The old lady knows nothing but her hunger at this instant. She emerges from her home, locks the door, and begins to hobble on her rickety knees down towards the river. The forest floor squelches under her feet, oozing up gelatinous black liquid that clings to her skin and travels up her legs. When she breathes, her nose burns from the sharp fumes in the air, and she coughs in harsh, guttural gasps as she hacks up a glob of phlegm.

A fish surfaces on the river, body swollen and gills flapping as it gasps for oxygen, eyes glassy. She spies it at once, snatching it up without hesitation, her bony and gnarled fingers slicing through the brown sludge of water. The fish doesn't even fight. She brings her catch up to her nose, giving it a good deep whiff, smelling something foul and on the verge of rotting.

"The fuel is strong today, no?" she says, cackling, speaking out to an empty forest.

Her only response is the soft gurgle of rushing water from the river, which is fed by the large cascading falls in the mountains. Her gaze lingers, remembering how downstream where the water empties out into the bay, the taro patches used to be abundant in the wetlands. Now it's just built over with businesses and towering real estate developments. She thought that maybe, maybe, if she kept cultivating the taro and grew new baby ferns and trees, make the forests vibrant once again that the land could recover. The sickness would leave, and her people would come home. A dream, a hope, until her aching back and hacking cough told her the reality. She can't do this alone. The old lady needs help.

She threads back to her home. Her bent form and crooked spine make this daily trek an arduous ordeal, but she does what she must. The old lady wishes she could share her meal with everyone but she's all alone, been alone for what feels like an eon and an age. Her people used to be here, her lāhui, but they're gone now. Dead, driven off, or denying the reality of what their land has become.

But not her. She's still here. And she will continue to be here even when her body is gone and her bones have become dust. This is her home and she will not leave it. This land is precious, her people have taken care of it and been nurtured by it, her last duty is to protect what's left of it.

At last, she reaches her firepit and places her fish on the stump she uses as a table. Taking the machete resting against it, she slams it down, severing the fish's head with a neat thunk. Blood pools out, sticky and dark like the color of mud, and coats her fingers. She licks them clean. The old lady makes quick work, deftly removing the skin with her machete, peeling it away to reveal the prize inside. There are dark black areas on the meat and smaller white globules that burst with a foul-smelling liquid when she touches them. No matter, she plucks out the bones and the spine, then chops up the body into bite-sized pieces. Her stomach rumbles in anticipation. The fish is barely longer than the length of her hand but it's enough.

She's going to eat good tonight.

Except for the head. No, the head is special, reserved for the special child who lurks in the deep.

The old lady throws the fish head into a bowl hanging over her firepit. There's roasted kukui nuts already prepared, oil seeping out in generous quantities. She takes a long, thin branch, and swishes the head around until it's thoroughly saturated. Perfect. The old lady takes the bowl and clutches it to her chest. She makes her way back over to the river.

"My child, my child, are you hungry?" she calls out in her raspy voice, hands shaking with the weight of the bowl. "I have brought you something."

She tips the bowl over, the head falling out with a plop. She rubs her face with her grimy hands and waits for something unseen. Something only she knows. Something spoken about in the tales of old.

In the shadow of the overhanging trees, a claw pierces the river surface from below and snatches her offering.

#

Their voices are whispering to her. Soft, insistent, like the rush of wind through fallen leaves. He's coming, he's coming, they say. He's coming to take you away.

#

The man appears at the edge of the forest, his outline dark and growing as he rounds the bend of the river.

Danger, danger, danger.

He's tall, has that clean-cut, closely shaven hairstyle like many of his fellow intruders sported before. Every step he makes is one of deliberation, a claiming over the land he walks. When one's head is so high, they can only look down.

The old lady sees him right away, not because of his pale skin, but because of his clothes. Uniforms. Brands. Mottled green and brown camouflage. She sneers, spitting at his black boots as he comes closer.

He pauses for the briefest of seconds, eyeing her actions, and assessing his target at the same time. Greasy strings of hair, tattered clothes that are barely hanging on, and layers of grime coating every inch of her body. The man curls his upper lip at the sight.

She knows what he's going to say, she's heard them before.

"Ma'am, I'm Chief Petty Officer Chet Lawrence on behalf of the U.S. Navy, and I'm here to continue the negotiations that were started about your relocation," he delivers, impaling her with his dark stare.

Relocation? She scoffs. These people can never say their sentiments plainly. Forcibly removed. The old lady glances at her house, tucked away among the trees, overgrown weeds and ivy crawling all over the foundation. The walls are hollow, the seams are splitting, and the white paint is blotched and marred with black. A perfect vision of despair and decay.

But this is her home. The last holdout against the hands that want to rip her away. Who would take care of this land when she's gone? Who would try to make amends for all the damage they have caused? Not them. Only her, only her, only her.

The old lady shakes her head. This forest would be flattened. Paved over to make room for roads, houses, and facilities for the ships floating in the bay down at the ocean's edge. They've already installed their tanks deep in the mountain, sloshing containers full of gas and fuel that seeps into the ground and into the ground water below, ruining and destroying everything it touches.

No. No. No.

She will not leave.

"My child, my child, do you hear me? Are you with me?" the old lady cries out, beseeching the void in pleading tones. She wobbles on her feet.

"Ma'am, did you hear me?" the sailor repeats, raising his voice and getting into her face. "I wanted to discuss your relocation."

The old lady hisses at him, baring her blackened teeth. He blanches and flattens his mouth, hands flexing at his side. She turns away from him, showing her hunched back. She doesn't deal with colonizers. There's a narrowing of eyes, as if he's considering a new plan of attack.

"Ma'am? Tūtū," he entreats, overly enunciating each syllable. It sounds more like derision than a title of affection.

He dares call her grandma? She snaps around and snarls at him.

"Don't you dare call me by that name! I don't want to hear my language escape your lips," she screams, swiping at him with her curled fingers. The old lady is nearly frothing at the mouth, black spittle flecking her chin.

The sailor avoids her attack with simple sidesteps, his lips now pressed into a thin line. He contemplates calling for backup. But he takes a deep breath. No. He'll give her one more chance. Just his luck to be assigned a job no one else wants.

"I must impress upon you the importance of this offer. This will be your last chance. We will pay you for your relocation. I'm sure you will find the new housing we have chosen very agreeable. It is a brand-new development with every modern comfort you could want and need," he rattles off, hoping he sounds like the very best salesman. "But if you do not accept our terms, the cash payout will no longer be offered."

"Don't feed me your lies! The only way you'll get me out of here is if I'm dead!" the old lady shrieks, planting herself on the ground and wrapping her hands around thick stalks of fern. "Isn't it enough? I don't have people. You've chased them all away! I don't have a home. You've poisoned it all with your gas and fuel! It's in the air, it's in the water, it's even in the dirt beneath my feet!"

He takes a step back at the ferocity of her words. "You need to calm down," he barks, moving forward to reach down and grab her.

"No! I am a Kiaʻi! I will protect this land with my last breath!"

The sailor is about to fully encircle his hand around her wrist and yank her to her feet when the old lady leans forward and spews vomit on him, thick, chunky brown liquid exploding from her mouth. The sailor blanches, reeling back, covering his mouth with his hand. She continues to gag, falling over to her side and moaning pitifully. The stench is horrendous, acidic and smelling strongly of rotten fish.

"My child, my child, where are you? I need you?" she cries, curling into a ball, hands over her stomach.

The sailor has just about had it with this nonsense. His hand flexes by his pocket, wishing he could carry a piece like all the other armed forces do. If he did, maybe she'd finally listen to him. His superiors didn't say anything about how she should be removed.

He grabs her wrists in a crushing grip, strong enough that her thin skin would bruise heavily. The old lady screams, fighting with every inch of strength she has left in her body. She knows that if he takes her away, they'll destroy this land, bulldoze it flat to cover up their mistakes, their horrors, the poison sickening this earth. Her people will not be extinguished this way, she will not be silenced!

And then she sees it. Bubbles. Undulations of the water. A dark mass rising out of the water.

She cackles again, coughing when she's unable to breathe deeply, and looks the sailor in the eye. "My child, you have come!"

A pulse of fear strikes through the sailor, and he lets go of the old lady, standing straight, eyes scanning the river and the horizon wildly. What's coming? He wishes he had something hard to hold in his hand. If not from the delusional hysteria from a senile old lady but as a promise of security should things truly go to shit.

Darkness rises from the river, a huge black mass, dripping water, four black legs thick as tree trunks and a long slender body with a spiked tail. The ridge of the creature's spine splits the space above it in two. The old lady squeals in delight. It's a moʻo, the lizard spirit who protects these lands. Every day she's made offerings, every day she's whispered stories to the water, cleaned the muck that grows on the ground and the plants. And now the creature has come to repay her in kind.

Golden eyes snap instantly to the tall man standing over the old lady. The spirit swivels its head back and forth, powerful neck muscles bunching and releasing, tongue flicking out to taste the air. The old lady's body shivers in anticipation.

The moʻo roars, leaning its head back and exposing its long, sharp teeth, black water dripping off the points. The spirit is huge, nearly ten feet in height, casting a shadow on everything around it. The sailor screams, reaching for the phone in his pocket to call for help. Before his fingers could even graze the tip of the case, the moʻo's tail swings around and slams him to the ground, a cloud of dirt erupting around them.

A wheeze escapes him, his vision blurry from the pounding his head took to the ground. He should feel lucky the spikes missed impaling him, only tearing through his uniform and ripping lines across his ribs. Pain flushes through his injured side and he gasps, pressing a hand to his wounds, a red stain blooming over his uniform. He attempts to get up, stumbles over his feet, and falls flat to the floor.

The spirit lunges forward and clamps every tooth deep into the sailor's neck, cutting off any sound he could make. He thrashes, taking swings at anything he could reach. He punches the lizard's nose, its neck, even clawing at its eyes. The moʻo growls, a deep guttural sound that makes every hair on the old lady stand on end, the ground vibrating beneath her. Blood pours from him in thick rivulets, dripping onto the uniform he wore so proudly. The sailor's eyes are wide, the whites of them a beacon in the dark forest. His face is contorted in pain but still he reaches out a hand, begging, pleading, beseeching. The moʻo pauses, body still as it stares at her, awaiting the next step.

A dizzying pulse of electricity shoots through the old lady, and she wraps her arms around herself, relishing the way her body tingles with pleasure. Slowly, she approaches the spirit with a slow, measured walk until she is standing in front of the intruder as straight as her crooked back and crooked knees will allow. The old lady pins the sailor down with her gaze, twisting her lips into a sneer, every black tooth showing. "You won't take me away. Not now, not ever. You will die with the poison you leave."

That's all the answer the moʻo needs. With a gurgle, a crunch, a twitch, it drags the sailor into the turbid river, his flailing hand the last thing she sees. The old lady walks up to the edge and stares at the spot where the moʻo and man had once been. There is nothing there now. Only the river and the land. Her home now and forevermore.

A bloody splotch emerges on the surface of the water, a dark stain spreading out like waves. There's a soft pop, and the sailor's head emerges, bobbing, its mouth open in a last attempt to scream, eyes rolled back. She smiles and plucks it from the water. A gift in return for her care.

"Thank you, my dear," she says, cradling the head to her chest.

The old lady remembers her lāhui, remembers how they used to flourish far and wide, and the words they lived by. The land provides and the land gives life. She won't stop now. There is still work to be done. Even if she is the last of her people, until her dying breath, she'll take back what was stolen from her.

And she will seize it from the colonizers who have dared to desecrate her home.

Deep beneath the river's blackened surface, the moʻo lurks, eyes gleaming, as it watches her and waits for the call to rise again.

© 2024 Krystle Yanagihara