Snowfire (9 page)

A
fter an early dinner, Megan helped Ann and Darby wrap half of a fresh batch of malasadas for their camping trip.

“Jonah loves malasadas,” Aunty Cathy said as she watched them.

Jonah patted his belly. “I love them too much. But I can't resist. Besides, I have another reason for wanting to take a batch along tonight.”

“Another reason besides eating them?” Darby asked.

“You'll see,” Jonah said mysteriously as he left the kitchen.

“Megan, I don't know why you won't come with
us,” Darby urged. “It will be so much fun.”

Megan laughed. “Oh, sure, I just love eating Jonah's poi and jerky for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

“Is it really that bad?” Ann worried.

“Not if you're a fan of mashed taro root without a drop of salt or sugar.”

Ann made a face.

“Just kidding. Sort of kidding,” Megan said. “And it's not the
only
reason I'm not going, anyway,” she replied. “Cade and I need the time to practice, because once you two come back we'll have to concentrate on the four-person team events.”

Ann slid Darby a teasing glance, and Darby returned it. They'd already practiced right up until dinner.

“
What?
” Megan asked, realizing something was going on.

“You know
what
,” Ann teased. “Cade and you just
have
to work together this weekend.”

“Yes…we do,” Megan insisted. “Excuse me if I'd rather not break Cade's arm by yanking him off Baxter.
Your
nickname is Crusher, not mine.”

Ann and Megan had once both been on the soccer team at school before Ann had been sidelined by an injury, and they still acted like teammates sometimes.

“True,” Ann agreed, laughing.

“Hey,” Megan said, wagging her index finger at the other girls, “you just wait. If Conch doesn't get
sold right out from under me,
then
you can say this was about Cade.”

 

Darby, Ann, and Jonah parked the truck at the drop-off point at the foot of the trails to the Two Sisters volcanoes.

The drop-off point was sort of a staging area for trips up to the volcanoes. On the edge of the small parking lot there was a water spigot for filling canteens, a bulletin board for messages and announcements, and a sign-in sheet. This land belonged to Jonah and Aunt Babe. It had been given to them by their mother, Tutu, and an invisible border ran between the two volcanoes.

But Aunt Babe and Jonah agreed on two permanent rules: Everyone who went up toward the Two Sisters had to print their name on the sign-in sheet, and no one was allowed beyond the stone trees, which were two miles from the craters of the volcanoes.

Dusk hadn't fallen yet, but a mist in the air blurred the peaks of the twin volcanoes, making them look even more magical.

Darby rode Navigator at a slow and steady pace up the steep terrain. She had loaded her fanny pack with her flashlight, inhaler, some water, and a granola bar, all of which bumped along behind her as they rode.

Jonah was ahead of her on Kona, his big gray cow horse, and Ann was behind, rocking in the saddle with
Biscuit's steady gait. They passed ohia trees with blazing red blooms, also called Pele trees after the fiery goddess said to rule the volcanoes.

The last time they'd been up here, one of the Two Sisters had erupted. Darby tried not to think about it, but the Pele trees reminded her of Tutu's tale about the white stallion, who was only one of many forms that Pele's brother Moho could assume.

He was the god of steam, and another of Pele's brothers, who sometimes took the form of a black stallion, was the god of thunderclouds.

Snowfire, god of steam.

Black Lava, the god of thunderclouds.

It struck Darby as poetic that these two roamed together, just as they did in the legend.

“You girls are quiet,” Jonah commented as he ducked to pass under a branch laden with low-hanging lehua blossoms.

“I guess I'm getting a little tired,” Ann admitted. “That doctoring race—getting on and off of Lady Wong, who must be seventeen hands tall—”

“Sixteen,” Jonah put in. “And you do a nice job riding her.”

When Ann sat a little straighter in the saddle, Biscuit picked his feet up and arched his neck. Ann apparently knew how rare Jonah's outright compliments were, and her pleasure had flowed right down the reins to the buckskin.

They came to a trail Darby remembered from her
trip with Megan and Ann. It still gave her a shiver when she thought of how these trails were formed. They were carved naturally from flowing lava on its way downhill. If one of the volcanoes should erupt while they were on this path, they were in big trouble.

Volcanic signs were everywhere. There was a
kipuka
, an island of fertile life surrounded by black lava rock. And this
kipuka
had a strange fernlike plant she'd never seen before. Huge and curled in on itself, kind of like a fuzzy green cinnamon roll, it reminded Darby of illustrated books she'd read that showed dinosaurs prowling among prehistoric plants.

Jonah stopped to look at it, too. “That's
moa
. The only other place you'll see that is on a fossil, yeah?” he told them. “Tutu uses it to make a medicinal tea for a condition babies get called thrush.”

Farther on, Jonah pointed out tall, spindly koa trees. Dark, sickle-shaped pea pods dangled from their highest branches.

“Take a good look,” Jonah said, pointing. “And not just because darkness is coming. Those koas grow only in Hawaii. We've always used them for war canoes and surfboards, but now the wood is used for high-priced furniture.”

“And that's bad?” Darby asked.

“Only if you think native Hawaiians should be able to afford it.”

When they'd ridden past the koa trees for about a mile, Jonah stopped and dismounted.

His gray waited, ground-tied, as Jonah unfolded his pocketknife and cut some branches from a tree with bright green leaves.

“What's that?” Darby asked as Navigator halted next to Kona.

“Papala,”
he answered as he cut.

“For Tutu?” she asked.

“No, for us.”

Even in the fading light, she saw her grandfather's smile. She hoped he could see well enough to enjoy this trip. She hoped they'd take it a dozen times more.

“They have such pretty little pink flowers,” Ann noticed.

Sticking the branches in his pack and climbing back on Kona, he started them moving along the trail once more. “The flowers are pretty,” he agreed. “That reminds me of a story about another flower: the
koali
morning glories.”

“Are morning glories those blue flowers that grow on vines?” Darby asked.

“Yeah, but these are the wild kind,” he clarified. “The flower opens blue in the morning and turns pink later in the day.”

“Cool,” Ann murmured.

“The Old Ones used the vines as ropes. When I was a kid, I had a swing made from it,” he told them. “There's a legend, though, that the vine was inhabited by little worms that the Creator blessed with thought, then turned into people.”

“Tyson must have been one of those people,” Ann joked. “It's easy to believe he started life as a worm.”

“Yeah, but there's that part about being blessed with thought,” Darby answered, and Ann laughed.

T
he sounds around the riders died out, until only one stubborn bird cried, “e-e-vee,” as it trailed them for another mile.

Jonah stopped, peered around the clearing, and suggested that they take advantage of the last of the light to make camp.

Darby was glad she'd learned to do this before. Her fingers were as swift and sure as Ann's as they helped set up the horses' high line, tying each end of a long rope to nearby ohia trees as though they planned to hang out their laundry with clothespins.

Jonah set up his tent and the two-person tent Darby and Ann would share, while the girls watered and hand-grazed the horses.

“We got the best of the deal,” Darby said as they watched Jonah fit poles together and pound stakes into the forest floor.

“Thank you,” Ann called to Jonah.

He just waved and said, “Be careful. Make sure those horses are spaced apart. And don't give 'em enough slack to get a leg over the rope, or then you'll see a real rodeo.”

“Speaking of that, I haven't seen any wild-horse tracks, have you?” Darby asked.

“It's too dark to tell,” Ann replied.

“And our horses aren't restless,” Darby said, watching the tied horses.

So Black Lava and his band weren't hiding from Snowfire on Two Sisters. They must have gone all the way back up to Sky Mountain.

After dark, Jonah and Ann helped Jonah build a fire with the wood they'd collected earlier.

All three of them stared into the crackling flames. Their color shifted from gold to orange to scarlet, reminding Darby of her filly's coat.

“The fire feels good,” Ann said. “I didn't think I'd be cold.”

“We've ridden up a couple thousand feet,” Jonah said. “There's a reason the snow doesn't melt on Sky Mountain. Now you two aren't complaining about the extra blankets I made you pack, yeah?”

Jonah squatted by the fire, stripping one of the
papala
branches he'd cut on the trail with his knife. “It's the altitude that makes it cold, but we're prepared for it.”

Darby unwrapped the malasadas they'd brought for dessert. The fire and dancing shadows made the pastries even more of a treat. Ann passed one to Jonah and he took it, but then he did something strange.

Instead of gobbling it down like the girls were about to do, Jonah wiped the malasada's greasy surface on the sharp end he'd carved from a
papala
branch.

Darby scooted closer to the fire, wondering what her grandfather was up to. She caught her breath in surprise as he lightly tossed one stick up into the air, just above the fire. It whooshed up into the air like a flaming dart, before heading back into the campfire.

“Wow!” Ann exclaimed. “Did you know it would burn like that, Jonah?”

He nodded. “Ancient Hawaiians used
papala
branches for entertainment. They'd make spears of them, grease them, and then hurl them from the cliffs above the water. The wood was so light the flaming spears got caught by the trade winds and flew all over the place.”

“I'd love to see that,” Darby said. She pictured glowing sticks flying through the air, doing somersaults into the wind.

“If we were closer to the ocean I'd show off, but it's too dangerous to just throw flaming sticks around
near these trees.”

In the campfire's glow, Jonah's high cheekbones were shelves above dark hollows. When his heavy black brows lifted as though he'd just been struck with an idea, Darby thought it was a trick of the firelight.

But then her grandfather stood slowly. He looked around, judging his position on this mountain slope.

“If I remember right, there's a marsh near here. I can toss burning sticks over it, and the water will put out the flames.”

“Awesome!” Ann cheered. “I never expected fireworks tonight.”

Jonah held an already whittled handful of sticks. He handed them to Darby, then took a few uncut branches himself and told the girls to bring their flashlights as he lit their way with his own.

Darby and Ann walked through the darkness, following Jonah with confidence as he led them down a path leading away from their campsite. The girls playfully swung the beams of their flashlights through the darkness, pretending they were bright fairies.

“Ah, here it is. This way,” Jonah said after a ten-minute walk.

They left the path and descended a slope. They'd gone down only maybe three yards before the slant leveled off into a marshy area. Damp earth squished beneath Darby's boots.

Jonah hung his flashlight lantern on a tree. The
marsh turned midnight green.

The night chitter of insects faded.

Jonah looked up. Darby looked, too, seeing that the break in the trees caused by the marsh exposed a sparkling mantle of stars against the night sky. The moon was a silver crescent.

A bird squawked in surprise, and Darby felt prickling along the nape of her neck. They were being watched. She was sure of it.

Let it be horses,
Darby thought, not a wild boar and her piglets, or something cranky because they'd roused it from sleep.

Jonah took the malasada from his jacket pocket and used it to grease all the sticks. Then he took a slide-covered box of matches from his pocket. He lit the first match and then the first stick. As he hurled the flame-wrapped stick into the air, it went up, trailing yellow-orange streamers. But it was more dazzling coming down, a falling golden star attended by hundreds of red sparks.

“Better than Fourth of July!” Darby whispered, and the next stick Jonah threw flung off sparks of oil on its way up, then caught an invisible current of air and danced on the breeze.

“Wow,” Ann said.

As the second stick drifted on its fiery course, Jonah launched another flaming stick and another, until three of the light wooden sticks were lifted, making firefly trails on the breeze.

“They're like balsa wood planes,” Ann said. “Toby and Buck love those things.”

“Same idea,” Jonah agreed, and then, in rapid succession, he launched the first of the smaller sticks.

“Pele's happy,” Jonah said as the sticks dipped and glided in the darkness.

Better than that,
Darby thought,
Jonah's happy
.

A rising wind swept one swirling stick off course, away from the others. It sailed to the right, and Ann gasped as it plummeted straight down.

A sudden commotion, a thrashing in the tangle of shrubbery, and then dark forms rose. Darby heard a single, startled neigh.

Ann gripped Darby's wrist and whispered, “Wild horses!”

Ann was right. The herd had been hiding just yards away. No wonder she'd felt eyes following her.

Snorts and whinnies filled the night as the black forms thundered away.

“Aloha!” Jonah called after the horses. “
Papala
fireworks and wild horses! A great way to end our show, yeah?”

“You sure took us to the right place at the right time. Did you know they'd be here?” Ann asked.

“I'd like to say yes, but it was only luck.”

Darby gazed at Jonah's happy face in the lantern light and didn't believe him. He might not have planned to find the wild horses in this way, not consciously, but
his horse charmer's instinct had been at work from the first moment he set eyes on those
papala
branches and stopped to cut them.

No, it had started before that, when he told them to make more malasadas and bring them.

Then Jonah had led the girls to water, and, of course, the wild horses were nearby.

“Now that we've found what we came to see, let's go check our campfire and warm up the rest of those malasadas. I'd like to actually eat some,” Jonah said, wiping his hands.

As they walked back to camp, Darby wondered if that had been Black Lava's herd. She was about to ask Jonah, when it came to her that such a question might crush his good mood. It would obviously remind him of his failing eyesight.

Later, she was glad she hadn't brought it up. The three of them were sitting by the campfire, eating malasadas, when Jonah said, “Don't worry, Granddaughter.”

“I'm not worried.”

“You are a little,” he told her. “When I said we'd seen what we'd come to see, I could hear your bones stiffen in disappointment.”

“No,” Darby began, but Jonah laughed.

“Tomorrow we'll go back to the marsh and track them, see how they look in the sunshine. Now, please pass me another malasada.”

“Okay,” Darby agreed.

As she did, she was pretty sure that Kona's unhappy snort didn't mean anything. Neither did the sound of Navigator shifting from hoof to hoof, or Biscuit taking deep drafts of night air.