling him, in so many messages. It was time to go home.

Akoni slid back into the water and made strong, slow strides into a current. In moments, he was well clear of Keasau, and he turned back to see the god's tail slip at last into the sea.

That was it, then, Akoni thought. A culmination of years of his life, a blessing and a gift that led to this moment. A whale freed. And his people without their god of oil.

If he had been at all.

Akoni shook his head.

"Go, Keasau," Akoni called out, doubting the god could hear him, who had likely doven to the seafloor, "And do not let us find you again." He smiled despite himself. Even now, he could not help but tell it what to do.

I am sorry, old friend.

He felt stupid for the sentiment, but much had brought them here, and it was hard not to think of a creature who had saved his life as anything less.

Then, just before Akoni could turn and swim on, Keasau breached a final time, throwing its enormous, finished form into the sky.