The Chronicle of Matahouroa Chapter 7: Speaking

 Aata had known Rinomaunga for as long as he could remember.

It  was impossible not to: the mountain’s ash and soot clouded the heavens  to the northwest, a black stain in the horizon seen from anywhere in the  Plateau. It was as mundane as the sky itself, even if it stood well  apart from the majority of the white peaks.

When he finally did  get to see it up close, as a young soldier, the area couldn’t possibly  be stranger. A place where hot and cold existed almost simultaneously,  rivers of lava running along tracts of cold black rock or  pumicite-covered snow. Where vast expanses of pure emptiness were  dominated by the roar of the crackling earth or gas vents, where  unrefined boulders co-existed with the impossibly intricate sculptures  of the Tahepuia Kahuna.

As Aata rose in the ranks, he found less  time - and need - to visit the place, making each subsequent visit all  the more surreal.

And as he and his small contingent arrived  through the clear waters of the Kapongatakere river, six years since his  last visit, that feeling didn’t die at all. As the Hōkūle‘a travelled  upriver, the stain in the sky increased, until it was as thick as a  storm cloud, the sun only passing through as a dim ember. Lights from  distant lava flows and lightning bolts lit the slopes in orange and  purple glows, always dying and being replaced by new ones.

“Wow!” Mura said, pointing at a lightning ball flying overhead, “Did you see that!?”

Aata  nodded, his eyes tracing it until it reached a slope opposite to them,  blasting a boulder into molten pieces. Some rolled into the  Kapongatakere’s shoreline, stopping just before they touched the water.  Similar piles edged the waters, now blackened and solidified together.

“I  can’t believe I’m finally here” Mura said, “It’s so beautiful. It’s as  if fire is painting the mountains, and with so many inks no less. And  sculpting it too!”

Aata smiled at Mura’s enthusiasm. He traced  his left index finger on his right forearm, then circled a vortex  outward, carefully making this spiralling motion resemble a mountain.

“I know” Mura replied, “It's like energy flows everywhere, like a heartbeat. I never felt this excited.”

Mura  stood on the edge of the Hōkūle‘a. They passed through a pair of stone  half-arcs, one emerging to the right and another further forward to the  left. Streams of lighting periodically connected these arcs in an ever  shifting maze of purples, reds and whites. Cracking, violent sounds were  heard across the bolts and the rock they touched.

“I never felt this...” Mura said, watching the crackling web intently, “welcome.”

Aata didn’t respond, but he didn’t have to.

“I’m sorry” Mura excused himself,” it’s just that, after yesterday, Raiti-”

Aata  scratched his left arm, then slid one open palm against the other and  clenched his fingers. It was a motion he didn’t quite feel expressed his  intended message. Mura simply nodded in response, and Aata worried if  this was indeed the case.

As the crew passed the arcs they  arrived at a massive valley expanse. Impossibly tall slopes surrounded  them to the north and south, black and gray rock crossed by orange and  red streams or white sheets, surrounded by mist as they melted or froze  instantly. The air vacillated between intense heat and cold at a  moment’s notice, and Aata suspected that the Kapongatakere was the only  thing keeping those extremes survivable. The river grew shallower and  shallower, and it branched into two upriver streams, each impossibly  apart.

As between them was Rinomaunga itself.

If the other  mountains reached the sky, their peaks hidden by the ash clouds, then  the barest hint of the slope outmatched all of them in sheer bulk.  Occasionally, winds blew away the smoke, showing parts of the slope in  the firmament above, and periodic flashes of orange and gold appeared in  the distant sky, as distant as the sun. Lightning flashed almost  perpetually, bolts replaced by swirling vortices and more esoteric  shapes in a myriad of reds and purples.

Loud roars and screeches  of the earth and thunder filled the air every second or another, which  surprised Mura and intimidated most of the crew. Even Aata was still  shocked by the occasional explosion of sound that came awfully close,  but he quickly grew used to the cacophony. He noticed that no two bursts  of noise were alike, preventing him from finding full stability, but he  allowed himself to notice things no one else had.
Like a strange old woman standing on the bottom of the mountain, where the Kapongatakere split in two.

She  wore a shimmering fabric that reflected the multiple glows, that Aata  recognised as made from the hair-like fibers in lava. She was of the  Tahepuia Kahuna, bearing a warm, welcoming smile.

“What?” Mura asked Aata, before he saw her as well.

The woman’s lips moved, but none of what she said passed through the screen of explosions and blasts.

“Hello?” Mura shouted.

The  woman shook her head calmly. At first Aata thought that she didn’t hear  Mura, but she made no other signs about this. His mind replayed the  movements of the lips - something easier said than done, especially as  he could already feel his memories of the movements distorting.  Carefully, he placed together:

Words are air. Air needs you as a vessel, but you don’t need air to speak. Speak with your real voice.

That  sounded about right to Aata, so he  turned to Mura. Going through the  usual gestures would take time, so he simply mimicked the woman’s lip  motions.

“Aata?” asked a confused Mura.

Aata pointed to  the woman - who waved back. She moved her lips again, no sounding  passing to them. The message she delivered was the same.

“You know what she’s saying?” asked Mura.

Aata  responded with a rather impatient nod. Breathing deeply, he began  raising his hand to his mouth, and breathed in and out. First the flow  went unrestricted, then Aata’s fingers began blocking the air randomly,  either at exhaling or inhaling. As he did so, he rose another hand to  his throat, touching his Adam’s apple. He winced slightly as he scraped  the perforation.

Mura tilted his head at this display, and touched his chin. Aata’s doubts returned, and he exhaled with frustration.

“Sorry” Mura said, “Let’s try something.”

Mura  stared at the woman. She repeated the same lip motions, but this time  she pointed her fingers to her chest. A pinkish glow emanated from her  crooked finger tips, small but reflecting all over her mantle,  obfuscating the other myriad of lights.

Mura closed his eyes,  imagining that glow in his mind. As he did, he felt it darting down like  a falling star, reaching his heart. He felt a strange burning  sensation, which rose and lapped his chest like a flame. Around him, the  explosions and sounds seemed like air itself, ready to be burned, to  fuel these flames out of control.

Mura opened his eyes, and  stared at Aata. As he did, the prince heard another, much lower sound,  emanating from the general. It was a nervous pulse like the lightning  above and around them, starting to subdue in favour for a cooler,  breeze-like whispering, twisting with the tilt of Aata’s head. Both were  accompanied by “colour”, like the thinnest trick of the light,  spreading a pink filter over Mura’s eyes whenever he looked and listened  at the same time.

Mura looked at the other crewmembers, all  display the same interplays of “pulse” and “breeze”. They also had other  sounds and colours, lapping flames in orange glints, voiding wails like  sinkholes, and what seemed to be the sound of light, accompanied by a  brighter palette.

Mura looked at the woman. Alone, she had all of  these, a storm of “pulses”, “fires”, “breezes”, “wails”, even a  freezing sensation. Right now, the most dominant state was that of  “lava”, a sound of bubbling emerging through her warm, welcoming face,  painted in gold and red.

Mura’s fingers snapped.

“I know what to do!” he said to a still confused Aata.

A moment of realisation dawn on Mura, and he hugged the general.

“I know how to understand you. Well, better than what I do now. I can feel, well, feelings now.”

Mura disentangled and looked to the side, ashamed.

“I  can feel you were pretty frustrated with me” Mura said, “I’m sorry. I  know this is hard for you, and I know I should be getting used to this  after so many years, but please-”

Aata hugged him, and Mura felt  his insides as the pulse giving way to “molten rock”, bubbling upwards,  and flame, rising and rising. Quickly, Mura began picking several small  nuances, small “winds” and “dust” and “fallen grass blades”. Aata began  moving accordingly, but Mura already knew the words that would come out.

“I know” he said, “You’re worried about this. I’m worried too.”

Mura disentangled himself again, and moved to the edge of the Hōkūle‘a.

“But  I have to go, Aata. I was meant to be hear. My heart wants to me here, I  want to be here. I’ll come back before the Kahikole, okay?”

Aata  nodded solemnly, not allowing his watering eyes to flood forth. He made  a heart with his hands, which Mura perceived as lightning, flowing  between the fingers and the palm like it did between the arcs.

“I love you to” Mura said, “Tell Whēuriuri to not get jealous.”

Aata  couldn’t laugh, but his expression didn’t need sound for it to be the  same. A few soliders exchanged “oh” or “burned… literally” in their  whispers, a moment of undiscipline that Aata would make sure they’d get  punished for. Mura basked in these jokes, before turning around and  jumping into the water.

Kapongatakere was remarkably cold, and  shallow, the prince having scraped a knee. He moving quickly, swimming  or dragging along the shallows, until he reached the shore. As soon as  he left the protection of the river, the air grew impossibly hot and  cold within seconds, and Mura screamed.

Aata, worried, motioned  for some men to go after him, but he felt a burning sensation in his  heart. It was the old woman, raising her hand. This was Mura’s test.

With  a knee scraped, his body on the verge of burning or freezing within  seconds and the storm louder than ever, Mura screamed, first in pain and  then in rage, the sheer emotion in the sound drowning all others.  Lightning and molten rock fired at him from all directions, but in a  moment of euphoria he dug his hands on the rock, touching the black  ground, now cracking with yellow. He felt the heat, he felt his fingers  burning in agony and their ashes reaching his nostrils, but it was an  improvement over frost and fire burns every two seconds.

What  remained of his fingers was immersed in lava, and the pain ceased.  Instead, the lava became part of his body, an extension of digits that  no longer existed. He was quickly enamoured by it: first he made  elemental fingers, some plastic like molten lava, other rocky and  crooked like insect legs. He would’ve spent a lot of time playing with  his new found prosthetics if not for the coming blasts of fire, rock and  lightning. In a moment, he dug into the lava, and around him jets of  gold intercepted every disaster.

Feeling particularly powerful,  Mura summoned a wall of molten rock, swatting at everything he could  find that was coming in his direction. As he did, the hair-like fibers  fell around him, prompting him to sniff. It didn’t take long for him to  realise their potential, and so he turned to the woman.

“Your fibers, your coat” she said in a low, guttural voice.

Mura  understood, and sat down. He felt every single fiber, as thin and as  light as hair, if he had hands to touch them with. Instead, he willed  them to come together, to encircle and cross each other, first in  agglomerations slowly weaving other agglomerations. Unlike normal hair,  the fibers were thick, frictioned easily and caused small explosions,  which fueled Mura’s craft further.

Eventually, two major metallic  sheets were formed. These were “ironed out” with bursts of heated air,  leaving a smooth surface like polished metal. Metallic ropes were tied  by Mura’s rock fingers, and the two sheets formed a perfect shoulder  cap.

“Now, you’re one of the Tahepuia” said the woman.

For  the first time in his life, Mura felt happy. No sunlight to punish him,  just the warm embers of the lava to guide him. His rock fingers and  robe didn’t hurt either.

As he turned to the Kapongatakere, the  contingent had left. Only Aata remained, looking at him from the back of  the boat, tears running down his eyes. He didn’t gesticulate, and he  didn’t speak. Mura knew exactly what he said in his mind.

Can’t wait to have you back home.