by K. D. Keenan
Auntie had recommended Kapukahehu Beach on the west end of the island. It proved to be a small crescent cove, safe for swimming. There was nothing built near the beach, only two other people were there, the waves were fairly calm, and the water sparkled in the sun. The sand was a blaze of heat that they could feel though the soles of their flop-flops. They spread out mats and towels, lathered up with sunscreen, and sat in the sun. Clancy regarded the idyllic scene before him and heaved a sigh.
Rose eyed him shrewdly. “You’re obsessing about Sierra, aren’t you?” Clancy nodded. No point in denying it. Rose hesitated a moment, then took something from around her neck. “Here. I can’t swim with it, and maybe it’ll help you.” She placed it in Clancy’s hand. Clancy looked down at the object resting in his palm. It was a small, soft leather bag, gathered at the top with a thong that went around the wearer’s neck.
“What is it?”
“Medicine bag,” replied Rose. “Don’t look inside, please. It’s got a lot of power.” She shivered in the hot sunshine as though chilled, and Clancy saw goosebumps rise on her bare arms. “I just have a feeling that it may be helpful to you. Anyway, Sierra’s with Chaco. She’ll be just fine. Stop worrying!” She reached down, took the bag back, and placed the thong over his head. He thought she muttered something as the bag came to rest against his chest.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m going in for a swim!”
Rose went down to the water’s edge, leaving her flip-flops on her beach towel. She skittered into the ocean like a drop of water on a hot griddle. Clancy watched for a while as she splashed around, looking relaxed and happy. He looked down at the little leather bag and sniffed at it. It smelled like leather, with maybe a ghost of something fragrant and herbal. He let the medicine bag fall back against his chest. Nothing seemed to shake his worry over Sierra. He felt a sense of foreboding, even dread, that was foreign to his pragmatic nature.
When Rose tired of swimming she returned and flopped onto a mat to dry off. “Not going in the water? It’s delicious! It felt cool for just a moment, but then it was just wonderful. I could see fish even though I don’t have a mask or goggles. Aren’t you going in?”
As Clancy shook his head, his cell phone rang. To his surprise, it was Houghton Roberts. “Clancy? Hi. Huff here. Say, I’ve been calling Sierra, but there’s no answer. Everything okay?”
“Um, yeah, everything’s fine.” I hope. “You know, cellular reception can be kind of spotty here.”
“Tell me about it. Anyway, we’re starting to work on the jack ships again, and I was wondering if you and Sierra wanted to come out again. Maybe this time it won’t be as dramatic.”
Clancy thought fast. If construction on WestWind were starting up again, would Kanaloa and Kauhuhu play the same terrible game as before? Or had Sierra and Chaco been successful in recruiting Kama Pua‘a to help? He hesitated.
“It’s okay if that isn’t convenient,” Roberts said. He sounded a bit disappointed.
“No, it’s not that,” Clancy said. “It’s just that Sierra’s still on the Big Island to, um, visit a friend for a while.” That was pretty close to the truth.
“Oh, that’s right—I thought she’d be back by now. Well, how about you? Want to come out to the site again?”
What a dilemma. Should he warn Roberts not to start construction yet? On what pretext? He made a quick decision. Maybe there was some way he could be helpful if things did go wrong.
“Yeah, sure. I’d love to go. I thought the jack ship was beyond cool.”
“I’m going out to the other one, Jack of Hearts. It’s pretty much the same, but it’s working a different area. We leave from the helipad at two o’clock. See you there.” Roberts ended the call. Clancy stared at his phone. What would he do if all hell broke loose again?
• • •
Later that day, after Clancy left for the helipad, Rose called Mama Labadie to bring her up to date. She told Mama she had given Clancy her medicine bag.
“I never knew you to be parted from that bag before now,” commented Mama.
Rose was quiet for a moment. “I just think he’s going to need it.”
“Why?”
“You ever look at someone and think, ‘That guy may not know it, but he’s in for big trouble’?”
“Yeah. I sure have.”
“I looked at Clancy this afternoon, and all I could see was trouble.”
Chapter 27
Sierra called Clancy from the Kaunakakai Airport, but got no answer. She then tried Rose’s phone and had no luck there, either.
“I can’t call Auntie Keikilani,” she fumed. “Auntie’s already done so much for us that I’d feel guilty asking her to drive out here to pick us up.”
Chaco pointed out that it was a quick drive, but Sierra insisted getting a taxi for the ride back to Auntie’s house. When the cab pulled up, she saw immediately that Clancy’s car was not parked on the street in front, as she’d expected it would be.
“Auntie,” she called as she entered the house. “Chaco and I are back! It worked. We think. Where’s Clancy?”
Auntie was in the living room, practicing hula. She halted her graceful swaying and fingered the off switch on her DVD player. “Clancy went out to the WestWind Project again with the CEO fellow, Roberts or whatever his name is.”
“Oh. Too bad. We’ll just have to tell you all about it and tell him again later,” Sierra said, feeling a bit deflated. And I’m a bit worried about Clancy being out there. What if Kanaloa and Kauhuhu attack while he’s at the jack ship? But then she remembered that Kama had promised to help, and tried to shrug off her uneasiness.
“Where’s Fred?” Chaco asked, peering around.
“Fred? He ate enough bacon at breakfast for a football team, then told me he had to go visit the Menehune,” responded Auntie. “Well! Let’s get you some lemonade and you can tell me all about it.” She bustled into the kitchen. “The two of you must’ve had some adventures, by the looks of you.”
Sierra looked down. It was true. She and Chaco were coated with dust and grime. Her new boots, battered and scarred from walking through the volcanic wilderness around Kilauwea, now looked like her oldest pair. Various rips and tears in her clothes and the occasional raw scrape and scratch proclaimed that she had not been drinking Blue Hawai‘ians at the Hilton. Chaco was just as dusty, but his precious vest filled with earth was perfectly intact. He had been ultra-cautious about not letting anything tear or rip the fabric that protected the source of his mana.
They sat at the kitchen table with their lemonade. Auntie also produced a plate of cookies. “Tell me everything!” she said eagerly.
The tale took a while in the telling, as Sierra and Chaco each related part of the story, interrupted, corrected each other, and generally complicated the story, but eventually Sierra said, “And that’s it. We finally got back to Hilo, dropped off the car, and here we are.”
Auntie just sat and stared at them with shining eyes. “If only I could’ve seen it! The meeting of Pele and Kama Pua‘a. It must have been magnificent!”
“It was,” Sierra said. “Also terrifying. To be honest, we have no idea what Kama plans to do vis à vis WestWind. We’re hoping he hasn’t forgotten in the heat of the moment.”
Auntie considered this. “So he didn’t say how he and Pele planned to stop Kanaloa and Kauhuhu?”
Chaco shook his head. “No. I don’t think Kama knew what he was going to do until he actually reunited with Pele. And then things got kind of wild, so it’s not as though he had the time or attention to discuss it with us.”
“We’ll have to wait and see,” Auntie said.
As they talked, the sun dipped toward the west and mynah birds began settling down for the night, setting up a cacophony in the trees around the house.
“It’s odd that Clancy isn’t back yet,” Sierra noted. “And we still haven’t seen Fred.” Sierra looked at Chaco. “I’m worried,” she said.
• • •
The helicopter hovered over Jack of Hearts. The ship looked like a toy boat at first, but grew rapidly as the ’copter descended and finally set down with a touch as light as a butterfly landing on a fingertip. The ship was a clone of Jack of Diamonds; Clancy couldn’t see any difference between the two. Roberts donned a hardhat, gave another to Clancy, and walked him around the ship, introducing him to the crew and asking questions about the work. Roberts always asked if everything was proceeding normally. Had anyone noticed anything not quite right? The crew was well aware of events at Jack of Diamonds, but they all shook their heads. Roberts began to look positively cheerful as each crewmember affirmed a complete lack of the unusual. Finally, he led the way to an observation platform at what would be the stern of the ship when it was not jacked up on its steel legs.
“We’re going to install a tower on its base,” Roberts explained. “It’s exactly the same maneuver we were doing when we were on Jack of Diamonds. Let’s just hope it goes better this time—but there’s no reason it shouldn’t.”
Clancy had his doubts about that, but didn’t say anything. He peered intently at the ocean around the base. It looked normal enough, dark water slapping at the bright yellow column. He saw that the five men waiting inside the base to position the tower were wearing life jackets. The men at Jack of Diamonds had not had life jackets, so Clancy knew they were taking extra precautions. A few small boats were already launched, waiting a respectful distance from the base. Good. They were ready for problems.
As before, the massive crane swung the 200-foot tower gently from its resting place on the ship and positioned it above the base. The tower began its cautious descent, moving only centimeters at a time. The men in the base were looking up at it, as was nearly everyone but Clancy, who kept his eyes firmly fixed on the water below.
The tower dropped lower, always at a snail’s pace, until it hovered just above the waiting crewmembers. Five pairs of orange-clad arms lifted to make the micro-corrections in trajectory that would snug the tower into the base.
“Stop!” Clancy yelled, pointing down at the water. Just like the incident at Jack of Diamonds, the water was beginning to roil green-white around the base. Shouts of alarm went up around the ship. Roberts leaped into action, grabbing his two-way radio.
“Abort!” he yelled into the receiver. “Get those men out of there!”
Clearly, new emergency procedures were in place. Crewmembers sprang into purposeful activity as the base began to rock slightly, but discernably. The crane began to lift the tower away from the base. The men in the base scrambled down the interior ladder and appeared on the work platform below, where a bridge-like structure extended from the jack ship out to the platform. The workers ran hastily across this to safety as Clancy spotted the first knife-like fin in the water surging below.
Though the workers were now safely onboard the jack ship, the base continued to rock. The movement became more and more pronounced, and Clancy wondered how long it could resist whatever pressure was destabilizing it from beneath the waves.
Roberts had been talking over his radio, but he holstered it abruptly once the workers were safe. His face was pale and shocked. “I need to go talk to the men,” he said. “Please stay here. It’s safe.” He set off down the metal steps leading to the main deck.
Clancy began to follow, but reconsidered. He had an excellent view from this vantage point, and he was unlikely to be helpful down on the main deck, dodging the many crew members moving purposefully below. As he watched, the yellow cylinder of the base rocked ever more wildly, finally tipping over. The water closed over it, and the yellow faded to a ghostly green that wavered and disappeared into the depths. The sharks patrolled for several more minutes, hunting fruitlessly for the men. The fins disappeared as the water calmed, and within minutes, there was no sign that anything at all had happened—except for the activity aboard the jack ship, which now resembled a beehive ripped open by a marauding bear.
When Roberts finally reappeared, his face was gray with worry. “Let’s get back to Kaunakakai,” he said tersely. “This is a disaster. I’ve suspended all work until further notice. There’s no way I can make the milestones now. No way.” He ran his fingers through his hair, looking as though he would prefer to rip it out by the roots. “The thing is, I just don’t get it. What could possibly be doing this?” He looked at Clancy pleadingly, as though Clancy might have an answer.
“The ships are miles apart,” Roberts went on. “Even if there was something anomalous about the other site, it wouldn’t be duplicated here—right here, by some coincidence, the next location we decided to erect a tower. It’s just crazy. And whatever it is leaves no trace behind. The divers went down the last time and found the base lying on the bottom. It had been knocked over like a toy block—but there was no indication what had caused it. None. Shit, I think this just might ruin us.”
The straight-from-Central-Casting CEO had vanished. In his place was a man staring abject failure in the face. Sweat ran down his cheeks in streams, and his eyes were wide. Clancy took the man’s upper arm and felt the tension that hardened his muscles.
“Huff, take a deep breath.” Roberts gave him a sharp glance, but did as he was told. “Take another. Another. And another. That’s it. Okay.” Clancy watched Roberts’ face regain some color. His body didn’t exactly relax, but lost its rigidity. “That’s better. Now, have you done what you can here? Yes? I’m sure you’ve got a lot of crisis management stuff to take care of back at the office. You do? Yeah, we should go.”
Talking calmly, Clancy walked Roberts back to the ship’s helipad. The pilot, as grim-faced as every other worker on the ship, prepared for takeoff and they were soon buzzing over the ocean swells toward Moloka‘i. Roberts’ eyes had the inward look of a man who is contemplating the end of all his hopes and plans.
• • •
When Chaco returned to Jack’s house, he found Sierra waiting up. Auntie Keikilani had gone to bed, but Sierra was waiting up. She was increasingly worried about Clancy and Fred, who was still among those missing in action.
“He’s a big mannegishi, you know,” Chaco had said. “He’s taken care of himself for—oh, I don’t know—several hundred years. Maybe a couple of thousand? He’ll be all right.”
Sierra had to concede that no matter how annoying and buffle-headed Fred might be, he was pretty self-sufficient. So was Clancy (minus the buffle-headedness), but she worried about him, too. When she heard his car draw up outside, she flew out the door, meeting him halfway to the house. Surprised, Clancy folded his arms around her and kissed her.
It wasn’t a casual kiss. Sierra melted into him like warm caramel. He could almost feel her trickling into every nook and cranny of his being. She held herself against him with such urgency, such passion, that he could only respond in kind. Without speaking a single word, they turned and went to the car, arms around each other.
Chapter 28
“What was that all about?” Clancy asked, propping his dark head on one palm. His other arm curled around Sierra’s shoulders. She lay tucked against him, her long hair spilling loose across his bare chest and arms. She smelled of coconut oil and plumeria.
Sierra stirred against him sleepily, utterly relaxed. “I love you,” she murmured.
“I love you too, but what was that all about?”
Sierra reluctantly returned to full consciousness. “I was afraid for you. I was worried sick, really. Auntie told me you had gone out to the jack ship, and I was afraid Kauhuhu and Kanaloa would attack again—and who knows what they might do this time? But I guess Kama kept his promise and everything was okay. Because here you are.”
“Well, no. It wasn’t okay.” Clancy sat up, resting against the hotel cushions. “They attacked again while I was out there with Huff.”
Sierra’s eyes flew open and she sat up abruptly. “What? Why didn’t you say something?”
“I didn’t say anything because you, um, directed my attention elsewhere,” Clancy sai
d reasonably. “Once you shot out of the door and into my arms, I wasn’t thinking about anything else.”
“Tell me what happened.”
It didn’t take long. Sierra had witnessed the first tower coming down, and the second incident was much like the first. Her face grew grim.
“And there were sharks in the water? Like the last time?” Clancy nodded, his face as grim as hers. “The bastards! And no sign of Kama or Pele, I suppose?” He shook his head.
Sierra raised her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs. “I would’ve sworn that Kama would keep his promise. This time, anyway. Now what do we do?”
“Right this minute?” Clancy replied. He kissed the top of her head. “I can think of something to do.” Gently, he tipped her over onto her back and kissed her nose, then her lips. She reached for him, and there was no more talk of WestWind that night.
• • •
When Clancy and Sierra strolled into Auntie Keikilani’s kitchen the next day, Fred was still conspicuous by his absence, and Sierra asked about him.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t seen him,” Auntie said. “He’s usually the first one to turn up for breakfast.”
Sierra’s happy mood evaporated like dew on the beach. “Oh, no. I wonder what’s happened to him? ”
“How old is Fred?” asked Clancy.
“I don’t know. Hundreds, maybe thousands of years,” said Chaco.
“He must be pretty good at taking care of himself by now,” Clancy said.
“Yes, I suppose. But I can’t help worrying. You know—he’s like a kid in a lot of ways.”
“He’s no child, Sierra. Relax. He’ll show up. He always does.”
“I think we’d better have a council of war,” said Sierra at last. “About WestWind. And about Fred. Let’s find Chaco, Rose—who are we missing?”
“Houghton Roberts,” said Clancy, and Sierra shot him a look. “Yes, I know that’s impossible, but I feel for the guy. He seems decent enough, and everything’s crumbling around him. The project will fail because of this, and he doesn’t even know why.”