Te Kakau (Orion's Belt)

Chapter One

Behind Maui's eyelids, a shadow suddenly passed over the sun, and then the light returned, but harsher, this time. Startled, Maui opened his eyes abruptly to see the huge form of someone or something standing over him.

It looked, at first glance, like a man made of nothing but stars, which was a difficult thing to comprehend in the middle of the morning sunshine. The creature's entire body seemed to be made of tiny, white-hot, blazing pinpoints of light, and they gave off a warmth that trickled in through Maui's bones and heated his core, providing a relief that the sun, apparently, could not.

"Maui," boomed the star-man.

Oh, great, thought Maui. Now I'm seeing things. Yup, this is the end, all right. I'm toast. Hah, how am I supposed to not 'go towards the light' if the light is coming for me?

"Maui of the wind and sea," repeated the star-man, leaning in so that his lights shone even more brightly and intensely, forcing Maui to squint.

"Go away," mumbled Maui. "I'm dying."

"I...noticed," declared the star-man. "Do you not know me?"

Maui raised an eyebrow, which proved too painful an expression to maintain.

"Uh....no? Is this a guessing game? Because, and I don't want to be a party pooper, but I'm not really in the mood. Ugh."

The star-man just sighed and shook his glittering head.

"Wait, don't tell me you're my conscience," Maui rasped, trying and almost managing a sarcastic grimace. "If you're about to remind me about all the amends I need to make in the next life, then I've got news for you. You're about three weeks too late. This is my amends...uh, I think."

"Indeed," murmured the star-man.

"Good" Maui tried shifting onto his side to avoid the glare from the blinding lights, but found that moving too much was unmanageable. "Glad we agree. Now, if you don't mind, unless you've got some good news for me, conscience, I'd rather-!"

"Here." The star-man laid something down beside Maui's head. "Eat this."

"Not," mumbled Maui, "hungry."

"Eat," insisted the star-man, a bit more forcefully than he'd spoken thus far. "You are sick with a disease that I have seen spreading for days across the surrounding islands. There is no hope but this; it will heal you, make you whole again. Eat."

Turning his head ever so slightly, Maui managed to see the bowl lying beside him. It was full of something that looked like fruit, although, in his delirious state, he couldn't identify what kind of fruit it was. Upon further inspection, it certainly didn't look like any fruit he'd ever seen before. The pieces were shaped sort of like stars, only somehow round, with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny points, even though, of course, that was impossible. There was no fruit on earth that grew like that. There was something wrong with the color, too; they were too bright, too clear, with no blemishes or bruises anywhere that Maui could see.

Maui glared at the fruit.

"Why?" Suspiciously, he tried looking back up at the star-man. "You say this is some kind of...what, some kind of miracle cure? So, why give it to me? What have I done to deserve a miracle?"

The star-man only shook his head.

"Are you sure," repeated the star-man, "that you do not know me?"

Maui winced. All this talking was making his throat burn like hell.

"Y-yeah," he managed, snorting his best attempt at a laugh. "Yeah, pretty sure I'd have remembered something like, uh, you. Why, you got a name? Might...jog my memory."

The star-man only sighed again, then turned, and...disappeared, as though he'd never been there at all. The bright lights faded away, until Maui was lying, again, on the rock ledge, chilly and shivering in the harsh sunlight that was now beating directly on his face.

The bowl of insane-looking fruit, however, was still there. Maui reached out with a hand and felt it, then carefully picked up a piece of fruit, and was relieved to find that the points on the star-shaped things didn't turn out to be prickles or thorns of any kind.

Light-headed, aching, and aware that there was very little left that he could lose, Maui shrugged, maneuvered the fruit to his mouth, and took a large bite.

Unexpectedly, the juices were hot in his mouth, and they burned his throat as he hastily swallowed the bite down, coughing, spluttering and wincing with the effort and pain.

For a moment after choking down the fruit, he lay there gasping and sucking in gulps of cold air to combat the searing sensation, feeling like he'd somehow just swallowed the sun. Then, just as he was wondering what the heck that had all been about, and if the star-man had actually been some death-wish manifestation, rather than anything like a conscience, his head began to clear.

It happened gradually; a soft, cooling sensation that began in his temples and washed gently down through his shoulders, arms, torso and legs, coating him in calm and healing the desperate aches, shivers, dizziness and burning pains that filled and tormented him. He lay there on the rock with his head back and his eyes closed, basking in the amazing current of relief that came as the sickness ceased, ad when he finally sat up, minutes later, he could see clearly again without any kind of delirium.

It was then that he realized that the sky had gone dark again, and that the sun was gone. The moon was out, and so were a few brave stars, twinkling down at him from a safe, un-blinding distance, reminding him of the basket of fruit at his side, and of the strange creature who had, quite possibly saved his life.

How long have I been lying here? Maui was startled. He'd had very little sense of any time passing as whatever he'd eaten had purged the sickness from his body, but somehow, in the matter of a few minutes for him, the day had managed to turn into night. He looked over, discovered that he still had the bowl of fruit, and sighed.

Okay, then, he thought. So, probably not a dream. Great. Well...thanks, shiny man, whoever you are. You did me a solid. If I knew where to find you, or even what the heck you are, I'd owe you one.

Whoever it was had asked him several times, "do you know me?" Maui wasn't sure what that had been all about. He was sure, absolutely positive, that he didn't know that person, that he'd never known that person. Maybe this had all been some kind of mistake in Maui's favor. Maybe that star-man had really been looking for someone else, trying to save someone else's life, and Maui had just borne a convenient resemblance to one of star-man's relatives, or something.

There had been something else, too, that star-man had said, but Maui was exhausted after the painful ordeal of almost dying...again. Whatever comment of star-man's was itching at the back of Maui's mind, it could wait until morning, couldn't it?

Maui shut his eyes, laid his head down, and tried to will himself to drift off to sleep, but his brain wouldn't let him rest. There was something really important, it was telling him, something that he absolutely needed to remember, right now, even if the pain-soaked memories of the star-man's visit were still a little fuzzy.

Sitting up again, he grumbled to himself, stretched, and was pleased when he found he could do all those things without his muscles or his throat feeling like fire.

It was about the illness, he decided after a moment's clear-headed thought. Star-man had said something about the sickness. It hadn't been food poisoning, after all, it had been...

"'...a disease that I have seen spreading for days across the surrounding islands," he repeated aloud, recalling, with some effort, exactly what the star-man had said. "'There is no hope but this; it will heal you, make you whole again.' Oh. Uh, that's...that's not good."

Across the water, the island of Motunui was a dark-green, peaceful, moonlit mass, it's people having probably already tucked themselves into their houses for the night.

Maui gazed at it for a long moment, trying to fend off a few particularly uncomfortable memories. Then, he sighed, took a deep breath, and hunted and began hunting around the ledge for his hook.

Author's End Note: We've made it to Delaware, but typing in this car is difficult. Please forgive me for the typos and errors; I promise to correct them as soon as I possibly can. Writing is making this trip go so much faster for me.