Pele's Tears

by Catherine Mulvany

  Benches lined seven of the eight walls of the octagonal gazebo. Dillon deposited Noelani on the red-and-white flowered cushions of the bench opposite the entrance.

  “Oh, right,” she said in mock annoyance. “Get a girl all worked up, then just dump her.”

  He kicked off his shoes and stripped off his shirt and jeans.

  Noelani gazed at him, her eyes huge and luminous. “We’re really going to do this, aren’t we?”

  “We really are,” he said, then sat down beside her and started to remove her clothes, a job that turned out to be more difficult than anticipated when her lacy pink bra got snagged on her necklace.

  “Don’t pull,” she said. “You’ll break it.”

  “The bra?” he asked, then realized what she was talking about when the pendant suddenly came free. A tiny horse’s head carved from koa wood, dark against the skin of her breast, hung from a chain around her neck. “You kept that trinket? All these years?”

  “You made it,” she said. “It was all I had left of you.”

  “But you thought I’d forgotten you. You must have hated me.”

  She shook her head solemnly. “Never. Did you hate me?”

  “I tried,” he said honestly, “but the minute I laid eyes on you in the Shamrock, I knew I hadn’t succeeded.”

  “Lucky for me.”

  “Lucky for us.” He kissed her, tenderly at first, and then with increasing passion. They made love in a delicious tangle of limbs, playful and intense by turns, and when they were both sated, basking in the afterglow, he repeated, “Lucky for us.”

  Noelani studied Dillon’s face in the flickering shade of swaying palms and royal poinciana trees, her expression solemn. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” He brushed a thumb across her full lower lip. “So why so serious?”

  “I don’t understand why she did it. Grandmother, I mean. She banished me to boarding school and confiscated your letters. She must have known the hell I was going through. I thought she loved me.” She hesitated. “Do you think that’s why she killed herself ... to atone?”

  “No.” His heart clenched at the expression on her face. “I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t your fault.”

  “Then why? Why suicide?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe we never will, but—” he shoved himself to his feet “—we still have three-quarters of the attic to search. We may find a clue yet.”

  “Maybe.” Noelani started to sit up. “Ouch!” She snatched back the hand she’d been using to lever herself up. A trickle of blood ran down her palm.

  “What happened? Something bite you?”

  “No. My hand slipped between the cushions. I must have dragged it across an exposed nail head.”

  “Move over and I’ll have a look.”

  She inched sideways, nursing her injured hand, and he pushed the cushion aside to examine the bench. “Damn,” he said. Another of Pele’s tears, thin and razor sharp, had been wedged into the wood.

  Noelani paled, and he thought for a second she was going to faint. “It ... It m-must mean something,” she stammered.

  Anger flashed through him, fierce and hot. “Yeah, it means somebody’s playing nasty tricks.”

  Noelani studied the obsidian teardrop, a frown creasing her forehead. “Or maybe it’s a clue. Maybe we’re supposed to look inside.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Inside the bench. The tops are hinged,” she explained, “so the cushions can be stored there during bad weather. But maybe there’s something else inside. Maybe that’s what the tear’s trying to tell us.”

  She stood, tossed the cushions aside, and then lifted the top of the bench to reveal a storage compartment. Empty, Dillon thought, until he noticed the envelope tucked into one corner. He reached for it, but Noelani was closer and beat him to it. She turned the cream-coloured envelope over and over in her hands, oblivious to the blood she was smearing on it.

  “Grandmother’s stationery,” she said. “And Grandmother’s handwriting.”

  “Noelani” was scrawled across the front. Nothing else.

  I spent my whole life trying to protect those I loved, and yet, one by one, I lost them all - except for you, my darling granddaughter, and even you have not escaped unscathed. Years ago when I saw you kissing that Makua boy, I panicked and sent you away. I was afraid he’d ruin you, break your heart. Instead, I was the one who managed that. You thought he’ d forsaken you. He hadn’t. I just made it seem that he had. Please don’t hate me for my deception. At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing.

  I tried to save my brother, too, with even more dreadful results. My efforts to control his behaviour drove him to greater folly. In the end, his recklessness cost him his life.

  But my biggest mistake was leaving Honolulu — and John — in December of ‘41. Because I gave in to my well-intentioned — if futile — do-gooder tendencies, I missed out on the last days of my beloved husband’s life.

  Pele has offered me a second chance, an opportunity to relive those last few days with John. I’m not sure how she’ll manage, but she’s promised to grant you a second chance, too. Don’t waste it.

  Noelani set the letter aside.

  “Well?” Dillon said.

  “Do you believe the old gods and goddesses exist, Dillon?”

  “If you’d asked me a week ago,” he said, “I’d have laughed at the idea, but after our run-in with Auntie Polly ...”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was a classic encounter. Pele appears out of nowhere and asks for a lift.”

  “Pele? The Goddess Pele? You’re saying that old lady in the football jersey was . . .?” Surely he didn’t believe what he was suggesting.

  “She told us her name was Polly Ahiaihonua, right? I’m pretty sure ‘ahiaihonua’ is Hawaiian for volcano. And isn’t the name Polly suspiciously similar to Pele?”

  Noelani considered his theory. It made sense ... in a crazy sort of way. “According to Grandmother’s letter, she struck a deal with Pele, returning the tears and sacrificing her own life so she could relive the last days of my grandfather’s.”

  “The photograph was real then?”

  She nodded, smiling as she remembered how happy her grandparents looked in the enlarged snapshot.

  “And your great-uncle’s altered headstone?”

  “An unexpected side effect, I suspect. Because Grandmother didn’t return to the Big Island to bail him out of trouble, he had to face the consequences of his actions. As a result, I’m guessing he straightened up his act and eventually became a priest.”

  “So,” Dillon said, his voice carefully neutral, “that’s it. Case closed. You won’t be needing my services any longer.”

  “Think again.” Noelani twined her arms around his neck and kissed him. Thoroughly.

  “So . . .” He shot her a bemused look. “Am I to infer you do need my services?”

  “Desperately,” she told him.

  Author Biographies

  Catherine Mulvany

  Award-winning author of the Wicked series.

  catherinemulvany.com

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  3 The Lanchesters 162 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 9ER www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Robinson, an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2009

  “Pele’s Tears” © by Catherine Mulvany. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.

  The right of Trisha Telep to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  UK ISBN 978-1-84529-941-5

  First published in the United States in 2009 by Running Press Book Publishers

  All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

  US Library of Congress number: 2008942197 US ISBN 978-7624-3651-4

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