“Does anyone remember the story about how Pahne’i conquered fire, and taught the people how to protect themselves against shadows?” There was an awkward silence from behind him. “Come on, we’ve talked about this in class, you guys.”
“Was that the one with the lizard god in it?” Joseph Kienga said.
“No, stupid,” his brother Ricky answered, “he got the magic knife from the God of Lizards, remember?”
Patrick glanced over his shoulder, and sure enough, Angela Kururangi had raised her hand and was waiting to be called on. She was a stickler for proper student-teacher etiquette.
“Yes, Angela?” he said, turning back to wrestle with the vines. “You have something to share?”
“He went to the First Volcano,” she answered, “looking for a way that the people could cook their food so that they wouldn’t have to eat it raw.”
“And wouldn’t be cold at night,” Tommy Hulana added, eagerly.
“Right,” Patrick nodded, dropped a fistful of vegetation to the pavement at his feet. “The people who lived on Kovoko-ko-Te’Maroa didn’t know anything about fire, so it wasn’t just that they ate their food bloody and cold, but their nights were full of terrors because they had no defense against the shadows that crept outside the grass walls of their huts.”
“Pahne’i knew about it, though, didn’t he?” Sandra Kaloni interjected. “Didn’t his mom tell him about it, or something?”
“He saw it when he went to visit his dad, the god of the ocean,” Ricky answered.
“How can there be fire under the ocean?” Joseph sounded skeptical.
“It’s magic, dummy. He’s the god of the ocean.”
“Technically you’re both right,” Patrick said. “Pahne’i’s father lived in a cave under the ocean. But yes, Pahne’i had seen light coming from burning logs in his father’s long house, and had eaten cooked fish and boar there. So he went to ask his mother—and yes, Sandra, she was the one who knew where this burning light could be found.”
Patrick could remember his Uncle Alf telling him the story, time and again over the years, and if he listened hard enough he could almost hear the echoes of the old man’s voice, bouncing around somewhere far back in his mind.
“Pahne’i’s mother,” he could remember the old man saying, “who had been introduced into the mysteries by her own mother, told her beloved son everything she knew about the secret light he had seen, told how it burned within the breast of every man, but extinguished when brought into the air. She told him how the sun and the stars were of the same stuff, floating high above the waves. And she told him the secret name of the light: Fire.”
Patrick had managed to pry loose most of the vines, and picked up the paint brush to use the end of its wooden handle to start digging moss out of the grooves.
“Pahne’i’s mother told him that the fire lived far away to the west,” Patrick continued, “at the edge of the world, in the place where the sun went to sleep every night. So Pahne’i sailed west, for eight days and eight nights, until he came to Helekea, the First Volcano, climbed up to the very top, and then climbed down inside of it.”
“Where he fought a lot of monsters!” Nicky Tekiera was always the most interested in Te’Maroan legends that involved monsters of one kind or another.
“With that magic knife of his,” Ricky Kienga amended, quickly.
“Yes, with the moonstone knife he’d been given by the god of lizards, which was said to shine like the stars themselves.” Patrick gritted his teeth as he scraped away a particularly ground-in bit of moss. “He fought the tikua demons that live beneath the earth, sending their shadows back down to their master. Then he came to a lake of fire, resting in the bottom of the volcano. He tried a bunch of different ways to carry it back with him, but it burned everything he tried to put it in, so in the end he drank it and carried it back in his belly. Then he climbed back out and headed home.”
“Wait,” Sandra cut in, “what about the god of shadows? Didn’t Pahne’i fight him down there, too?”
Patrick shot her a grin over his shoulder. “That was the next trial he faced—good memory, Sandra—but it wasn’t on that same island. He got caught in a storm on the way back, and was lost at sea in the cold and dark for days and days. When the storm finally cleared, he was in an unfamiliar part of the sea. He continued sailing east for a long, long time, trying to find his way back home, until he came to a shore that stretched out to the north and south as far as the eye could see.”
“The mainland?” Tommy asked.
“Maybe,” Patrick answered noncommittally. “Island people sailed all over the place, so it’s entirely possible that they might have gotten that far. Anyway, as Sandra says, it was there that Pahne’i encountered the God of Shadows, after climbing down into a big hole in the ground, like an unhealed wound on the land itself.”
“Why was this dude always going around climbing down into holes?” Joseph sounded skeptical.
“Because he was looking for more monsters to fight, I’ll bet!” Nicky said, bouncing his basketball on the pavement to punctuate his point.
“The way I always heard the story, he went underground to get away from the heat of the sun, after having been outdoors so long,” Patrick answered, appraising the state of the mark he’d uncovered. Reaching down, he picked up the paint can, twisted off the lid, and began to touch up the cracks and gaps where the decades-old paint had flaked away. “Anyway, he found the God of Shadows, who promptly swallowed Pahne’i whole. For eight sunless days and eight moonless nights the darkness tried to consume him, but he was kept warm by the flames that were still burning deep inside of him. And finally he found the strength to cut his way
