Silversword

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “I don’t know exactly how it happened, but my mother became so excited that she threw that heavy piece of wood at me. It was terrible to see her lose control like that.”

  “I know,” David said. “I saw it happen once myself. That’s why they try to keep her happy and calm.”

  “Joanna told me that before the ride into the crater that time, Noelle was getting ready to leave my father and take me away from him. My grandmother blames him for whatever happened. She said he might have tried to kill my mother that day. But I can’t accept that, David. I really do remember how much he loved her.”

  “We’ll probably never know for sure. Must you know?”

  The spell of the crater was wearing off and I was beginning to get stirred up all over again. “It’s too easy to make him a scapegoat, since he can’t speak for himself. But if that’s what they’re doing, why are they doing it? Who is protecting whom?”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore. You don’t have to listen.”

  “I keep telling myself that. Telling myself that only now matters, and I must think only of Noelle. Perhaps my grandmother and Marla are right and the only sensible thing to do is to leave her alone. She was like a wild creature when she threw that carving at me. There’s one thing more, David—Joanna said you might know who my father was having an affair with. But you were only a young boy, so how would you know?”

  He stirred uneasily beside me. I sensed that this was something he didn’t want to talk about, and I let it go.

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “Even if you do know, and would tell me, how could it matter now?”

  “You may meet her one of these days,” David said. “She’s a fine person, so perhaps it’s better if you aren’t prejudiced ahead of time.”

  “The thing that bothers me is that while it was all so long ago and shouldn’t matter, they are all behaving as though it does—Marla, Tom, Joanna.”

  “Let them live in the past—you don’t have to.”

  “My father would never have tried to harm my mother!” I had come full circle again.

  “Let it go. You can’t know what to do until you find your own peaceful place. That’s why I brought you up here—I’d like you to find it. If the gods are willing.”

  I didn’t know what he meant, but I went with him more hopefully as we returned to the car.

  “You still have that rock to dispose of,” he said, as I picked it up from the seat beside me. “We’ll drive to the next level below, and walk down a trail for a little way. Then you can find a place to leave it. It would never do just to toss it into the crater.”

  When we’d parked near the next overlook building, we walked to the beginning of the Sliding Sands Trail. From above I had seen the narrow threads of trails winding into the depths, but I found this wide enough to walk on, though gravelly in places.

  “Of course, no vehicles are allowed in the crater,” David said. “Its wildness is carefully preserved. There are only three rather primitive cabins, plus one ranger cabin out there in what we call the backcountry, so supplies are brought in by mule. Visitors either hike in with backpacks or ride horses or mules. Bikes are illegal inside the crater. We won’t go far—you can see what’s already happening.”

  As David pointed, I looked toward a far gap and saw the clouds boiling through. Even as we watched, they tumbled down the palis—those Hawaiian cliffs—and began to fill up a portion of the crater. Far down on the trail a hiker with a red backpack was visible.

  I held up the rock in its ti leaf wrapping. “Where shall I leave it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Anywhere beside the trail. It’s an old custom Marla’s picked up. If you leave something for Pele, you’ll be brought out safely.”

  He was only half joking, and one couldn’t stand in this place without being aware of much more than our earthbound eyes could see. I followed the trail a short distance, and then knelt to place the rock in the cinder dust. Marla had told me to say a few words, and I spoke in a whisper, lest I awake echoes in the tremendous silence below. A silence that seemed all the more hushed because of clouds floating down into the crater, filling its basin with smothering fog.

  The words came easily. “I’m sorry for what my father did. I return what belongs to this place.” I placed the rock in its green wrapping beside the trail and went back to David.

  “Come on,” he said, “we’ll be lost in fog any minute. But perhaps it won’t spill over the top, and you’ll be lucky.”

  He took my hand and pulled me along, and I sensed again that excitement that could stir him. It didn’t disturb me now, as I understood it better. David had managed to keep some of the young boy’s wonder that I’d sensed in him long ago. Perhaps that was why he could savor so keenly whatever he did. My own spirits lifted in response to the exhilaration that charged him now.

  We climbed to where we could stand below the overlook building, but away from its shadow. The sun of late afternoon was at our backs, not yet ready to set.

  “You have to stand alone,” David said. “You must find it for yourself—if it happens.”

  He walked away, and I stood on the edge of the crater looking out over the great sea of clouds that had filled it. Only the outer ridges of rock showed above a whiteness so thick that it seemed to have substance of its own. As I watched, the clouds piled up until the far rim vanished, and now I saw what lay against the mounded whiteness.

  A great luminous circle of light shone against the clouds, and in the center of the rainbow circle I could see the shadow of a human figure. It took me a moment to realize that it was my shadow, ringed by that miraculous rainbow. I moved my arm, and the distant shadow moved with me.

  From a little way off, David spoke softly. “Hawaiians say it’s our own spirit we see reflected upon the clouds. You’re very lucky—it doesn’t always happen. But I thought you might be—I thought you might be given a sign.”

  Whatever he said I could believe. I could believe that somehow, in some inspired way, that was the reflection of my own spirit—soul—shining out there in that circle of light. No one could behold such a vision without being touched and changed. While I had come to Maui for some small human purposes of my own, now something more was being given to me. Something far larger—a destiny? At this moment the word didn’t seem too large for me to accept. I was here because—something—was meant to be. I didn’t need to understand. In a little while I would go back into my own small human perspective, but I wouldn’t forget what had touched me here.

  The air had grown colder as the sun dropped, and I could feel the chill as I returned to where David waited for me. It felt good to be out of the wind and inside his car. He seemed to understand that I needed a few moments to return from wherever I’d been, and he didn’t start the motor right away.

  “What did I see?” I asked him.

  “The explanation is prosaic enough. They call it the Brocken Specter because it was first described by someone who saw it a long time ago in the Harz Mountains of East Germany—on the Brocken Mountain. But you can forget all that. Here it belongs only to Haleakala, as the silversword does. Hawaiians have a wonderful word—aman. You say it with the accent on the second syllable, and it’s a wonder word that means many things. Power—spiritual power—energy, the life force. There is certainly mana when your spirit shadow is cast out on the crater in its rainbow light. Remember that, Caro—use it. Don’t let the everyday world wipe it out for you.”

  “Thank you, David,” I said softly. “I’ll try to hold on to what I felt.”

  He nodded and reached into a pocket of his jacket. “I have something for you—something I’ve kept for a good many years. Once I promised you this, but I never gave it to you because things happened so fast and you flew away from Maui before I had a chance.”

  He’d drawn out something folded in tissue paper, and I took it from him. Inside the paper lay a string of wooden beads. I held them up in wonder, remembering the time when I’d climbed to the Needle with Dav
id above a sea of candlenut trees.

  “A lei of kukui nuts!” I cried. “How could you have remembered?”

  “Koma’s mother made this for me to give to you. These are brown, and harder to find than the black. I asked her to do this right after our trip up the valley. She was one of your Grandma Joanna’s protégées, and quite young at the time. Joanna helped Ailina to get started singing at the big hotels. Of course, that was before she married, before Koma was born. When you left for San Francisco, I put the beads away, thinking that someday my little friend would return. So there you are, Caro.”

  I put the lei of smooth brown beads over my head. They felt warm, as though they would always hold the sunshine of my island. I leaned over and kissed David on the cheek, as I’d sometimes done when I was little. He laughed, pleased, and kissed me back—only suddenly it was different. For just a moment we looked at each other with unexpected recognition—with a new awareness that I wasn’t ready for. Neither was he, for he moved away from me and started the car. The naturalness of my little girl’s gesture was lost, and I wished I’d been less impulsive.

  Before we could turn out of the parking lot, a man in the gray shirt and olive-green pants of a park ranger looked in at David’s window.

  “Hello, Koma,” David said. “You remember Caroline—you met her last night.”

  Koma’s smile was impersonal, and I sensed the same reserve in him that I’d felt before. Because I was a haole-malihini? White and a stranger?

  “That was a good meeting last night,” David said. “I’m glad you spoke out as you did.”

  “I had to. If we’re going to save what’s left of Hawaii we have to let people on the mainland know that it needs saving. And that it’s worth the trouble.” He looked at me. “My mother wants to meet you, though I don’t know why. She’s working as a volunteer at Baldwin Home in Lahaina. Maybe you’ll be going there.”

  It wasn’t a question, and he told us “aloha” before I had time to respond.

  “That young man doesn’t like me,” I said. “Why should his mother want to meet me?”

  “She probably remembers you when you were small and she was often at your grandmother’s. She made those kukui beads for you with love—in spite of everything.”

  That sounded enigmatic. But I was beginning to put things together. She was a singer and my grandmother’s protégée. I remembered the beautiful young Hawaiian woman who had sung that night at Ahinahina. I remembered my mother’s anger.

  “David, is she the one? I mean the one my father …? Koma must have heard the stories, and that’s why he doesn’t like me. Though it’s hardly fair. David, I don’t want to meet her.”

  “A little while ago you were curious. I didn’t mean to open this up, but now that you’ve guessed, I think perhaps you really should meet her. I don’t know how she’ll feel toward you, but now that you’ve put the rock back, you can help to mend something else—if only in a small way.”

  “From so long ago? When I had nothing to do with whatever happened?”

  “You were Keith’s child. There are wounds that take a long time to heal.”

  Yes, I thought. I carried such wounds, and so did David in the death of his wife.

  “Who did she marry?”

  “A young lawyer who came here from Manila—Carlos Olivero. It must have been a happy marriage, and perhaps it made up for what went before. They just had the one son—Koma. Carlos died about ten years ago.”

  “If she knew him, she’d remember my father.”

  David spoke almost absently. “It doesn’t matter. You’ve seen what was in the clouds for you—so what will happen will happen.”

  “No freedom of choice? I don’t believe that!”

  “Oh, you’ll have all the choices there are. It will be interesting to see what road you take.”

  Sometimes he made me feel uncertain. I hadn’t accomplished the transition into the full spirit of Maui yet. That still seemed a little mystical and out of my reach. Yet I had stood on the rim of the crater and I had seen a vision. So what was happening to me?

  “I hope I can choose wisely,” I said, but he didn’t answer.

  He started the car down the mountain along the switchbacks, and clouds blew past our headlights like wisps of smoke until we came into the clear below and David turned off the lights.

  When I looked up toward the summit I saw that clouds now lay across the top in straight lines that dipped in the middle as though they were being sucked into the crater’s mouth. The sky toward the west was turning pale lavender, with streaks of golden light that painted the high-piled clouds. Hints of rose had begun to show, touching the dark shapes of the West Maui Mountains where they stood up in silhouette against the sunset.

  As the car turned back and forth down the mountain, my spirits began to lift again, and I knew that nothing would ever be the same for me. Perhaps I would even welcome the chance to meet Ailina, if it ever arose, because I might learn from her. About my father, if she would talk about him. Surely about my mother. I needed to know about them as human beings, not just as the mother and father of a small child.

  “I’m glad you took me up there,” I said to David. “I’m glad I was lucky.”

  He must have heard the new lift in my voice. “What’s up there always helps. Perspective! Let’s stop for an early dinner before we return to Manaolana. Maybe there’s some more talking to be done.”

  I was willing. For the first time, everything seemed to be coming together for me. Something had focused, and I must hold on to that for a little while at least. Even the need to help my mother seemed more tuned in—as though a direction had been given me, even though I still wasn’t sure what it was.

  “It’s better to be whole and well,” I said, half to myself. “Noelle can deal with what is real if she can just come back to life. I don’t think she’s as fragile as they all believe. Anyway, I have to try.”

  David touched my hand lightly. It was a gesture of affection, of approval, and the sudden rush of warmth I felt again disturbed me. Slow down, I warned myself. This, at least, was a choice I could make. Of course there was affection between David and me. Its roots lay far back in the years, when a boy of twelve had been kind to a little girl who was like a younger sister and who adored him. The relationship was far more uncertain now, and filled with possible pitfalls. I’d rushed all too easily into Scott’s arms, and I mustn’t repeat that pattern. I wasn’t free of Scott yet, as I knew all too well in the night’s dark hours. And David wasn’t free of his wife. Rebounds were dangerous, and not what either of us would want.

  Our trip down the mountain seemed shorter than the way up. Before Pukalani, where the road to Makawao turned off, we followed a side road David knew. Along the way, a strange, slithery little animal darted in front of us.

  “That was a mongoose,” David said. “There aren’t any snakes in Hawaii for them to kill. They were brought in originally to get rid of rats and mice. But they also kill poultry and wild birds that live on the ground. They rob nests of eggs and baby birds, and there are no predators to take care of them. That’s the trouble when you monkey with nature. The mongoose doesn’t know that he’s not allowed on United States soil.”

  David pulled into a parking space beside a restaurant built where the hillside dropped away to a deep valley. Inside, encircling windows offered a distant view. We were early and found a pleasant corner table where we could look out upon a giant avacado tree, its reaching branches heavy with green fruit. On the other side lay a shadowy valley plunging down the mountain.

  The sky had begun to darken and lights were coming on in the direction of the airport, so that the curving road that led along the Hana coast became a line of sequins—lights that vanished into the rain forests that grew almost to the water.

  Before we ordered, David went to phone Manolana to let Joanna know we wouldn’t be there for dinner. When he returned and we’d order the fish catch of the day—aku—I asked about David’s parents.


  “My father’s still a doctor in Hana—semi-retired. He was born on Maui, though he went to medical school in the States. My mother’s history is more unusual. Her great-great-grandfather was captain of a ship that sailed out of New Bedford for the Pacific islands. He met her great-great-grandmother in the port town of Lahaina in West Maui. She was full-blooded Hawaiian royalty—descended from the chiefs—or at least that’s the legend. He married her and took her home to New England, where her life must have seemed strange and probably wasn’t very happy. My mother is the first descendant of her line to return to Maui. She met my father here—and stayed. The same story in reverse. Except that she loves it here. She was a teacher until she retired. Now she’s especially interested in Hawaiian history and the restoration and preservation of all that’s historic. It can be so easily lost to the bulldozers. She’s in Honolulu now, talking to a few legislators about protecting our lands. My mother’s a persuasive lady.”

  “I’d like to meet her sometime. What fun to have Hawaiian alii on your family tree.”

  “The blood’s pretty thin by now, but I’m proud of it anyway. I like to brag to Koma and other Hawaiian friends. Maybe it even gives me a bit of an in.”

  “What about your father?” I asked.

  “He’s the contrast to my mother—quiet, not so electric. He has a great sense of humor, and great compassion for those who need him. I think he’s gained a lot of wisdom over the years. Sometimes I even listen to him.”

  “You’re lucky to still have your parents,” I said.

  “I know. Caro, they’d like to see you, since they know Joanna well, and they remember when you were born. Could you drive to Hana with me sometime soon?”

  “I’d enjoy that. Besides, the only way I can get to know my own parents the way they were is to meet people who knew them.”

  “Kate—my wife—would have liked you. And I think she’d have approved your wanting to help Noelle. She was a good therapist, and it upset her that Joanna would never let her try to help your mother.”