Fire Maiden

by Terri Farley

  “Naw,” Jonah made a dismissing gesture. “You’ve got your thick-soled boots to protect you from hot ground, and you can ride in them—besides, our lava is pretty tame, and you can depend on Megan.”

  The older girl flashed a shaka sign their way, but Jonah went on talking.

  “The only way you get in trouble is letting its beauty tempt you too close. Our lava’s so slow-flowing, you can get mesmerized and not notice you’ve been cut off from the path you want to take. But you’re smart. You won’t stand and watch it. You’ll get away while you can.”

  “That’s right,” Darby assured her grandfather.

  But even when the sound of a heavy vehicle turning onto ‘Iolani Ranch road made them both look up, Jonah hadn’t finished.

  “You’ll ride up the slope from the drop-off. If there’s trouble, just go back down the same way. In an emergency, if you’re cut off from the road, take the lava tube down to the beach. The Boy Scouts do it every August, so it’s no big secret. From that beach, you can look up and see Sun House.”

  Dogs barked. Truck doors slammed.

  Brown skin crinkled at the corner of Jonah’s eyes. He pulled Darby into a hug.

  “You take it all in, then tell me about it,” Jonah said.

  Darby returned her grandfather’s warmhearted hug, but she wasn’t surprised when he let her go and looked embarrassed by his kindness.

  He squeezed her arm with a work-callused hand, and said, “Don’t let that pupule mustang get you into trouble.”

  When he strode over to greet the Potters, Darby tagged along behind him, still grinning.

  An hour later, they’d almost reached the drop-off where the Potters would help the girls unload their gear and horses.

  Darby liked Ann’s parents. Mr. Potter had red hair sprinkled with gray, and Mrs. Potter wore her sparrow-brown hair in a braid. Tanned, middle-aged, and happy, the Potters told Darby to call them Ed and Ramona.

  Besides Ann, they had a shy seven-year-old named Toby and a baby called Buck. Both boys were strapped into the extended cab of their truck. Darby, Megan, and Ann had had to fit themselves in where they could.

  “Hey, Megan, how’s the team going to do this season?” Mr. Potter asked, reminding Darby that Ann and Megan had been soccer teammates.

  “It’ll do,” Megan said, “but we miss Ann.”

  “Yeah,” Ann huffed, as if she blamed her parents, not her injury, for her removal from the team.

  Darby didn’t blame her. Ann’s soccer skills were so excellent, she’d been the only eighth grader ever to compete on the Lehua High School team.

  Ann’s mother didn’t let her dwell on the injustice of her accident.

  “Ann, can you distract Toby from sucking his thumb? I don’t know why he’s back at it.”

  Toby pressed his face into Ann’s shoulder. She stroked his head and planted a kiss on the nape of his neck.

  “And Darby, if Buck is bothering you, just tell him no,” Mrs. Potter said when she noticed the little boy cooing as he threaded his finger through Darby’s long black hair.

  “He’s fine,” Darby told her. As an only child, she’d never felt the chubby, exploring hand of a baby, and she kind of liked it.

  “I should mention that his real name is Buchanan. That’s my maiden name,” she said.

  “Buck is a good old Nevada name,” Mr. Potter protested.

  “I just can’t get over the fact that your little mustang’s a Nevadan, too,” Mrs. Potter said. “I do miss seeing the Calico Mountains from my kitchen window.” She patted her husband’s shoulder before adding, “But I don’t miss deep snow or pushing hay bales off a flatbed truck while Ed sat in the cozy truck cab with the heater on full blast.”

  “It was never that way,” Mr. Potter assured Darby, then added, “Well, almost never.”

  Then the smile faded from his face. “You say Shan Stonerow had your filly.” Mr. Potter pronounced the name as if it was bitter in his mouth. “That good-for-nothing—”

  “Dear,” Mrs. Potter cautioned her husband.

  “Some folks don’t deserve good horses.”

  “Any horses,” Ann put in.

  “Sam Forster faxed me his phone number, in case I wanted to get in touch with him,” Darby said.

  “Don’t waste your time. If Hoku was his, you’re lucky she’s not ruined. He rode all his stock young. Yearlings, I’m talkin’ about, and he beat the devil out of them. At least that’s how he put it.”

  They drove for about five minutes before Mr. Potter said, “I don’t know if I’ve ever been so mad at my dad as I was the day he sold this grulla colt of ours to Stonerow. Dad got it into his head that the colt was bad luck. He was a jumper. And fast? Let me tell you, kids, he could punch a hole in the wind and run right through it.”

  Mr. Potter looked up into his rearview mirror and Darby met his eyes as he asked, “She have scars on her face? No? Well then, maybe she got the better of him. Wouldn’t that be something.”

  Mr. Potter’s grin got bigger as he mulled over the possibility.

  A few miles later, as the road turned steep, Mr. Potter chuckled and shook his head. “Still hard for me to believe Wyatt married a woman from the Bureau of Land Management. The Wyatt Forster I remember had no use for the bureau or wild horses, but I guess times do change. Hey now, we should give this lady a hand.”

  The girls leaned around Buck and Toby, seeking a better view out the windows.

  “I don’t recognize her, do you?” Mrs. Potter asked. “Ann?”

  “Nope,” Ann said.

  “Megan?”

  Megan removed her cap as if it obscured her view, then said, “Me either.”

  Darby’s eyes tracked the dotted yellow line down the center of the street until she saw the woman at the roadside. She wore a stylish red dress and red high heels, but somehow managed to look at home in this desolate place.

  As Mr. Potter steered the truck and trailer carefully off the road, stopping out of traffic, Darby saw the woman push a cloud of curly black hair back from her face. Her features were those of a warrior queen, and she stood in a column of smoke.

  Darby’s chest went tight, and it had nothing to do with asthma.

  Red is her color, black is her hair. Respect Fire Maiden, or I warn you: beware.

  “Car must’ve overheated coming up this hill,” Mr. Potter said.

  Darby saw the red Miata convertible the woman leaned against. Of course it was steam, not a column of smoke, that rolled out from under the car’s propped-up hood.

  As Mr. Potter left the truck and offered to help the stranded motorist, Darby kicked herself for being so gullible. Her imagination had rarely conjured up magical people and situations when she lived in Pacific Pinnacles.

  So what if she was in Hawaii now? Pele did not drive a red convertible.

  As they lowered the windows to listen, they heard Mr. Potter say, “Let me get a rag or something to take this cap off so we can add some water. No, ma’am, you don’t want to do that with your bare hands. It’s over two hundred degrees. I’ll be right back.”

  Mr. Potter looked puzzled as he walked back toward the truck. The woman’s laughter floated after him.

  “Everything okay?” Mrs. Potter asked as her husband rummaged around on the truck’s floor.

  “Why she’d laugh about gettin’ her fingerprints burnt off, I don’t know,” Mr. Potter grumbled.

  “Is she a tourist?” Mrs. Potter asked.

  “I guess.” Mr. Potter picked up a piece of cloth and folded it as he said, “She wants to see ‘the top blow off a mountain,’ is what she said. When I mentioned for her to be careful, since they spew out millions of pounds of lava a minute, she laughed at that, too. Woman must have the brains of a grasshopper.”

  “Don’t say that!” Darby blurted.

  The entire family stared at her. Toby’s thumb fell out of his mouth.

  Darby couldn’t explain that Pele would send them up in flames for their lack of respect, so she just stare
d at the window, feeling awful.

  “Sorry, Darby, you’re right,” Mr. Potter said. “Probably just standing in the heat like this has got her head a bit addled.”

  “She—” Darby pointed and gasped. The metal lid of something under the car’s hood, maybe the radiator, dropped from the woman’s hand, struck the pavement, and rolled on its edge until Mr. Potter ran around the front of the red car and blocked it with his boot.

  Mrs. Potter jumped out to give first aid, and Ann said, “She did it. But she couldn’t have. She’s not screaming.”

  As the Potters fussed around the woman, Megan elbowed Ann and asked, “You know who she looks like?”

  “Who?”

  “Check her out,” Megan insisted. “You’ve been on a field trip to the museum, right?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know…” Ann concentrated. “Not a queen.”

  “Pele!” Megan whispered, underlining Darby’s fear.

  “Megan, come on,” Ann said in a long-suffering tone.

  “I’m just sayin’, we all saw her take that hot thing out from under the hood—”

  The woman in red looked calmly toward the truck.

  “Is she looking at us, Annie?” Toby asked.

  At the little boy’s fearful tone, Darby sat up straighter and Megan cleared her throat.

  “Uh-huh,” Ann said, and then, casting around for an excuse to satisfy her little brother, she said, “She probably doesn’t think we all look related.”

  “That’s for sure,” Darby blurted.

  Megan twisted in her seat, ending up nearly nose to nose with Darby.

  “We could be sisters. We have the same eyebrows and eyes, practically the same mouth, and my hair’s just got more red in it than yours,” Megan said as if she’d given it some thought. Then she turned to point at Ann. “Not quite as much red as yours.”

  While Ann and Megan laughed, Darby enjoyed a surge of delight. She’d been about to dispute Megan’s compliment—and whether Megan knew it or not, that’s what it was—by saying Megan looked like a fashion model and she looked like a soft, pale grub.

  But something kept Darby from saying it. Probably, she thought, she just wanted Megan’s opinion to be true.

  “What?” Megan said, as if she felt Darby’s eyes on her.

  “You’d be a great big sister,” Darby admitted.

  For a second, Megan looked touched, but then she flounced back in her seat, crossed her arms, and said, “I know it.”

  Toby was naming Megan’s hair color, then Darby’s and Ann’s, when Darby’s gaze turned to the woman at the roadside. Darby agreed with Toby. There was something calculating in the woman’s expression, as if she were memorizing them.

  Just remember we stopped to help you, Darby sent her thoughts toward the woman, even though she couldn’t possibly be the ancient fire goddess.

  After a few more endless minutes, the woman got into her car and started the engine. She signed okay to the Potters and Mr. Potter slammed her sports car’s hood. The lady in red waved as she roared away from them.

  With their heads close together, Ann’s parents were definitely talking about the strange woman, but once they were back in the car, Mrs. Potter just smiled and said, “She used the hem of that lovely silk dress to protect her hand while she unscrewed the radiator cap.”

  “Oh,” Ann, Darby, and Megan said together, and when Toby and Buck echoed them, everyone laughed.

  Chapter 15

  The Potters had driven away from the drop-off point, with its water spigot, bulletin board, and sign-in sheet, about an hour before.

  Darby rode Navigator and led Hoku up the Two Sisters slope at a slow and steady pace. Both horses were interested in the steep terrain and unfamiliar place, but they moved with a calm cooperation Darby could barely believe.

  “They’re doing great,” Megan said, and soon she’d lost her frown and fallen into the role of tour guide for the two mainland girls.

  Rocking with Biscuit’s smooth gait, Megan pointed out ohia trees with bright red blooms. When she called them Pele’s trees, she sounded matter-of-fact, not superstitious.

  “What’s that bird?” Darby asked.

  The girls drew rein and listened.

  “The one that sounds like you’re changing stations on an old dial radio? That one?” Ann asked as the bird called again.

  “Yeah,” Darby said.

  “I’m not sure,” Megan said, still listening.

  “I have no idea.” Ann sounded a little stiff to Darby.

  In fact, she’d sounded that way ever since they’d unloaded the horses, and Darby had a pretty good idea why.

  “I didn’t mean to snap at your dad,” Darby said.

  “Then why did you?” The corners of Ann’s lips turned down as if she was hurt, but not angry.

  “You’ll think I’m dumb. Dumber than a grasshopper,” Darby joked “But I’ll tell you, because I don’t want to wreck our—”

  “Just tell me!”

  Darby took a deep breath, then said, “It was—what Megan said.”

  “Pele?” Ann and Megan said together.

  “Look, I’m just learning about these legends—”

  “Stories,” Megan substituted.

  “Stories,” Darby repeated, “and it was on my mind because of our project. I was thinking that since we’re in her territory and she demands respect and the way that woman was looking at us kind of got me…what?”

  “Nothing,” Ann said.

  “You gave me a weird smile,” Darby said. She glanced at Megan, who looked more rigid in the saddle than usual.

  “Oh, it’s nothing. I would have told you before if I thought you were worrying, “Ann teased.

  Darby reined Navigator closer, so they were stirrup to stirrup. Finally, Ann admitted, “When you were unloading Hoku, my mom told me that the woman told her she’d been looking at me because she loved my hair.”

  “That’s okay, then,” Darby said, feeling better for a few seconds.

  “Because red is her favorite color…,” Megan said in a spooky voice.

  “That’s right, harass the new girl,” Darby said, controlling the urge to stick out her tongue at her friends, “but gods and goddesses are famous for changing into things, right? And Tutu says that Pele can change into the Fire Maiden—”

  “Who?” Ann asked.

  “An amazing golden horse.”

  “I’ve never heard that,” Ann said.

  “I have,” Megan admitted. “The wild horses up here are supposed to be sacred to Pele, but I’ve never seen one.”

  As they rode, Darby retold Tutu’s tale of the white stallion who was really Pele’s brother, the god of steam, and the black stallion who was another brother, the god of thunderclouds.

  “I knew about the battle between Pele and the sea goddess. Fire and water constantly fighting each other,” Ann mused. “I always sort of thought the Two Sisters were named for them.”

  “They are,” Megan said.

  Darby stared at the cones on the horizon. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of that when Tutu had been telling her story, but of course that made sense.

  The girls had admired each other’s horses while unloading them, but they didn’t get a real chance to study them until they stopped in the shade to eat their sandwiches.

  Sugarfoot was a caramel-and-cream-colored pinto. As he grazed on the plants sprouting from the volcanic dirt, his two-toned mane touched the ground.

  “He looks so sweet,” Darby said.

  “Why can’t you use him as a therapy horse?” Megan asked.

  “Sugarfoot’s a chaser,” Ann confessed.

  “A chaser?” Darby asked, and she noticed Megan stopped chewing her sandwich and raised her eyebrows as if she wasn’t sure what Ann meant, either.

  “It’s a vice you don’t hear about a lot, because people are ashamed to admit they’re afraid of their own horses. That’s my theory, anyway.”

  “What does he chase?” Darby asked.


  “Anything that runs from him. People, dogs, cars. It’s more common in stallions, but he came so close to hurting one of our adult clients, it was scary. The guy was out in our pasture in his wheelchair, and Shug came galloping at him. He’s a Morab—half Morgan and half Arabian—but when he charges, you can imagine some sheikh with a spear riding him into battle.” Ann pretended to shiver. “He looks fierce. So our client took off, and Shug chased him and knocked him over. The metal wheelchair kind of protected him. If he hadn’t been in it, he would have been hurt for sure. My dad wanted to get rid of Sugarfoot on the spot—”

  “You can bet Jonah would have,” Megan said.

  “—but it’s a colt thing, and he’s outgrowing it. Plus, my mom and I have worked with him a lot.”

  “Wow,” Darby said, looking at the horse differently now. “Why does he do it?”

  “He’s playing,” Ann said. Then, in the tone of a parent admitting a child’s flaw, she added, “And he hasn’t tried it for three months, but if he ever did, with either of you—”

  “Don’t back down?” Megan guessed.

  “Right,” Ann said. “Stand your ground, and when he gets close, like a few car lengths away, start jumping up and down and waving your arms like crazy.”

  “Does that work?” Darby asked.

  “No, but it’s fun to watch,” Megan put in.

  “Yes, it works. He comes to a screeching halt, shoots you a dirty look, and starts poking around for something to eat,” Ann told them.

  Darby felt relieved by Ann’s description of the young gelding’s disappointment when people wouldn’t play his game, but she wondered what would happen if they came upon any wild horses.

  “Let’s go, so we’ll have time to explore the lava tube before dark,” Megan said, crumpling up her lunch sack.

  Ann shoved things back in her pack, too.

  “You’ve got flashlights, don’t you?” Megan asked.

  “Sure,” Ann said.

  “Jonah made me bring one,” Darby said.

  “Cool. We’ll make camp when we get to the stone trees, put up our stakeout line, and go ahead on foot.”

  “Okay,” Darby agreed, but she couldn’t help thinking that the thing had been formed by lava. That meant it was a known path for the flow of molten rock on its way downhill.