Fire Maiden

by Terri Farley

  “Not funny,” Darby said, but she smiled and kept Joker turning in the direction in which he was heading. When she finally had him aimed in the direction where they’d started out, she put him into a jog.

  Joker snorted at Cade each time they passed him on the fence.

  The guy looked awful, Darby thought. Like an anxious father, his frown was fixed on Joker, and he tugged at his collar until his shirt hung at a weird angle. He held his hat in one hand, while the other pushed nonexistent hair out of his face over and over again.

  Brother, Cade had called this horse, and he must be afraid she’d hurt him.

  When Jonah told her to move Joker into a lope, Darby gave it a try.

  The Appaloosa jumped forward. Darby pulled back on the reins. Then Jonah walked toward them, and Joker ran in place for a few seconds before stopping.

  “Okay, this is what happened,” Jonah said, as if he were dissecting a crime. “He was too spirited for whoever rode him before Cade. They kicked him into a lope and when he went, they yanked back on his mouth. Every time, they had to kick him harder because he knew they were going to hurt him when he did go. Finally, he just decided to skip that painful part and buck ’em off. Scared rider with too much horse. Got it?”

  Darby nodded. It made sense. She’d done almost the same thing when Joker seemed about to take off, even though she’d been expecting trouble.

  “This time,” Jonah instructed her, “when Joker’s about to buck, just press your elbows against your ribs, lean back enough to keep his head up, and drive him forward with your legs.”

  Elbows in. Head up. Drive with legs.

  Darby understood, but it took three tries to do it right. Once, she lost her stirrup and Joker ended up going in a circle. Another time Darby lost her stirrup and slid halfway out of the saddle, before she pulled herself back up on the saddle horn. At last, she drove Joker through his buck and it worked just the way Jonah had said it would.

  Only then did he let her dismount.

  Her hands were already trembling when she noticed Joker’s muzzle was covered with froth.

  “How did I hurt his mouth?” she said, gasping.

  She’d tried so hard to keep her hands light on the reins.

  “You did fine,” Jonah said, then pointed at Joker’s mouth. “Not the bad kind of foam. Did you forget how to read horses, girl?”

  Sweat dripped from Darby’s forehead, down her temples, but she ignored it, focusing on the Appaloosa’s eyes. They were so dark, they almost matched his disheveled forelock. Finally, though, she made out the gelding’s expression.

  “What’s in his eyes?” Jonah prodded her.

  “Mischief.”

  Surprised, Darby turned toward Cade. He still looked scruffy with concern, but he didn’t sound that way.

  “It’s like, when you’re nervous, you know how your mouth dries out?” Cade explained. “Well, he’s not nervous. His mouth is wet. He’s having fun messing with you.”

  “Oh, good,” she managed.

  “Turn Cade’s trick horse over and come on up to the office, get out of the heat for a minute,” Jonah said.

  Why were her legs shaking now, when she and Joker were both safe? Darby put her hands on the saddle skirt for balance and leaned there a minute, swallowing against a kind of queasiness.

  She hadn’t heard Cade move off. He wouldn’t, without Joker. That meant he had to still be standing there, watching her.

  Darby pushed back and squared her shoulders. She offered him the reins with a steady hand, but she hadn’t counted on the quaver in her voice as she said, “I just need a drink of water.”

  Cade nodded and took the reins, then replaced his hat.

  “I don’t let just anyone ride my horse,” he said.

  It was almost a compliment or almost a joke. Darby couldn’t tell which.

  “Well, I don’t let my horse stomp just anyone,” she said, gesturing at his open shirt and the hoofprint Hoku had scarred him with on the day of her arrival.

  He gave a short laugh that reminded her of Jonah’s, then pulled his shirt closed. He led Joker just a few steps before he looked back over his shoulder.

  “I’m going out to gather cattle near Two Sisters. I’ll keep an eye out for you and Ann.”

  “Do you know Ann?” Darby asked.

  “Only met her once and she ’bout took my head off for trying to help her.”

  “But Ann’s so nice,” Darby protested.

  Cade shrugged. “She was riding a blue-black horse full out and bareback”—Cade pointed west—“and I thought he was running away with her.”

  “Oh,” Darby said, thinking of the day she’d slowed her pace so that Ann, with her injured leg, could keep up. She’d been insulted and pretty mad.

  “She told me that Soda—that was the mare’s name—was just shakin’ her sillies out before some kid rode her, and I could go rescue someone who needed it.” Cade’s lips twisted in a self-mocking smile. “Anyway, you watch out for Pigtail Fault.”

  That was just like a real conversation, Darby thought as Cade and Joker walked away. And then she blushed, wondering why she’d even noticed.

  Another time, Darby might think that having juice and peanut butter crackers with your grandfather sounded like a little-kid thing to do. But today she was grateful for the coolness of the office, and the food had made her feel less shaky and tired.

  Jonah sat in Aunty Cathy’s desk chair, peering so closely at the computer that his nose almost touched the screen.

  When Darby wadded up the plastic from the crackers and threw it away, then stood up and tidied her drooping ponytail, Jonah asked, “Feel more confident?”

  Darby considered his question for a few seconds. She didn’t want her grandfather to think she was full of herself, but she couldn’t deny she did feel more confident.

  “This morning helped a lot,” Darby said, “but how do you think I’m doing?”

  She waited for Jonah to mention she’d ridden Joker through an aftershock. Wouldn’t that be a big deal to anyone?

  “Fine,” he said. “But you have one more horse to go.”

  “Tomorrow,” she reminded him.

  “Why wait?” Jonah asked. “In the old days, they’d hire bronc busters who’d work through ten or fifteen colts in a day. Pretty soon, they just depended on muscle memory.”

  “And cruelty,” Darby said. “Besides, I’m—”

  She stopped short of saying she was too tired and sweaty to ride Baxter. Maybe Jonah was right. Hours of riding, reacting instead of listing steps one, two, and three, might make her responses automatic.

  Still, she made one more weak protest. “Really, I think tomorrow would be better, don’t you?”

  “No.” Jonah gave her a buddy-buddy punch in the shoulder and activated the office walkie-talkie.

  “Yes, sir,” Kit’s voice crackled to them from someplace on the ranch.

  “Bring Baxter up. I got you a bronc buster,” Jonah said.

  “Yes, boss. You want me to help ’er out?”

  “You better. I can’t bear to watch,” Jonah joked. “Just let me know if we need an ambulance.”

  Buckin’ Baxter trembled with anticipation. He sniffed Darby’s boots, jeans, and hands, and Kit didn’t object when she stroked the horse’s blueberry-and cream-colored neck.

  He shook like a big dog, allowing her to lead him around the pen as if the reins were a leash.

  “What should I do?” Darby asked Kit when they rounded the last bit of the corral and stopped in front of him.

  Arms crossed, Kit leaned against the fence.

  “I’m more of an expert on the business of makin’ ’em buck, not stoppin’ ’em,” Kit said. “But if I were you, I’d just get on and put him through his paces the way you did the other two.”

  “But I’m not one-hundredth as good a rider as Kimo,” Darby said in a high-pitched whisper that caught Baxter’s attention. “And Baxter bucks with him.”

  “Kimo’ll be the first o
ne to tell you he let Baxter get away with it too many times. You’re going to catch Baxter and not give him a chance to buck with you even once,” Kit told her. He stood next to the roan’s head, watching her prepare to mount.

  “If I get bucked off and break something, and I can’t go do this project, it won’t be my fault if I fail my Ecology class,” Darby said.

  She rested a few ounces of her weight in Baxter’s left stirrup, then a little more, and slowly lifted her leg over Baxter’s back. She winced at the ache in her legs before settling in the saddle.

  “I don’t think Jonah sets much importance on grades,” Kit said, hiding his smile.

  “But I do,” Darby said. She let the reins flow in straight lines from her fingers to the snaffle bit rings, waiting for clues to Baxter’s feelings.

  “Then I guess you better not get bucked off,” Kit said, and he took a step back to let her put the horse into a walk.

  Twenty minutes later, Baxter still hadn’t bucked. He’d been edgy, breaking a sweat instantly. He’d thrust his tongue at his bit while he moved from a walk to a jog to a lope, and Darby never stopped watching for something that might make him shy, but she didn’t let herself be distracted. Finally, when Kit said “Whoa,” she was amazed to see that Kimo, Jonah, and Megan all stood around the pen, watching.

  “Do you know what that is?” Jonah asked.

  Darby looked around before getting off Baxter. Was Jonah talking to her?

  “Dumb luck?” Megan joked.

  “Looks like horse mastery to me,” Kit said.

  “Looks like I better find a new job,” Kimo complained.

  As Darby dismounted, Jonah kept watching.

  “That colt wanted a boss and you told him you were it. He’s not going to give you any trouble because he can tell you’re ready for it. No need to blush about it.”

  “Thank you,” Darby said. She’d concentrated so hard on each sound and move of Baxter’s, she felt like she’d just woken up.

  “A horse can’t buck, kick, or rear when he’s moving forward. All bets are off if you decide to ride an outlaw, but if you keep him moving ahead, you’ll usually be fine. Most horses don’t want to hurt humans. If they did, we wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “Thank you,” Darby said again.

  “Come tell Mom about it,” Megan encouraged Darby. “She’s going nuts up there.”

  “She’s only been in bed for a day,” Jonah pointed out.

  “It seems more like a week.” Megan rolled her eyes. “She’s sick of television, bored with magazines, and she’s finished reading all of her library books.”

  “Okay, go visit,” Jonah told Darby, “but cool this horse out and untack him first.” Jonah waited until Darby nodded, then said, “Think you might want to take him instead of Navigator?”

  Darby thought of Pele, of Ann’s rowdy Sugarfoot, and Hoku. Trying to pony Hoku with Baxter would be insane. They’d be wrapped up in rope like bugs in a spider’s web.

  “No thanks.” Darby barely pronounced the words before yawning. She lifted her hand in a wave and began walking.

  I did it, Darby thought as she led Baxter to the tack shed.

  Now, if she could just walk back to the house without doing a face plant into the dirt, it would’ve been a really good day.

  Chapter 14

  The Two Sisters wore leis of smoke on the morning the Potters were due to arrive with a four-horse trailer to pick up Darby, Megan, Hoku, and Navigator. There was no denying that the earthquake had disturbed the more active of the volcanoes, and this upset in nature only scraped nerves already made raw by the girls’ plans to leave the ranch.

  Jonah stood on Sun House’s lanai when Darby emerged from her bedroom.

  “News says our smoky skies are coming from Kilauea. It’s as much from ‘atmospheric conditions’ as volcanic activity. The earthquake may have shaken things up, but there’s no sulphur smell.”

  “That’s good to know,” Darby told him. She was relieved to hear that the smoke was drifting from a volcano on the Big Island. “I’m about finished packing.”

  Jonah watched Darby with the same intensity that had made her afraid of him the day she’d arrived on Wild Horse Island. She remembered thinking that if she’d met him in the city, she would have crossed to the other side of the street.

  But now he just looked like her grandfather, not some stranger with a concealed weapon, and his heavy black eyebrows, so much like her own, were lowered with…she wasn’t sure what.

  Jonah pushed away from the rail of the lanai and shook his index finger at her, but he just said, “You can breathe fine, yeah?”

  “I can, but I packed my medicine just in case,” Darby said.

  “Okay then,” Jonah said. “You better eat up and get out there. Those horses won’t groom themselves.”

  Darby was on her way to the tack shed when Megan pounded down the stairs from her apartment. Her cherry Coke–colored ponytail bounced out the back of her baseball cap, her white T-shirt was tucked without a wrinkle into her jeans, and her full saddlebags were slung over her shoulder.

  She smiled as she fell into step beside Darby, then announced, “My mom’s gone nuts.”

  “She probably just—” Darby began.

  “Totally crazy,” Megan interrupted. “She told me to go ride with you and Ann, and quit ‘hovering’ over her. She says she’ll rest more if she’s not trying to prove to me that she’s fine. Tell me,” Megan pleaded with melodramatic gestures, “does that make sense?”

  Darby knew Megan wouldn’t be chattering like this if her mother’s condition was really serious, but she wasn’t sure what to say.

  It didn’t matter, because Bart, sensing the girls’ excitement, raced up and threw himself at Megan’s legs.

  “Bart, no.” Megan dodged the Australian shepherd when he tried for a second collision, and then she went on, “And then, once I agreed to go—which I wanted to, but I was trying to be, you know, responsible—she told me not to ride Tango, because there are wild horses up there, supposedly, and they might get Tango to ‘revert.’”

  When Megan made quotation marks in the air, Bart hurled himself, snapping, toward her fingers.

  “Bart!” Cade shouted from the tack room.

  The dog wagged his stumpy tail in apology, but stayed with Megan.

  “So I say, ‘Fine, I’ll ride Biscuit,’” Megan continued, “but when I look up from packing my stuff, Mom is staring out the window at the smoke, steam, whatever, saying she won’t sleep until I get back, because there could be an eruption!”

  “I bet she—”

  “And I say, ‘Mom, just tell me what you want me to do,’ and you know what she said?”

  Darby shook her head, trying not to smile at her friend’s frustration.

  “She told me”—Megan paused to put her hands on her hips and lean toward Darby—“that it wasn’t very nice to be rude to her when she wasn’t feeling well!”

  Megan whipped off her cap and threw it on the ground.

  “Don’t even think about it!” she threatened Bart.

  Instead of retrieving the cap, the dog sat and stared at Megan with the concentration of an obedience champion.

  “That’s better,” Megan said. “Go to Cade.”

  As the dog trotted off, Megan sighed, picked up her cap and shook the dust from it, and asked, “So, what are you doing?”

  “Grooming Hoku and Navigator,” Darby said.

  “Great,” Megan said, and she walked a bit faster.

  “The Potters are supposed to be here in about twenty minutes,” Darby added.

  “The sooner, the better,” Megan said.

  Navigator, Hoku, and Biscuit shone from brushing by the time Jonah showed up at the tack room.

  Darby and Megan met each other’s eyes, hoping they weren’t in for more advice.

  Jonah considered the horses as he said, “You’re only spending two nights. The Potters will take you to the drop-off on the road below the Two Sisters. It�
�s about a six-mile climb to the very top. You can go as high as you like on Babe’s volcano, because it’s stone cold—”

  “We can? I thought…,” Darby began, but Megan was nodding.

  “But it’s kapu past the stone trees.”

  Kapu. This time, the Hawaiian word gave Darby chills. It sounded less like breaking a rule and more like an unforgivable sin.

  “That’s only two miles away and that’s close enough. Don’t go up and look into the crater. It’s tempting—”

  “No, it’s terrifying,” Darby said, but when she glanced at Megan, she saw that the older girl’s arms were crossed.

  Megan looked totally confident, but Darby remembered that even when Tutu had told her about the Fire Maiden becoming a horse the color of flames that danced on the lava pool, she’d thought not about the spirit horse, but about the lake of molten rock.

  She would not go up and look into the active volcano. No way would she expose herself or her horses to that kind of danger.

  “Wouldn’t it be too hot?” Darby asked suddenly. “I’m not going up there,” she added, when Jonah’s head snapped around and his eyes locked on her. “But don’t scientists need special suits and stuff to get close enough to study a—”

  Jonah didn’t wait for her to finish. “I’m not crazy about those two standing so close together,” he said.

  Those two…? Darby thought. Even Jonah didn’t have the kind of authority to make volcanoes scoot away from each other.

  But Jonah jerked on Navigator’s tie rope to release him and lead him away from Hoku.

  The bay stepped back at his urging, and Hoku flattened her ears at Jonah.

  “You keep your opinions to yourself,” he told the filly.

  But Darby could see Hoku was improving. A simple flicker of her ears was pretty good for a filly that hated men.

  Finally, after Darby and Megan had kissed Aunty Cathy—who’d come downstairs despite Jonah’s grumbling—good-bye, Darby and Jonah stood on the knoll she often used to help her mount.

  Her grandfather had given her so much volcano advice, she was beginning to feel a little scared.

  “If you don’t think we should go,” Darby blurted, “I don’t have to. I’ve got a whole week to do something else for this project.”