by K. D. Keenan
And, of course, ran straight into a chain link fence that blocked her from approaching the ocean any closer, although the monstrous, white-toothed waves breaking over the seawall sent gouts of water flooding across the level tarmac. Water swirled around her legs, threatening to topple her. Sierra found a steel utility pole and planted her feet in the streaming water, leaning into the wind, arms wrapped tightly around the pole. Then she screamed at the top of her voice.
“Kanaloa! Please hear me! I’m waiting for you. Everything that happened was because of me, so take your anger out on me. Don’t use your great mana to hurt others, Kanaloa!”
She then began an ancient chant that Auntie had taught her, imploring Kanaloa for mercy. In ancient Hawai‘ian she begged him to lift his hand from his people and bring back the days of sun and good fishing. She gathered all her mana together, envisioning it as brightly glowing ribbons of green, purple, gold, fuchsia, silver—all the hues of the richly colored world she lived in—and offered it all, every bit of it, to Kanaloa in return for his mercy.
Sierra chanted with her eyes tightly shut against the stinging rain. She chanted with an intensity of feeling she had never experienced before. The horror of what this storm could do to thousands, maybe millions of innocent lives pared her down to just one intent: take me, not them.
She chanted with such utter concentration that she never noticed when the wind began to abate. The rain, too, grew softer, and the howling of the storm mellowed, but she chanted on, hoarse now with the effort of keeping her voice raised against the wind.
So when he touched her, she screamed and opened her eyes. She was face-to-face with a tall and muscular Hawai‘ian man dressed as an Ali‘i chieftain. He looked incongruous standing there on the runway, the storm surge flowing around his powerful legs, but Sierra didn’t need to see his all-blue eyes to know who it was. She bowed her head in supplication.
“Kanaloa. You may do what you wish with me. But leave the others alone. Please.”
He contemplated her in silence as the great storm gradually ebbed.
“You have great mana and great courage,” he said. “But neither can save you from me.”
She merely nodded and waited.
“Your Avatar friend tried to explain to me why you did what you did. I didn’t care. You thwarted me—worse, you involved Pele. Fire and water don’t mix. That was not well done.”
Sierra nodded again. The wind had slackened, but she retained her grip on the steel post. “I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have asked for your help in the first place. But I thought Kama had broken his promise—Kama did break his promise. But I shouldn’t have meddled.
“Kanaloa, I don’t expect you to forgive me. I haven’t had these powers for very long. I don’t know what the rules are. I…I don’t really know how it works. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I’ll take whatever I’m owed for what I’ve done.”
Kanaloa looked up into the black and gray sky, his strange eyes following the flight of an entire rooftop on the wind.
“I may have been a little bit hasty,” he said, bringing his gaze back to Sierra. “After all, the whales are happy now that the construction has stopped. The Menehune are happy because the whales are. Pele has returned to Kilauwea. She enjoyed spoiling my game, but she won’t be back—she only did it because that muscle-bound pretty-boy asked her to get involved.”
Sierra thought that was an accurate description, but a little harsh. “Kama Pua‘a is okay. He saved my life. And Chaco’s life. He’s a bit full of himself, but I think his heart’s in the right place.”
“And I think your heart is in the right place,” said Kanaloa unexpectedly. “Go in peace. Aloha.” Without any warning, he was gone. Sierra stood in the water, now beginning to recede. She was drenched, and she had small bleeding cuts where random objects driven by the wind had encountered her skin. Her shoes were gone, who knew where. The wind’s piercing scream declined to a steady roar as the surf thundered against the rocks of the seawall bordering the runway.
She blinked the rain out of her eyes and limped back to the terminal building, carefully negotiating the debris left by the storm.
Chapter 35
Sierra sat on the lawyer’s overstuffed brown leather chair, wondering why she had been summoned to this meeting. Clancy’s lawyer, Robert Jamison, had called her shortly after her return from Moloka‘i and asked her to come by. She assumed Clancy had left some kind of bequest for her in his will, but it was hard for her to be interested; there were so many urgent problems to solve. How would she find the time and the money to search for Clancy? How would she ever find him in the vast expanse of territory and time indicated by the loa?
Sierra visited Jamison’s unassuming offices near downtown Sunnyvale about three weeks after returning from Hawai‘i. He didn’t keep her waiting long, bustling in with a sheaf of papers and a briefcase that he set on his credenza before turning to her. He adjusted black-framed glasses and cleared his throat.
“Ms. Carter? How do you do?” He held out a large, soft hand and shook hers. “First, please accept my condolences on Mr. Forrester’s death. He was my client for several years. I am so terribly sorry.”
Sierra nodded wordlessly. She’d had to endure a lot of what she hoped was misplaced sympathy in the past several days as she encountered friends and co-workers who knew about Clancy. It never got easier. She felt vaguely guilty for accepting their sympathy. And people sometimes asked when the memorial service would be held. She might accept their condolences under false pretenses, but she was damned if she was going to organize a fake memorial service.
“So, when is the memorial service?” Jamison asked. “I would like to attend. If that’s all right with you.”
“Of course it would be fine, Mr. Jamison, but I’m not holding a memorial service. It’s just too…difficult. At this time. I hope you understand.”
Jamison obviously didn’t understand, but he nodded and adjusted the glasses, which had slid down his nose. “Indeed, indeed,” he said and picked up a formal-looking legal document. “As you know, Mr. Forrester made you the sole beneficiary of his will—”
“WHAT?”
Jamison looked up in surprise. “Didn’t he tell you? I assumed you must know. Dear me, let me get you some tea or something.”
He hurried out of the room as Sierra, literally unable to speak, sat gasping in his brown leather chair. By the time he returned, closely followed by a young man with a laden tray, she had recovered somewhat. Jamison fussed over her, offering water, tea and coffee—how about some cookies?—until Sierra accepted a cup of coffee and a ginger snap. She despised ginger snaps but couldn’t think of any other way to make him sit down again.
“Yes, well. Now. Feeling better? Ah, good. Now, back to Mr. Forrester’s will…”
The upshot was that Sierra inherited Clancy’s house, savings, investments, and all worldly goods.
To her astonishment, he turned out to have quite a lot of money. Apparently he had been squirreling everything away for decades, probably since he was quite young, and had made some excellent investments in Silicon Valley technology companies. In addition to her own modest holdings, Sierra was now the owner of a three-bedroom home in Sunnyvale—a million-dollar-plus ranch-style bungalow built in the 1950s and lately remodeled—a pleasantly plump bank account, and a stock portfolio that was currently close to three million dollars. Added to that, she was the beneficiary of his 401k and life insurance policy. Sierra Carter was now, if not fabulously wealthy, quite comfortably well off.
With care, she would never have to work again if she didn’t want to.
But of course, Clancy wasn’t dead, and this flood of worldly wealth didn’t really belong to her.
Which was not something she could tell Clancy’s lawyer.
But she couldn’t just take Clancy’s hard-earned money. He would need it someday. Hopefully.
Then it occurred to her that she could quit her job and devote all her time and Clancy’s substantial
resources to finding him and bringing him home.
The seesaw between conscience and guilt abruptly stilled. There was no problem. Clancy was the priority. Although he hadn’t planned to use his resources in this way, Sierra was sure he would be the first to approve. After all, what good was a 401k if you never retired and claimed the money?
Her brain spun. One moment, she was wondering how she would ever be able to find the time and money that would be required to search for Clancy. The next moment, she was free to do as she pleased. Sierra listened politely to the rest of Robert Jamison’s painstaking explanation, probably missing most of it, then rushed home to make some phone calls.
• • •
“But that’s wonderful news,” enthused Kaylee, sitting with Mama Labadie, Chaco, and Fred in Sierra’s living room. “Now you can really concentrate on looking for Clancy full-time.”
“I still have one little problem,” Sierra said. “Namely, he may or may not be in 76,000 square miles of mostly jungle. And, if you recall, ‘Time is not on our side.’ It’s kind of hard to know where—or when—to start.” She looked hopefully at Mama. “Do you suppose the loa…?”
Mama shook her head regretfully. “Sorry. The loa don’ wanna answer more a your questions. They say, ‘Look to yourself.’”
Sierra stared at Mama in horror. “How am I ever going to find Clancy if the loa won’t help me?”
Rose cleared her throat and leaned forward. “Sierra, this is as good a time as any to bring this up. You don’t know your own strength.”
Chaco, Fred, Mama, and Kaylee all nodded solemnly at this. Sierra stared at them, confused and worried.
“Tha’s right,” said Mama. “You the strongest of all of us. ’Cept Chaco.”
“What do you mean?” Sierra asked.
“They mean that your powers make you magically stronger than anyone else here, except for me,” Chaco said, watching Sierra closely. “I am still the stronger, but I hope we never fight.” He smiled, but Sierra didn’t.
“I don’t feel powerful or full of mana or whatever,” Sierra replied. “I feel like when it works, it’s usually because there’s an emergency. It’s like I can’t stop the mana from being used when there’s trouble. But on an everyday basis? I don’t have any special powers.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Mama said. “The loa say you close to an Avatar your ownself.”
Sierra rounded on Mama. “Where did you say you’re from? Just curious.”
Mama eyed her. “Tha’s nunna your beeswax, girl. Don’ change the subject.”
“Beeswax?” Really?
Rose cleared her throat again. “Sierra, I think what we’re trying to tell you is that you are a hair’s breadth away from becoming a powerful sorceress. You have the raw power. What you lack is the training and discipline to use it.”
“Me? A sorceress?” Sierra snorted.
“Yes. And I hope I don’t hurt your feelings here, but it needs to be said.” Rose looked around at the others and received silent confirmation. “From the beginning, you’ve resisted your power. You didn’t want to be involved in fighting Necocyaotl. You didn’t believe in your own strength in Moloka‘i. Think about it; why did you call on Kanaloa and Kauhuhu? Why didn’t you look to your own powers to solve the problem?”
Sierra looked around at each face in disbelief. This was an intervention. Only she wasn’t an alcoholic or a drug addict. Apparently, she was a delinquent sorceress who didn’t want to use magic.
“You know,” she said slowly, “I don’t want to be a sorceress. I want to be normal. I’d like to settle down, marry, have kids, live in a rose-covered cottage, and keep chickens. I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
She looked around the room again. She did not like what she saw.
Chapter 36
Sierra drove across the mountains to the coast the next day. It was a lovely summer day, but it was a Wednesday so she didn’t have to fight the beach-goers fleeing Silicon Valley. She reached her destination in under an hour. She wanted to walk on the beach, to take solitary time to think.
The purpose of the “intervention” had been to convince Sierra that she needed to train and develop her powers.
“Rose has been teaching me,” Sierra had said. “She’s done a great job.”
Rose shook her head. “I can’t take you any further, Sierra. Your powers are far greater than mine, and I have no idea how to guide you.”
Mama Labadie agreed, saying, “Can’t help you, girl. You need to find a teacher.”
“Can’t I just choose you?”
Mama shook her head. “No point a-tall in that. Find someone stronger than you.”
“What if I don’t want to be a sorceress?”
“That would be like giving a baby a loaded pistol,” said Chaco. “A lot of firepower, but no idea how dangerous it is or how to use it.”
Sierra had shaken her head and asked for privacy and time to think. The three women had departed, Kaylee giving her a hug and a kiss and a whispered, “Cheer up, honey. It could be worse. You could have ended up doing public relations your entire life.”
So when Sierra arrived at her favorite beach, she was feeling annoyed. She was annoyed with her friends for insisting that she take on magical training. She was annoyed with the situation—she had never asked to be gifted with amazing magical powers. She was annoyed with herself for not understanding the powers better, not comprehending how magic worked. The only person she was not annoyed with was Clancy, who had landed in his current predicament for only one reason: he was a good man who was trying to help.
She walked south on the beach, heading for an empty stretch. The sandstone cliffs made the area unsuitable for building, so there was a miles-long stretch of largely deserted sand and waves. It couldn’t have been more different from Hawai‘i. The water was cold even in summer, and the waves heavy with sand and kelp. Swimmers without wetsuits braving the waves ended up chilled, wearing swimsuits now weighed down by several pounds of accumulated sandy grit. The sand wasn’t ground-up coral, bleached white under a tropical sun. It was beige where dry and brown where wet, composed of minerals and shells.
Sierra walked along the water’s edge, out of habit searching for shells and sea glass. She had found several perfect sand dollars and a lovely bit of cobalt glass, frosted from its years in the waves, when she nearly bumped into a small woman wearing a green skirt. Sierra’s head had been lowered, searching the sand for treasures, and she hadn’t seen the woman until she was almost on top of her.
“Oh! Excuse me,” Sierra exclaimed. The woman wore a colorful green, red, and yellow squarish top over her skirt. Her straight black hair was arranged in an elaborate hairstyle bound with tasseled cotton bands. She wore a necklace of chunky jade beads and possessed the rich, deep brown skin and high-bridged, arched nose of an Aztec or a Maya Indian. The woman wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow in downtown Santa Cruz, but she looked out of place on this beach.
Sierra’s adventures had given her the ability to recognize an Avatar when she encountered one. “Who are you?” asked Sierra.
“Huixtocihuatl,” replied the woman, smiling.
“I see. And if I may ask, who is Huixtocihuatl when she’s at home?”
“The goddess of the sea,” said the small woman, still smiling.
“I thought Kanaloa was the god of the sea?”
“It takes a village, you know.”
Sierra did not know, but she decided to move on. “So why are you here?”
“A mutual friend sent me along with a message,” said Huixtocihuatl.
“Mutual friend?”
“You know him as Quetzalcoatl.”
“Ah, yes. What does the Big Q have to say to me?”
Huixtocihuatl gave her a quizzical look at this, but went on. “Lord Quetzalcoatl says he can help you to find your man.”
Sierra’s world suddenly became brighter. “Really? He’ll help me?”
“Yes,” replied the Avatar. “But he
says first help yourself. Find a teacher. Become what you were meant to be.”
“But what about Clancy?” Sierra almost wailed. “He might be in terrible danger, and I can’t help him!”
But the woman just shook her dark head. “I can only tell you what Lord Queztalcoatl instructed me to say. I have no more to tell.”
Sierra nearly imploded on the spot. More mystery! More obfuscation. More magical doings that she didn’t understand. She pushed her palms against her eyes in frustration, and when she looked again, Huixtocihuatl had vanished and she was alone on the beach. At her feet lay a single large feather, blue-green and sparkling. Sierra knew the feather was from Quetzalcoatl, as she knew that when she touched it, it would chime like a distant crystal bell. She regarded the feather for several moments as it lay gleaming on the sand. The feather trembled as the sea breeze threatened to lift it into the air. Sierra picked it up. The faint chimes sounded clearly over the constant low mutter of the waves.
Aloud, Sierra said, “I’m coming, Clancy.” She turned and set her feet on a new path.
Afterword
Wind Farms and Moloka‘i
Fire in the Ocean is a work of fantasy fiction that bears little relationship to what we like to think of as reality. Needless to say, there are no Menehune-built wind farms on the west side of Moloka‘i. Penguin Bank is still an extinct volcano, as it has been for millions of years. However, I came up with the idea of a company trying to build a wind farm on Penguin Bank before I knew that such an attempt had actually been made. Disappeared News had articles about a company called Grays Harbor out of Seattle that wanted to build a wind farm on Penguin Bank.[7] Suits were filed in an effort to protect the area, which is a humpback whale breeding ground and nursery. The installation was prevented from going forward by the discovery that the permit for the site had been issued by a government agency that had no authority to do so.