“Good idea.” Maile put down a peeler and washed her hands at the sink. “You feel like walking with me, picking some herbs for Bebe’s patient? We need to go soon. The clouds are coming in and it’ll rain in an hour or two.”
“I’d love to. Give me five minutes to change my clothes.” Storm dashed off to her room.
When they got outside the house, Aunt Maile pressed a piece of carved wood into Storm’s hand. Storm smiled. “Pua‘a, my pig. You still have it.”
“Of course, it’s your ‘aamakaa, your personal guardian. One day soon, I’ll give it to you.” Maile cocked one eyebrow at her. “When I know you’ll take proper care of it.”
“It’s old, isn’t it?” Storm looked at the totem in her hand, gave it a pat, and handed it back to Aunt Maile.
“Yes, it belonged to my father, and his father, your great-grandfather. A kapana carved it about a hundred years ago, when people knew how their ancestral guardians looked out for them.” Maile looked at Storm, her smile tinged with solemnity.
“You think I need it today?”
“I think you need it always, but I chant to it from time to time for you. It can take care of you from my house.” Now, her eyes had a mischievous sparkle.
“Come on, Aunt Maile.” Storm grinned back.
Maile looked up the mountain and started to walk. “The ancients had good reasons for their beliefs. We shouldn’t reject so many of their teachings.”
“I believe you.” Storm recognized her aunt’s mood. She knew that while she’d been changing her clothes, Aunt Maile had probably said an Hawaiian prayer for guidance in her search for strong herbs. Like many other Native American cultures, Hawaiians believed they were a small part of a great circle of life; the earth and her gods nurtured and needed to be shown gratitude for their benevolence.
Aunt Maile was a modern woman in many ways, but she believed in the teachings of the ancients. When Storm was a child, Aunt Maile had tied a small ‘aamakaa on a thong around her neck before taking their walks on the slopes of the volcano. For Storm, it was tradition, like putting a star on top of the Christmas tree. For her aunt, it was deeper, a plea for a safe journey into the sacred lands that bordered the kapa, or forbidden trails of the ali‘i and their kahana.
The royalty of old, their priests, and certain gods still wandered among the koa forests and lava fields. Those who saw them said that their feet never touched the ground and their presence was preceded by the aroma of gardenia or pikake. It was said that whenever the sweet perfume of those flowers surrounded a person out walking, this person needed to heed the warning or face death. Tale after tale, even modern-day ones, passed on the omens.
Chapter 16
Storm followed the wide seat of Aunt Maile’s overalls up the narrow path that veered from the main road and rose with the slopes of the volcano. Mauna Kea had not erupted for many years, though Kilauea spewed regularly from the Pu‘u õ‘õ vent, north of Hilo. Still, Storm could see the lava paths that had flowed hundreds of years ago. A thick layer of lava could take decades to cool, and only then did the hardiest varieties of grass, blade by blade, poke through the convoluted sheets of congealed rock.
Along the edges of the lava flows, koa and kiawe grew gnarled by the ceaseless trade winds into skeletal crones that tottered across the grasslands. Storm was always amazed that this same koa tree produced the richly burled wood treasured by the best furniture makers in Hawai’i.
She took a deep breath of cool air and watched wisps of clouds dance ahead of them on the path. Aunt Maile bent down and plucked a plant, carefully leaving leaves behind. Storm drew up beside her and tilted her head back to the damp mists that drifted around them like amiable spirits. She’d forgotten how revitalizing it was to hike these pastures. From time to time, a cluster of cows with their spring-born young would low and trudge away from their approach.
“Want me to carry your basket?” She spoke softly, as if the clouds that descended upon these deceptively fruitful lands requested peace.
“Thanks, honey, but I’m accustomed to it. I’d feel like something was missing.” Aunt Maile’s voice was low, too.
“Aunt Maile, why did my mother use the paeo for her ‘aamakaa?”
Maile looked at Storm out of the corner of her eyes. Storm saw the glance and knew she’d caught her aunt off guard by actually bringing up the topic of her mother. “She felt closer to the owl, our mother’s family’s animal guardian. I chose our father’s, the pig. Same as you.”
“Did she carry it?” Storm knew she was surprising her aunt by discussing her mother, a topic she’d avoided over the years, even when Aunt Maile had brought it up.
Maile grunted, then bent down and poked among some grasses. “No, she didn’t.” She stood up slowly. “She didn’t learn about the old ways as much as I did. She was only twelve when our mother died. I’d had six more years of learning, and that’s a lot when you’re young.”
Storm felt goose flesh creep along her arms. “I was the same age when she died.”
Maile looked over her shoulder at her. “That’s right.”
“But your mother was sick.” Storm’s voice was brittle and Maile dropped back to her side.
“So was yours.” Maile sighed. “If my mother had got pneumonia a few years later, better antibiotics might have saved her life. Eme was no different. There are good drugs these days which might have relieved her illness.”
“Like the sleeping pills that killed her?” Storm spat out the words.
Aunt Maile’s voice was gentle. “Depression killed her. She had no more control over it than my mother did over pneumonia.”
Storm kicked a rock and sent it bouncing along the path. “Didn’t any of these remedies help?” She waved her hand in the direction of Maile’s basket and quickly stomped ahead of her aunt.
Alone, she sat down on a boulder off the side of the path. Why was she searching for answers about her mother now? Maybe Uncle Miles’s death had set it off, or maybe it was just PMS, though she’d never admit the latter out loud. It made her feel like crying.
She was terrified of being like her mother, yet she could still miss her so badly that she ached. One of her childhood memories was of her mother comforting her, saying, “Cry, let it out. Your tears carry away the pain.” Why hadn’t crying, or something, relieved her mother? Why hadn’t her only daughter been able to provide enough light in her life? A wave of pain passed through Storm. Maybe because the daughter hadn’t been a very sympathetic adolescent.
Storm shuddered with the recollections of how people had whispered about her, lovely Eme’s defiant daughter. Then, later, when Storm was a gawky teenager, the women sitting around would stop talking if she walked into a room and look at her with pity blurring their expressions to mush. It made her furious; the notion still made her boil.
Storm swallowed hard. She seemed to be caught between grief and the fear that depression would be as much her legacy as her mother’s dark eyes and wavy hair. She was even further tormented by the scorn that much of society and organized religion heaped on suicide. Storm detested pity, the condescension it implied.
Aunt Maile sat quietly, six feet away on another boulder. She looked up at Storm, her brown face creased with sadness. “I still miss her.” Maile picked a flower out of her basket and twirled it between her strong fingers. “Sometimes when I look at you, I see her.”
Storm jerked as if Maile had touched her with a hot wire. Awareness passed over Maile’s wizened face. “You only resemble her physically.”
Storm lowered her gaze. “Was she stubborn, like me?”
Maile chuckled. “No, she was sweet.”
Storm glared at the older woman.
“She was impressionable, even as an adult,” Maile continued. “Very different from you. You’re stubborn, yes, but tough. And generous.”
Storm shook her head with distress. Maile walked over and put her hand on Storm’s sh
oulder. “I mean that in a good way. I’m like you. Eme was artistic and sensitive. You and I blaze ahead. To our own detriment, sometimes.” Maile smiled. “She did like to walk these same paths, though, just as you and I do.”
Tears burned Storm’s eyes. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand, then rubbed her hand across her jeans. “I should slow down and listen to people more.”
Maile shrugged. “We learn at our own rate.” She looked around at the fog that had silently surrounded them. “Storm, the clouds have come down and I need to get one more plant, koali, the blue morning glory. I think there’s a vine on the pasture fence up ahead. Let’s go, then we’ll head for home.”
“Aunt Maile, I want to sit here for a minute and enjoy the peace. Could you come back this way?”
Aunt Maile paused, then nodded. “It’s only about a hundred yards up the path. Stay here, you could get lost in this fog coming.”
The thickening mists gradually muffled the sound of Maile’s footsteps. Storm raised her face to the coolness that eddied around her, glad for tranquility and solitude. Some of the cloud wisps were cooler than others and carried larger raindrops; they gathered and obscured the path Aunt Maile had taken. The fog cushioned not only the sights and noises of the pasture, but Storm’s own bruised emotions. She took a deep breath of the soothing dampness and rested her elbows on her knees, chin in hands. Unlike the city, this was the land of her people, and for her, it held the power to heal.
Chapter 17
Storm had been startled by the upsurge of emotion that enveloped her. She had nearly shouted a protest to Maile’s comment about her resemblance to her mother. Her aunt had meant it as a compliment. Family members who dared to bring up the subject of Storm’s mother around Storm usually spoke of her beauty or musical ability.
Storm took a deep breath and forced herself to picture her mother. Her memories were still those of an insecure little girl facing adolescence. The sadness in her mother’s dark eyes, the translucent pallor of her skin, the slenderness of her waist and wrists, merged into a fuzzy portrait. Storm found this image mixed with a sense of self-loathing.
Though superficially aware that she was, at five-eight, tall and handsome, when she was around other women she still thought of herself as clumsy and robust. She felt as if her hips and breasts were too voluptuous, her fingernails ragged, her feet too large.
In addition to her self-consciousness, she detested sitting in salons. She found herself intimidated by petite women who had perfect makeup and never sweated armpit rings onto their silk blouses, but she sensed she should try to look more like them. In her mind, they mirrored her mother’s fragile perfection, an icon that Storm had no hope of duplicating.
People had admired and wanted to care for her mother. In the year before her death, neighbors dropped by with noodles and manapaa, those tender pork-filled buns, helped with the cleaning, or drove her to doctor’s appointments. They sat and drank tea with her in the afternoons after the long nap that was meant to rejuvenate her fragile constitution. Storm remembered the disapproving moues of certain women when she got home from school and let the screen door slam behind her.
One of them, a willowy brunette—Storm now was convinced that she had maintained her stick figure with an eating disorder—snickered at the number of chocolate-covered graham crackers Storm had placed on her plate for a snack. “Eme, you’re going to have to watch this child’s appetites,” the woman simpered.
Storm’s mother walked into the kitchen and poured two big glasses of iced guava juice, then sat with Storm at the table and ignored the woman who slipped into an extra chair with them. That day, Storm only ate one cracker instead of the usual five or six. Despite her mother’s efforts, her mouth had been dry and the guava juice too sweet.
Her mother was a singer, the one-in-a-million lottery winner of talent who got to leave the islands to study in New York City. She was famous for her promise. One day she darted from the stage after the first song of an important recital. She wandered the icy streets without a coat for hours until she stopped to rub the muzzle of a mounted policeman’s horse. It was a breakdown, people said. She was too high-strung.
Storm remembered singing with her mother. Eme had played the piano and encouraged her daughter’s reedy voice. She blended her own rich contralto to Storm’s in duets. Storm’s voice would break with effort and she tried to believe people didn’t cringe when she sat beside her mother on the piano bench.
Her mother didn’t see it; she would hold Storm’s hand against her stomach to teach her better breathing technique. Storm remembered her own dirty thumb next to the perfect one, rising and falling with the deep breaths.
She looked at her thumbs again. Still grubby, though the nails weren’t as tattered as she remembered. In fact, they looked more like Eme’s.
A rustle brought Storm to the present. “Aunt Maile?”
No answer. There were probably cattle grazing nearby, though she wasn’t sure how far away the pasture fence was. Visibility was practically nil. She could barely make out the shape of a good-sized koa tree fifteen feet away. Its shadowy form wavered. A rustling sound came from the tree. Were the branches moving or was something behind the trunk?
Storm squinted and stood up. “Scram.” Her voice sounded uncertain in the foggy stillness. She hoped it wasn’t an escaped bull.
Maybe only a branch had fallen. She sat back down with a glance up the path in the direction Maile had taken, then looked back at the tree and froze. Something large moved in the deep grass. Whatever it was glided away from the tree, then clouds veiled its form.
The shape was too small for a bull, maybe more the size of a calf. Storm let a breath go.
Momentarily, the mists thinned and Storm saw the shadow again. It stood with a posture like that of a sprinter at the starting block. A creature that stood nearly upright. Or did it? She frowned and strained to see. Clouds drifted between her and the animal, but its shoulders looked higher than its rump. Its arms appeared to approach the ground, though the creature didn’t use them to walk. It looked more like a human than a bull.
A hole in the fog drifted by. Through a tunnel of visibility, Storm caught a glimpse of the brown-furred animal. Its small, glittering eyes looked in her direction. She clapped a hand over her mouth with surprise and stood absolutely still.
Long, curved teeth gleamed against its dusky muzzle. It wasn’t human, but it was definitely not bovine. The creature paused and swung its dark, boar-like head on muscular shoulders as if scenting the air. Lifting its long snout, it sniffed in her direction. Storm froze to her rock, unable to even lower the hand over her mouth.
The beast glided parallel to the path. It traveled several feet in the direction Aunt Maile had taken, without making a sound in the twig-strewn grass.
Fog wafted between them, obscuring the twenty or so yards between Storm and the creature. Storm drew a shaking breath. God, what was that?
The inside of her mouth was as dry as sandpaper. The back of her throat stung from the volcanic fumes, but she was too scared to even swallow, let alone move. She sat like a statue and prayed the animal’s small porcine eyes couldn’t see any better through the sulfurous vapors than hers could.
Storm stared into the shifting haze until her vision blurred. Something rustled again near the koa tree. This time, she dropped to the other side of the boulder and curled into the smallest ball she could manage. She strained, listening, but either the fog muffled the movement of whatever was there or it had left. Was it another beast, moving toward Aunt Maile?
Aunt Maile was out there, elderly and unsuspecting. Storm unturtled her head from the collar of her shirt and peeked over the top of the rock. Fog swirled around her; the meadow was unnaturally still. No cattle lowed, no birds chirped.
Aunt Maile might come down that path at any moment. Yelling a warning wouldn’t help either of them. She had to get to her aunt ahead of this thing. They would be fa
r stronger together than alone.
Storm crouched and peered around at the swirling mists. Her eyes burned with the effort of trying to penetrate the haze and her limbs tingled from fear and immobility. She felt as if she’d sat paralyzed for an hour, but she knew it had probably been only a few minutes.
The fog was still thick, but wetter and less sulfur-laden. An occasional raindrop splatted onto the top of her head and she felt moisture gather into drops heavy enough to glide down her forehead into her eyebrows.
Storm slowly stood. An aroma of gardenias floated on the next wraith of mist. It was a welcome scent compared to the sulfur from the volcano and she raised her chin in the direction it came. Now the perfume was cloying, too sweet, like a dying lei.
The odor wrapped around her with an insistence that made her take shallow breaths. She could practically taste it. Abruptly, she recalled the repeated tales of Aunt Maile’s and Uncle Keone’s friends. The yarns of people around campfires, folks talking story at family ll‘aa. The old Hawaiians had said, “If there are no flowers around and you smell gardenias, it’s a warning. Get out, go away, leave it alone. Go, go!”
Fists clenched, too terrified to breathe, Storm bolted up the path. Once she stumbled on a rock and sprawled facedown in the dirt. Her knee slammed into the ground and she heard her jeans tear. Shakily, she got to her feet and darted ahead, too frightened to check her aching knee. The trail forked a few feet in front of her and one path disappeared behind a thicket of kiawe, the other wound around porous black boulders of volcanic rock to higher elevations. It led to thicker mists. Which way had that creature gone? Which way was Aunt Maile?
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