Fire Maiden (14 page)

“Yeah, but who cares about our packs?”

“Flashlights and food,” Ann snapped. “We might be out here for a while.”

Darby looked over her shoulder. Ann was right. She didn't see lava, but the two sisters wore halos of murky red. And there, jetting up from another crack, burned a bright and steady flame, consuming a small tree.

Darby was pretty sure they wouldn't need their flashlights. The world was lit with bright red light.

O
nce Ann loosened the reins and let Navigator settle into his ground-eating lope, they reached camp in about three minutes.

“They're gone!” Darby gasped.

“They're here,” Ann insisted. “It's just smoky and dark, hard—” Ann broke off, coughing. “Hard to see. There's Megan!”

Amazingly, the older girl emerged from the smoke, with a T-shirt tied over her face, leading Biscuit.

Darby slid off Navigator, even though she heard Ann's objection.

Lifting the hem of her own shirt to cover her nose and mouth, Darby blundered through the smoke.

There! She made out the rope line, but it lay on
the ground, torn free of a fallen ohia tree.

Why hadn't they tied the horses to the stone trees? Then Hoku and Sugarfoot wouldn't be gone.

Darby heard Ann shout her name a second before Navigator charged past, clipping her shoulder and knocking her down.

Navigator was even more upset than they were at the horses' disappearance. Plunging and wheeling, he searched and snorted. Darby jumped out of the way, seeing it was all Ann could do not to fall off.

Biscuit screamed nearby, and Darby felt Megan grab her forearm and haul her to her feet.

“—going after Hoku and—” Megan shouted, but rumbling covered half her words.

Darby nodded frantically. At least Hoku was safe. Gone, but out of the volcano's reach, with Megan on the way to help her.

Megan faced the buckskin, grabbed black mane, and vaulted aboard.

“—Navigator?” Megan yelled as the gelding lifted his front hooves, ready to flee.

“Yeah!” Darby called back, and then Megan and Biscuit were gone, and Navigator was right beside her.

“He wants to rear,” Ann said levelly. “I think I can stop him, but give me a minute before you get on.”

Darby squinted back uphill at the volcano's fiery glare.

“Get our packs,” Ann said. “I'd do it, but I'm not
sure my leg can take the drop.”

“Okay,” Darby said, and she tried to concentrate on finding their packs, but she couldn't help staring at the top of Two Sisters. She tripped over a sleeping bag, fell to one knee, and looked uphill again.

The volcano had changed. There was a stream of orange, red, and yellow, mottled with black. And a smoke plume.

Or was it ash? Something moved down the slope, towering over her. Three stories high, it was shaped like gigantic gray broccoli and so huge, she lost her balance and had to look away. And then she laughed.

But there was something else within the broccoli form: a face with high cheekbones that looked furious.

Darby's laugh stopped as if someone had tied a gag over her mouth.

“Do you see that?” Darby asked, pointing.

“How could I not see it?” Ann demanded. “Don't get hysterical on me!”

“I won't.” Darby snatched up Ann's backpack and looked around for hers.

“One is okay,” Ann yelled over Navigator's loud snorting.

Somewhere, my mom is freaking out,
Darby thought. She felt disconnected, as if she were floating above the campsite, watching. When had she felt that way before? She should know the answer to that question, but she couldn't remember.

Darby concentrated long enough to hand Ann's pack up to her.

Navigator misted her with his frantic breath and Darby felt guilty for bringing him into this nightmare.

Ann shrugged on the pack and gave the big bay a pat on the neck. “This is an amazing horse. Sugarfoot would've—”

Darby stopped listening and turned back. She broke into a jog as she spotted her own pack.

An explosion knocked her off her feet. The earth beneath her pitched. Was it an earthquake? Gas igniting? Magma churning up and overflowing the volcano's top?

Navigator reared, and it was a good thing he did.

A boulder the size of a beach ball whizzed through the night to land right where Darby had been standing, right where Navigator's front hooves had been, and fire flew behind it. Flames sprung up like golden dancers, following as the boulder rolled downhill.

The flames between Darby and Ann were only a foot high. Darby started to go around, but downhill, there was no path through, so she turned up the slope and ran, trying to reach the ground above the boulder's landing.

Clapping her heels to the frantic Navigator's ribs, Ann rode to meet her.

More quickly than the horse, fire fanned out
between them, wide as a car, and Navigator shied away, with sparks burning in his mane.

“Your hair!” Ann screamed.

For an instant, Darby could only see the firefly orange in Navigator's black mane, but then she heard sizzling. She clapped her hands to her own head. The spark only burned for an instant. And then she heard a neigh—not Navigator's—and the earth rumbled beneath her again, but not from the volcano.

A horse galloped through the smoke
on her side of the fire
, coming toward her.

Ann was screaming again, but Darby couldn't hear what she said.

Oh, no!
Darby grabbed her stomach as if she'd been punched.

“Hoku!” The name burst from her before she could stop it.

Copper and cream, the filly ran toward her and then faltered as a wave of either smoke or ash swirled between them. She reared, trying to see over, and the tangerine-and-white lead rope dangled between her forelegs.

Why had Hoku come back to her? Safety lay downhill, away from this inferno.

“—tube!” Ann cried out.

At last Darby understood. They were divided by a widening wall of flame, but there were escape routes on each side. Ann and Navigator could make it to the road at the foot of the volcanic slope. With
luck, that's what Megan had done.

Darby and Hoku, if they were very lucky, might make it through the lava tube, down to the beach near Sun House.

“Got it!” Darby shrieked, and she gulped back a laugh that became a cough.

Ann raised her hand, leaned low on Navigator's neck, and rode him down the slope.

Hoku circled Darby at a trot. The filly's eyes rolled white, staring at the fire, then focused on Darby as she tightened her bedraggled ponytail.

Hoku stopped. She nudged Darby's shoulder where the spark had burned through her hair. The mustang stared with confused intensity at her human.

“C'mon, girl.” Darby tried to sound chipper, but she coughed again. Her asthma-scarred lungs fought the volcanic vapors. “Hoku, I'm just ripping off a piece of my T-shirt for a mask.
Shh
, girl,” Darby soothed. “I'm no mouthless monster, just me. You know if I don't do it now, later might be too late.”

Darby knotted the cloth over her nose and mouth. Her eyes never left her horse.

From ears to nostrils, the filly vibrated with fear. She looked down the slope, knowing that Navigator, Biscuit, and Sugarfoot were down there, though she couldn't possibly see the other horses. And then she walked to Darby.

Darby caught the lead rope, thankful beyond words that it was still there; that her horse was, for the
moment, safe; and for the lava tube. She was pretty sure she could find it. There was a path, after all, and the fire cast plenty of light. She wouldn't get the flashlight from her pack until she needed it. Otherwise there was a chance she'd drop it, and she might not find her way through the lava tube in sheer darkness.

Lava. Squinting through the smoke, she saw it. A bright brass-colored snake of the burbling, hot liquid, edged in black, crawled toward them.

Mr. Silva had said that when lava cascaded down, the crater walls caved in and the lava flow slowed, then actually helped seal walls from outside with its overflow. She'd seen something like that once today. Maybe it was happening again.

Or maybe not. She couldn't assume that the brass-colored snake, which had broadened into a searing rope streaked with orange, would stop before it got to her. If it didn't, it would cut off her path to the lava tube, her last chance of escape.

Darby jogged as fast as she could. Even with her cloth mask, the air was like a hot, wet washcloth held against her face. She could barely breathe.

Hoku followed with total obedience, head bobbing as she trotted behind. Every now and then her hooves clipped the back of Darby's thick-soled boots, but she made no move to outpace the girl.

She wants to stay near me. She trusts me, but oh, she has no reason to—I have no idea what I'm doing,
Darby thought.

“We've got to beat that river,” Darby told her
horse, because that's what the orange-red lava stream had turned into. It spread thicker by the minute. Sparse grass and ohia trees ignited all around it, and it roared as it came.

Roaring. Lions' paws.

When Darby stopped to make the biggest decision of her life, Hoku moved alongside her, nudged her, and blew grainy breath down her neck.

Was Hoku telling her a secret, saying it was okay to ride her, to gallop from the lions' paws to the lava tube, outrunning Pele's fire?

Darby didn't turn to face her horse. She just reached up and touched the cheek alongside her own.

Can I do it?

In Nevada, she'd lain in the snow with the wild filly and talked her back from the brink of death. Instead of closing her dulled eyes and tumbling into darkness, Hoku had listened.

And tried.

And won.

Darby turned now and looked into her filly's golden face.

“Can you do it, girl? Can you carry me on your back?”

She led Hoku alongside the lions' paws. If the horse bolted while facing this direction, she'd be headed toward the mouth of the lava tube.

Holding the lead rope, Darby looked up to see lava smoking and crawling toward her. It was fire-
edged now, an orange-red ribbon with flashes of gold and black. And hot. She and Hoku both dripped with sweat.

“It's time, baby girl,” Darby said, and then she took a long step, climbing up onto the lava-rock lions' paws. Holding her breath, Darby eased her left leg slowly, inch by inch, over the filly's back.

Yes, the first time she got on her horse she did it backward, mounting from the right side. Just like the first time she'd mounted Navigator. If she told Jonah, she knew what he'd say.
Who told you it was wrong, the horse?

Hoku's sleek, golden back hummed with energy. Darby felt the filly pondering this sudden change. It was familiar, but different. This time it didn't hurt. This time, it was comfort, not fear, which flowed into her from her rider.

Darby would have given her filly another minute to get used to carrying her, but Hoku's ribs flared beneath Darby's knees and a cough shook the horse. With a nervous glance at the lava, Hoku struck out, pawing with one forefoot.

“Let's get out of here, girl,” Darby whispered, and leaned forward.

The filly took a tentative step, and then another and another. Each move was more sure, until she swung into a trot.

Please don't let me fall,
Darby begged the stars overhead.
Please let me find the lava tunnel. Please
let us get home safely.

A cool breeze swept over them as they ran out of the lava's path and Hoku celebrated with a lope. Her hooves pelted grass and stone. Her legs swung strong and golden, forward and back, head level, belly almost skimming the ground, as if she knew exactly where she was going.

In the volcano's glare, Darby could barely make out Hoku's ears, hidden in the mane that rose and fell like creamy wave crests.

We can do this,
Darby thought. Body balanced, hands wrapped in Hoku's mane, face pressed to her filly's neck, she felt like a centaur, half girl and half horse.

Just then, Darby heard tinkling beneath Hoku's hooves. The path was black among strands of silver. Tinkling, crackling, shattering. Pele's hair?

The filly slowed to a trot, then a walk. They were at the entrance to the lava tube, home free, if only she could get the flashlight from her backpack. Safe, if Hoku would go inside.

The filly neighed into the lava tube. The sound echoed. Hoku pawed at the hardened lava, trusting wild instincts that told her to keep going.

But why? It was unnatural for a wild horse to go into a dark, confined place.
Counterintuitive,
that was the word, Darby thought.

She felt dizzy and her mind spun. She was more at home in a world of words than here, trapped between
a dangerous channel to the sea and blazing death.

Maybe wild horses had hidden here before and Hoku could smell them. Maybe Pele ran as a golden spirit within her filly. Maybe stars were the eyes of heaven, of ancestors who wanted Darby and Hoku to survive.

Darby fought for the advice of her logical mind. Should she ride in, or risk climbing off, get the flashlight from her backpack and walk? Get the flashlight and ride in?

The lava tube had a twelve-foot ceiling, isn't that what Megan had said?

Megan's face bobbed up in her mind. And then Ann's. And what if Jonah and the hands were out looking for her on the volcanic slope, amid all that fire and lava? No, Ann knew. She'd tell them Darby had gone through the lava tube. If Ann was okay.

Please let them be safe.

She left the flashlight in her backpack. If she dropped it, her horse could spook, whirl, and run the other way.

And she stayed on Hoku's back. Rather than risk falling from Hoku as she dismounted, she leaned forward and Hoku entered the lava tube as if she'd been there a million times before.

It was wet inside the tube—wetter than before. Darby could smell the moisture, and when Hoku stopped to lick the water from the stone walls, she touched them.

Shaking from the sudden change in temperature, she rode on.

Hoku's hoofbeats echoed all around her.

Something crawled across her brow! Was it a spider? Darby struck at it. A plant. A little tendril of root had made its way through the stone ceiling, looking for water.