by Terri Farley
They didn’t, but she was still left with the problem of catching Hoku. And, wait, if the other horses hadn’t followed Joker, why should she believe they’d follow her filly?
Darby shrugged. It didn’t matter what she thought. Jonah thought they’d follow Hoku, so she’d give it a try.
She walked closer to the horses. They all watched her, Hoku most of all.
Darby stopped when Lady Wong and Blue Ginger snapped at their babies, making them back away from Darby instead of going to her as they usually did. The other horses swept their heads from side to side, looking somehow embarrassed as they backed away, too.
Only Tango remained beside Hoku. The rose roan mustang fretted and stamped, but she stayed, watching Hoku dip her head like a swan, before raising her muzzle to point at Darby. Hoku arched her golden neck again and repeated the movements, using her chin to draw long ovals in the air.
It almost looked like a dance.
“What’s that, pretty girl?” Darby asked as she took a step closer.
In a tangle of legs and switching tails, the other horses scattered.
“You guys,” Darby scoffed softly, “don’t roll your eyes like you don’t see me every day. I know the earthquake was scary, but I didn’t do it.”
Darby knew she couldn’t just walk right up to Hoku and slip the rope around her neck. The rest of the horses acted like they were about to stampede. This wasn’t going to work, but she had an idea of something else that might.
Darby looked back over her shoulder. She didn’t see Jonah standing on the lanai or the cliff, looking down to make sure she didn’t do anything dangerous. That was a good thing, too, because what she wanted to try was a little risky.
She sat down cross-legged in the middle of the pasture and pretended to be fascinated by her own hands. She only remembered a couple of finger games from her childhood.
Putting the knuckles of each hand together, she whispered, “Here’s the church….”
Interlacing her fingers, she pointed her index fingers up, tips touching.
“Here’s the steeple….”
She let her thumbs escape, pressed them side to side, then pulled them apart.
“Open the doors….”
Darby lifted her eyelashes a fraction of a millimeter to see all the horses were watching her.
But then she turned her hands, fingers laced, upside down, and wiggled them wildly as she said, “And see all the people!”
Koko and her silver-maned colt bolted. Luna pawed impatiently.
“I’m not leaving,” Darby told him. At the same time, Hoku looked back at the big bay stallion and shivered her skin, as if his stare was a pesky insect crawling on her.
This little piggy went to market. This little—Wait. That was a toe game you played with babies. Not that the horses would know the difference.
Darby didn’t look up again until she heard teeth clipping grass.
The horses were relaxing. At least, Judge was. Darby dared to look up again and saw that the old horse had been joined by the brown bird that rode on his withers. The bird flared its wings to show white bars against the brown, then returned to harvesting minuscule bugs from the gelding’s back.
Darby smiled as four horses eased away from the herd. Navigator, Judge, Tango, and Hoku grazed in her direction. Slowly, so slowly, but it was progress and she was excited. Until Luna decided to round them up.
At least, that’s what she thought he was doing at first.
As Luna pranced toward the group of four, Tango and Hoku flattened their ears, but the geldings moved out of his path. The king was coming and they would not block him.
Hoku did. She stood beside Tango, but Luna looked past her, regarding Tango as if he’d never seen her before.
Luna reared. His arched neck shone like mahogany and his forelegs curved. His display was enough to send the walking geldings into a trot, leaving him with the two fillies.
Luna tucked his chin and gave a snort so loud it made Darby jump. He was showing off, and he looked great doing it, Darby thought.
Tango’s ears flattened, but the big bay didn’t take the hint. He kept jogging forward.
Tango’s eyes narrowed and even though her hooves didn’t change position, she bared her teeth and her pink head snapped out like a snake’s.
Not so impressed, Darby thought.
Luna strode on toward the fillies, planting each hoof with determination. He looked pretty serious about teaching Hoku and Tango a lesson in obedience.
But the two fillies had lived in the wild. They stood firm, guarding each other.
If some flip of forelock or widening of eyes signaled their defiance, Darby missed it.
Hoku charged past Luna. Maybe she was trying to lead him away, but the stallion rushed to Tango.
Whirling around, Hoku moved into position to kick Luna.
But the stallion had eyes in the back of his head, or he heard what Hoku was doing, because, instead of touching noses with Tango, he lashed out his own hind legs at the same time as Hoku.
Neither connected, so the moves were just warnings, but Darby bolted to her feet, afraid for either horse to be hurt.
“Stop it!” she yelled. “Luna!”
Darby waved her arms, hoping to distract the horses, but she might as well have been mute and invisible.
This was bad. Luna outweighed Hoku by hundreds of pounds. If his sledgehammer hooves landed, they could break her slim legs.
Why would Luna fight a filly he’d been courting just last week?
Was it because Hoku was what Jonah had called a tomboy mare? The mustang filly had challenged two stallions: Luna and Black Lava.
Now, Luna reared and kicked out once more, then screamed his dominance.
Hoku sprinted away, but just when Darby’s shoulders sagged in relief, she realized Hoku wasn’t fleeing. She was galloping a protective circle around Tango.
The fillies made a game of their defiance. Heads tossing and eyes sparkling, they taunted the stallion.
But what if the stallion decided to discipline them?
He didn’t. Luna gave a snort that might have meant disgust or amusement. Then he shook his mane and jogged back to his knoll.
When Darby realized both hands were flattened over her heart, she forced her arms to hang loose at her sides. Then she cleared her throat and whispered, “That could have been worse.”
With both fillies safe from their own mischief, Darby smiled.
Watching the horses communicate had been fascinating. Of course she’d missed much of what was going on. It was like watching a play performed in another language. She’d understood enough to follow the basic plot.
I could watch wild animals for a living, Darby thought. Biologists and naturalists and all kinds of scientists did it.
So pay closer attention in science classes, she scolded herself. Like Ecology.
She still didn’t know how she’d managed to forget a major assignment. It just wasn’t like her!
Losing track of time wasn’t like her, either, and she must have done precisely that, because now Jonah was watching her from the bluff.
“Expecting me to return at the head of a line of horses,” Darby grumbled to herself. And that wasn’t going to happen. Although, maybe…
She had one thing left to try. And it wouldn’t work while Hoku and Tango faced away from her, nosing each other in congratulations over Luna’s retreat.
But horses’ eyes were on the sides of their heads. They had great peripheral vision, right?
“C’mon, Hoku,” Darby whispered. She tightened her ponytail. “Hoku, my sweet, strong girl, you showed Luna who’s boss. Now, come show me you’re my friend.”
Hoku’s head swung around and she stared at Darby. Hoku took deep breaths, and with each one her head rose higher. She knew Darby had freed her from the corral. Maybe that comforted her enough to return, because Hoku danced on nervous hooves toward Darby, circling her as she had Tango.
“That’s my beauty,”
Darby said. “You are such a smart girl. You know I didn’t cause all that shaking, don’t you? And I let you run when you felt like you had to get away from it.”
Good thing no humans stood near enough to hear, Darby thought. Her gushing sounded crazy, or at least peculiar.
“Abnormal.” Darby pronounced the word with exaggerated precision and Hoku shook her head, making a blizzard of her blond forelock in front of her eyes. She looked like she was laughing, and when Darby started walking, Hoku followed her without the lead rope looped around her neck.
A deep neigh made Darby turn.
Luna gazed toward Sun House. He’d spotted Jonah. With no more than a snap of his fingers, her grandfather could probably call the bay stallion to him. But he wouldn’t.
The man and the stallion had an understanding. Luna guarded the mares and foals while Jonah ran things up at the ranch.
Darby had climbed halfway back to Sun House, when she heard the rasp of more hooves. She glanced back to see Navigator and Biscuit pass Hoku. Then they were right behind her, and after giving her hair a sniff, the two geldings paced ahead, returning to their home and hay.
They trust me, Darby thought.
Without meaning to, she walked a little taller, but when she reached the top of the path, Hoku stopped.
The filly glanced right, looking down the driveway as it became a street to the highway. She looked left, at the two geldings, Jonah, and her corral. Then the filly swerved toward Darby, but questions clouded her eyes.
“C’mon, girl,” Darby whispered. “It’ll be okay.”
Would it? Darby wondered. What if there was an aftershock while she was at school? Cade was gone, Aunty Cathy might go to the doctor, and Kimo was already later than usual. Kit was under his house, assessing damage, and Jonah was now squatted there, too, talking to him.
Darby turned cold, thinking how helpless they’d be if there was another serious quake.
She looked back at her horse and wondered. Would anyone think of freeing Hoku from her corral a second time?
Darby couldn’t promise her horse safety, and Hoku sensed it, turning her gaze back to the pasture.
“I understand,” Darby told Hoku. Then, even though she dreaded trying to explain this silent conversation to Jonah, Darby made a vague shooing motion to let the sorrel know she was free to go.
Lady Wong uttered a whinny, stretching her long, gray neck in a way that made it seem as if she was calling Hoku.
The filly stood so close, Darby could have swung the lead rope around her neck, or touched the white star on her sorrel chest.
“I think you’re better off down there for now, but you’d better remember this when I come to get you after school,” Darby warned.
Hoku made no promises. She simply wheeled on her back hooves and galloped down the trail, before Darby changed her mind.
Chapter 6
Darby expected Jonah to be angry.
What do you have to say for yourself? he’d probably demand.
So Darby prepared excuses as she walked.
She hadn’t caught Hoku, but she had gotten him a horse—a choice of two, actually—to ride to Tutu’s cottage.
Besides, she’d allowed Hoku to go. It had been her decision, not the filly’s. And Jonah always claimed he wouldn’t second-guess her when it came to Hoku.
But it turned out her excuses weren’t necessary.
Maybe the earthquake had shaken a little sarcasm out of her grandfather, Darby thought.
As they met in front of Sun House, Jonah only said, “You open the cage and a wild bird will fly out.”
“I let her go, after she came to me.”
“I saw.” Jonah nodded, looking weary. The hair at his temples looked grayer than usual.
“Hoku would have come all the way back up here, if I’d asked her to,” Darby said. When Jonah gave a skeptical smile, she insisted, “Really, she would have.”
“If you say so.” Jonah yawned, then pointed at his brown Land Rover. “Looks like Megan’s ready to go.”
Alarm crackled through Darby. Megan. School. Aunty Cathy. And she still hadn’t called her mom. How could her mind have floated so far away?
Aunty Cathy was walking toward the truck, so Darby waved and hurried up to her.
“How do you feel?” Darby asked first.
“Okay,” Aunty Cathy said, then admitted, “A little weird. Kind of like I’m looking at things from a distance.” Hearing what she’d said, she amended, “I’m fine to drive, but I think I’ll take Jonah’s advice and stop by the doctor’s office, just to be—Darby, what are you doing?”
Darby had been standing on tiptoe, trying to see past Aunty Cathy’s messy brown-blond bangs, but she hadn’t meant to be obvious. “I was checking to see if your pupils were both the same size. I’ve read that when people get head injuries, that’s one of the first things you’re supposed to do.”
Aunty Cathy squeezed Darby in a one-armed hug, then opened her eyes wide, and let Darby look.
“They seem the same,” Darby told her.
“Thanks, honey,” Aunty Cathy said, then glanced at her watch.
Darby said quickly, “I’ll be right back, after I call my mom—”
“The power’s out and the phone lines are down, even in Hapuna,” Cathy said sympathetically.
Darby sighed. Her mom would understand.
“I’ll just get my stuff, then.”
And put on clothes, brush my hair, and grab some food, she added to herself, but when Aunty Cathy opened the Land Rover’s door and made a sound of admiration, Darby stopped.
Hands on her hips, Cathy looked at the clean upholstery and dashboard smelling of coconut polish and mused, “Don’t rush. This appears to be the one place on the ranch I won’t have to clean up. Take your time and let me enjoy it.”
Just the same, Darby sprinted toward the house.
“This was smart,” Megan said to Darby as they walked onto the campus of Lehua High School.
“What was?”
“Starting with Nutrition Break instead of first-period classes,” Megan said, waving as she glimpsed her friend Elane. “We can find out what’s up with everybody—”
“And eat.”
Megan saluted Darby’s firm tone.
“I’m starving,” Darby explained. “I bet it’s some kind of survival response, so you’ll be strong after an emergency and—”
“You could have eaten at home. I mean, there was food all over the place,” Megan teased.
“I know. Do you hear that?” Darby asked, looking down at the gummy sound of each step she took. “I think my soles are coated with pineapple juice.”
As her stomach growled, she mentally thanked Aunty Cathy for reaching into the ranch cash box to give her and Megan enough money to buy food at the snack carts.
Most students had been shaken from bed by the earthquake and many of them had been awake ever since, but you wouldn’t know it, Darby thought, by the noisy chatter as they waited in line for food.
Darby had just noticed that her cousin Duckie stood at the front of the line, already chugging milk, when an arm reached out to grab Megan’s elbow.
“I saved you a place,” Elane said, dragging Megan into line.
Darby flashed a sheepish look at the guy they’d just cut in front of and asked, “Is it okay?”
Shoulders hunched, hands shoved deep in the pockets of baggy shorts, the guy looked like he was asleep on his feet.
Darby smiled at his black hair, rumpled into something like a cockatoo’s crest. In slow motion, he looked up, blinked as if she’d wakened him, and gave a “be my guest” wave of his hand, so Darby tucked in behind Megan.
“…almost six point zero on the Richter scale,” Elane was saying. “Centered on the Big Island, near Hilo, and why do I know that? Oh yeah, you remember how much my mom and dad laughed when I spent all my summer job money on a special cabinet with baby-safe locks for my computer? Turns out they’re earthquake-proof, too, and my computer’s not
facedown with a cracked screen like the television.”
Elane looked pleasantly smug, Darby thought. The girl, with her short brown hair and glasses, loved her computer. She was so skilled, teachers consulted her all the time for troubleshooting.
“Hey dude, howzit!”
“Hey! Bet you was scared?”
“Nah…”
Darby didn’t look back, but she was pretty sure the denial came from the cockatoo-crested boy who was in line behind her. He and another guy must be doing some friendly scuffling, too, she thought, because one of them bumped her shoulder.
“No shame, you can tell me.”
“Nah, I went back to bed. That’s why I’m so messed up!”
Darby sneaked a glance over her shoulder to see the cockatoo guy tousling his own hair, making it even worse, as he talked. She was returning his grin when his friend, a guy in a gray hooded sweatshirt, wheeled on her, sneering, then turned back to his friend.
“Haole girl’s givin’ you the stink eye!” he hooted.
“I am not!” Darby snapped, but just then Megan jiggled her shoulder.
“Order,” Megan said.
“Really, I wasn’t,” Darby said, still looking back at the boys. Despite her protest, the guy in gray was still doubled up, laughing at his friend and pointing at Darby.
“Haole crab!”
Darby couldn’t tell which of the boys had said it, but Megan was not pleased.
“Come on!” Megan raised her voice to Darby, gestured toward the snack-cart lady, then turned on the two guys and barked a few words Darby couldn’t understand.
Darby wasn’t nearly as hungry as she’d been a couple of minutes ago, especially when she realized that the guy in the hood was in one of her classes.
“What did you say to them?” Darby asked Megan.
“Never mind,” Megan said, hiding a smile behind her breakfast wrap of Spam and eggs. “There are a few Hawaiian phrases you’ll have to learn on your own. And that was one of them.”
Miss Day’s English class was a madhouse. Darby noticed that at the same time she saw her friend Ann’s seat was empty.