I kiss Malia’s forehead where she is shivering from the sight of the night marchers. I do not know if she remembers them from before from the first time we saw them on the night we made Nainoa but now it is time. I squeeze her hand and let go. I take my place at the back of the line and the marchers turn their sad faces and the endless light of their eyes up toward the back of the valley.
“Where are you going?” Malia asks. I try to say but it is the sound of sharks giving birth it is the sound of birds plunging for the hunt. I know that I am coming back. I touch her head I touch her neck I touch her shoulder and there is something in me that takes her from the ridge and carries her like air back down to our tent at the valley floor. She will wait. I will be back and I will be the only one.
The march begins. Each one ahead of me with their torch raised high and their eyes nothing but smoking lights watching the valley ridge and how it rises. They march and I march with them. I take up branches from the ground as we go. The sky is blasted across with stars and the valley still scraped of sound and in front of me each marcher stepping and holding their torch high. When I have gathered enough branches I think again of Nainoa lost now to us all these days my son my son and as I think of him gone from this world and all the gifts that came with him the thoughts streak from my head down through my hot heart and out along my arm into my hand and then the branches I hold burst into flames.
That is when I see what all the night marchers see.
I am the man named Augie and I am the blood that pumps inside and I am the sand that was blown to life with the breath of all our gods and I am the wet mud of the valley and I am the green that grows from within it. I am the shore the drift of the world underwater and I am the shatter the wave throws over. I am the atmosphere that heats the thunderheads and I am the cool rain the thirsty soil reclaims. I am the flex that drives the arm of the wayfinder the planter the carver. I am the beat that drives the hips of the hula. I am the spark that starts the child’s heart and I am the last beat from the elder’s.
And so it is with Nainoa.
There he is.
He never left us.