“I wouldn’t take that wager,” Bayang said as she was reduced almost to a shuffle.
The air was so murky that it wasn’t until they were nearly at the crater walls that they saw how the side was cracked and crinkled like paper. A concrete ramp zigzagged back and forth within a fissure for the first two hundred feet to a broad ledge.
With surer support for her feet, Bayang took the ramp at a run, jogging along the welded steel sheets as they crisscrossed upward. The gas and dust grew thinner about halfway up the crater wall, and they found themselves next to a large rectangular building made of corrugated iron. Through the open doorway, they saw a row of steel stalls inside. Within one of them, a fire salamander was idly chewing from a trough of coal.
“That must be the stables,” Scirye said.
Below them, the crater floor looked as if it were hidden behind a thin gray veil of smoke and gas. Even so, the fiery lace of lines seemed to be spreading and increasing as if the crust everywhere was breaking down. Pele had seen to it that Roland’s crews would have their hands and paws full.
A metal staircase rose the last two hundred feet to the rim. It was painted black so that it nearly blended in with the volcanic rock.
Koko eyed the steps nervously. “Maybe you ought to change back to a human,” he said to Bayang. “I don’t think that thing’s going to take your weight.”
“I assume that’s how all the workers get to the crater, including the fire giants, so it has to be strong,” Bayang reasoned. “And if I transform to something lighter, lazybones, it’ll take longer and you’ll have to get out of the volcano under your own power.”
“Well, when you put it that way, I guess there are advantages to being carried like a baby.” Koko covered his eyes with a hand. “Just tell me when we’re on top.”
Despite her assurances to Koko, Bayang tested the first step anyway. It was a reinforced steel platform big enough to take even her fire giant’s foot, and it seemed as solid as the rocks around them. Reassured, she began to mount the staircase, but she couldn’t go as fast as she liked. The steps were a compromise for both its human and giant pedestrians, with broad steps for the giants but set at a height for short human legs rather a giant’s long ones.
The result was that Bayang climbed in a series of fast but dainty steps as if she were dancing up the crater wall, following each set of zigzagging stairs and pausing only when a trembling in the crater made footing hazardous.
She was puffing by the time they reached the top. She tapped Koko on the head. “You can open your eyes now. It’s all downhill from here.” She panted, nodding to the roadway that led down the outer slope of the crater. “Everybody off.” She set them down on their feet.
Near them the siren on top of a metal tower was still wailing urgently. A platform leaned against the ground, one of its legs broken. More magical devices lay broken upon the rocks, including a huge crystal globe. Smoke wriggled up from the crack in its sides, and Bayang assumed this was how Roland had been controlling the ash and smoke from the volcano.
In the middle of the debris lay another wizard with the same protective symbols on his robes they had seen on the first one’s. Bayang took his limp wrist delicately between her thumb and index finger. “I can feel a pulse.”
Suddenly smoke and gas jetted upward from the crater floor, and there was a chugging sound like a hundred locomotives speeding down the track. Then there was the sound of a huge explosion.
Immediately Bayang thought of the wizard’s dented helmet and what it might mean for them. Setting the carrying rock down, she got down on all fours. “Get underneath me,” she told the children. “Pele’s charm might work against fire but not against falling rocks.”
Scirye and Kles scooted beneath her but Leech and Koko hesitated. Scirye seized one wrist of each. “Either you trust Bayang or have your brains knocked out!”
A stone hit the ground nearby, shattering into dozens of sharp bits. Koko needed no more urging and he hopped beneath Bayang. Leech slipped in a moment later.
Bayang grunted whenever a rock smashed against her, but she maintained her position as a living shield. As the crouching children saw how she shivered and heard the meaty smack of each impact, they could guess at the pain it cost her.
Scirye looked at Leech. “She’s trying to make up for what she did in the past.”
As another falling rock thumped Bayang overhead, Leech could see how her arms and legs were trembling. “I figure she is.”
Koko tugged at his ear. “Yeah, I guess I could be wrong. That happens every few years.”
As quickly as it had begun, the rain of stones ended. Scirye risked poking her head out from underneath Bayang to check. “I think the rocks have stopped falling,” she said.
As Leech got up, he extended a hand to Bayang. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“I don’t blame you,” Bayang said. “But I promise you, I won’t make the same mistakes that I did in the past.”
“Neither will I,” Leech said. “But you’ll have to tell me more about what I did.”
“Let’s stroll down memory lane later and get away from here,” Koko said as he skipped out of the way of a rolling rock the size of a watermelon. “My mother didn’t raise me to be roadkill.”
Suddenly a dark column, as huge as a hill, began twisting out of the crater floor as if the smoke, ash, and gases were escaping. However, instead of collecting into a ball overhead, they began to flow over the crater’s lip like a nest of twisting serpents.
Bayang waved a hand toward the west. “If I remember right, there were buildings that looked like barracks there. If that’s what they are, I bet there’s also an infirmary there. I’ll take the wizard to it, and Leech, you lean on Scirye and Koko and pretend like you’re going there, too.”
She gestured to Koko. “And since we don’t want Roland’s workers wondering how a fire giant can touch humans, we’ll have to change back into humans.” Since she couldn’t be sure that Roland had hired human women as well as female fire giants, she transformed into a man in coveralls with protective symbols like the wizards’. The air sparkled briefly as she released the elements she had taken in for the change.
Koko imitated her without the glow, since he was still the same size. “I thought fur was hot enough but skin on fire tops that any day.” He scratched luxuriously.
Bayang was about to tell Scirye to try to disguise herself as a boy and noted with approval that the hatchling had already figured out what she had to do just from seeing Bayang metamorphose. With her griffin’s help, she was pulling her hair back into a tight bun.
Koko’s coveralls had the correct signs but Scirye’s and Leech’s were plain. Still, that couldn’t be helped.
“Whoa!” Koko said in awe as a huge pillar of smoke and gas shot heavenward. Fires on the crater floor outlined the billowing folds so that the pillar seemed to glow with a life all of its own.
“Hurry,” Bayang said, and hefted the wizard onto her back. “Oof, if I have carry passengers, I ought to charge fares like a bus.”
When Leech had taken his place between Scirye and Koko, his arms slung over their shoulders, Bayang led the way down the path.
Halfway down the paved road, the crater wall began to sway, making it hard to keep their balance. Stray rocks rattled down the slope so that they sometimes had to jump out of the way. Bayang kept an eye on the hatchlings, steadying them when necessary and even shielding them with her body against the larger missiles, but they all took some bruises. By the time they reached the foot of the volcano they were all aching.
“We’ve got company,” Koko said, and pointed.
A convoy snaked its way along the path toward the emergency in the crater. Fire elementals were rolling along the asphalt while fire giants jogged alongside the trucks. In the back of the vehicles were humans in coveralls and pith helmets, as well as piles of picks, shovels, cauldrons, and other wizards’ paraphernalia.
With a jerk of her head, Bayang gestured them
to step off the roadway, but they continued on over the hard mounds covered with black veins.
The first truck was forty feet away when all four of it tires popped and then shredded into ribbons of rubber. Its wheels screeched along the road for thirty feet, sending up sparks, and then it fishtailed about, blocking the road. A human in coveralls and pith helmet got out of the passenger side. The cloth was covered with magical symbols.
“Are you all right?” Bayang asked as they trudged up to him.
“Yeah, but that was quite a ride.” Turning, he motioned to the workers who were pulling themselves up straight in the back of the truck. “Everybody out. We’ve got to drag this heap out of the way so the rest of the convoy can go on.” As the workers obediently piled out of the truck, he examined one of the tires. “What the…?” He yanked something from the rubber and held up the cluster of iron spikes. “Where did this come from?”
The next moment, the air was filled with whirring sounds.
“Down!” Bayang shouted, dropping the wizard so she could stretch out her arms and knock the hatchlings down.
The rough rock scraped their hands and faces as ropes weighted at the ends with heavy wooden sticks spun past overhead. By the truck, though, Roland’s employees were hollering as the ropes wrapped themselves around legs and torsos, tossing their trapped victims to the ground.
Cries from all along the convoy suggested that there were more workers being trapped.
“It’s an ambush,” Bayang said.
Leech struggled out from under her. “But who did it?”
As if in answer, little men popped up from crevices like gophers. They were only about a foot high and were dressed in everything from skirts made out of what looked like tree bark to torn pieces of human coveralls that hung on them like long coats. Somewhere on each’s clothing were some of Roland’s magical symbols to protect them from the volcano’s effects. Their hair was done up in topknots, and despite their large bellies, they quickly swarmed over the fallen prisoners, trussing them tightly with more ropes. On the bare backs of some, Bayang saw the stripes scarring their skin and realized they’d been whipped.
But then she had worries of her own as one little man swiveled to glare at her.
Hastily, Bayang held up the flower charm. “We came with Pele.”
The little man nodded. “The Lady told us to keep an eye out for you because you might be delayed.”
“I bet she didn’t tell him she caused the delay,” Koko muttered to the others.
At that moment, a man only about four feet high stood up in the back of the truck. A pith helmet covered his head and enormous dark glasses covered a quarter of his face. From his belt, he pulled a whip. Raising it over his head, he brought it down sharply with a loud cracking noise.
“Watch out,” Bayang said. Springing to her feet, she knocked the little man to the side as she raised her arm, wincing as the lash wrapped itself around her wrist.
With a jerk, she yanked the little man from the truck onto the road. His pith helmet fell off, revealing a head of brown tufted feathers instead of hair. His giant sunglasses dropped down at the same time. His huge eyes, which seemed to fill his face, squinted at the little man. “Lice, vermin.”
Then he disappeared under a pile of little men. There was a scuffle and then the first little man shouted, “Don’t kill him. Lady Pele says we will have justice. But only later.” Despite the ominous words, there was a musical lilt to his words.
Reluctantly, the other little men began to tie up the man with huge eyes as the little man unwrapped the lash from Bayang’s arm.
“Thank you, friend,” he said. “I am Eleu of the Menehune.”
“Menehune?” Scirye asked Bayang as Bayang helped her up.
Eleu slapped his chest proudly. “We are the cleverest of peoples and the quickest with our hands. We can build bridges and houses overnight.”
“That’s why Roland kidnapped you,” Scirye said sympathetically.
Eleu spat on the creature with big eyes. “And set our mortal enemies, the Owl folk, to torment us.”
“But no more,” Bayang said, and then introduced herself and the others.
Koko scratched his head. “If that bum’s one of the Owl folk, why didn’t he fly away from here?”
Eleu pointed up at the sky, which was growing darker with pollution by the minute. “Would you?” Then he threw away the whip. “We had been planning this revolt ever since our captivity began, but when Lady Pele came to rescue us, we put our scheme into motion.”
Scirye pointed behind her at the volcano. “There’s at least one human, two fire giants, and some elementals in the crater.”
Eleu nodded. “They’re already being taken care of.”
Bayang let the flower charm dangle beneath her throat again. “Could any of you fine gentlemen tell us where Lady Pele is?”
“I know where’s she going,” Eleu said, “and she told me to take you there.”
As little men stepped forward to tend to the unconscious wizard, Bayang glanced over at Koko. “I think we’d better transform back to our true shapes,” she said. “We might not always get a chance to show our little gifts from Pele before we get mobbed.”
“Right,” Koko said, and changed back into the tubby, furry badger.
Bayang sighed and stretched with satisfaction after she had changed herself into a dragon again. “Much better.” Then she bent one leg. “Climb up on my shoulder, Eleu,” she said to the little man.
Eleu scrutinized Bayang’s fangs suspiciously. “First, tell me if you’ve already had lunch, mo-o.”
“I’ve had to cut Menehune out of my diet,” Bayang said. “Doctor’s orders—though you do look very appetizing.”
“I’ve always wanted to ride a dragon,” Scirye said, practically shoving Eleu up onto Bayang.
“I don’t remember inviting you,” Bayang complained, but it was already too late as Scirye got up behind Eleu, and Koko and Leech scrambled up a moment later.
“Aw, have a heart,” Koko wheedled. “We’ll go faster on those stilts of yours.”
“Well, don’t sue me if you fall off,” Bayang warned. She would have liked to have galloped but could only manage a slow walk on the undeveloped ground to the side of the road.
As they went along, they saw that the entire convoy had been taken prisoner, even the fire giants and elementals who were being bound with chains of an iridescent metal similar to the bridle of the salamander back in the crater. While they were being taken prisoner, little men stood by with heavy odd-shaped balloons.
“What’re those?” Leech asked Eleu.
“They’re the organs from the cattle that get shipped here,” the little man explained. Now that he was on the dragon, he seemed to be enjoying himself so he was willing to chat. “Roland used some of us in the kitchen and made the mistake of having us doing the butchering. We’ve been saving these.”
“But what’s in them?” Leech asked.
“Water,” Eleu explained. “It hurts their skin.”
There were brown patches on the giants and elementals as if they had been burned—not by fire but by the water.
When they reached the rear of the convoy, they saw that the last truck had also been wrecked to prevent the other vehicles from retreating. Little men were dragging it off the road now.
When they were past the roadblock, Bayang stepped back onto the asphalt and began to gallop, but here the crust had cooled in uneven layers so that the pavement undulated up and down, jolting her passengers.
“Y-y-yikes,” Koko gurgled. “It’s l-l-like sitting on a runaway leather sofa.”
The road angled down to the harborside of the island where it followed the shoreline. The complex of barracks and warehouses looked deserted. And the wharves were empty of both people and ships.
Just a little past the piers, they saw tufts of hardy grass springing from cracks and even a few determined tree sprigs, all of them growing from seeds blown here by the wind. After the deva
station of the crater, even these signs of life were welcome.
When they reached the border of the western half, though, the ground suddenly began to grow flatter where the violent land was being tamed. Areas of rough, bumpy stone lay like islands in smooth black dirt, and in the rich soil grew patches of weeds, shrubs, and even saplings.
Several hundred yards on, they saw a broad, shallow pit surrounded by young palm trees. Flats filled with young flowers sat ready to be planted. Rocks had been piled into artificial hills and a track cut down the face as if for a waterfall that would pour into the pit, which, Eleu explained, was going to be a lagoon. “We were breaking up the rock here like we did in the first half of the island. And the wizards would use magic to make all the trees and plants grow faster.”
“So they chop down the real jungle to make a fake one,” Leech said with a shake of his head.
Scirye remembered Pele’s jungle. “But a safer one.”
Leech grunted the truth of that while Koko said, “Personally, I’ve never trusted any plant—even with blue cheese dressing.”
When Bayang saw the whips lying scattered about like brown snakes, she could guess what the incentive had been.
“What happened to the owners of those?” Scirye asked Eleu.
“They’re our captives, too,” Eleu said with satisfaction.
Farther along, they saw their first developed areas. Little bungalows encircled a glistening blue lagoon and transplanted flowers bloomed everywhere in a riot of color. Here the palm trees were some thirty feet high. Crews of Menehune surrounded them as they chopped industriously at the wooden trunks. They were smiling and chanting as if they were truly enjoying their work.
“Okay, the owl guys I understand, but what did those trees ever do to you?” Koko asked.
“We need to make rafts for us and our prisoners,” Eleu said.
They sped by luxury villas that were in different stages of completion, from simple wooden frames to a few finished homes with tiled roofs and pleasant, spacious verandas and shady palm trees. The villas were so large they would have made up ten of the cottages.
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