The Girl from Everywhere (18 page)

“I’ve never found myself facedown on the road surrounded by an army of ghosts, but . . . I have sometimes seen torchlight on the mountainside. Who can say?”

“Fascinating.”

“Are you having fun with me?”

“Not at all! Myths reveal the history of a place. I mean, who are these warriors? What do they protect? Why do they wander? I know the Hawaiian chieftains never suffered
commoners to look them in the eye—I read that once, but . . .” I stopped myself; I was gushing. “Well. I’ve never had a tour guide.”

“I would gladly teach you all I know about the islands. I’d need some time, of course.”

“A few weeks?”

“A few years!”

I laughed. “Maybe I should just look over your sketchbook.”

“Oh, Miss Song. It’s so much more than what you could read in a book.”

A red bird flitted across our path, and the trees opened up into a clearing where flowers winked from the edges of the undergrowth. The sun warmed the grass beneath Pilikia’s hooves, but the air was quite cool and as soft as a kiss. In the distance, rushing water whispered about where it had been.

“Is this it?” I asked.

“Oh, no, we’re not there yet. This is . . . well. You can see the places where the grass is growing a bit thinner? That’s because the earth was packed down under the
hale pili—
the grass houses. There was a village here when I was a small boy. The signs are faint, though.”

“Where did they go?”

“They died.”

I gasped. “How?”

“Foreign disease. The least dramatic type of slaughter.”

The path continued on the other side of the sunny clearing, but it had grown narrower, and the trees lower; green and yellow guavas hung from lichen-gray branches that wove themselves together at a height just above our heads. Blake stopped Pilikia and swung down from her saddle. He offered me his hand.

“We have to continue on foot, but it’s not much farther.” I took his hand and slid from the saddle; my shoes sank into the loamy earth. Blake removed his own shoes and socks. He grinned when he saw me watching.

“How do you think I keep them clean?” He threw his jacket over the pommel of the saddle. “Come.”

I followed him along a path no wider than my feet, lined with feathery ferns and drooping pink ginger. He pushed ahead of me, through the branches, bending them out of my way.

“What is this place?” I stepped under his arm as he held open a fall of vines like a curtain. The roar of water grew louder, and the fresh smell of crushed greenery
filled my lungs.

“I told you before. It’s a sacred place. A secret place, where the water comes out of the caves in a fall so powerful it turns to mist and drifts in clouds down into a healing pool. Please,” he added with a grin. “Try not to lure me in and drown me.”

I smiled back at him. “Don’t you know how to swim?”

“Miss Song. Do you think I could have lived my life on an island and not learned how to swim?”

“Why is that a given? Do you want to escape?”

He laughed and reached for me, helping me across a rocky patch of the trail where orchids bloomed at my feet and my father’s words resurfaced: “heaven in a wild flower.” The path smoothed, but I didn’t let go of Blake’s hand. “My mother talks of sending me to England to complete my education,” he said. “But no, I don’t want to leave.”

“Why not?” I asked, and then I stopped dead in my tracks. We had emerged from the exuberant undergrowth into a large clearing where, as Blake had said, a silver spray of water burst from the cliff face fifty feet above our heads, enveloping the mossy black rocks in clouds of mist as it fell to shatter the mirror of the black
pool at our feet.

“Why not?” He turned to me, his face shining. “This is paradise, Miss Song,” he said, gesturing at the roaring falls. “This is home.”

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B
lake dropped me off at the ship near dinnertime. We hadn’t had time to explore the caves above the falls, but Blake gave his word he’d show me some day. Neither of us set a date, though; we knew the promise was empty. Despite the guavas, I heard his stomach growling on the ride back, and I hoped it was loud enough to mask the sound of my own. This close to the ship, I smelled Rotgut cooking fish stew and I hesitated on the dock. I might have invited Blake up for a bowl, if he were of another era, and I’d had another upbringing.

Bee was there on the deck, watching us impassively. Blake raised his hand to hail her, and she nodded without saying a word. His eyes sparkled as he leaned in to whisper. “
She
is certainly a pirate.”

“Not at all. She was a cattle herder.”

“What? Like a
paniolo
? A cowboy?”

“Cowgirl.”

“Like Annie Oakley!”

“She’s better with a revolver than a rifle.”

“Who cut her throat? Was it cattle rustlers?”

“A man jealous of her . . . her marriage, actually.”

“How awful.” Blake gazed at Bee. “It’s hard to comprehend all the evil committed in the name of love.”

“Or greed,” I said, remembering Kashmir and Slate and the business I’d mostly forgotten all afternoon. I took a step back, toward the ship, suddenly anxious not to have Kashmir come up on deck and see us together. “Good night, Mr. Hart.”

“Until the full moon, Miss Song.” He tipped his hat to me, as though ready to leave, but he did not go. “I would like to ask,” he said after a moment. “I would be honored . . . if you would attend as my personal guest.”

“Oh? Oh! Oh, ah—I was attending with, uh . . . with my tutor, actually,” I finished lamely. Puzzlement flickered across Blake’s face; it was a terribly unbelievable story, for the time. “He is also my dancing instructor,” I extemporized.

“Do you dance much on the ship, then?”

“Ah. Well. You must have heard that dancing is a cure for seasickness!”

“Odd,” he said. “A sailor who gets seasick?”

I laughed a little. What else could I do?

“Well,” he continued, dropping the point. “Perhaps he would prefer to have the evening off? There are many events in Honolulu that night.”

“I . . . I know he is eager to attend the ball.”

“Ah. Then I will be pleased to see the both of you there,” he said, but he seemed less pleased than he had a moment before. He tipped his hat again. “Good night then, Miss Song.” He turned Pilikia toward home. Her ears swiveled forward, and she broke into a trot with little urging.

I climbed up the gangplank; here, on the deck of the ship, I was once more on firm footing. I met Bee’s eyes. “He doesn’t have any cattle either,” I told her, and she laughed.

Kashmir and Slate had not yet returned, so I needn’t have worried about being seen, though I could have been worrying about where they were. But I was too hungry to worry. I ate so fast I barely tasted my dinner, outpacing even Rotgut, although that may have been because he was telling me about the rock lobsters he’d caught on the reef, while I was focused more single-mindedly on consuming them. It was only shortly after I finished my bowl that I heard Kash and Slate tramping across the deck above my
head.

After a moment of consideration, I made up two conciliatory bowls of stew and carried them topside. I found them together, their heads close. The captain’s face was drawn, and though they spoke in low tones, his gestures were emphatic, and he broke off abruptly when he saw me approach. Kashmir accepted the bowl gratefully, but Slate just shook his head.

It had been years since I’d last bothered trying to insist. I dug into the stew myself, more slowly this time. It was very good: huge chunks of white lobster in a broth rich with butter. Rotgut loved to eat well, and it showed in his cooking.

“So,” I asked. “How did it go? On a scale of one to treason?”

Kashmir barked a laugh, but Slate waved a dismissive hand. I pursed my lips. “I was worried about you,” I said to my father. He didn’t respond. “Worried you’d get shot.”

He folded his arms and glared off toward the blackness of the open sea. “We weren’t shot.”

“Yes, indeed, I see that now.”

“Thank you for your concern,” he said, stalking off to
his room.

“You know we’d be stuck here if you died,” I called after him.

He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “You wouldn’t be stuck,” he said, seeming to speak to the teak of the door. “You would find a way, Nixie. If you really wanted to escape.”

He shut the door behind him, and Blake’s words came back to me. “Why would I? This is home.”
I shook them out of my head and slid down to sit against the bulwark, setting my half-empty bowl on my knees, suddenly uncomfortably full. “Ugh.”

“Today put him in a foul mood,” Kashmir said.

“
I
put him in a foul mood,” I corrected, leaving myself wide open, but Kash didn’t even seem to notice.

“Then today made it worse.” He tipped his own bowl and scraped the bottom with his spoon. Then he sat beside me and took my bowl from my hands.

“What happened?”

He made a face. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yeah. Shoot.”

“Ha ha. Well. We’ve encountered a few obstacles, the biggest one the weight of the gold. There’s no way to carry it away
without help. Or at least a couple of draft horses. There’s also the Royal Hawaiian Guard to consider. It’s only fifty local boys in nice uniforms, but all it takes is one lucky shot. Slate was talking about hiring mercenaries, but—”

“Ugh, not really?”

Kashmir shrugged. “He didn’t seem happy about it.”

“Where would he find them? The map ends a hundred miles out to sea. How would we get back here? And can you imagine having mercenaries aboard? Or, God, unleashing them here?”

“I don’t know,
amira
. It’s a last resort. He doesn’t want any bloodshed.”

“Well, then, he shouldn’t be considering piracy.”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

I scoffed. “If I did, I wouldn’t share them with the captain.”

“Pourquois non?”
he said. “It will never actually happen. You and I will get the map first. But in the meantime, you could get back in his good graces if you would just promise to try to help him.”

I made a face. “That’s dishonest.”

“Heaven forefend you lie so you can steal. He’s thinking of giving you the evening watch on the night of the ball.” My
jaw dropped, and Kashmir shrugged. “I told you. He’s in a foul mood.”

“But I have to be there!”

“I’m sure I can manage without you,
amira
.”

“No, I mean . . . I’m expected.” It felt like a confession. “Mr. Hart asked me to come.”

“He asked all of us to come.”

“No, I mean, he asked again later. After the hike.”

Kashmir’s spoon stopped in midair. “After the what?”

“I was trying to reconnoiter, like you! Only I didn’t have much success.”

“You were trying . . .” His brow furrowed like he was trying to picture it. “
Amira
. . . what exactly did you say to him? Tell me you didn’t tip our hand!”

“I don’t think so. We did talk about maps, but it was a part of a previous conversation—”

“You mentioned the map? The map we want to steal? The map his father is using to barter for treason?”

“It wasn’t like that! And he might not be on their side, at any rate. When we were at the waterfall, he was going on about paradise. . . .” I trailed off. Kashmir was shaking his head as though in awe. My cheeks went hot.

“Next time,
amira
,” he said at last, “leave the
reconnoitering to me.”

“Understood.” I dropped my chin, letting my hair fall over my face.

We were quiet for a while as he scraped the bottom of his bowl with the spoon. “You’d met the boy before.”

“In Chinatown, yes.”

“By luck or by design, do you think?”

“Oh, luck. Definitely.”

He arched one eyebrow. “His or yours?”

I cocked my head at him. “Kashmir. Are you jealous?” I teased. He didn’t laugh, though; his expression didn’t change at all. An odd fluttering flew into my throat, and I swallowed it down. “What? Do you think he’s in on the plot?”

“Oh, no, nothing so grand! But there’s more than one reason to spy on a pretty girl.” Kashmir stood up, taking the bowls, then he flashed me his teeth. “I told you you looked like a hussy.”

“Takes one to know one,” I called as he went below, but my heart wasn’t in it. And that night when I changed clothes, I found myself staring into the mirror and wondering what Blake saw when he looked at me.

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