by Toby Neal
Island Fire
Toby Neal
Copyright Notice
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
© Toby Neal 2014
http://tobyneal.net
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.
Photo credit: Mike Neal © Nealstudios.net
Cover Design: © JULIE METZ LTD.
E-book ISBN-13: 978-0-9896883-3-8
Print: ISBN-13: 978-0-9896883-4-5
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Contents
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Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Acknowledgments
About the Author
More Titles From Toby Neal
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Toby Neal’s Website
Foreword
`Aumakua
In the Hawaiian cultural tradition, an `aumakua is a family god, an ancestor who’s been deified through a sacred ceremony. `Aumakua act as spiritual guardians and may manifest as an animal, such as a shark, an owl, or a turtle, or as a natural phenomenon, such as a rainbow or a flash of lightning. Knowledge of ancestral `aumakua, their particular names, manifestations, and favorite haunts, are passed down through generations. When Hawaiian children are born, they are introduced to their family’s `aumakua, who will guide and advise them throughout their lives if shown proper respect. If a family’s `aumakua assumes the form of a shark, that family takes care of all sharks, refusing to hunt or eat them and often leaving offerings of food for them. There are many stories of `aumakua intervening to save their descendants from harm, or to chastise them for poor behavior.
Mo’o
Mo’o are ancient Hawaiian dragon deities. Revered as the guardians of freshwater, they were known to inhabit waterfalls, fishponds, and mountain streams. Most mo’o of Hawaiian legend were female and could be helpful protectors or dangerous foes. Mo’o possess supernatural powers; they are able to see things that humans can’t, manipulate the seas and rain, and change shape at will. Some of the most powerful mo’o are `aumakua, the deified ancestors of royal Hawaiian families.
—Shannon Wianecki (Ms. Wianecki writes about Hawaiian natural history and culture. Find more of her work at www.shannonwianecki.com.)
For Kai and Eva because you taught me how fun it is to be an aunty
Chapter One
Nick Webster held his backpack close—everything he owned, packed into two cubic feet of space, a double-sided blue nylon cover belted over it. He looked around the crowded airport waiting area. There was a festive feeling in the air—family groups sharing snacks, a couple of people already wearing leis. He was several hours early for the first leg of his flight to Hawaii, a place Nick had never been.
His new home.
Nick’s stomach knotted at the thought. He knew what would take his mind off it—working the room. He would go to an immediate departing gate, dip a crowd close to getting on the plane.
He stood, slinging on the backpack, and drifted with an aimless distracted walk, his gaze apparently on the phone in his hand but really scanning the room. He wore a loose gray hoodie with deep pockets emblazoned with the Notre Dame logo, his ash-blond hair cut short. He looked like a young college athlete, from the tops of his stolen Nikes to the crisp jeans that completed his costume.
Still looking down at the phone, he bumped into a mark standing at the Starbucks stand, doctoring his coffee, and as the man turned with a frown, he raised the hand with the phone in apology. “Sorry, man.” The other hand lifted the square bulge of the man’s wallet from a back pocket and slid it into the sweatshirt, Nick’s turned body concealing the quicksilver movement. Nick never worked a line on its way to the cash register. It was best to dip just after a wallet was used, so the mark took longer to notice it was missing.
Nick drifted on, employing the Drop Coin, Elbow Grab, and Lost Kid’s Toy. His heartbeat spiked with excitement—he’d never had such rich, easy pickings in his chosen profession. Even the train station near where he’d lived in Chicago wasn’t this good. Everyone’s guard was down. They’d bought tickets to Hawaii, they were already on vacation, and they were in a safe place where they’d been “screened.”
It was really kind of unfair. But Nick would need everything he could get where he was going, in case he didn’t want to stay there.
When the hoodie’s pockets were bulging, Nick cycled through the men’s room, and in a bathroom stall, he sat on a toilet and skinned the poke off the wallets. No point keeping credit cards—the marks would have canceled them by the time he got anywhere he could use them. He unbelted the cover on his backpack and stowed the IDs of two men roughly matching his own looks that he’d taken the time to work—six foot, in their twenties. He packed the cash into the black money belt circling his narrow hips.
People thought money belts were lame. Actually, they were one of the only places he couldn’t get into easily.
Nick stood up, setting the backpack on the back of the toilet, and unzipped the hoodie. On the inside, which became the outside, a bold Chicago Bulls logo gave him a new look. He zipped up the black and red sweatshirt and flipped the nylon cover on the backpack over to the red side. Before he exited, he put the hood up over his head and curved his back into the shape of a sullen teen.
He waited a long moment until the roar of the hand dryer and rustle of other bathroom users ceased. Nick slipped out and dropped ten discarded wallets filled with memento photos, IDs, and credit cards into the steel trash bin. Sheep, his friend Dodger had called the marks. They deserved to be fleeced of what he so easily took.
Bea Whitely knew what to expect by the way her dad’s feet sounded on the steps when he came home. She lifted her head, ears tuned like a deer at a watering hole, to listen. The crackling of fish frying in the pan at her hand didn’t drown out a beat of extra energy in the tread of his work boots as he climbed to the porch, and she exhaled relief.
Tonight should be a good night.
She glanced at her reflection in the window over the sink—a brown, lanky girl with a long dark braid and shadowed green eyes. Her hair was neat, her tank top and basketball shorts modest—nothing for him to find fault with.
The screen door creaked, and her father came in.
“Hi, Dad. How was your day?” It was what he wanted her to say. Even a variation wasn't a good idea. Bea flipped several small papio in the skillet, all she’d been able to catch casting off the beach.
“Okay.” William Whitely pulled a sweat-soaked bandanna off his neck and hung it on the peg on the back of the door. He took off the
stained John Deere cap and hooked it over the bandanna. The summery scent of cut grass clung to him, almost masking the underlying tang of sweat and last night’s booze. He sat on one of the straight-backed kitchen chairs, loosened his work boots and toed them off. They hit the linoleum floor one at a time.
Thump.
Thump.
“Fish again, Beatitude?”
She’d always hated when he used her full name. Bea was such a better fit.
“Sorry, Dad. We need to go to the grocery store.” Groceries on the tiny island of Lanai cost four times the national average because all food and necessities had to be flown or boated in, and there was only one small store serving the island. Bea made it her business to catch something every day to supplement their meager budget.
“Hey, Dad. Come check my work,” Sam called from the living room. Bea shot a narrow glance at him—he was trying to distract Dad, prevent an argument. Thirteen-year-old Absalom Kanekoa Whitely had been born with a clubfoot—bent inward and missing two toes. Something about the disability, or Sam himself—Bea had never been able to tell which—made Dad extra hard on him.
And still Sam tried to protect her.
William stood up from the chair, a process of unfolding that was as painful to watch as it must have been to perform. He was a tall man with long arms corded from work and big, hard hands. His face was seamed with weather and drink, furrows of deep-etched grief bracketing a mouth like a tight purse. He shambled into the living room, where Sam sat on the floor at their coffee table, homeschooling books spread around him.
“Show me what you’ve been doing, boy.”
William sat on the rump-sprung tweed couch and dragged the notebook over. Sam got up and sat next to him.
“Check my answers.” Sam’s brown eyes sparkled with pride. He was a slender, wiry boy just beginning the growth spurt that would make him tall. His rumpled brown hair was a little long—Bea would have to clip it soon. He handed his father a pencil. “I got all of today’s lesson and some of tomorrow’s done.”
Bea served up the plates and called them to the table. They ate dinner, and afterward the two of them resumed schoolwork review while Bea cleaned up.
“Taking out the scraps.” Bea scooped the trimmings from the dinner prep into a bowl, including one last whole fish no one had eaten. Neither her father nor brother looked up—salt-and-pepper head bent toward brown, their voices soft. Bea slipped out the door onto the porch, slid her feet into rubber slippers, and trotted the scraps out to the chicken coop at the back. She dumped the fish leavings in. The hens, loose during the day, ran out of their roosting spots to peck up the offal. Rainbow, their horse, pushed her head over the sagging barbed-wire fence and nickered. Bea gave her a handful of green bean scraps and a nose rub.
A conflagration of sunset bloomed against approaching dusk, catching her eye. The purpled hump of nearby Molokai Island loomed across the Kolohi Channel to her left, the wide hammered-metal ocean streaked with sunset. The ball of sun was unusually bright, almost pulsating, the sky strobing with colors. Rubbing Rainbow’s ears as she gazed at the strange sunset, Bea missed her mother, dead three years now, a pain under her sternum she’d tried to grow used to.
Mama would know what was going on with the sunset. Angel Kanekoa Whitely’s Hawaiian roots on Molokai had given her a deep knowledge of the natural world, and she’d passed on all she could to her children.
Bea leaned her forehead on the mare’s blazed face, breathing in the comforting horsey smell. “I’ll be back for you later, girl.”
She had one last pet to feed. She went around the back of the house, which was built on a slope. A slatted storage area marked with a plywood door made the most of the falling-away ground. She heard a soft whuffle from under the house and slipped inside the dim space.
Hi, Beosith, she thought as she squatted and extended her hand, holding the whole fish still wrapped in a paper towel.
Lambent golden eyes emitting light revealed the dragon’s location as he opened them. He moved closer with a rustling of scales, a dry sound like something slithering through straw.
Bea. How is he tonight? The mo’o dragon’s long black tongue snaked out and lifted the fish, paper towel and all, off of her hand and into his mouth. She saw the faint sparks, heard the crunching of the fish’s bones as the mo’o made short work of it. Hawaiian dragons made water their home, but Beosith could still generate fire.
He seems okay. I have to get back, though.
You know I’m here if you need me.
I know. Sorry there wasn’t much to eat tonight.
I can do my own fishing. His blue-purple hide camouflaged him so well in the dim, striped light of the flaming sunset that when the dragon closed his eyes, he vanished.
Sam sat on the overturned wooden box in his room after dinner, the battery-operated reading lamp on the side table casting illumination over the old toaster oven he was working on. Bea swung through the dump on her trips into town to sell fish from the reef, and she’d pick up broken appliances from the rubbish for him to fix with the little soldering set Mama had given him for Christmas the year before she died. Bea resold the ones Sam was able to fix back in Lanai City.
Fixing things. It was what Sam could do. When he was focused on figuring out a problem, he didn’t think about missing Mama or worry about pissing Dad off, or even remember how lonely he was, stuck out here at the house without any friends.
Sam touched a tiny bit of solder wire with the iron. It hissed as it ran to the broken wire contact at the back of the toaster oven. The solder seemed to vanish, drawn in to the break in the wire and filling it as if by magic. He lifted the hot iron, and a tiny curl of sulfurous black smoke rose from the tip.
The join looked good. Sam examined the worn cord, and it seemed intact. He plugged the cord into the wall socket. Their electrical system was run off of batteries that stored about a day’s worth of electrical juice for every hour they ran the generator, which they did as little as possible since gas had passed seven dollars a gallon on the tiny island.
Sam pushed the lever turning the toaster on and watched with satisfaction as the wires inside glowed to life. They could probably get at least five dollars for it at the little resale shop Papa Obajan ran behind his house.
Sam turned off and unplugged everything. He could hear the rumbling of Dad’s snores down the hall. As usual, their father had left the dinner table with a flask of Jack Daniel’s and headed for bed. Dad’s booze took a lot of the family budget, which was why Sam and Bea worked hard and creatively to keep the generator full of gas and food on the table.
Sam got into bed and pulled out his favorite comic, Batman. But even with his little reading lamp on, he spotted a pattern of flickering color in the night sky outside. Sam turned the lamp off and pushed the old sash window up, pressing his face against the screen to see the rippling ribbons of light better.
Purple and green and hot fuchsia, layers of wavering light spanned the black bowl of the heavens. The colored light dimmed the stars and the rising moon, just like the northern lights he’d read about in the geography section of his homeschool program. Did the northern lights show this far toward the equator? He hadn’t thought so, but apparently they did. He thought of calling Bea to show her, but he knew she was going out later and would see the light herself.
Sam pulled the window shut and turned the lamp back on, opening the comic, battered from multiple readings. He liked Batman because the Dark Knight didn’t have a natural superpower; he used technology to be a superhero. Looking down at his clubfoot, sore just from walking around that day, Sam wished he could figure out a way to get around better. Walking any major distance hurt his foot and twisted the muscles of his back.
They’d done some initial correcting of his foot when he was a baby, but Dad hadn’t allowed the further surgeries that were recommended. “God gave you this foot for a reason,” he’d said. “Time will tell what it is. Besides, we can’t afford it.” Mama’s protests had been o
verridden.
Sam wished he could get the foot fixed. He was pretty sure God didn’t have anything to do with it.
Chapter Two
Bea waited in her bed until the rumbling snores from her father’s room signaled sleep. She got out of bed and padded to the door, peering down the short hall of the plantation-style cottage. Sam’s door was closed, but she carefully opened it to peer in at her brother. He was on his back, moonlight falling on outflung arms, relaxation in the boy’s posture that was never there on waking. She closed the door and tiptoed along the linoleum to the creaky screen door, slipped through it. On the porch steps, she shook out her worn cowboy boots in case of roaches or centipedes and slid her feet into their cool leather depths.
Bea spotted something in the sky as she headed for the paddock. She tilted her head back and saw a rippling veil of green-to-purple ribbons crisscrossing the heavens.
The patterns seemed to be moving, shimmering; a curtain of glorious color shot through with white sparks like falling stars. She gazed in wonder. These phenomena sure looked like the northern lights, something she’d read about that appeared at the earth’s poles.
It’s something different. Beosith’s bell-like voice rang in her mind. Her `aumakua, or guardian spirit, had appeared to her a week after her mother’s death.