Fire Maiden (15 page)

The idea was only poignant for a second.

If a root could come through, so could liquid rock. Lava could drip down and burn them both.

Darby clucked, riding faster into the darkness.

What was that?
Darby heard something behind them.

So did Hoku. The filly turned around of her own volition. She was either breathing hard or sucking in an unfamiliar scent.

It was probably just water dripping, Darby told herself.

“Back the other way, there's a beach,” Darby murmured, trying to turn her horse with her knees. “You can run on the beach. You can swim. Keep going, girl.”

Was lava oozing after her like a steady, red-hot boa constrictor?

She heard something else. Not lava. It sounded like a hammer shattering china dishes. And then a snort. Like Navigator?

At last, Darby knew she had to risk getting out her flashlight. Even if Hoku threw her here, they
were safer than before.

She grappled for her pack. As she did, she realized there was a comfort in darkness. When she couldn't see, there were fewer things to fear.

But now, everything happened at once. Her fingers closed around her flashlight. She heard a snick of sound like a flashlight clicking on, but she hadn't done that yet. Darby lost her grip on her backpack. It hit the filly's legs on the way down and Hoku bolted as Darby flicked on the flashlight.

The beam surrounding her couldn't have been warm, but Darby imagined it was.

“Darby!” Ann's voice was a celebration, and then a gasp. “Oh my gosh, you're riding Hoku!”

All at once, the lava tube was crowded with white horses.

Ash, Darby thought. Ann's red hair was gray with it and she rode a pale Navigator with white Sugarfoot charging alongside.

Biscuit's black mane was powdered white as he pushed past the other horses to reach Hoku.

Biscuit was gliding his neck over Hoku's when Megan leaned over to shake Darby's shoulder. An ash cloud billowed off Darby's clothes and surrounded them, but it really didn't matter.

“Sister!” Megan said. Her voice spiraled high in joy, then broke into laughter as she took in Darby, mounted on Hoku. “The trouble some people will go to, to keep a secret!”

“I
t's okay, girl!” Darby gasped.

With the greetings over, Hoku suddenly felt cramped. She lashed out a hind hoof and it struck the lava tube's wall.

“You're doing so well. No one means to scare you.”

“Boy, this is a day to remember,” Ann said.

Darby nodded.

The first day she'd ridden Hoku….

Darby knew she would never have forgotten it anyway, but she wished the volcano hadn't made it quite so memorable.

Hoku rocked backward in a half-rear and Darby ducked, holding tight to her horse's neck.

“I think I'll get off and lead her,” Darby said as Hoku came back down to all four hooves.

“I think that would get you trampled,” Megan said.

In the crazy flashlight shadows, Darby realized the hammer she'd heard destroying china plates had actually been those twelve hooves clattering on the lava stone.

“It's not that far to the beach,” Ann said. “Listen.”

Darby held her breath until she heard the same sound she'd listened to by holding a seashell to her ear. The beach was out there, and Jonah had said Sun House could be sighted from that beach.

“The mask's a good idea,” Megan interrupted. “Don't take it off. When two-thousand-degree lava hits the ocean, it dissolves the salt and makes hydrochloric acid.”

“Not good for someone with asthma,” Ann tried to joke.

“Not good for anyone,” Megan said, and the next time she spoke, they were all masked with ripped pieces of clothing.

It was a relief, and Megan's voice cut into the waves' purling, “Will you tell Jonah?”

“I hadn't thought about it yet,” Darby said. “I was just thinking we'd better check the horses over as soon as we get out of here. I mean, sparks sizzled my hair and burned a hole in my shirt….”

Darby stopped chattering, seeing Jonah's face in smoke just as she'd seen Pele's.

“Well, you better think about it,” Megan said. “I don't mean to sound mean,” she added as Ann whipped around to look at her. “It's just, I'm sure they're all out looking for us, and it just makes sense that he'd be the one to come down here.”

“I don't think I should tell him yet, or let him see me riding Hoku, until she's perfect,” Darby said.

“So, you think you'll still be riding when you're ninety?” Ann teased. “Darby, no horse is perfect. Neither are riders.”

“I know, but he doesn't think much of mustangs, and she's not that good around men….”

“You can count on me to keep your secret, if that's what you want to do,” Megan said, “but don't forget he already thought, last week, that she was ready to carry a rider.”

“Yeah,” Darby said, but Megan hadn't been there when Jonah had barked
I wash my hands of you
, just because she'd fallen off Navigator.

His words had sliced through her like knives.

If Hoku acted up in front of him…

Ann clucked and the horses moved forward in the lava tube.

Darby tried not to think about what would happen if Hoku threw her as Jonah watched. They'd have to prove themselves all over again, and though her filly had the spirit for another test, Darby wasn't sure she did.

 

It somehow felt like forever, but also felt like she'd just ducked into the lava tube when the three girls and four horses emerged from the darkness into a moonlit night of waves, stars, and steam hissing and rising into the air.

Lava flowed into the ocean no more than a quarter mile up the coast from them, and Darby could hear the sea boiling.

“The wind's with us,” Megan said, pointing at a huge steam cloud blowing over the sea, not ashore.

But the horses were staring at the ocean right in front of them. They showed no inclination to gallop into the water.

“That fizzing and hissing doesn't belong in the ocean, and they know it,” Ann said as she slid off Navigator's bare back.

Darby gave a short laugh as she remembered Jonah saying that he and Kit had determined that Darby shouldn't waste Hoku's curiosity. The filly had learned a year's worth of information about wild Hawaii today.

Darby's knees buckled as she slid off her horse, and she ended up holding the rope, sitting in the sand, looking up at Hoku.

Moonlight painted the star on the filly's chest, making it brighter than usual. Beyond Hoku, a black shoulder of land showed. Bright lava went gliding into the sea as if Pele had let it flow from her open hand, across her palm, over her fingertips, into the water.

Pele wasn't a woman in a red convertible, Darby thought. Pele was nature, both fierce and gentle.
We escaped because we didn't intrude. If we'd been gazing into the crater, it wouldn't have been like looking into the flames of a campfire. When the eruption came, we would have gone up in flames.

A sea bird sailed overhead, crying a night song. Despite her morbid thoughts, Darby wanted time to stop. She could stay on the black velvet beach forever, unless the wind shifted.

Holding each other's mounts, the girls took off their masks, then rushed through the job of checking the horses for injuries. All of the horses' manes and the girls' hair had crispy places where sparks had burned them, and Sugarfoot had a skinned knee.

“He did that when he made his split-second decision to come back,” Ann guessed.

Ann's remark set off a question in Darby's mind, but she didn't circle back to it until they'd remounted, ponying Hoku, and they were on their way down the beach, toward the barely visible lights of Sun House.

“Why did you guys come back uphill? Did you get cut off by fire before you reached the road?” Darby forked her fingers through Navigator's mane. “Was the road covered with lava or something?” She was straightening the gelding's reins, trying not to think about the bumps of his backbone, when she noticed the silence.

Megan and Ann gave her such accusing stares,
they were plain to read by moonlight.

“What?” Darby asked.

“It didn't look all bad down below,” Ann said.

“Well then, why—” Darby's frustration rose, but Megan cut her off.

“We came back for you!”

“Why?” Darby demanded. “What were you thinking? You had a safe—okay, relatively safe—way out of that”—she searched for an appropriate word—“I don't know, firestorm, that was behind you. Why would you walk right back into danger when I was okay?”

“We weren't sure you were okay—” Megan started.

“I don't like my friends to put themselves in mortal danger,” Darby interrupted.

“We weren't in mortal danger,” Ann said in a humoring tone.

“Of course we were,” Megan said, then she rode Biscuit into Navigator's path and held Darby quiet with a stare. “The last time Ann saw you, you were on foot and we didn't know what would happen with Hoku. You love her. You might have taken some risks to protect her.”

“I mean, she's wild. What were the odds you were going to jump on and ride her bareback, with lava at your heels?” Ann asked.

Hoku whinnied and the girls laughed. Then the mustang tossed her flaxen mane and gave an even longer neigh.

“She's a smart girl,” Darby said, smooching at the sorrel filly.

Seeing another horse getting attention, Sugarfoot pranced, bidding for Ann's praise.

“Of course, it was all Sugarfoot's idea. He saw you follow that white stallion into the lava tube and he had to go chase him.”

“What?” Darby asked. “We didn't follow the white stallion. I haven't seen him since he jumped over us up there.” Darby gestured in the direction of the stone pulpit where they'd hidden to watch Black Lava and his herd.

Ann was shrugging, as if she didn't want to start another spat, when a voice boomed out of the darkness and a mounted silhouette cut its way down a sand dune.

“You girls done playing with fire? Decided to come back on home and let the old folks quit worrying?”

“Jonah!” Darby shouted. She tapped Navigator with her heels and the other girls rode beside her until they drew rein in front of Kona.

“You girls all right?” her grandfather asked. “Horses come through that okay?”

“We're fine,” Megan said. “We managed to sidestep the whole thing.”

Ann made a half-strangled sound of disbelief.

“Well, okay, maybe not the whole thing,” Megan amended. “But none of us have anything
worse than crispy hair—”

“From the sparks,” Ann explained. “Except Sugarfoot's knee, but I'll just clean that up and put a little salve on it.”

Jonah seemed to notice that Darby hadn't said anything since she'd shouted his name.

“How you doing, Granddaughter? Trip to Two Sisters all you hoped for?”

Megan and Ann were laughing when Darby blurted, “I rode Hoku.”

She hadn't meant to say it.

It was quiet for a long time, except that hooves hit sand and waves searched the shore. Darby imagined Jonah's face changing colors as he tried to keep his temper under control.

“How'd she do?” Jonah asked at last.

“Perfect. It's like she understood I had no choice.”

Darby winced at her own words. That had definitely been the wrong thing to say. It sounded like she hadn't been in control.

“I always knew that Three Bars breeding would shine through when it counted,” her grandfather said.

But this time Darby was too proud of her horse to let Jonah's comment go.

“Not to mention her mustang instincts,” Darby said.

“Could be,” Jonah shrugged, and Hoku chose that moment to snake her head out and snap toward Jonah's stirrup. “Remind that broomtail of yours
who pays for the hay she loves.”

“Hoku,” Darby said in a scolding tone, but then Jonah changed his mind.

“Never mind. Actions speak louder than words. Animals get that sooner than people. She'll come around to tolerating me, after a while.”

Hooves splatted on the wet beach. They rode for another minute before Jonah glanced at the glowing display of his cell phone.

“Oh, I bet my parents are out looking for me!” Ann said suddenly.

“Them and Kit, Cade, and Kimo. Cathy's holding up her end by going crazy and sayin' she told me so,” Jonah said.

“But I bet she's on the lanai with binoculars,” Megan said. She made a huge waving motion and yelled, “Hi, Mom!”

When Sugarfoot and Hoku shied, Megan said, “Sorry!”

“Try to call them again, please,” Ann urged Jonah.

“The news is saying this is a minor eruption, just the hot sister lettin' off steam,” Jonah said.

Darby felt relieved. Even though it had felt like a hellish inferno to her, maybe her mother wouldn't be too worried.

She was swaying comfortably on Navigator's bare back, feeling proud of her horse and herself, when she caught Jonah watching her.

Embarrassed and hopelessly empty of things to say, Darby opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“That's got it,” Jonah said, but he'd stopped looking at Darby. He was pressing a button on his cell phone.

First he called Aunty Cathy to let her know they were riding home. Next, he called Ed and Ramona Potter. Then he made a third call.

“Hey, Kit,” Jonah shouted as if he could communicate to the other side of the island by volume alone. “Yeah. All of 'em. Called you first, but you can tell Kimo and Cade”—Jonah glanced over at Darby and gave her a wink—“the can-do
keiki
is back in the barn.”

I
n case anybody reads this besides me, which it's too late to tell you not to do if you've gotten this far, I know this isn't a real dictionary. For one thing, it's not all correct, because I'm just adding things as I hear them. Besides, this dictionary is just to help me remember. Even though I'm pretty self-conscious about pronouncing Hawaiian words, it seems to me if I live here (and since I'm part Hawaiian), I should at least try to say things right.

ali'i
—AH LEE EE—royalty, but it includes chiefs besides queens and kings and people like that

‘aumakua
—OW MA KOO AH—these are family guardians from ancient times. I think ancestors are supposed to come back and look out for their family members. Our ‘aumakua are owls and Megan's is a sea turtle.

chicken skin
—goose bumps

da kine
—DAH KYNE—“that sort of thing” or “stuff like that”

hanai
—HA NYE E—a foster or adopted child, like Cade is Jonah's, but I don't know if it's permanent

haole
—HOWLEE—a foreigner, especially a white person. I get called that, or
hapa
(half)
haole
, even though I'm part Hawaiian.

hewa-hewa
—HEE VAH HEE VAH—crazy

hiapo
—HIGH AH PO—a firstborn child, like me, and it's apparently tradition for grandparents, if they feel like it, to just take hiapo to raise!

hoku
—HO COO—star

holoholo
—HOE LOW HOW LOW—a pleasure trip that could be a walk, a ride, a sail, etc.

honu
—HO NEW—sea turtle

‘iolani
—EE OH LAWN EE—this is a hawk that brings messages from the gods, but Jonah has it painted on his trucks as an owl bursting through the clouds

ipo
—EE POE—sweetheart, actually short for
ku'uipo

kapu
—KAH POO—forbidden, a taboo

lanai
—LAH NA E—this is like a balcony or veranda. Sun House's is more like a long balcony with a view of the pastures.

lau hala
—LA OO HA LA—some kind of leaf in shades of brown, used to make paniolo hats like Cade's. I guess they're really expensive.

lei
—LAY E—necklace of flowers. I thought they were pronounced LAY, but Hawaiians add another sound. I also thought leis were sappy touristy things, but getting one is a real honor, from the right people.

lei niho palaoa
—LAY NEEHO PAH LAHOAH—necklace made for old-time Hawaiian royalty from
braids of their own hair. It's totally
kapu
—forbidden—for anyone else to wear it.

luna
—LOU NUH—a boss or top guy, like Jonah's stallion

menehune
—MEN AY WHO NAY—little people

ohia
—OH HE UH—a tree like the one next to Hoku's corral

pali
—PAW LEE—cliffs

paniolo
—PAW KNEE OH LOW—cowboy or cowgirl

pau
—POW—finished, like Kimo is always asking, “You
pau
?” to see if I'm done working with Hoku or shoveling up after the horses

Pele
—PAY LAY—the volcano goddess. Red is her color. She's destructive with fire, but creative because she molds lava into new land. She's easily offended if you mess with things sacred to her, like the ohia tree, lehua flowers, ‘ohelo berries, and the wild horse herd on Two Sisters.

pueo
—POO AY OH—an owl, our family guardian. The very coolest thing is that one lives in
the tree next to Hoku's corral.

pupule
—POO POO LAY—crazy

tutu
—TOO TOO—great-grandmother