Voyagers

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Title: Voyagers
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Jack O’Neill, Teal’c, Daniel Jackson, Samantha Carter
Word Count: 17,673
Categories: action/adventure, alien culture, gen
Spoilers: None; set between “Threshold” (5.2) and “Beast of Burden” (5.7).
Warnings: N/A
Summary: The team visits a world of islands with the expectation of a simple and safe first contact mission. As per usual, things don’t go quite according to plan, and ancient mysteries are revealed.


It was a dreary gray January Wednesday outside the mountain, and for once Jack was genuinely looking forward to heading through the Gate. Not that he didn’t like Gate travel most of the time, but usually there was danger and death waiting at the other end of the wormhole and after a while that that could wear on a guy. Today, though, SG-1 was headed to a warm, sunny planet to visit some nice folks who lived in stilt houses perched above a bright blue ocean. He would go so far as to say he was thrilled by the prospect.

As the Gate circled through the dialing sequence that would take them to this paradise, Jack threw a glance at his team. Carter’s face was calm, but there was no mistaking the delight in her eyes; he knew she was tired of the Colorado winter, too. Daniel was staring into space, wearing a faint frown. Jack could all but see the cogs turning in his head as his mind sifted through the data the MALP had provided. He would be internally referencing and cross-referencing, matching what they’d seen against what he knew and compiling what was sure to be an exhaustive list of questions about what he didn’t. As for Teal’c—well, he looked as happy as Teal’c ever looked, which meant he was practically ecstatic.

“Everybody pack their swimsuits, shades, sun block?” Jack jokingly asked.

Carter’s lips twitched and Teal’c raised his eyebrow in amusement. Daniel just gave him a bland look.

“Let me guess: you’ve packed an inflatable dinghy and some collapsible fishing rods in there,” he said, pointing at the pack Jack was wearing.

Why hadn’t Jack thought of that? “No, but I probably have time to grab some before we g—”

The Gate connected, the whoosh of the wormhole establishing cutting him off.

“Darn.” Jack snapped his fingers in overdramatic fashion. “Maybe next time.”

“I’m sure the locals will have some fishing gear you can use, sir.”

Carter’s tone was a little too innocent, and Jack turned to catch her smiling sweetly at him. He narrowed his eyes at her, only to have Daniel join in from his other side.

“Maybe it’ll be part of the cultural bonding experience. Or the negotiations.”

“That would make it an ideal use of your skills, O’Neill,” Teal’c added.

Oh, yeah. They definitely were all looking forward to this trip; their roasting game was at defcon levels. Jack hid his pleasure over their good moods under a carefully cultivated layer of childish grumpiness. He turned to frown back up at the control room window and met General Hammond’s eyes.

“General!” he called out, throwing a little bit of a whine into his voice. “I would like to request a less sassy team!”

Jack could see the hint of a smile on Hammond’s face, but the general’s voice was as dry as ever coming over the intercom.

“You’re just going to have to make do, Colonel. Wormhole’s open and you have a go. We’ll see you at your check-in at 0900 tomorrow.”

Giving it one last show, Jack slumped dramatically. “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” He shooed the team up the ramp. “You heard the man, march.”

Teal’c lead the way, Carter and Daniel sharing twin looks of amusement just before they stepped through after him. Jack allowed himself a small smile before he followed.

PBJ-992 was everything the MALP had said it would be.

The Gate itself was set just a few meters inside a mangrove swamp, with the bulk of the swamp behind it. The Gate was positioned at the end of a long, large, stone-built quay that continued through the mangroves and out into the ocean for about ten meters or so. While the majority of the quay was only about two meters wider than the Gate, the part that was inside the mangroves widened out to roughly 5 meters to either side. To the team’s left, and about 3 meters away from the Gate, was the DHD. The MALP had been parked in front of it, and Jack gave it a fond pat as he walked past. Stepping out of the mangroves and onto the sea portion of the quay, he threw out an arm to encompass the view that had greeted the team when they stepped through the Gate.

“Finally, something that matches the brochure.”

As far as the eye could see, there was ocean. The bluest water Jack had ever seen glistened beneath the sun, water so clear Jack could actually spot various sea creatures moving beneath the waves around the quay. There were some things that looked like starfish, though they were fuchsia and had only three arms, as well as a few different schools of small fish, one neon yellow and another a dull green that reminded him of jade.

There were small islands spread out across the water, like the one behind them that the mangrove swamp led onto. From where they were located, all the rest of the islands were a fair distance away, most no more than dark shapes against the horizon. The few that were close enough to have details only gave the general impression of sandy shores and green interiors.

Closer by, only about fifty meters away from the end of the quay, stood the village. The entire thing was built on stilts that rose a few meters above the waves, with the various structures connected by walkways. It was every bit a town with buildings and sidewalks, only wooden and sitting above the water, which acted as the mode of transportation.

There were definitely more boats than buildings in the village. While the main structures sat higher above the water, there were at least a dozen floating docks that were at sea level, and boats of various sizes and shapes were crowded around every one. Even more were at anchor in the waters around the village. As the team reached the end of the quay, they watched a lone boat move away from one of the docks and start toward them through the swells.

“This looks like a Polynesian-origin culture,” Daniel muttered, seemingly to himself. “With some Austronesian influence.”

Jack nodded to the stilt houses with his chin. “Village reminds me of the Philippines.”

Daniel glanced around as if he just remembered the rest of them were there. “Yes, stilt house villages are common in the native cultures of the Pacific. As are boats.” He gestured to the one approaching them. “Their ancestors were master navigators with an expert understanding of sea currents who could find their direction by the stars; they were actually the first peoples to successfully make long sea voyages. And they did it on boats that looked almost exactly like that.” He pointed toward one of the boats at anchor, a larger one with a single broad sail.

“Catamarans, right?” Carter asked.

“Yeah.”

“It is most impressive.” Teal’c did in fact sound very impressed, and was studying the boat Daniel had indicated with serene interest.

“Have you been on the water much, T?” Jack asked, suddenly stuck by the question. Aside from his and Teal’c’s one suicide mission on a sub, he couldn’t recall the team having had much in the way of sea-bound adventures.

“I have not, O’Neill. There are no large bodies of water on Chulak, nor was I ever posted to a world with any to speak of. To my knowledge, the Goa’uld tend to avoid seas and oceans, if they can, though I have never thought of it much before now.”

“That’s odd.” Daniel was frowning in thought again. “Given that Goa’uld all start out in water, you’d expect them to have a natural affinity for it. Perhaps it’s some kind of instinctive revulsion, a—a genetic reflex against their primordial origins. We know they need hosts to survive outside of water; maybe they don’t like being reminded of that.”

“I’m guessing they would hate fishing, then.”

Carter cut him an amused look. “Probably, sir.”

Their taxi was only a handful of meters away now, and they could make out the details of its occupants. A man and a woman sat at the opposite ends of the long canoe, each paddling on one side to push it through the water. The man was bare chested, while the woman wore a kind of tube top that was a rich red in color. As they got closer, Jack could see the dark tattoos they both bore on their skin, as well as the wary expressions on their faces. They were cutting through the water swiftly, with no signs of hesitation, but it was obvious that they were very surprised and possibly a little concerned to find SG-1 on the quay.

“Looks like we’re gonna need ‘Reassuring Diplomat Daniel,’” Jack said.

“Better than ‘Placating Prisoner Daniel,’” Daniel sighed in reply, and Sam gave him a sympathetic smile.

The canoe finally reached the quay, the locals pulling it parallel to the wall at the end. Jack noticed for the first time that there were steps cut into wall, to allow people to reach the quay from the water. There were also anchor points set along the wall, two of the which the locals tied the canoe off to before cautiously climbing up onto the quay. They stared at SG-1 with a mixture of intrigue and trepidation, and Jack gave Daniel a little nudge with his elbow.

Daniel cleared his throat and raised his hand in greeting. “Hello, we’re travelers from another world. We came through the Stargate—” he pointed back over his shoulder “—to meet you and learn about your culture and your planet. My name—”

“You came through the Water Passage?” the woman interrupted.

“You mean the circle, there?” Daniel turned his body this time to point at the Gate, but kept his eyes on the locals, who nodded. “Yes, we came through there. We call it a Stargate.”

Daniel paused as the woman and man shared a look of shock and disbelief. Since they didn’t show any signs of fear or aggression, Jack kept his body language relaxed. As a first contact team, SG-1 had experienced a lot of different reactions from the native populations they encountered, and he’d gotten good at reading the signs that indicated when a situation was shifting from awkward to dangerous. So far, he hadn’t gotten any of those kinds of vibes from the two locals now watching SG-1 with wonder in their eyes.

“We use it to travel to other planets, other worlds like yours,” Daniel repeated in a reassuring tone. “We’re people, just like you, but from a place a very long way away.”

“You are from the Other Side,” the man said, as much statement as question.

“The ‘Other Side’?” Daniel asked.

“The Other Side, the place through the Water Passage,” the man replied, as if that clarified things.

“Did you die?”

The woman asked it gently, as though she were easing them into the realization that they were, in fact, dead and just hadn’t realized it yet. Teal’c had one eyebrow raised in the expression Jack knew meant that he was uncertain about what was going on and wasn’t sure he cared for it. Personally, Jack’s mind had immediately gone to all the times they actually had died but just hadn’t managed to stay that way. It looked like Daniel might have gone that route, too, as he’d opened his mouth to speak but was just frowning in the general direction of the two locals instead.

“Is that where you go when you die?” Carter curiously asked. “The Other Side?”

The woman nodded. “We send the dead through the Water Passage to the Other Side,” she said, pointing at the Gate, “where they will live until the seas are dry.”

“No one has ever come here from the Other Side.” The man’s tone had grown wary.

“We aren’t from the Other Side.” A recovered Daniel picked back up the conversation. “We’re from another world, another planet.”

“Do you send your dead to another world?” Carter asked.

“No, the Other Side is here,” the man clarified. “The dead live with us, but just on the other side of the surface.”

Jack could see understanding dawning on Daniel’s face. That, along with a heaping dose of excitement that had Jack already weary of the anthropology lectures they were no doubt going to get.

“So it’s like the concept of the spirit world or the ‘veil’ back on Earth,” he said for the team’s benefit, before returning his focus on the locals. “We have similar beliefs where we are from,” he told them. “But we aren’t ghosts and we aren’t dead. We’re just travelers, voyagers from other lands.”

The woman’s face had cleared some when Daniel used the word “voyagers,” and she gave a nod of understanding, the term clearly getting his meaning across to her. But she was still staring at him in puzzlement.

“If you are voyagers, why did you not arrive by boat?”
“Ah, we couldn’t get here by boat. We wouldn’t be able to travel here by your water.” Daniel gestured to the seas around them. “We’re from very, very far away.” Then he seemed to get a bit of inspiration, and he pointed up at the sky. “We’re from another star, and we used the stars to guide us to you. The Water Passage allowed us to navigate to you, but we couldn’t take a boat through.”

It wasn’t an entirely accurate explanation, but it was close enough to be true and to also get the concept of Gate travel across to people who probably hadn’t realized that they weren’t alone in the universe, if they’d even thought about it at all. The locals wore matching expressions of amazement, but they seemed to accept that SG-1 somehow got to them from another star, a star that—Jack remembered Daniel’s earlier words—they no doubt used to navigate around their own planet. However alien the concept might seem to them, it made enough sense for them to understand and accept it.

They nodded at Daniel’s explanation, but then the man frowned in confusion again.

“What are ‘ghosts’?” he asked.

Daniel thought for a second, then responded, “Ghosts are the—the spirits of the dead that remain connected to our world. Sometimes they can be seen or heard, but they can’t affect anything in the real world.”

“Ah.” The man nodded. “Yes, the mana is strong, and oftentimes we can hear or see the ancestors beneath the surface.”

“They come to us when we are in need,” the woman added, her expression a mix of fondness and reverence. “They can reach us from the Other Side, if we just listen.”

“How do you send your dead to the Other Side?”

Jack turned to see that Carter was wearing an expression of faint horror. It took him a second but, thinking back on what the woman had said about them sending their dead through the Stargate, he understood why. Had these people been opening the Gate to some other world and chucking dead bodies through, not realizing what they were doing? It didn’t bear thinking about.

“The water takes them,” woman said.

“Do you, like, push them into the water?” Carter tentatively asked, actually making a small pushing motion with her hands as she did so.

“No, the water reaches out and pulls them in,” woman repeated. “It takes them with it to the Other Side.”

The relief on Carter’s face was obvious, and Jack saw that Daniel had gone on the same emotional journey with her. Jack felt relief, too, thinking that if they had found out that these people were sending their dead to another world, they might’ve had to go explore it. Dead bodies showing up on a planet with a Stargate would be a major cause for concern should the planet be occupied. If no one had attempted to trace the source of the dead that kept showing up on their doorstep, it might’ve meant that it was an unoccupied world that no one—including the Goa’uld—knew about.

That being said, if these people were letting the wormhole vortex “take” their dead, that meant they were still dialing the Gate each time they held their version of a funeral. And if that hadn’t alerted anyone to come check on who kept making what was essentially the Gate version of a prank call, then… Jack sighed internally and made a mental note to try and get the address these people used. It might be a good off-world base for emergencies, if they could deal with the periodic funeral calls.

In the meantime, Daniel had finally been able to complete the team introductions. The man and the woman likewise introduced themselves, as Temanu and Heiani, respectively.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Daniel told them, smiling broadly.

“And it is an honor for us to meet you, Voyagers From the Stars,” Heiani replied. “Welcome to Manau’u.”

“‘Voyagers From the Stars’: I like that,” Jack stage whispered to Carter. “We need to put that on our patches.”

Carter cut her eyes at him, and he could tell she was suppressing the urge to roll them. “Yes, sir.”

“Come.” Temanu gestured to their canoe. “Let us take you to the village. I’m sure everyone has been watching and will be impatient to meet you themselves.”

Jack looked over at the village and, sure enough, he could see people crowded on the walkways and bridges that faced the quay. People were also hanging out of windows and doorways, and he was pretty sure he saw at least one figure up on a roof. This might wind up being a hell of a welcome.

Temanu and Heiani returned to the canoe first, acting to stabilize it in the front and back while SG-1 climbed down and cautiously arranged themselves in the middle. After casting off, Temanu and Heiani began paddling them back toward the village, protesting when Teal’c—and then the rest of the team—picked up spare oars lying in the bottom of the boat and began helping. Jack just told them that the team was finding it fun (which wasn’t untrue) and that they didn’t often get to be out on the water (which was very true), and Temanu and Heiani had accepted their assistance without any further fuss. It seemed their understanding of the allure of the sea had overridden their hospitality practices.

Temanu, steering from the back of the boat, directed them between the stilts and into the interior of the village. There was a large, square floating dock moored at what appeared to be the village center, and it was there that they disembarked.

It felt like the entire population had come out to line the docks and walkways around where they’d landed. Jack stared up at all the faces looking down at them, studying their expressions. Everyone seemed rapt at the sight of his team, and he figured it was due to a combination of them having come through the Stargate, them being strangers, and—as he clocked the skin tones on display—the fact that he, Carter, and Daniel were probably the first white people the locals had ever seen. It was a whole lot of “fascinating” to pack into a group of four.

He spotted a child, young enough to be at that age when gender was completely indiscernible, watching him from a smaller dock nearby. He gave the child a tiny wave, which they returned with wide eyes. Then the child smiled bashfully and buried their face in the leg of the man standing next to them, no doubt a parent or family member. The man put a comforting hand on the child’s shoulders and met Jack’s gaze. Jack tried out a smile and was pleased when the man responded in kind.

Once they were all on the dock, Heiani raised her arms, and the chatter that had been going around the crowd ceased. She gave everyone, including SG-1, a smile and then spoke in a loud voice so that everyone could hear her.

“These friends have voyaged here from the stars to meet our people!” Walking down the line, she laid a hand on the shoulder of each member of SG-1 as she introduced them. “This is Jack, Sam, Daniel, and Teal’c.” She turned her gaze back to the team, but her voice was still for the assembled people. “You are very welcome.”

“We’re very happy to be here,” Daniel responded, voice also raised so that everyone could hear him. “And we can’t wait to learn about your people and your world.”

With that, the crowd around them began to disperse, though not without many backwards or sideways glances SG-1’s way. Temanu and Heiani had moved to the end of the dock, where a wooden ladder-cum-staircase led up to the main level of the village. They were speaking with a small group of older adults, no doubt the village elders.

After a minute or two, Temanu headed up the ladder while Heiani motioned them over. She introduced them to the group, who were the elders of the village, and told them that they had been invited to stay in the home of the village chief. The chief was a wizened old woman named Leimomi, who had gray hair that hung in a long braid down her back, eyes that twinkled with mischief, and a mind as sharp as the knife at O’Neill’s waist. He fell in love with her instantly.

“You will stay with me for as long as you stay with us,” she told them. “But you must behave.” This part she directed at Jack, and he ignored the amused look Carter shot him. “My husband may be on the Other Side, but he can still see you.”

“I’ll do my best,” Jack solemnly replied.

Leimomi took one look at his face and burst into cackles. She gave him a whack on the arm that was, perhaps not unsurprisingly, full of strength. “Oh, I am going to have to watch after you,” she told Jack. “You’re going to be trouble.”

“As always,” Daniel muttered under his breath.

Leimomi had elder duties to attend to, she so left Heiani—who, it turned out, was her granddaughter—to take SG-1 to what would be their overnight quarters. As they walked through the village, everyone they passed seemed to be doing their best to pantomime normal activities while not blatantly staring at the team. Jack figured they were the biggest curiosity that would ever hit town for the Manauans.

The entire way to Leimomi’s, Daniel kept up a running commentary, voice low enough that it wouldn’t be easily audible to everyone they passed by, but loud enough that the team could mostly hear him. He had started with talking about the boats they had seen, then had rapidly moved into what they could expect to find in Leimomi’s house: it would be a multi-generational home, he had informed them, probably with only a few internal rooms, if any. As they began walking between buildings, he had droned on about their construction before getting sidetracked by all of the baskets on display.

“Look at all the different designs!” he’d enthusiastically said. “The different shapes and sizes and colors! They must collect the materials from the islands and—I wonder if they dye them?”

Jack had tuned him out as he began talking through the history of basketweaving and the signifier it played in a culture’s evolution. He tuned back in, though, when he heard Daniel mention tattoos.

“Even the children have some.”

When they’d met Temanu and Heiani on the quay, Jack had noticed that both had a large number of tattoos. But they hadn’t gotten around to discussing them since the borderline miraculous nature of SG-1’s appearance in their world had distracted everyone. Now that he could focus just on his surroundings again, Jack studied the people around him.

Everyone he saw was tattooed to some degree. Even Leimomi had had tattoos, though he was sure they were all obtained when she was young. Men and women alike had tattoos on their faces, arms, torsos, and legs. Almost all of the women had some kind of design on their chins, while some also had ones on their cheeks or even foreheads. The men tended to have lines that went across their face at cheekbone level, which some supplemented with chin tattoos as well. While the women more often bore tattoos on their upper arms and thighs, the men would have their entire torso, front and back, covered.

Jack saw a few children clustered together outside a doorway, and he looked them over. Their skin was still mostly a clean slate, but they all—aside from the youngest, who was only a toddler—had small tattoos on the inside of their right forearms, just below the elbow crease. He could only catch glimpses as they passed, but it looked like some, but not all, of the tattoos might have matched.

“They are of interesting designs,” Teal’c said, eyeing the chest of a man they were passing, which bore the image of what looked like a manta ray.

Flicking his gaze from person to person, Jack took a quick inventory of the designs he saw. They seemed to be a combination of geometric shapes—triangles, circles, and spirals, mostly—and stylized depictions of sea creatures or sea life. All were done in dark ink, and all were, he had to admit, beautiful in a striking way. He’d never been big on tattoos himself—he could take them or leave them—but for some reason it seemed perfectly right that these people would have them.

They reached Leimomi’s house and Heiani took them inside. She showed them where they would be sleeping—in a corner of the large, open room that took up three-quarters of the building, Daniel had been right about the communal living situation—then directed them to the back side of the building, which housed the bathroom and a storage room. It wasn’t the Ritz, but it was clean and cool and comfortable.

They left their packs by their sleeping spots and rejoined Heiani outside on the covered area that served as a sort of porch for the building. The team sat on grass mats on the porch and chatted with Heiani and the others who would periodically join them, like a revolving cast of characters in a play. Jack idly wondered if there was a casting director somewhere, deciding who would be sent in next.

Daniel was about two notches away from literally vibrating with excitement, and Jack hid the fond smile that wanted stretch across his face. His team didn’t get enough opportunities to do this kind of thing, exploring worlds without death and danger nipping at their heels. Daniel was quizzing Heiani and their most recent guest, a man named Nanui, about everyone’s tattoos.

“Do they have a specific meaning? Can anyone get any tattoo they want, or are there certain designs that only men or women can have? Or ones that belong only to specific families?”

“It is a little bit of it all,” Nanui replied.

Jack thought it appropriate that they were having this conversation with Nanui. He was the most heavily tattooed of all the people they had seen so far. He was covered from his neck to his knees in the dark purple ink, with swirling patterns on his chest and thighs, triangular sleeves on both forearms, and his back and upper arms taken up by a scene of fishermen fighting what looked, to Jack, like a kraken. Jack would find out later that Nanui and his family were the village tattooists.

“Each tattoo has its own inherent meaning,” Nanui continued. “But each person can also give a tattoo a personal meaning, since each person gets each tattoo for a specific reason. Tattoos tell the story of epic deeds, both personal and those from the past, and of things that we hope to come. They can imbue the person who wears them with specific traits or protections.”

“And they show who is family,” Heiani added, touching the tattoo on the inside of her arm. “Each family has its own symbol.”

“Those are the ones that the children have, too,” Daniel said.

Nanui nodded. “All children get their family design once they reach the age of amanu.”

“What is ‘amanu’?”

“Until a child reaches amanu, they are not yet fully human. They still carry traces of the spirit world from which they were sent. Until all of that has left them, they are not completely part of the human world or their family.”

“We are to have an amanu ceremony in a few moons’ time,” Heiani added. “Perhaps you could return then and see it for yourself.”

Daniel actually shot Jack a hopeful look, and for a moment he was the young, floppy-haired archaeologist Jack had almost forgotten. But before Jack could react, Daniel had schooled his expression back to its default “put-upon archaeologist” face and he gave Heiani a noncommittal shrug and smile.

“Maybe,” he said.

“What tattoos do you have?” Nanui asked, eyeing them curiously.

Aside from bare forearms, the team was covered neck to toe by their clothing, so even if they did have tattoos, none of them would have been visible, aside from Teal’c’s.

“Tattoos aren’t a core cultural concept where we are from,” Daniel explained. “There are people who get them, and even some cultures who view them very much the same way that you do, but we aren’t a part of one of those cultures.”

Nanui seemed stunned. “You have no tattoos?”

“No.”

“How do you know who you are?” Heiani sounded genuinely concerned for them.

“We, ah, we use words to identify ourselves,” Daniel told her. “Our names carry that meaning, and we identify our families that way, too. For example, I am called Daniel, a name which has its own meaning, and my last name, or family name, is ‘Jackson,’ which has both a meaning as a word and a meaning as the designation of a family tie.”

Heiani and Nanui understood that, even though they still seemed a little disturbed by the idea that none of the team had tattoos. Teal’c, perhaps sensing that, spoke up.

“I have a tattoo,” he gravely intoned, pointing to the gold mark on his forehead.

“What does it mean?” Heiani asked, interest in her gaze.

“It is the mark of the false god who imprisoned my people and forced them to worship him and die for him.”

Heiani and Nanui both appeared to be perplexed by the explanation, but Heiani tentatively asked, “Why is it gold?”

“It was originally ink, but once I became the most trusted warrior of the god, it was branded into me with liquid gold to show my strength and my power.”

The two locals blinked at him in astonishment.

“So, you do know who you are,” Heiani finally said.

“I neither believe in the false god nor serve him any longer,” Teal’c said with a slight growl.

“And your tattoo reminds you of that.” Heiani’s tone was firm, final.

Teal’c pondered her words for a moment, faint surprise in his expression. Jack wondered if Teal’c had ever been able to think of his tattoo that way before: not as the mark of his former enslavement, but as the reminder that he was now free, and of what he had gone through to gain that freedom. After a moment, Teal’c met Heiani’s gaze and inclined his head in acknowledgment of the truth in her words. She returned the gesture with a small smile.

“What is a ‘warrior’?” Nanui asked.

Daniel stared at him in surprise. “It’s someone who battles others, for many different reasons.”

“What do you mean by ‘battle’?”

“Uh..”

Daniel paused, uncharacteristically lost for words. Jack wondered how exactly he was planning to explain the concept of war to people who had clearly never known it. Then he wondered if Daniel should even try.

“It’s when you fight to try to protect others,” Jack quickly explained.

“From sea creatures?” Heiani asked.

“No, from other people.”

Heiani stared at him in shock, and Nanui looked completely lost.

“There is no need for that here,” he said. “Why would would we hurt each other?”

Yup. That was it. If he managed to not die first, Jack was going to ask to retire here. There was no way they could turn him down if he requested retirement off-world. He’d earned it.

“People are not so kind everywhere,” Carter gently told Nanui.

He and Heiani shared a dark look, and he shook his head. “I am glad we do not know those people.”

“So are we,” Jack replied.

After a moment’s silence, wherein everyone contemplated their place in the universe, Daniel spoke up again.

“Where do you get your ink?” he asked, with a tone that indicated he was purposefully changing the subject.

“From the feke,” Nanui told him.

“What is a ‘feke’?”

“A sea creature,” Nanui said. He pointed to his back, where the kraken-like creature was depicted.

“Oh, so like a squid or an octopus.” Daniel nodded. “We have similar creatures where we’re from.”

The knowledge that there were similar, simple things out there among the stars—after discovering the horrible, foreign concept of battle—seemed to soothe Nanui’s and Heiani’s spirits. They began discussing the various sea creatures that could be found on the planet with Daniel. After a little while, Nanui was called away, and Heiani had to take care of a family matter inside the house, so SG-1 was left alone for the first time since they’d arrived.

Jack looked around them, noticing that the crowd milling about nearby had thinned some, no doubt due to people needing to get on with their daily activities. There was still plenty of bustle, though. He was idly studying the tattoos that he could see when he spotted a woman who had the depiction of an octopus-like creature—similar to the one on Nanui’s back—curled around the upper part of one arm. He turned to give Carter a teasing smile.

“Maybe you should get a tattoo, Carter.”

She gave him a bland look. “What makes you think I don’t already have one, sir?”

Before Jack could decide whether it was safe for him to continue with this topic of conversation and, if so, whether he wanted his retort to be about what kind of tattoo she might have or a veiled suggestion as to where it might be located, Daniel cut in.

“Because of those times we were all forced to get naked together for decontamination showers on Corvia,” he absentmindedly replied.

Carter’s eyes went wide and she flushed magnificently, if only for a few seconds. Then she turned to level an unimpressed stare at Daniel. Daniel, realizing what he’d said, was looking at her with an expression that was both apologetic and unrepentant. For his part, Jack had taken that entire episode on Corvia and shoved it way, way back in the room where he and Carter shoved the things they couldn’t let themselves think about.

“We would’ve seen any tattoos you had then,” Daniel said, with an overly casual shrug. “Not to mention all the times the three of us have either had to bandage your wounds or help you get dressed or undressed while you were healing.”

“You definitely do not have any tattoos, Major Carter,” Teal’c stated matter-of-factly; he had always been completely unperturbed by the times the team had found themselves in varying states of undress together. “At least you did not as of three months ago, when I had to assist you with getting into the ceremonial attire that was required of us on P62-545.”

Carter’s expression turned faintly haunted. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“Those outfits were… extreme.” Jack suppressed a shudder.

“We should’ve sent Barber’s team,” Daniel said in a slightly hollow voice, repeating what he’d grumbled after they’d committed to the ritual and saw what it would require of them. “They specialize in ceremonies; they would’ve loved it.”

When even Daniel wanted to hand the cultural duties over to someone else, Jack knew it was bad. Still, at least they’d been the only people from the SGC to have attended the ceremony, and there was no advanced technology on P62-545, so there had been no evidence to bury. No one but the four of them knew the details, and no one else would ever find out.

Fortunately, the Manauans didn’t seem to stand on ceremony, at least when it came to entertaining new friends. They did, however, believe in celebrations. As the afternoon began to grow dusky, people converged on Leimomi’s home—all relatives, Heiani told them—and started to actually pull off the walls. It was only then that Jack realized that each wall panel was a self-contained unit made of a rectangular frame covered by woven grasses. Each wall panel attached to the frame of the house, and could be detached and reconfigured as needed.

The six panels that made up the front half of the building—two on each side and then the two on the front—were popped off and set aside, with one of them being reattached inside the structure to half-close off the back half of the building. In the meantime, the now open-air front half slowly filled with Leimomi and Heiani’s family, including Leimomi herself, returned from attending to her duties around the village.

Many of the other houses around Leimomi’s were similarly opened up, giving the area the feel of a party pavilion. People crowded under roofs, chattering away while children ran through the sea of adults, laughing and playing. Food was appearing in various states of readiness, and Jack heard his stomach growl. Thankfully no one else did.

SG-1 had been directed to sit near the back wall of the house with Leimomi while everything was set up for the evening’s feast. Daniel had immediately started peppering her with questions, getting back as good as he got as Leimomi picked his brain about Earth. Since Leimomi appeared quite content with being interrogated, Jack left Daniel to it. He turned his attention to Teal’c, who was watching all the preparations with polite, if genuine, interest.

Near them, a few of Leimomi’s children—who all appeared to be around Jack’s age—were laying out bowl after bowl of food. Jack couldn’t have named a single one of the dishes they contained, but he could at least recognize some of the ingredients. As was to be expected, there was a lot of seafood on offer. He tapped Teal’c on the arm and gestured to the food with his chin.

“Looks like we’ll definitely be able to persuade them to take us fishing, T, what do you think?”

Teal’c frowned ever so slightly at the food on display. “I do not understand the appeal of fishing, O’Neill, but I would be willing to accompany you.”

Jack smiled to himself. He knew that Teal’c would probably follow him into an active volcano if he asked him to, and he just hoped it never came to that. From his lips to the universe’s ears.

“If nothing else, we could get to see more of the planet, maybe explore some islands?”

“It would be interesting to see if the people of this world ever lived on land before they moved to the sea.”

One of Leimomi’s sons heard them and lifted his head to give them smile. “We have always lived on the water,” he explained, “but we are very familiar with the islands. If you would like to see them, my daughter’s husband, Tangaroa, could take you tomorrow.”

“That would be great,” Jack replied. “We’d really like to see as much as we can while we’re here.” And Carter could get plenty of samples from whatever land they landed on.

The man gave them a nod. “I will arrange it for you.”

The evening’s festivities proceeded in much the same way as the many others the team had participated in over the years had. There was a short welcome speech from Leimomi, with a gracious answer given by Daniel that had the assembled crowd smiling and nodding in approval. The meal was large and long, with dishes simply passed from person to person while everyone sat in groups and clusters on the plentiful straw mats.

Everything Jack tried was delicious, including a fermented drink the team had been offered that they were told was made from a fruit found on the islands. Since their usual taster, Teal’c, didn’t do alcohol, Jack had tried it out. The beverage was lightly sweet, with a slightly salty aftertaste, and it wasn’t too strong. So he told Daniel and Carter that they could each have one cup. Well, he told Carter she could have one cup; he told Daniel he could have half of one. Knowing his limits—and the fact that they would be out on the water the next day—Daniel hadn’t argued.

After dinner, the team had been entertained with some traditional dancing, which they thankfully were not asked to participate in. Then a woman had stood up, somewhere near the center of the congregated group, and told an epic saga about an ancestor named Kulii and the contest of wills he had undertaken against some great sea creature of old. By that point in the evening Jack had begun to get drowsy, and his attention had faded in and out, but Daniel had listened raptly to every word. Jack was sure he’d be able to recite it word for word later if Jack asked. Which he wouldn’t.

Tale told, everyone began to disperse to their respective homes. Leimomi’s house was put to rights in rapid order, her family removing dishes, replacing walls, and laying out sleeping mats in the time it took the team to do a bathroom rotation.

SG-1 had been set up to sleep in the back left corner of the building, near a side door that opened out onto the walkway that led back to the bathroom and store room. They’d only brought sidearms for the mission, and Jack made sure they each secured their weapon, unloaded, deep inside their respective packs. He didn’t believe that any of the Manauans would bother their things, especially not while the team was literally sleeping inches away, but he didn’t want to take the risk. Not out of fear that the Manauans would turn on them, but out of fear that their curiosity might lead them into danger. He thought about all of the children he’d seen, including the half a dozen or more who would be sleeping in the very same room as SG-1 that night, and he felt cold fear in the pit of his stomach. He pushed the feeling down and rechecked his own pack before turning in.

Jack didn’t sleep as well as he should have, with the sea breeze and the sound of the waves, but he slept well enough to feel refreshed when he got up the next morning. If there had been bad dreams in the night, he didn’t let himself remember them.

At breakfast, the team was joined by the man who would be taking them out that day, Tangaroa, and his fishing partner, a woman named Kealoha. Jack found out, courtesy of Daniel’s questions, that the Manauans usually fished in male and female pairs, believing the balance of spirits contributed to their success. There didn’t appear to be a distinct delineation between male and female roles in their society, something Jack caught Carter looking pleased about. He wasn’t unhappy about it either; they’d visited too many places that had required Carter to play the subservient role—or forced her into it—and he’d had enough of that for a lifetime.

They would be out on the water for a good portion of the day, so while Daniel and Teal’c helped Tangaroa and Kealoha load up the catamaran they would be sailing, Jack and Carter borrowed a small canoe to row back over to the Gate and make their check-in. Jack was a little surprised that none of the Manauans had asked to go with them. Given that they had just found out that the Gate actually led to other places, he thought at least one person would have been interested in watching them. But he figured since they weren’t actually leaving, there wasn’t that much excitement in simply dialing the Gate, something the Manauans were used to doing.

The check-in went smoothly, Jack relaying to General Hammond the team’s plans to scope out the area. He’d actually called it “sailing and fishing,” but Carter had corrected him, to the general’s clear amusement. In fact, Hammond had told Jack that if he found anything he thought the team should stay for, they could have another day on the planet. Either way he expected to get some kind of contact by no later than 2100, otherwise he’d send people after them.

Jack assured the general they would call back on time, then he and Carter had returned to the village and joined the rest of the crew on the ready-to-go catamaran. It was a beautiful boat, and Jack absently wondered how much something like it would cost back in the States. The single sail it bore was a brilliant red, the same color as the top Heiani had worn the day before. Jack figured it must be a common dye on the planet. The color made the sail stand out sharply against the almost-matching blues of the sky and water.

“We will take you first to our favorite fishing spot,” Tangaroa told them as they left the village. “That way Daniel can see the sea creatures we have talked about.”

“And I’m assuming the ones we ate last night?” Jack cheekily asked.

Tangaroa grinned at him. “Many of them, yes.”

Unlike Jack’s favorite fishing spot, Tangaroa and Kealoha’s was rife with fish, as well as other sea life. There were fish of every size and color, a rainbow of lone individuals, small clusters, and large schools. Jack spotted crustaceans and invertebrates of both familiar and unfamiliar types, and aquatic plants that lazily waved in the currents. Because of the clarity of the water, they could watch the sea life approach their boat, some darting off as soon as the shadow fell over them, others lingering curiously, as though studying the team while the team studied them.

Since they weren’t heading directly back to the village, Kealoha told them that they wouldn’t try to catch anything right then. They would, however, make a stop on the way back and see what they could catch for dinner.

“See, sir?” Carter grinned at him. “You will get to fish after all.”

Their next stop was an island that was just beyond horizon-sight of the village. It wasn’t very large, probably less than a quarter mile square, but it was rich with plant and animal life. Because of the shallow slope of the shoreline, they were able to sail right up onto the beach, everyone jumping off into the surf to go explore. Carter took samples while Teal’c stood watch and Kealoha quizzed her about what she was doing and why. Tangaroa led Daniel and Jack further inland, to show them where they collected the fruit that had been used in the fermented drink they’d shared the night before. It reminded Jack of a coconut, but without the hairy shell. Tangaroa collected a few to take back with them.

Back on the boat, the team headed for another island nearby. This one was larger, and was one of the sources of freshwater for the village.

“We also collect rainwater within the village,” Kealoha told them, “but we have periods without rain, during which we can come here and collect drinking and cooking water.”

For this island, they had to anchor in the shallows and then wade to shore. The team left their boots on the boat, rolled up their pants, and jumped into the water, which was just above Jack’s knees. After making it to the beach, they trooped along between Tangaroa in the lead and Kealoha in the rear, following a well-defined path that led them through the jungle. Tangaroa patiently paused every time Daniel or Carter stopped to collect a sample or scratch out a quick sketch, but thankfully that only occurred a few times.

The real showstopper was the small clearing the path led to. There, water splashed over a pile of large, rounded stones about three feet taller than Jack and into a deep pool. There was lush vegetation all around them, and Jack could see that the pool drained into a narrow stream that disappeared into that jungle, no doubt heading back toward the sea. As soon as they all got their breath back from the view, Carter commandeered Teal’c’s help and methodically made her way around the area, taking what felt, to Jack’s eyes, like an unnecessarily large number of samples. Daniel, meanwhile, was jumping from one topic to another. First he was asking Kealoha about a group of plants he thought might be used in their basketweaving, then he was in deep discussion with Tangaroa about dyes and cloth making while they both squatted over what looked to Jack like a small mud puddle.

Jack, after consulting with Kealoha on the safety and appropriateness of it, had sat next to the pool and stuck his feet in it. He enjoyed an hour or so of leisure, idly swirling his legs through the water while listening to the water gushing away on his right, then stretching out in a sun-dappled spot for a catnap. Teal’c woke him when it was time to return to the boat.

They remained anchored off the island while they ate lunch under the shadow of the sail. While they ate, Daniel kept up his stream of questions.

“How many islands are there?” he asked.

“Many,” Kealoha replied. “The sea is very large and the islands are plentiful. We have a few other villages, too, smaller but close to other water sources.”

“Have you explored all of the islands? Do any of them have anything interesting, anything like the—the Water Passage?”

“We visit all but one of the islands. None of them have anything like the Water Passage, though.”

Daniel and Carter had both perked up at the indication that there was an island the locals didn’t go to. Even Teal’c appeared intrigued.

“What island don’t you visit?” Jack asked.

“Black Beach Island,” Tangaroa replied.

“Why don’t you go to that island?” Daniel was frowning his ‘There’s a Story Here’ frown. “Is it sacred, or protected?”

Tangaroa shook his head. “Only Passage Island is sacred, but even there we have nothing to fear.”

“You fear this Black Beach Island?” Carter’s curiosity was now mingled with misgivings.

Tangaroa and Kealoha shared a thoughtful look, before Kealoha responded.

“No, we do not fear it. It is just somewhere no one goes, somewhere no one has ever gone. At least not for many, many generations.”

“There are stories of ancestors who went to the island and never returned,” Tangaroa advised, picking up the narrative. “And of those who went after them and were also lost.”

“The stories say that a sea creature guards the island and that it took them. Or that there is a creature on the island itself that killed them.”

“It is for this reason that we don’t go there. There are more than enough islands for our needs, and one that took our ancestors doesn’t need more of us.”

“Could we see it?”

Daniel asked the question with an almost innocent enthusiasm, and Jack wondered whether it would work this time. Kealoha frowned in thought before meeting Tangaroa’s contemplative gaze.

“We have sailed near it many times before,” she said.

Tangaroa nodded slowly. “I have anchored within sight of the black beach itself, and have never been in any danger there.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to show them; the dark sands alone are very interesting.”

Tangaroa nodded again, this time as though making a decision. “We will take you, but we will not go on the island.”

“We understand completely,” Daniel quickly agreed. “And we won’t ask you to. But if we decided that we wanted to go on the island?”

Tangaroa looked surprised, and he glanced to Kealoha, who wore an expression of concern, before he answered. “You would have to ask Leimomi for permission. Going to the island isn’t expressly forbidden, but no one has tried for so long that I think you should speak with her first.”

“Of course. And I’m not saying we definitely would like to set foot on the island, but if we spot anything interesting it’s something we might want to ask to do.”

Expectations set and lunch finished, Tangaroa and Kealoha set them under sail toward the Black Beach Island. It wound up being farther away than Jack had anticipated, as they were at sail for over an hour before Kealoha called her first sighting of their destination. Jack watched as the dark splotch on the horizon grew closer and closer, gaining definition and color as they neared it. From what he could make out, it really did look like any other island they had seen that day; he could tell there was a small strip of sandy beach backed by the same lush greenery they’d encountered before.

They were about sixty to seventy meters out, and Jack was wondering exactly how close Tangaroa and Kealoha would take them, when he caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of a large shadow darting beneath the boat. The movement was so quick, in fact, that he wasn’t sure it hadn’t just been the light on the water playing tricks on him. He was squinting off the starboard side of the boat, in the direction he thought he’d seen the shadow move, when he felt the boat shift under his feet and heard Carter yell.

“Sir!”

Jack spun around and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. A large creature—the tattoo he had seen on Nanui’s back, come to life—had pulled itself partially out of the water and onto the port side of the boat. That side of the boat was lower in the water due to the weight, and everyone had stumbled slightly from the sudden tilting. Jack was just getting his balance back when he saw the creature wrap a tentacle around Teal’c’s neck. It then slid back into the water, yanking Teal’c after it, its shadow zooming under the waves in the direction of the island they had been headed for.

The loss of the creature’s bulk caused the boat to wobble back and forth for a minute or two, and everyone on board—well, everyone who wasn’t a native who had been born on the water—was once again left unbalanced. Jack, Daniel, and Carter had all instinctively fallen toward the only upright point of support, the mast, and were holding onto it when Jack bellowed across the water.

“Teal’c!”

He swore he could see a commotion in the surf just near the island’s beach, and he wondered if perhaps the creature had taken Teal’c on shore. Breathing heavily, he turned to Daniel.

“Daniel, was that a goddamned kraken?!”

“It took Teal’c!” Carter pointed toward the island.

“We need you to take us there.” Daniel was already pleading with Tangaroa and Kealoha, who looked shaken. “That creature took Teal’c to the island, and we need to rescue him. Please!”

When their guides hesitated, Carter added, “We won’t ask you go on the island; we’ll swim to it if we have to. But we need you to get us closer so that we can save our friend.”

“The feke may not let us,” Tangaroa countered, fear in his eyes. “It might attack us if we try.”

Daniel emphatically shook his head. “No, I don’t think it will. It seemed to be targeting Teal’c for some reason. It didn’t even touch the rest of us.”

“Please, just get us close enough that we can get to him, that’s all we ask,” Carter entreated.

Kealoha stared at Carter for a long moment, unblinking, before Jack saw some of the uncertainty in her expression clear and she nodded. “We will help you.”

Tangaroa shot her a look, but upon seeing Kealoha’s face, his own cleared. Whatever silent communication had passed between them, Jack could tell that they were now determined to help them save Teal’c, whatever fears or misgivings they might have about doing so.

The boat had been knocked off course and out of the wind by the creature’s attack, so it took a little bit of time for them to get it underway again. Jack was pacing the deck, trying to keep his eyes fixed on the spot where he thought Teal’c had been thrown ashore. Their little “sailing and fishing” trip had turned into a life and death battle, which seemed to happen far too often, in Jack’s mind.

As they once again began flying over the waves, he turned to glare and Carter and Daniel.

“‘Maybe you’ll get to go fishing, sir,’” he said in a mocking tone. “‘Maybe it’ll be a bonding thing, Jack.’”

Carter looked bewildered for a moment before she realized what he was talking about. She looked away with an annoyed expression, but Daniel didn’t bother. He frowned at Jack with something like disapproval on his face.

“Jack—”

“We’re adding a new off-world rule, rule—what are we up to now?”

“Thirty-three,” Daniel said.

“Thirty-four,” Carter corrected him in a flat voice.

“Thirty-four.”

“Rule thirty-five: Never make jokes about what might happen; the universe is listening.”

Carter turned to give him a half smile. “O’Neill’s Razor?”

“That rule definitely needs to be higher on the list,” Daniel muttered.

Jack could feel eyes on him, and he turned to find Carter watching him with a gaze that was half-curious, half-amused. He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Is this what it’s like at your cabin, sir?”

“No, Carter. Contrary to popular belief, I prefer to not have to fight for my life in my leisure time.”

She gave him a small smile and returned her gaze to the island that was only thirty meters away now. Jack could definitely make out a shape on the beach that seemed out of place, even if he couldn’t identify what it was. He was sure it was Teal’c, though, and allowed himself the relief that at least he wasn’t still in the water.

Jack felt the boat suddenly slow down, and he turned to Tangaroa in question, only to find the man pointing a shaking finger toward the bow. There, they could all see the shadow of the creature coming at them once more. It was moving much more slowly this time, though, almost casually. It came up to the port side of the boat again, but this time it simply turned its head and lifted it just enough that one of its giant eyes broke the surface. This close and still, Jack could see that the creature wasn’t quite a squid, nor quite an octopus. It looked like some kind of mixture. Its head wasn’t as elongated as a squid’s would be, though its arms were longer like a squid’s, and some of them had a more flattened, club-like end than an octopus would have.

The creature appeared to study them for a moment before sinking back in the water. The boat, while slowed, was still moving toward the island, and they watched as the creature reappeared in front of them. Slowly, almost gently, the ends of its tentacles rose out of the water and curled over the edge of the boat. They could feel it nudging the boat off course, away from the island.

“It is sending us away!” Tangaroa cried.

“Wait.”

Before Jack could react, Daniel walked to front of the boat, just inches from where the creature’s tentacles had taken hold, and knelt down.

“Daniel!” Jack called out.

“Wait,” Daniel said again.

Tentatively, Daniel extended his hand. Jack could see that he was holding it over the water, no doubt to where the creature could see it. After a moment, the tentacle closest to Daniel lifted from the deck of the boat and instead wrapped around Daniel’s hand.

“Daniel.” Carter breathed the warning, but if he heard her, he didn’t react.

He stayed that way, kneeling at the front of the boat, face over the water, creature holding him by the hand, for what felt like an hour but was probably only minutes. Just as Jack was about to dig out his gun—still safely stowed in pieces in the bottom of his pack—he saw the creature uncurl its tentacle from Daniel’s hand and lower it back into the water, followed by the rest of the appendages that had been holding the boat. Tangaroa, who was staring at Daniel in solemn wonder, corrected their course and they were once again sailing toward the island.

Kealoha walked over to Daniel—who was still on his knees, staring into the water—and helped him to his feet.

“What happened?” she asked him.

Daniel turned back to them, and Jack could see that he looked a little dazed himself. “I don’t know. I just didn’t believe the creature was trying to hurt us, so I thought if maybe I could help it see that we weren’t a threat, it would let us go.”

“What did you do?”

Daniel shrugged at Carter’s question. “I—I just thought, ‘Please, we have to help our friend,’ and then it let me go.”

“Are you saying that the kraken is psychic?” Jack asked, incredulous.

The dazed look faded from Daniel’s eyes as he shot Jack an annoyed glance. “No, the kraken is not psychic. But I know cephalopods can taste the chemicals in our bodies through contact with our skin. It’s been theorized that can sense emotions that way, through how our feelings affect our body chemistry.” He shrugged again, and shook his head. “I figured it couldn’t hurt to try.”

“Whatever you told the feke, it appears to have worked,” Kealoha told him. “Look.”

She pointed ahead of them, and this time they could actually make out Teal’c’s distinct figure laying on the beach. The beach that looked black. Jack didn’t pray, but he hoped with everything in him that Teal’c was still breathing.

Though Tangaroa kept darting nervous glances all around them, he didn’t hesitate in bringing the boat in as close to shore as he could. They were still about three meters out, but none of the team hesitated in diving overboard and swimming to shore. They had to swim almost all the way up to the beach itself; the sea floor drop-off from this island was a lot sharper than the ones they had been on previously.

Carter had brought her pack, which contained the bulk of their first aid supplies, holding it above the water while she swam. Daniel and Jack had stayed close to her as they cut through the water, making sure she didn’t get dragged under.

Once they all had decent footing, they scrambled up onto dry land and collapsed onto their knees at Teal’c’s sides. He was lying on his back, and Jack felt the relief flood him when he saw his chest rise and fall. There were painful-looking sucker marks all around Teal’c’s neck, and a shallow gash that had cut through his shirt and across his chest. Daniel was gently patting Teal’c’s cheeks, trying to get him to wake up, while Carter was checking his pulse. After a bit, she frowned up at them.

“His pulse is strong, but very, very slow, as is his breathing. I—I don’t know what that means.”

A look of understanding came into Daniel’s eyes. “Kel’no’reem!”

“What?”

“Remember, Teal’c once told us that in extremely deep kel’no’reem, a Jaffa can slow their heart rate and respiration. He must’ve done that when he went in the water, to give him more time before he drowned! He’s done it before.”

“Yeah, but that time he knew what was coming and could prepare himself. This time, though?” Jack dubiously asked. “He wasn’t even in the water long enough to have entered kel’no’reem.”

“Maybe not, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.” Daniel resumed calling Teal’c’s name and shaking his shoulder, trying to revive him.

“Could his symbiote have knocked him out?” Carter asked.

“Junior?”

“As a kind of self-preservation tactic?”

“I mean, it’s the Jaffa,” Jack said. “Anything’s possible.”

Suddenly, Teal’c shot upright. Jack flinched, while Carter and Daniel were both so startled that they fell over backward. Teal’c coughed a few times before turning to Daniel.

“I heard you, Daniel Jackson.”

His voice was steady, but hoarse, and Daniel clapped him on the shoulder with a relieved laugh.

“That was a close one, buddy,” Jack told him.

“Indeed, O’Neill.” Teal’c’s eyes met his, and Jack could see that they were a little bit bloodshot. “I believe I am starting to understand the appeal of fishing.”

Jack grinned at the joke, and Carter actually laughed so hard—relief increasing the humor—that she had to hold on to Jack’s shoulder to keep from falling over. Jack even saw Daniel wiping tears of mirth from under his glasses.

“We’ll see about that later,” Jack promised him.

Just then, they heard splashing behind them. They all spun around, Jack convinced the kraken had changed its mind and come back to take them. But it was just Kealoha, looking both hesitant and determined, pulling herself onto the beach. Jack felt his esteem for her rise as she took steady steps toward them, despite the faint fear he could still see in her eyes.

“I came to see if I could help. Tangaroa had to stay with the boat,” she advised, as though feeling the need to account for his absence. “But we want to help if we can.”

Carter shifted, moving from between Teal’c and Kealoha, the latter of whom smiled warmly when she saw that Teal’c was sitting up.

“You are okay,” she said, with relief. “That is good.”

Teal’c tilted his head in acknowledgement of her relief. Meanwhile, immediate crisis overcome, Jack could see Daniel and Carter were converting their adrenaline into curiosity.

“It looks like the creature brought Teal’c to the island and just threw him on the beach,” Daniel said.

He stared around with his ‘I’m Going to Figure This Out’ frown, and Jack essentially braced himself for Daniel to run off into the jungle. Meanwhile, Carter had turned her mirror image frown on the sand beneath them. She scooped up a handful and brought it closer to her face, prodding the grains around her palm. Jack had been distracted when they’d first gotten onshore, but now he noticed that the sand wasn’t uniform in color. He could see grains that were the same tawny shade of the rest of the sand they’d encountered on the planet, but on this particular area of this particular beach, there were also grains in silver, gray, and black.

“Kealoha, has this island always been known as Black Beach Island?” she asked.

“Yes, always.”

“What are you thinking, Carter?”

“Sir, I don’t think all of this is actually sand. I think there’s a lot of other particulate mixed in here that just appears to be the same size and shape as the sand.”

“What kind of particulate?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Guys, I think there’s a boat over there.”

Jack turned to find Daniel pointing into the jungle where it ran all the way to the edge of the water, at the far end of the beach to their right. It was only about twenty feet away and as Jack studied the greenery, he realized he could make out the shape of what appeared to be a canoe covered in vines and trailing planets. Kealoha was looking at it, wide-eyed, when Daniel turned it her.

“You did say that some of your ancestors came here,” Daniel reminded her.

“Yes, or at least that they tried.”

“Looks like some of them made it, even if they didn’t get back.”

“Well, we know why they didn’t get back,” Jack said, jerking his thumb back toward the water. “There’s a kraken.”

“It’s not a kraken.”

“Well then what is it? A squid?”

“More like an octopus, sir.”

“I don’t know, Carter, it seemed like a mix to me.”

“A squoctopus?” Daniel offered. “An octupid? Squidtopus?”

“Y’know, for someone who speaks something like twenty-three languages, those are incredibly weak portmanteaus,” Jack said, giving Daniel a disappointed shake of the head.

“I’m surprised you even know what a portmanteau is,” Daniel shot back.

“You wound me.”

“It is a feke.” Kealoha was giving them all an odd look. “The creature is a feke.”

“Right.” Jack nodded. “We know why they didn’t get back,” he repeated, getting their conversation back on track. “There’s a feke.”

“That doesn’t make sense, though,” Daniel argued. “That canoe didn’t just float up on shore; it was deliberately beached.” He pointed to the canoe again, which was clearly a few feet above the high tide line, with its nose pointed directly inland. “If the feke was responsible for whoever was in that canoe not making it back to the village, it would have to have occurred in the water. But who would have made it to this island by boat and then tried to leave it by swimming?”

Jack felt the hair on the back of his neck start to stand up. “So what you’re saying is, there’s probably something on the island that’s the danger.”

“Possibly.”

Jack cursed the fact that he didn’t have his gun handy, having left it on the boat.

“Carter?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Get out your gun.”

“Yes, sir.”

Carter dug out her pistol and magazine, dropping her pack into the sand in order to slam the magazine home, flick off the safety, and rack the slide. As she aimed the gun toward the tree line, scanning for potential dangers, Jack zipped up her pack and hung it over his shoulder.

“I think our beach vacation is over now, kids,” he said.

“Jack—”

“Daniel.”

“Jack, we don’t know that this island is actually dangerous. And I, for one, want to know what happened here. Don’t you?”

The question was thrown to the group as a whole, and while Jack was only slightly interested, he could tell that Daniel had gotten to Carter.

“I’d really like to get a better idea of what those particulates are, sir,” she told him, titling her head toward the sand.

Even Teal’c, who’d almost died, seemed curious. “We are here already, O’Neill,” he said. “We might as well look around before we leave.”

“I would also like to know.”

Jack turned to find Kealoha watching them, the fear gone from her eyes. Being on the forbidden island itself seemed to have melted away her concern and replaced all of it with bravery. She coolly met Jack’s gaze.

“We are here; I might not get another chance to learn the truth about my ancestors.”

Jack weighed the danger against their resources. One pistol, and he knew Carter would have one additional magazine in her pack. Five people, one of whom was at least familiar with the planet’s native flora and fauna. And an island of unknown size, possibly with an unknown killer hiding in its jungle.

They’d survived worse.

“Okay,” he finally sighed. “But everyone does exactly what I say.”

He gave Kealoha a pointed look, and then Daniel an even pointier one. They both nodded. Then he waved a hand at Carter, who understood what he meant and traded him her pistol for her pack before digging out her additional magazine and handing that to him as well. Jack pocketed it.

“I’ll go first. Everyone is to follow directly behind each other directly behind me. Daniel, you’re second. Kealoha, follow him. Teal’c, are you up to taking the rear, or do you want Carter to take it?”

“I will be fine, O’Neill.”

“Okay, then Carter, you come between Kealoha and Teal’c.”

Carter nodded as she shrugged on her pack. “Yes, sir.”

“If anyone sees anything—and I mean anything—you yell and we all stop exactly where we are. If I tell you to do something, you do it immediately. No pause, no questions, you just do it. Are we all clear?”

There was a chorus of assent. Jack took a breath and then turned to scan the tree line. It all looked the same, no indication of a path that they should use, so he just picked an area that was close to the beached canoe and headed in.

It was quickly evident that there had been no human activity on the island for a very long time. While on the others they had visited there had been carefully cultivated paths, the jungle on this island was the definition of the word ‘dense.’ Jack would have traded the pistol for a machete without hesitation, as the pistol was neither useful nor very usable while he pushed his way through vines and branches. As it was, he pulled out his knife to do what damage he could to the vegetation blocking his way.

Progress was slow and difficult, but he hadn’t gotten very far from the beach when he bodied his way through another layer of greenery only to emerge in a deeply shaded void. He stopped in surprise, half turning and looking back down their line. He could see that Teal’c hadn’t even fully left the beach yet, and Jack himself had only made it about ten meters or so into the jungle. He looked back at the open space he’d shoved his way into.

The light inside was less the filtered, green-tinted shade of the canopy, and more the true darkness of something that completely blocked the sky. Jack squinted, able to only make out the vague difference in shadows that indicated the void wasn’t completely featureless. But he couldn’t see how deep it went or even how it was structured. He took a small step back, out into the jungle proper again, and tried to discern anything about the space from the outside, but all he could tell was that it was covered in by the jungle.

“Carter,” he called.

“Yes, sir?”

“You have a flashlight in your pack?”

“I think so, sir. Give me a second.”

Jack leaned to the left a little so that he could see Carter squatting down in the trail he’d forged through the undergrowth. She dug around in her pack for a minute, before rising triumphantly with not one, but three mini flashlights in her hands.

“Here you go, sir,” she said, passing one to Kealoha, who handed it to Daniel, who gave it to Jack. She handed another to Teal’c and kept the last for herself.

“Thanks.”

Jack flicked on the light and aimed it inside the void. It was still difficult to determine its true shape, since the beam wasn’t that wide, but he could at least tell that the void seemed to have a regular shape and was about the size of a large living room or bedroom. Off to his left, he thought he spotted what might be a doorway, though if it was, the jungle was trying to close it up.

Seeing nothing dangerous in the space, he walked further in, making room for the others to follow him. Daniel and then Kealoha did so, both glancing around the space that Jack suspected was a room with interest. Carter, however, had stopped just inside the entrance, and was pulling at the plant life covering the walls.

“Sir?”

Jack heard the uncertainty in her tone and immediately aimed the light in her direction. It hit her back, but she shifted to the side, turning to look at him, and he saw the surprise in her eyes. She had peeled back some vines, wiping away the moss under them to reveal an area that was about a foot square. An area that looked like—

“Carter, is that the wall of a ship?”

“I think so, sir.”

“It appears to be a tel’tak,” Teal’c confirmed, studying the cleared bit of wall with distaste and a hint of disappointment.

“Carter, I thought this planet wasn’t on the cartouche.”

“It wasn’t, sir. It’s one of the ones you added to the Gate computer.”

“Shouldn’t that mean the Goa’uld don’t know about it?”

“Theoretically, sir.”

Jack blinked at her. “It’s ‘theoretically’ now? I thought we knew for sure that the Goa’uld didn’t know about the planets that were in the Ancient database thing.”

“The repository,” Daniel helpfully supplied.

“The head-sucker,” Jack retorted. “I thought the planets from that thing were free of the Goa’uld.”

“I believe this planet is free of the Goa’uld, O’Neill,” Teal’c calmly said.

“T, we’re standing in a tel’tak,” Jack reminded him.

“But we aren’t in a ha’tak, or a pyramid,” Daniel pointed out. “We’re in a single tel’tak that’s been buried under the jungle for who knows how long on an island that nobody on this planet has visited in generations.”

He turned to Kealoha, who looked bewildered.

“Kealoha, I know you said no one has been here for a very long time, but do you know how long?”

She shook her head. “Many generations. Even when our elders were young, the stories about this island and the ancestors who came here were old tales.”

“When I explained the nature of my tattoo to Nanui and Heiani, neither of them recognized my descriptions of the Goa’uld,” Teal’c provided. “That would indicate to me that the Goa’uld have never been here.”

“And still, here we are,” Jack countered, waving a hand to encompass the jungle-covered Goa’uld ship they were all standing in.

“Sir.”

Carter’s wary voice called from beyond the small gap in the greenery that Jack had suspected was a doorway. He pivoted in that direction, not having even noticed that she’d disappeared from view. He sighed as he walked that way.

“Carter, you are rapidly reaching your maximum of surprise revelations for the day, so this had better be a good one.”

He ducked through the vine curtain that hung over the doorway and into what was—despite the cover of the encroaching plants—undeniably the forward section of a tel’tak. He could sense the others following behind him. It was a little lighter in here, the large windows at the front of ship allowing in some light through the moss that covered them. Carter was squatting behind the pilot’s seat, looking at something on the floor. At the sound of Jack entering the room, she turned and gave him a grave look.

“I think this is going to be the biggest surprise revelation of the day,” she told him. Then she shifted to the side.

Lying there on the floor of the ship, Carter having cleared off the top half of it, was a skeleton.

“So you’ve found one of the Manau’u ancestors,” Daniel quietly said.

“I’ve found our Goa’uld,” Carter corrected him.

She directed the beam of her flashlight toward the skeleton and they all moved closer to see what she was indicating. It took Jack a second to spot it, since she hadn’t completely cleaned off the bones, but he finally saw what she’d seen. There, mingled with the human’s vertebrae, was a line of smaller bones, the unmistakable skeleton of a Goa’uld.

“So, what?” he asked. “It landed here and just died? No drama, no violence, no subjugation of the natives?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Carter shrugged. “None of the bones I’ve looked at so far appear to have any signs of injury, and a Goa’uld would be able to heal almost all diseases, so whatever killed this one would be very hard to figure out.”

Kealoha, who had been standing just behind Jack and Daniel, suddenly gasped softly and pushed between them to kneel at the skeleton’s side. Slowly, almost reverently, she reached down to what Jack calibrated was its wrist. Her fingers pushed aside moss there, and then—with the faint clacking of bones moving about—she lifted something. She moved it through her fingers a few more times, appearing to wipe it off, before holding it up for them to see.

It was a bracelet, comprised of a string of milky white beads tied with red twine. There were tears in Kealoha’s eyes as she looked at it with deep sorrow.

“It is a pekei’i,” she told them. “They are a very old type of jewelry, and very rare these days. There are no more tuani to make the beads.” She tenderly ran a fingertip over one. “It was said that the pekei’i were made by the very first ancestors who woke from the sea. They created them to remind them that they came from the water, and that their souls were made of it. I have only ever seen two pekei’i before,” she finished in a small voice.

Jack felt a pit in his stomach. “If an ancient Manauan was a Goa’uld…” He left the thought trail off.

Daniel, however, was shaking his head. “No, Jack, I don’t believe that these people ever knew the Goa’uld. Nothing in their culture or their behavior suggests it.”

“Maybe it was a Tok’ra,” Carter suggested.

The thought brought Daniel up short, and made Jack second guess his assumptions about the situation as well. Could a Tok’ra have been hanging out here, pretending to be a local for some reason? Just then, Teal’c’s voice came to them from outside the room.

“O’Neill. You should see this.”

Jack shared a look with Daniel and Carter before heading back to the cargo area of the ship. Teal’c wasn’t there, though, and Jack continued on to where he knew the final part of the ship was, the engine room. There, he finally found Teal’c, crouched over something that it took Jack a second to realize was a pile of human bones. Not of one skeleton, but of many; it looked like there were at least four, maybe five.

“I’m guessing not a Tok’ra, then,” Jack wryly said.

Daniel, who was peering around his shoulder, nodded. “Unless those are a whole bunch of assassins—unlikely—definitely not Tok’ra.”

“I see no Goa’uld remains among these,” Teal’c pointed out, “so they would not be ashraks. And I do not believe human assassins would ever be sent after Tok’ra operatives.”

“I have an idea, sir.”

Jack sidled past Daniel and back into the cargo area where Carter was standing with a subdued Kealoha, a thoughtful frown on her face.

“An idea, Carter?”

“Well, more of a suggestion.”

“Go on.”

“I think I know what happened here. Or at least, I think I can guess at most of it.”

“What’s that?” Daniel asked as he and Teal’c rejoined them.

“Well, we know this planet wasn’t known to the Goa’uld but, relatively speaking, it isn’t far from other planets the Goa’uld do know.”

“Not far?” Jack asked.

Carter smiled tightly. “Relatively, sir. Anyway, it’s possible that a Goa’uld was on this tel’tak, and for whatever reason, had to either make an emergency landing—or crash landed—on Manau’u. Personally, I think it was a crash landing, and I’ll explain why in a minute.”

“I’m on pins and needles,” Jack quipped.

“After finding itself here, the Goa’uld wasn’t able to fly away or signal for help, due to damage to the ship. It was stuck, but thought it would try to find a Gate, if there was one. It clearly didn’t find one on this island and, as Teal’c has pointed out, the Goa’uld aren’t fond of the water. But I wonder if maybe it still tried to get off the island and was stopped.”

“By the feke,” Daniel said, with a tone of growing realization.

Carter nodded. “Exactly. So the Goa’uld was trapped. And maybe it was trapped for a long time. I mean, we know that being host to a Goa’uld can extend the life of a normal human to a couple hundred years at the maximum.”

“Without the use of a sarcophagus,” Teal’c clarified.

“And there’s no sarcophagus on this ship,” Carter said, gesturing around them. “So maybe the Goa’uld was stuck here at the end of its host’s natural life, near death, when a Manauan came to the island.”

“And the Goa’uld got a new host,” Daniel darkly finished.

“And this happened over and over until finally the Manauans stopped coming here. This time when the host died, the Goa’uld died, too.”

“It makes sense.” Daniel’s tone was thoughtful. “And it explains the behavior of the feke.”

“What do you mean?” Jack asked him.

“When the feke attacked us, it didn’t actually attack. It just went after Teal’c. And even then, it didn’t kill him, it just brought him here, back to the island. And then tried to stop us from going after him.”

“Like it was protecting us,” Sam said.

“Like it could sense Teal’c’s symbiote and knew what it was. Or at least knew that it was dangerous.” Daniel took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes before replacing them. “I don’t think the feke attacked any of the Manauans who came here; I think it only attacked the Goa’uld who tried to leave.”

“Wait, are you telling me that the kraken—sorry, the feke—is hundreds of years old?” Jack asked, torn between astonishment and disbelief.

“No, there’s no sea creature that lives that long,” Daniel replied.

“And cephalopods have very short lives,” Sam added. “Most don’t live past two years.”

“I mean, we’re going off of Earth standards here,” Daniel continued, “so it’s possible that feke actually do live a lot longer than squid or octopuses or whatever, but even if that were the case, it’s highly unlikely that the feke out there is the same one the Goa’uld first encountered.”

“Maybe it taught its offspring about the island,” Carter mused.

“That’s vey possible,” Daniel agreed.

“Again, on Earth, cephalopods don’t actually care for their young, but—”

“But here they could.”

“Yeah.”

Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. “So a Goa’uld wound up stranded on this planet, a feke somehow knew it was bad news and kept it trapped on this island, where it continued to live out its many days, taking on hapless Manauans as new hosts until those ran out and it finally died for good. But a feke kept guarding the island anyway, because it had been taught to do so by its mom, who was taught by its mom, etc. etc.?”

“Pretty much, sir.”

“That’s a wild story, Carter.”

“It does explain everything we have seen so far, O’Neill.”

“Why do you think the ship crash landed, Sam?” Daniel asked.

“Oh! It’s the beach, all the particulates. I think they were actually created by parts of the ship that broke off when it crashed. Over time, they were worn down by the crashing tide into tiny pellets that look like sand.”

“Like that beach on Earth that was covered in glass bottles, and the waves eventually turned them into little glass beads.”

“Exactly.”

“So, bottom line?” Jack asked.

“The island is safe now, sir.”

“And the feke is friendly. Or, at least, not unfriendly.”

“And my ancestors did die here.”

Jack had momentarily forgotten about Kealoha’s presence. She had been silent since she had found the bracelet, which she was still clutching, and her voice was sorrowful when she spoke. Jack saw Daniel’s face immediately shift from Science to People, while Carter cringed slightly in sympathy.

“Yes,” Daniel gently confirmed, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder. “They did. I’m very sorry.”

“Their mana has been lost for so long, stuck here in the living world where they didn’t belong.” Kealoha sighed. “Now we can finally give them peace. We will be able to send them to the Other Side.”

“We’ll help you recover them,” Daniel told her, looking to Jack for his approval.

Jack nodded. Hammond had already offered them another day; he’d take up that offer when they got back and checked in.

“Thank you,” Kealoha gratefully replied. “We would be honored.” She took a breath, and seemed steadier when she spoke again. “We should return to the village; the sun will be setting by the time we get there if we leave now. And I am sure Tangaroa will be growing anxious at our absence.”

Kealoha led the way back to the beach. They could see the feke just out past the boat, floating beneath the water, seemingly watching them. Before they headed in, Jack took Carter’s pack from her, to put her pistol inside. When she reached out a hand for him to return the bag, he just shook his head and told her he’d handle it for the swim back. She gave him an odd look, but just mumbled “Yes, sir” and waded out into the tide.

As Tangaroa guided the boat away from the island, the feke swam beside them, only turning back once they were about fifty meters away. Jack watched it until it disappeared from sight.

As Kealoha had advised, the sun was setting when they reached the village, the sky brilliant in pinks and oranges and purples. Jack left the rest of the team at the dock and once again borrowed a canoe to head to the Gate. He went alone this time, and quickly informed the general of the situation. True to his word, Hammond had immediately approved the extra day, and had added in a “Good work” before cutting the call.

The next day, the team headed out on Kealoha and Tangaroa’s catamaran again, this time joined by almost the entire village. The lost ancestors were to be accompanied on their journey to the afterlife by all those who had come after them, an honor guard.

This time, when they got close to the island, the feke came out to glide along beneath the catamaran, literally shadowing them up to the anchor point. Then it slowly swam off to a spot near the opposite end of the beach, where it sat at the bottom and waited.

On their way to the island, Kealoha had informed the team that it was the village elders’ desire that they help retrieve the bodies of the ancestors from their resting places. Jack had agreed without hesitation, and once they were anchored, all four of them climbed down from the catamaran to a waiting canoe that would bear them, Kealoha, and Tangaroa to shore. As they cut through the water, Tangaroa told them that the honor of the retrieval had been given to them as they had been the ones to find the ancestors.

“Yours were the first faces they saw again after so many years,” he said. “You should be the ones to bring them home.”

Kealoha led the way from the surf back to the crashed ship. Inside, she and Carter returned to the cockpit to retrieve the body there. Jack knew that Carter would meticulously pick out the Goa’uld’s bones before they removed the Manauan. He, Daniel and Teal’c accompanied Tangaroa to the back of the ship, where Tangaroa directed Teal’c to enter the room first.

“You are the first one they saw,” he reminded him. “So you should be the one to remove them.”

Teal’c had nodded in solemn understanding before walking into the room, the others following behind him. Working together, they carefully moved the bones into the three baskets that had been brought for that purpose. Given that the skeletons had been mingled together, they didn’t bother trying to sort them into individuals. Tangaroa even told them it wasn’t important to do so.

“They will all be sent to the Other Side together,” he said. “They have wandered the wrong world for so long, it will be easier if they do not have to make this journey alone.”

So they just moved bone after bone into the baskets, being respectful but not needing as much time as Jack had expected. In fact, despite the larger number of bones they had to contend with, their group was finished before Kealoha and Carter. When the two of them emerged from the cockpit with their own basket, Jack could tell by the look on Carter’s face that he’d been right. She’d ensured not a single bone from the Goa’uld was coming with them.

As they returned to the beach with the baskets, Jack was startled by a sudden, loud wail. He realized, seeing several people on various boats with large shells to their mouths, that it was a kind of call, maybe of mourning, maybe of honor. The calls continued—one overlapping with another, the sound oddly haunting—as the canoe conveyed them back to the catamaran. Once everyone was on board and the anchor hauled up, Tangaroa turned them back toward the village.

The feke had followed the canoe as it returned them to the catamaran, then waited under the catamaran to shadow them back out to sea. Just as before, it only accompanied them about fifty meters out. This time, however, it didn’t immediately turn back to the island. Instead, it stayed where it had stopped while the rest of the boats passed overhead. Jack thought he saw people tossing flowers into the water as they passed over it.

As they glided across the water, Jack studied the flotilla of boats following them. The shell calls had stopped as soon as they started moving, but were replaced by singing that seemed to sound from one boat, only to be picked up by another, then passed along again. He couldn’t make out the words, probably wouldn’t have understood them even if he did, but he was still left with a feeling of immense sorrow, the tune itself affecting him in ways he wouldn’t have anticipated and couldn’t explain. Chest tight with emotion, he faced into the wind again, letting the airflow keep his eyes dry, just in case.

Jack was a little surprised when they didn’t return to the village itself, but carried on directly to the quay. He’d expected that there would be some sort of ceremony at the village before the funeral at the Gate, but it seemed like the most important thing was for the ancestors to get to the Other Side as soon as possible. Tangaroa brought them to the end of the quay, exactly where Heiani and Temanu had picked the team up just two days before, and Kealoha tied off the boat.

She climbed onto the quay and Teal’c handed the baskets up to her, one by one, while those from the other boats disembarked at the sides of the quay. Once all the baskets had been handed off, Tangaroa and the team climbed up as well. The crowd was growing on the quay, but a pathway had been kept open from where they were standing to the Gate at the other end. Jack could see that a bier had been built overnight just in front of the Gate, to hold the bodies they would be offering to the vortex, sending them to the Other Side.

As the finders of the bodies, Carter and Teal’c each carried a basket, while Kealoha and Tangaroa took the remaining two. Daniel and Jack took up positions behind them, and the group slowly made its way to the Gate.

Leimomi was waiting by the DHD, resplendent in what was obviously ceremonial dress. She was wearing several shell necklaces as well as gold and blue earrings and bracelets, and had an intricately woven sash hung cross her body. She looked more serious than Jack had seen her be, but she still gave him a small smile and the faintest hint of a wink when she caught his gaze.

Once the baskets were in place on the bier, Jack and the rest of the honor guard stepped off to the side, opposite the DHD. Leimomi said a few words in a language Jack didn’t know, then she started singing.

It was the same tune that had been sung on the boats, and every now and then voices would rise from the crowd. Sometimes it sounded like a call and response, sometimes it sounded as though all the voices were singing the same words. Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. Leimomi reached out and slowly pressed the symbols for a Gate address, and then opened the wormhole.

The bier had been perfectly situated, the baskets and their contents—along with a very small portion of the top of the bier—taken completely by the kawhoosh. As the wormhole stabilized, another short refrain of the song was chanted, seemingly by everyone on the quay.

“It almost sounds like they’re saying goodbye,” Daniel whispered beside him. “Like they’re calling through to the Other Side.”

Jack saw Carter nodding with tears in her eyes, and then Leimomi closed the wormhole again. The crowd began to trickle back into their boats and return to the village as Leimomi approached them.

“You will be able to stay for the feast, I hope?”

“Yes, we will,” Jack told her.

When he’d spoken with Hammond the night before, he’d made sure they could stay for the entire day, just in case something like this was asked of them. It hadn’t felt right that they might help the Manauans go through this massive revelation of a part of their ancient history, and then just leave. So the team would be staying the night again, and heading out early the next morning.

Leimomi nodded, satisfied. “Then I will see you back in the village.”

She headed off down the quay, followed by the same son who had sent the team out with Tangaroa and Kealoha. Jack and the team rode back to the village on the catamaran, and spent the day at turns watching and participating in the preparations for the night’s celebration. It seemed that by returning lost Manauan ancestors to their home, the team had become honorary citizens themselves, and so they found themselves periodically drafted to help with various tasks.

Teal’c assisted with moving walls around, while Jack carted foodstuffs from a central storage room to the kitchens where they were needed. Carter spent time distributing grass mats; Jack even spotted her and Teal’c weaving new ones at one point. Daniel, somehow, got pulled into cooking duty. Jack found him during one of his deliveries, frowning faintly as he dutifully following the instructions he was being given by an elderly Manauan man.

The celebrations started just at dusk, and they followed the same general pattern as what the team had attended on their first night. There was an opening speech, this time about ancestors and lost spirits and the Manauans being reunited when the seas ran dry. It was very moving, and Jack even saw Daniel wipe away a tear. Then followed the requisite feasting, followed by dancing and storytelling.

The story was a new one, they were advised, crafted just for the occasion. It would be shared for the first time that night, and then memorized to be passed on through the generations. Daniel, especially, had looked interested at that news.

“We’re going to get to see their narrative traditions being created real-time,” he excitedly whispered to Jack.

The same woman from the night before—the Story Keeper, Daniel whispered, having learned about the role during his time in the kitchens—stood and a respectful silence fell. None of the team had expected the story to be about them, and they all shared looks of surprise when the Story Keeper opened with the line: “Once, voyagers from the stars came to Manau’u…”

Daniel was utterly captivated by the retelling of SG-1’s time on the planet. Jack figured he was doing his linguistic thing, noting verb usage or metaphors or whatnot. Teal’c listened politely, inclining his head toward the Story Keeper when she referred to him directly. When Carter was mentioned, her blush was visible to Jack even in the spotty lighting from the torches and lanterns set around them. She looked caught somewhere between pride and embarrassment, and Jack was amused at how she could still get flummoxed by the spotlight, considering how often she was in it.

Kealoha and Tangaroa were similarly feted in the story, their courage, tenacity, and strength highlighted multiple times. Jack recalled the look in Kealoha’s eyes when they’d first encountered the feke, and the look she’d had when she first stepped onto the island. And he remembered how Tangaroa had deftly sailed them to the shore even though his hands had been shaking, and how he had stayed alone on the boat in an ocean that they knew housed a giant sea creature capable of sinking them. Jack thought the story just about did them both justice.

After the Story Keeper finished, there were a few long moments of quiet, as if everyone were absorbing what they had just heard. And possibly they were; Jack wasn’t sure whether this was the first time that the entire village had been able to hear the exact details (only slightly embellished) of what had happened.

But then it was almost as if the village all took a breath as one, and people started getting up, moving back to their homes. The team was staying with Leimomi again, just as they had on the previous nights, and Teal’c and Jack helped put the wall panels back into position while Daniel and Carter assisted with the clean up. They slept in their same spots, by the side door, and this time Jack slept like a rock.

In the morning, they shared a quick breakfast with Leimomi, Heiani, Kealoha, and Tangaroa before heading out. Leimomi had kissed each of them on the cheek—kissed both of Jack’s in fact—before waving them off.

“I knew it was a good omen when you appeared from the Water Passage,” she confided in them. “I had been having dreams that something big was coming, but didn’t know what it was. Turns out, it was you.”

She smiled fondly at them all, then she and Heiani left them on the dock with Kealoha and Tangaroa, who would be returning them to the Gate. The team double-checked that they had all of their gear, then they piled into the canoe that would be their taxi. Jack, noticing the familiar carvings on the front and back, realized it was the same one that Heiani and Temanu had been in when they’d fetched them from the quay three days earlier.

The ride over to the quay was quiet and quick, everyone pitching in with the paddling. They tied off to the left side of the quay, and Tangaroa kept the canoe steady while the team and Kealoha climbed up. Then he joined them.

“Will you ever return?” Tangaroa asked them, almost shyly.

“We might,” Daniel told him. “Or others from our world might visit, if that would be alright?”

Tangaroa’s smile was as bright as the sun. “Yes, we would like that.”

“Thank you, again, for what you have done,” Kealoha said sincerely. “We would never have recovered the lost ancestors if you had not been brave enough to face Black Beach Island.”

“Hey, you faced it, too,” Jack reminded her, before meeting Tangaroa’s eyes. “Both of you. We just helped out.”

At that, Tangaroa pulled Jack into a tight hug, setting off an exchange of embraces all around. When it was his turn to hug Kealoha, Jack noticed that she was wearing the pekei’i. He gently took her hand and held it up to more closely examine the now-clean bracelet that was tied around her wrist.

“You got to keep it?”

Kealoha nodded, with an expression of pride and sadness. “Because I brought the ancestors home, I was honored with the pekei’i.” She circled the bracelet around her wrist as though self-conscious of its weight.

Jack nodded. “Seems right,” was all he said before he hugged her.

Daniel dialed them up and sent through their IDC. Kealoha and Tangaroa were watching them intently, and Jack knew it was because they were waiting to see the team disappear through the Gate; it would be their first time.

Daniel had warned them about not going through to the address they used for the Other Side. It wasn’t clear whether the planet it connected to was habitable or otherwise safe—there was every chance the address had been given to the ancient Manauans specifically because it wasn’t—so Daniel had told Leimomi that no one should go through. He’d said that the SGC could find out if the planet was safe and report back to the Manauans, but Leimomi had just shaken her head at him.

“Why would we go anywhere?” she had asked.

And that had been the end of that.

Now, with the wormhole in shimmering stability, Jack and the team waved one last goodbye to Kealoha and Tangaroa. They both returned the gesture, lifting their hands in the air, Kealoha crying softly around her smile.

Jack gave her a nod, and then the team stepped through to the other side, back home.