Mistwalker (12 page)

D
arby planned to introduce Patrick and Ann before school that day. They'd arranged to meet on the Link, a bridge that vaulted high over the center of the school, giving everyone who stood there a view of the complete campus.

“I've seen him, of course, but I've never had a class with Patrick Zink,” Ann said as she and Darby headed for the Link. When Ann lowered her voice, Darby could tell she was a bit ashamed to ask, “He's…is he weird?”

“It depends,” Darby said, shrugging. “Maybe a little, but he's got an amazing paint horse, Mistwalker. He changed her name from Mofongo—”

“That's a plus,” Ann said.

“And he knows the ruins of the old sugar plantation like it's his personal playground, which it pretty much
is
—”

“Because his parents own it,” Ann finished for her. “So, he's rich?”

“I try not to hold that against him, since my best friend is rich,” Darby teased.

“No, we're not,” Ann said. “Just last night my dad was saying we're right back where we were when we lived in Nevada. Land and horse rich, but money poor.”

“Anyway,” Darby went on, “I get the feeling he's so smart he makes both of us look like slackers.”

Patrick and Ann hit it off immediately. In fact, Darby was almost late to class because of them. Darby realized the two had become instant friends when she had to leave them talking.

As she hurried to class, Darby heard Patrick's voice saying, “Actually, the centipede's bite is painful but not deadly.”

Ann caught up with Darby just outside Miss Day's English classroom, and Ann agreed she wanted to go exploring with Patrick. They'd decided to meet after school and ride out to the sugar mill. Ann had never been there, and she was eager to meet Mistwalker, too.

Just before the bell rang, Ann stopped to rub the knee she'd injured playing soccer and asked, “So, all the Band-Aids and casts…?”

Darby shrugged again. “To tell you the truth, I
don't know whether he's accident prone or just plain fearless, but I guess we'll find out.”

 

Some days at school are so great, it's like your brain is Velcro,
Darby thought later.

In English, Miss Day was talking about the author Madeleine L'Engle again, and she wrote her favorite L'Engle quotation on the board.

“‘Love isn't what you feel, it's what you do,'” Miss Day read, and everyone must have immediately gotten it like she did, Darby thought, because they all wrote it down.

The quotation had to be banished while Darby was hunched over her Ecology test, writing up the results of this morning's experiment. She glanced up at the clock and caught Mr. Silva looking over her shoulder, reading her analysis and chuckling.

For an instant she was worried, but he gave her a thumbs-up and continued prowling the rows of desks.

P.E. was rained out, so Miss Day had the class count off by threes. The “ones” would have a “crunch” competition. The “twos” would act as spotters and record the results.

“The threes—”

Darby's eyes squinched shut. Her muscles would protest almost any task.

“—will have silent study hall in the library.”

Darby's fist shot toward the ceiling, celebrating
without her consent before she calmly folded her arms together and tried to look studious.

 

That afternoon, Darby took special care grooming Navigator.

“You're a muddy mess,” she said, then dragged a mounting block up beside the big gelding so she could reach his back.

Navigator loved mud puddles, and she had to use a rubber curry comb to loosen slabs and flakes of mud from his hair before she could even think of using a brush.

“It would have been lots easier to ride Hoku,” she told him, but Darby knew that wouldn't have been a great idea.

Mistwalker was young and flighty. Patrick had said the filly allowed him to ride “when she felt like it.”

Ann's horse was Sugarfoot. The gelding was beautiful, a caramel-and-white paint, and though his training was coming along, he was still a “chaser.” According to Ann, the best thing to do if Sugarfoot set upon you was “stand your ground and holler.”

“Not good playmates for Hoku,” Darby told Navigator as she dabbed a damp sponge at the corner of his eye. “But I don't think you'll be corrupted.”

Navigator stared at her. The rust-colored hair circling his eyes gave him a wise look.

You can depend on me,
Navigator seemed to say, and Darby did. The seventeen-hand-high gelding had
earned his name by finding his way home from every place on the island.

“You're the fastest trail guide around these parts,” she drawled to him.

“Don't sweet-talk my horses,” Jonah's voice pleaded, but Darby could see he was joking.

“I forgot,” Darby said, although she knew he wouldn't believe her for a second.

“Off to ride with Wild Ann and the Zink boy, yeah?”

“Yep, but I'm running late,” Darby said.

“Tell 'em since you're no
malihini
anymore,” he said, taking the saddle from her arms, “you're runnin' on Hawaiian time.”

Darby shivered with delight. Not because Jonah had relieved her of the burden, but because he'd reclassified her. In his eyes, she wasn't a newcomer anymore.

Jonah settled her saddle on the woven saddle blanket and fed the cinch through the buckle without looking.

“You the one who put him onto this fence deal?” Jonah asked.

“Patrick? Well, sort of. I just mentioned all I knew about his family was that they used barbed wire,” Darby admitted.

Jonah didn't comment on whether or not that was rude. He just nodded and used his boot to move the mounting block next to Navigator.

Once Darby was in the saddle, he said, “Thought your mother was coming to ride today.”

Startled, Darby tried to remember exactly what her mother had said. She remembered the discussion of private school and the napkin full of sugar cubes. But for some reason she wasn't sure if her mother had said they'd ride on Tuesday or Wednesday. Finally, she said, “Tomorrow, I think.”

Jonah shrugged and turned his wrist in a Shaka.

“Have fun,” he said. And then, just as she was passing Sun House, he called after her.

“Granddaughter!”

“Yes?”

“Good call not taking your filly.”

“Thank—”

“Don't think she'd care much for those train tracks.”

Darby rode on, smiling, until Navigator hopped over the cattle guard at the ranch's front gate. Only then did it occur to her that Jonah knew exactly where she was going.

Her smile faltered briefly until a second revelation hit her. If Jonah knew where
she
was going to explore, he'd probably known about her mom's explorations, too.

 

Darby heard Patrick and Ann chattering as she approached the neighbor's laundry line, where they'd agreed to meet.

“But see, when I moved here, people told me the Zinks were lazy.”

Darby gasped at Ann's remark, but Patrick didn't sound like he'd taken offense.

“To a certain extent they are—not me, because I'm going to school—but my parents are both just doing their own things while they wait for the land to return to its original state. Their ancestors ruined the land, but sometimes you have to break with the ancestors and do what's right.”

By the time Darby rode Navigator into sight, Ann and Patrick had progressed from Patrick's theory on ancestor reverence to Ann's wondering which undiscovered species of wildlife would have remained if the burning of the forest and realignment of traditional water courses hadn't happened.

Instead of Sugarfoot, Ann rode Soda, a blackish-blue roan, which startled at the sight of Navigator. Patrick sat with bare legs dangling astride Mistwalker.

“Don't mind me,” Darby said as she halted her dark gelding near her friends.

“Aloha!” Patrick said, and Mistwalker surged forward. By nibbling his mane she reminded Navigator they'd met before.

“She looks beautiful,” Darby said.

“My mom bought the bridle and I had to cut it down to fit, but it hardly shows, does it?”

“Not at all,” Darby said.

The black leather headstall was a single strap pol
ished to a high shine, attached to a silver D-ring bit.

Soda mouthed his own bit, loudly and nervously. The gelding had been kept in a stall “no bigger than a bathtub” for most of his life, according to Ann, who'd been with her parents when they rescued the horse from his neglectful owner on the island of Kauai.

“And you look pretty, too, Soda,” Darby said, smooching at the horse. He looked up at her, surprised, but not scared.

Darby was about to try to pet Soda when Navigator protested the special treatment he was getting from Mistwalker.

Tired of the paint grooming him with tiny bites that had moved from his mane to his tail, Navigator gave a short squeal and swung his head in her direction.

“Hey! It's not customary to snack on your friends,” Patrick scolded Mistwalker.

The mare looked back at him and blinked. Then, not a bit ashamed, she feinted a nip at the toe showing through a hole in his sneaker.

Ann and Darby laughed, especially when Mistwalker shook all over, from nose to tail, quite pleased with herself.

Still, Darby couldn't help recalling the lecture she'd received from her grandfather when she wasn't wearing riding boots.

She didn't want to sound bossy, though, since she hardly knew Patrick. So she was happy when Ann suggested, “You might want to wear boots when you ride.”

Patrick looked down past his khaki shorts to his matching sneakers, then up at the girls.

“It's my understanding that boots are only safer because it's more difficult for the foot to slip through the stirrup, leaving the rider entrapped and in danger of being dragged to death,” Patrick said.

“That's what Jonah told me,” Darby agreed.

“I'm riding bareback,” he pointed out.

While he leaned forward to pat Mistwalker's satiny neck, Ann's eyes met Darby's. Neither of them had a rebuttal for Patrick's logic, but Darby wasn't convinced. Patrick's holey canvas shoes just weren't suitable for riding, especially out in the rain forest.

Birds took wing at the sounds of their conversation as they rode deeper into the rain forest. Ann and Patrick did most of the talking, because the whole time they rode toward the old plantation, Darby thought of Tutu.

There hadn't been time for her mom to see Tutu during their first ride, and Ellen had seemed down-hearted about it. But that wasn't why Darby thought of Tutu.

Her great-grandmother was a
kupuna
, a respected elder, and she'd warned Darby not to take this path toward the ruined plantation because it was dangerous.

What kind of trouble had Tutu worried about? Maybe she was just afraid of Darby getting lost, because she didn't know her way around. Patrick appeared to know every twig and trail on his family's
plantation, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Still, riding out here with Mom had felt different. Ellen had been there a million times before and she'd pointed out railroad tracks and rocks and vines. Patrick and Ann were preoccupied with their new friendship and discussing complex topics.

“So, where did all the houses go?” Ann asked Patrick.

He explained his parents' goal of letting the rain forest reclaim human structures, and told her, just as he had Darby and her mother, about the cultural mix of workers in the plantation's history.

“And this is where my mom and her friends had their Explorers Club,” Darby said as they rode through a row of sunbeams that had struggled through the trees.

“Hey, what are we going to do for initiation into
our
Explorers Club?” Ann asked.

For a moment, Darby thought Ann's blue eyes turned a little sly and her red hair, struck by the sun, appeared to be scattered with sparks. Patrick dropped his reins and let Mistwalker prance on without guidance, as he rubbed his palms together.

He turned his freckled face toward Ann's, clearly expecting her to lead him into some new amusement.

Wild Ann. No one at school would believe that Patrick and Ann could lead each other into mischief, Darby thought.

She noticed how the sun glazed over the lenses
of Patrick's glasses. Could he be blinded by having friends in this jungle where he was usually all alone?

Patrick threw himself off Mistwalker. The mare lowered her head. There was a clang of teeth on metal as Patrick pulled off the black leather bridle, hung it on a low branch, and made a cluck that sent the mare trotting into the forest.

Using neck ropes, Darby and Ann tethered Navigator and Soda to a length of pierced iron that neither of them could identify, while Patrick retrieved his pith helmet from the abandoned mill building.

“It's just electrifying to have partners in crime,” Patrick teased as the girls faced him with their hands on their hips.

Ann's wildness was contagious to Patrick, but had the opposite effect on Darby. She hoped her uneasiness didn't have anything to do with her horse-charmer instincts, her
ho'oponopono
sensitivity, or wise-woman genes she'd inherited from her great-grandmother.

Such thoughts were just ridiculous, but what was going on? She'd climbed the pali, swum in dangerous waters, and lain in the snow with a wild horse. She was not a scaredy-cat.

Still, Darby heard herself speaking as if she were a chaperone for the other two: “It's going to be dark in an hour or so.” Then she could hardly believe she added, “I'm not sure we have time for an initiation.”

Ann and Patrick turned to look at her, as if she'd
spoken a different language. But their stares only lasted a second.

They returned to arguing. Patrick tried to make a case for “tightrope walking” the edge of the dock that had once served as a loading point for the narrow-gauge railroad that ran to a pier at Crescent Cove.