Silversword

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “I don’t think so.” She twisted the jade demon ring on her thumb.

  As we walked toward the planes, Frank Wilkie came out of a small building. He was a stocky man with wide shoulders, thinning gray hair, and a rugged look about him. His manner was one of easy assurance laced with humor—a manner often found in flyers. As he came toward us he looked first at Noelle.

  “Hello,” he said, holding out his hand to her. “I don’t suppose you remember me, since you were in pretty bad shape the last time I saw you, but I remember you very well.”

  Though she gave him her hand, his words clearly meant nothing to her, and she was looking past him toward a small plane that was taking off.

  David introduced me, and Frank said, “Everything’s set.”

  We walked to where the helicopter waited and climbed aboard. The few seats were separated by an aisle, and David took the front seat beside Frank, while I sat behind him, across from Noelle. She seemed pleased and interested in this new experience. What might lie ahead was already gone from her mind, in spite of our attempted warnings.

  We took off in the smooth, slightly tippy lift of such craft, and flew for a short distance along the coastline. The noise level was high, and there could be no talking unless we shouted. On sightseeing flights, passengers were given earphones into which the pilot would speak. But today we had a grimmer purpose than sightseeing.

  The curling white road between jungle and sea ws the one that we’d followed toward Hana only a little while before. When we turned inland over miles of rain forest, we seemed to skim the tops of the trees. Once we hovered low enough to be opposite a waterfall that plunged down a cliff in a column of moving silver to lose itself beneath the green canopy of the trees. Sometimes as we circled we saw sugarcane, and green patches of pineapple fields, separated geometrically with strips of red earth in a pattern an artist might have conceived. We were climbing now, and the trees had thinned to growth that wasn’t as tall as lower down, and the light green of kukui gave a mottled effect as we rose still higher toward a slit in the crater walls.

  The clouds had let us through, and while I realized that the gap was probably miles across, it looked frighteningly narrow compared with the steep walls on either side. It must have taken a tremendous blast to blow such a hole, hurling chunks of granite far off into the sea.

  I looked across at Noelle, to find her happily absorbed in what lay outside her window. No threatening hint of what was to come had penetrated as yet.

  Through a window ahead, as we rose, I could see the live volcanoes on the Big Island—Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, a hundred miles away, peaceful now against a serene sky.

  We flew between the cliffs and were suddenly above a bare and desolate moon world, inside the crater. Shadows of high clouds made patches of light and dark below us, emphasizing contrast. It was a world of subdued colors—mauve and garnet and ocher in grotesquely twisted masses of rock that had once been tossed into the air to fall back upon this weird landscape. This was very different from standing on the rim looking down.

  Frank Wilkie had found his landing place, and we dropped toward the floor of the crater, three thousand feet down, so that the green world beyond vanished. Red sands spread in a curved wind pattern beneath the plane, and volcanic mounds rose all about us in irregular shapes, cast up by explosive forces ages ago. The shades of red were like dark fire etched into rock, and a great deal of the carving had been caused by erosion over the centuries.

  Noelle touched my arm and I turned to her quickly. She looked disoriented now, and anxious, so I held her hand tightly across the narrow aisle.

  We were dropping down to land, and for a moment I glimpsed distant buildings along the rim, and Science City’s silver domes. Then they disappeared, hidden by immense cinder cones all around us.

  We settled gently, the wind of our blades whipping red dust into the air while our noise desecrated the silence. Gradually the blades stopped turning and the awesome echoes died. I got out into an enormous emptiness and a silence that pressed down upon me, vast and unfamiliar. Only a tiny moving spot on a distant trail could be seen as a ranger on horseback. Nothing else stirred except a sudden gust of dervish wind that whirled sand into the air, so that we closed our eyes and turned our backs.

  I watched Noelle carefully, waiting for the recognition that must come. But though a little uncertain, she still seemed interested in this new adventure.

  After the sunshine of Hana, the air was sharply cold, and a sweater was hardly enough to provide warmth. In the face of this unearthly world, we spoke softly and moved on quiet feet. These echoes were something we didn’t want to rouse. All about us the colors seemed to grow more visible and intense, and more unlike the colors of the earth I knew.

  I remembered my first impression of black desolation, which hadn’t been true at all. As the eye became accustomed, one saw the strange, unearthly beauty of this place. The greens of high, distant cliffs contrasted with hills of gray boulders, while nearer cones were streaked with an intensity of reddish color. Among the lava peaks that surrounded me, I could glimpse quiet pockets of white cloud here and there. Not far away, on our own level, grew an entire field of silverswords, low on the ground, not blooming now, and among them several nene geese browsed.

  Noelle shivered and I put my arm around her. It wasn’t the mountain chill that made her tremble, but something she must be feeling as she looked around. She began to turn the demon ring on her thumb, as if she called upon it to ward off evil that might touch her in this place.

  Our feet slipped on volcanic sand as Frank led the way. Parts of the crater floor were strewn with rocks of all sizes—some broken from larger masses, some volcanic “bombs” that had been shot from the depths of the earth. There were “bubbles” too—round, hollow mounds, some small, some with openings large enough for a man to crawl inside.

  We climbed laboriously to the trail near which Frank had landed, and where we could step onto firmer ground.

  “We’ll walk around the shoulder of that next cinder cone,” Frank said, and started off ahead of us. This cone was black, which seemed ominous in this place of ancient fire.

  I held Noelle’s hand as she came after me—our long-ago roles reversed, since I was watching out for her.

  David came close behind us. I knew that he had never lost his capacity for full involvement in whatever cause he gave himself to. Noelle had become such a cause and he was both anxious and eager for the outcome.

  We walked around the steep slope of the cone, following the trail, and came again into a mottle landscape—Pele’s own playground.

  “Do you remember this place, Noelle?” Frank asked gently. “This is where the accident happened. This is where your horses went down and you all fell. I found you clear down there when I came to bring you out.”

  Noelle stared at him, frightened now, and I knew that in a moment the screen would come down and she’d escape into her own safe world where nothing could touch her.

  “Don’t run away!” I cried. “I’m your daughter. I am Caroline, and I want to help you go back through what happened so that you can return to what’s real. Please try. Try to remember what happened and tell me.”

  My words about being her daughter slipped past unrecognized, her guard against such knowledge still secure. Nevertheless, my appeal seemed to have reached her. She covered her face with both hands and words began to come—so softly at first that I could hardly hear. Then she grew more vocal, as though she lived again a scene long past.

  “I know he wanted to kill me. We were all mounted, and he rode his horse straight at me. He meant to—oh, I don’t know what he meant! But that’s when I remembered the tapa beater. Mother hadn’t wanted me to go on the trip, and she’d put it in my saddlebag, where I could reach it quickly. It was all she could think of that might protect me. I didn’t believe until that moment that he meant to hurt me. But when I saw his face, saw him coming—I knew. I snatched that thing out and …” She dropped her hands
, staring toward where the frightened horses must have slid in panic down the lava chips.

  “Then what happened?” I urged. “You needn’t blame yourself—just go on remembering.”

  “So many awful things were happening. I was terribly angry. I can remember how heavy the tapa beater was in my hand. Then a horse was screaming, rearing—and we were all jumbled together right here in this narrow spot. I think Keith went down first. He fell off his horse when I struck him. Marla was down too, trying to stop Pilikia from bolting. I couldn’t hold my horse and she fell right down there!” Noelle pointed. “I was thrown off into the sand. They told me afterwards that Marla’s Pilikia broke her leg and Tom had to shoot her.”

  “What happened after you fell?” I asked softly.

  Noelle was quiet. The vagueness was coming over her again—the settling mists. “It’s hard to remember … I think that’s when the maiden came. She was so beautiful and kind. She carried me to where a silversword grew and told me I needn’t remember anything that would trouble me ever again. The silversword would help me and take all the pain away. I can remember how silent everything was when all the noise stopped. I remember my mother bending over Marla after her horse kicked her. And Tom … I don’t know when he came. I began to do as the maiden told me and I broke off bits of the silversword leaves. They’re downy like a moth’s wings—did you know that?”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “There isn’t any more. I just went back to the time when all of us were happy. I had my little girl and Keith loved me—and I was never so angry that I wanted to kill him.”

  Frank had moved a little way off as Noelle talked, to give us privacy. She spoke half to herself, half to me, though with no recognition of who I was. David came to touch her shoulder gently, so that she looked at him.

  “Did you really strike Keith, Noelle? Is this what you need to face and accept?”

  “I—I don’t know. I don’t remember.” Suddenly she pointed down the slope. “Look! There are silverswords down there. Let me go down—I must go down!”

  David held her gently, firmly, until she gave up the struggle and swung her bag off her shoulder to open it. She took out the carved image of Pele and held it out in front of her.

  “I brought this for you,” she told the mountain. “So please let me go.” For an instant she held it out in both hands like an offering, and then let the figure drop so that it rolled and bounced down the cinders, to land among the silverswords.

  For a moment she stood watching it. Then she began to cry and this time it was David who held her gently, and whom she seemed to recognize. I wondered if her own action had released her from the spell she’d been under for so long.

  “We’d better take her back to the helicopter,” David said. “We mustn’t push her any further.”

  Frank led the way back. He couldn’t have understood all that had happened, but he had stepped back discreetly—a kind and considerate man.

  I let David take Noelle back along the trail and stayed where I was for a moment. Somehow, Noelle must have sensed all along where we were going, and so had brought the ring for protection, and the Pele figure as an offering to appease the lady of the volcano.

  The others had moved out of sight around a curve in the trail, and I was aware of the immense and terrible silence around me. It was as though a strange, primitive sense of danger touched me, and I ran to catch up with the others. This was a place of death and disaster—a haunted place—and I wanted no more of it.

  We descended to where the machine waited, incongruous and out of context here. Noelle had grown wilder in her weeping, and David and Frank had difficulty in helping her aboard. As I waited, I could hear the bleating of feral goats on some distant pali, followed by the sound of a shot—a sound that ricocheted and echoed endlessly.

  “Hunters,” Frank said. “Goats destroy everything they can eat, so the Park allows hunters to come in and cut down their population.”

  Noelle was in her seat and Frank motioned me to get aboard. For a moment longer I stood looking around this place I might never see again, but which was likely to haunt my dreams forever. Some small wild plant bloomed near my feet, and I saw with wonder that a butterfly hovered over it. A butterfly on the moon! Even volcanic cinders could breed plant life, and the crater wasn’t so empty of growth as it seemed at first.

  “We’d better hurry,” Frank said, and I looked up to see that clouds were streaming through one of the gaps. “They can fill up the crater fast, and we don’t want to be caught down here.”

  The wind pushing clouds through, was like pouring cream into a bowl, even though the sky above us was clear and blue. I hurried to climb the steps and fasten myself into my seat, while the machine shattered the silence with its own indifference. Noelle was crying harder than ever, and my concern for her grew. I couldn’t be sure yet what her tears meant.

  Frank took us back to Hana by a shorter route, and when we’d landed, David thanked him, and we led Noelle to the waiting car. She had never stopped crying, though she wasn’t sobbing wildly now, and she didn’t reject my arm about her.

  When we reached the house, Helena came out on the lanai and took charge of Noelle, who had turned into a frightened child. She took her out to the kitchen to fix her a dish of ice cream and soothe her tears.

  “Are you all right, Caroline?” David asked. His eager excitement had fallen away, and I knew he was as unsure of the outcome with Noelle as I was.

  “I don’t know what will happen now,” I said, “but I think we had to do this.”

  “She can’t be much worse off than she was. At least she’s come closer to the truth.”

  “Closer to realizing that she may have killed my father?”

  “We don’t know that. She may have been angry enugh to try, but somehow I don’t think she was ever strong enough to have struck that blow—even if she believes she did.” He looked past me down the walk. “Here’s Peter—I’m glad he’s home in time for you to meet him.”

  The boy came up the walk, dropped his books, and ran to hug his father. David swung him up and then put him on his feet to face me.

  “This is Caroline Kirby, Peter. She’s Noelle’s daughter, and Joanna’s granddaughter. Caroline, this is my son Peter.”

  He took the hand I held out, his brown eyes like his father’s, his ready smile his own.

  “Yes—hello. Grampa said you were coming. Is Noelle here now?”

  “She’s in the kitchen with your grandmother,” David said. “I think there’s ice cream if you want to join them. I’ll come along in a minute.”

  I started to follow, but David stopped me. “Wait. Give Noelle a little time to recover. She and Peter are friends, and maybe he’ll help more than anyone else right now. Besides, my father has something he wants to show you.”

  Dr. Reed had come out on the lanai. “Yes, I do have something I want you to see, Caroline. Will you come into my office for a minute?”

  Dr. Reed was as big a man as his son, and as rugged-looking. The rim of hair around his tanned head made a fringe of dark silver. His eyes, too, were direct in the way they regarded me, and I had the feeling that he would listen to his patients with empathy.

  He led the way to a small cluttered room at the back of the house. Since he was no longer in full practice, he’d given up his larger offices. The room’s windows looked out upon banana plants and a papaya grove. The clutter inside looked fascinating. Books were set sideways on top of other books, paintings and photographs crowded one wall, and various bits of pottery were set about. Not particularly old, so perhaps they were gifts from his patients.

  The desk was an old-fashioned rolltop that he said had come by ship a long time ago from Yankee New England. The top was pulled back now to show a small portable typewriter, and piles of paper. David had said he was setting down his memories of his days in Hana as a doctor.

  He indicated a big leather armchair beside his desk for me, and sat down in a swivel chair that tilted when h
e leaned back. From a shelf behind the desk he took a framed enlargement and held it out to me. It must have been taken shortly before I left Maui, and the little girl in the picture held on to a young David’s hand, looking not at the camera, but up at her friend.

  I had to blink to keep back sudden tears as I turned the picture. “That was a wonderful time.”

  David’s father agreed wryly. “I’m sure it was. Times often seem pretty wonderful when we look back. It’s a funny thing about you and your mother. Noelle has spent all these years trying to run away from the past, while, according to what David says, you’re trying to run back. Maybe you’re both wrong.”

  “Maybe neither of us can help that,” I said.

  “Joanna phoned me when she knew you were coming here, and she’s very concerned about you.”

  “Yes. She’s concerned enough to send me home. She’s bought plane tickets for me to use on Monday. Which doesn’t give me enough time with Noelle.”

  “Perhaps she’s thinking about your happiness. Perhaps she’s even protecting you.”

  “From the truth of whatever happened up on the mountain? But I can’t run away from that.”

  He was watching me keenly. “Then don’t. I’m just repeating what I sensed in Joanna, but I’m not sure she’s right. You could find yourself a room in Makawao or thereabouts, rent a car, stay on. I doubt if Joanna will keep you from seeing Noelle if you confront her with your presence.”

  “I wonder if I could—” I said doubtfully.

  “Why not? How does Marla feel about you?”

  “She’s become my mother’s keeper and she doesn’t want me around to interfere.”

  “And Tom O’Neill—how do you get along with him?”

  “I don’t. From the first he hasn’t wanted me here. But he’s not important. He does what my grandmother says.”

  “Don’t underestimate Tom,” Dr. Reed said quietly.

  I remembered the way Tom had kept Marla home when we’d left Manaolana this morning, and I told Dr. Reed about that, puzzling aloud.