Primitive Flame

by Lakes, Lynde

  Cort and Grandfather exchanged stunned glances, then looked up at Dr. Elele for an explanation. He merely scratched his head and shrugged.

  “This is weird.” Cort remained in his crouched position, looking unnerved. “A few minutes ago those roots were hard as concrete. Now they’re soft and flexible. Neither Keo nor I could pull the statue free. Then Lani comes along and effortlessly lifts it out. What is this?”

  Cort helped Lani to her feet, then slipped his arm around her waist and rested his hand possessively on her hip.

  Grandfather looked at Dr. Elele. “Yes. Please explain how any human could wedge the statue into the roots without breaking it, and how Lani was able to get it out?”

  “No human could. Whatever did this released the statue for Lani.” Dr. Elele’s pupils shrank into pinpoints of fear. “The ash-gray aura in the house…” He shivered. “And now this.”

  Cort’s jaw twitched. “This can’t be happening.”

  Grandfather shook his head. “If someone, or something, could wedge the aumakua statue into those roots, then maybe Lani’s right.”

  “It has to mean something,” Dr. Millie said.

  “Lani,” Cort said, “when I first asked about the statue, didn’t you tell me it was supposed to keep unwanted spirits away from the house?”

  “Yes. And it failed.”

  Cort raked his hand through his hair. “Maybe something wanted to bind it outside so it couldn’t protect the house.” His face darkened as if he was embarrassed to get caught up in something he couldn’t let himself believe.

  “As interesting as this is,” Dr. Elele said. “There’s no way to prove it.”

  Lani lifted her chin. “It proves that strange things are happening and that I’m not hallucinating.”

  “Maybe we should have another séance.” Dr. Millie looked encouragingly at Lani.

  “No!” Lani said. “I can’t go through that again. Ever.”

  Dr. Millie patted Lani’s shoulder. “You don’t have to do anything that upsets you, of course.” She held Lani’s gaze. “But it’s too bad that during the séance we weren’t able to contact the teenagers who found you when you were a baby.”

  “Now that would be impossible!” Grandfather said, brushing dirt from his statue. “They aren’t dead.”

  “But, Grandfather, you told me all of our family except you died when the lava flow took the house.”

  “Immediate family, honey. Lei and Pono didn’t live in our household. They merely visited us from time to time.”

  “Why didn’t you mention they were alive?”

  “Haven’t had much contact with them since moving to O’ahu. I didn’t know it was important.” His voice sounded hurt.

  She touched his hand gently, struggling to stay calm. “Where do they live?”

  “Lei is married and lives on the Big Island. I’ve lost contact with Pono. I think he’s living somewhere on the mainland. Lei probably has his address.”

  Lani’s heart skipped a beat. “Do you have Lei’s phone number?”

  Grandfather nodded.

  “It would be best to talk to Lei in person,” Dr. Millie said, rubbing her chin with her index finger. “This could be the breakthrough you need to discover what really happened the day Lei and Pono found you.”

  Cort squeezed Lani’s hand. “Call her and tell her you’re coming. And you’re bringing a friend.”

  Lani couldn’t believe it. Her gaze met Cort’s. Even in the semi-darkness she saw the intensity and strength in his eyes. As his arm slid around her waist, she smiled, warmed by his support.

  ****

  It had been only a short flight to the Big Island and now, with Cort at her side, she faced Lei. Lei was a dark, round woman whose eyes never quite met Lani’s, even while Lani explained the reason for the visit.

  “Lei, after all I’ve told you, I’m sure you can see why it’s important for me to find out the truth about my birth.”

  Lei’s hand trembled as she adjusted the gardenia in her mahogany hair. “It so long ago,” she said in pidgin.

  “But you remember it all,” Lani said, locking into Lei’s gaze.

  Lei flushed. “Like yesterday. No feel good about lie we tell.” She smoothed the folds of her light blue muumuu over her belly. “No like cause you pain.”

  “It’s all right.” Lani softened her voice. “But please, tell me the truth now.”

  Lei sighed and nodded. “Pono and I, we in big trouble after we stay out all night. Do nuttin’ wrong, jus’ go too close to lava flow, and it trap us.”

  Patience and support radiated in Cort’s face as he leaned forward to encourage Lei to say more.

  “Take all night to find da way out,” Lei said, shaking her head. “We afraid no one believe us. Halfway down da path, we rest on sacred fish boulder near lava flow, an’ try to make up one good story.”

  Suddenly, a Kona breeze rippled the living room curtains. Lei flinched. Lani covered Lei’s hand, hoping to soothe her.

  Lei offered a small smile. “Wen this young woman come with one baby wrapped in leaves, she sit down on rock next to us. We talk while she nurse baby.”

  “Who was she?” Lani’s heart pounded.

  Lei shrugged. “Pono say he see her around before. She look jus’ like you.”

  Lani shivered, remembering the many depictions she’d seen of Pele, fully aware of the resemblance. Cort entwined his hand with hers, bolstering her courage.

  Lei held Lani’s gaze. “Baby was you, you understan’?”

  Lani nodded. Her mouth felt dry. “Why did the woman give me to you?”

  “Lady say she sick and no can care for you. She tell Pono what to say to our families about how we find you surrounded by rain mist. She say family will believe it and take you into their home.” A look of amazement crossed Lei’s face. “And dey did.”

  “You’re sure you don’t know who the woman is?”

  “Sorry. No can tell you more.” Lei’s hands trembled.

  Lani knew Lei had held back something because of fear. “Did the woman say anything about the baby’s father?”

  “No.”

  “Could Pono tell me more?”

  Lei shrugged. “He no like talk about it.”

  Lani touched Lei’s hand. “Do you have his address and phone number?”

  Lei nodded. “He live L.A.” She flipped through her address book, then wrote the information down.

  “One more question,” Lani said. “Did you send this necklace to me?”

  Lei paled and vigorously shook her head.

  “Do you know anything at all about it?”

  She trembled. “Baby Mama wore one like it.”

  ****

  When Lani reached Pono by phone, he made it clear, in a cold don’t-bother-me-further tone, that he couldn’t help her.

  “It was a dead end,” she said as she hung up.

  “You can’t give up now,” Cort said. “You have to face Pono with this.” Without further discussion, Cort made reservations for two on a flight to Los Angeles. “Pono might be more inclined to tell what he knows face to face. And I’m going with you to see that he does.”

  Lani smiled to herself. For a guy who didn’t want to commit, he acted very committed indeed.

  Hours later, Lani took a deep breath, then, with a trembling finger, pushed the doorbell of Pono’s West Los Angeles condo.

  Heavy footsteps inside came closer, and her heart raced. The door opened. A muscular Hawaiian man in his late forties stood before them smiling. He didn’t look like the young Pono she’d known as a child, yet she knew it was him.

  “Yah?” As his gaze fell on her, his dark skin turned ashen.

  He swayed, as though about to pass out. Cort grabbed him to keep him from falling. He helped Pono to a chair in the living room and headed for the kitchen to get some water.

  Lani touched Pono’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  He raked a trembling hand through black hair sparsely sprinkled with gray. �
�You look just like her,” he said in awe.

  Lani’s mouth went dry and her heart began to pound in quick staccato beats. “You mean my mother.” She swallowed. “Please, tell me. Who is she?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Lani clutched her hands, waiting for Pono’s answer. Cort returned to the room and handed the big Hawaiian a glass of water.

  “Thanks,” Pono said, “but I need something stronger.” Looking shaky, he got up and headed for a bar at the corner of the room. “What’ll you have?”

  “Nothing, thanks,” they said in unison. With trembling hands, Pono poured himself a straight shot of bourbon, then sat back down.

  “I’m Cort Wayne and this is—”

  “I know who she is!” Pono gestured toward the sagging couch with the jerk of his thumb. “Sit down, both of you.”

  As they complied, Lani felt Cort’s arm slip around her, giving her a welcome surge of bolstering strength. “Please, what about my mother?”

  Pono lit a cigarette, watched the flame for a moment, then tossed the match into an overflowing ashtray. “Why come to me?” His speech carried no traces of the Pidgin English he’d spoken as a teenager, only the rugged sound of his native accent.

  “Lei thinks you know more about my birth than you’re telling. And I do too. Bad things are happening—threatening visions, property destruction, close calls. A man even died.”

  Pono’s round, handsome face scrunched into a scowling mask.

  Lani refused to let that stop her. “I must find out who my parents are,” she said. “Don’t you see? It’s become a matter of life and death.”

  Some of the hardness left Pono’s face. He looked up at the ceiling, closed his eyes for a moment, then let out a long, slow breath. “I’ve always dreaded this day. What I can tell you might add to your problems. That’s why I’ve kept the truth to myself all these years.”

  Lani’s nerves coiled tighter, and she dug her fingernails deep into her palms.

  “Quit stalling,” Cort said. “Can’t you see what it’s doing to Lani?”

  Cort’s brusqueness surprised her. She rewarded his show of support with brief eye contact.

  Pono cleared his throat. “All right. But remember I was only fifteen.”

  The muscle in Cort’s jaw twitched. “Save the excuses. Just tell us what happened.”

  Pono darted a sharp look at Cort. “This is none of your damn business, so butt out!”

  “Please—” Lani said fighting the waver in her voice.

  Pono inhaled, then nodded. “I met this girl,” he said, his tone still belligerent. Then his voice softened. “She was beautiful. With her, I was a man.” He paused and downed his bourbon. “I didn’t see her again for months. Then, one day she was at the beach with a belly out to here.” Pono gestured in a half-moon sweep from his chest to his belly. “She started talking crazy, told me she was the fire goddess, Pele.”

  Lani felt a prickling at her hairline. “Yes, yes, go on…”

  “Then it got really weird,” Pono said. “She said since our baby would be mortal, I’d have to raise it.”

  Our baby echoed in Lani’s head. Her stomach knotted. Pono, her father? No, no it couldn’t be. She looked for a resemblance and found none. But dear God, she did look like the depiction in her book of the Goddess Pele.

  “My buddies said she was a nut—that the baby might not even be mine. Granted, I didn’t need much convincing.”

  A myriad of feelings exploded in Lani’s head: disbelief, anger and pain.

  “If you even thought I could be your child, how could you have kept it a secret all these years?” Lani sought Pono’s eyes, wanting him to see how much he’d hurt her by holding back such an important part of her history.

  He just stared at her.

  Refusing to let him shut her out until she heard it all, she said, “But you ended up taking me.”

  “Yeah.” Pono wiped at the sweat above his upper lip. “Pele scared the crap out of me with her wild talk. When it was time, I met her by the lava flow. Lei came with me. She didn’t know you were my baby, didn’t even know I’d met Pele before.”

  “You called her Pele.” Lani willed herself to breathe normally. It would be easier if her mother was the crazy woman he described—easier than accepting that she was the daughter of a goddess.

  “That’s what she said.” Pono shook his head. “Crazy, right?”

  Lani clutched Cort’s hand. Bolstered by his reassuring squeeze, she asked, “What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know. A year later I thought I saw her standing near the lava flow. I ran toward her, but before I reached her, she disappeared. After I left the navy, I tried to find her. Never found a trace.”

  “You have no idea who she was?”

  “No. But when I look at you, there’s no doubt she was real. And she was sure as hell real the night we made love. No one has ever made me feel that important.”

  “You’re my father.” The word father almost choked Lani. Pono opened his hands in a helpless gesture. “The week before you were born, I turned sixteen. I couldn’t care for you. I wasn’t even out of school. So you became the hanai child of Kama and Kalihi.”

  A bitter bile rose in Lani’s throat. “For a while. Then they gave me away.”

  “I was at sea when they sent you away. It was out of my hands. And it was the hanai way to put you where you’d get the best care.”

  “You refused to see me.”

  “That’s because I can’t tell you what you want to know.” Pono raked his fingers through his mane of coarse black hair, looking like a cornered rat. “And I don’t know how to make things up to you.”

  “My haole foster parents gave me love and care you couldn’t give.”

  Pono lowered his gaze and stared at his big hands.

  “Besides,” she said, glaring at him, feeling more hurt than ever before in her life, “this isn’t about you. And I don’t want anything from you but information.”

  “I wish I could tell you more.” She didn’t believe him. He just wanted her out of his life. He was an immature man who had failed, even in his later years, to face the consequences of his actions until forced. “Have you been back to the Big Island?”

  “No. There’s nothing there for me now.”

  Lani touched the necklace. Pono couldn’t have sent it, not if what he’d told her was true. “Are you afraid to go there? Afraid you’ll run into Pele?”

  “I told you, dammit. I tried to find her. I’d love to see her again, hold her—build on what we had that night.” His wide shoulders slumped. “But without a last name, or an address…”

  “Then you believe the woman who called herself Pele was merely mortal?”

  “It’s too frightening to imagine anything else.”

  Lani blinked back a rush of tears. “Weren’t you even curious about the fruit of your lovemaking?”

  “Hell, yes. But your life was set. You’d been adopted by rich people. I had no right to spoil it. Besides, we all had sworn to keep the secret.”

  “That stupid promise again! Everyone hides behind it. I had enough love in my heart to include you,” Lani said, anger mingling with her sense of loss.

  “I knew if I saw you, I’d never keep the secret.”

  “Secrets eat away at the soul,” Cort growled. “And if there’s anything left of yours—” He stopped, as though stunned he’d spoken his thoughts out loud, as if he were really talking to himself—about himself.

  “You must care a lot for Lani to keep butting in, risking a smash in the face,” Pono muttered. Then he faced Lani. “Lani, I’m sorry I tried to avoid seeing you.”

  Lani couldn’t bring herself to say it was okay because it wasn’t. She stared at Pono, recalling a day when he’d shown how he felt about her:

  “Pono,” Kalihi had said in pidgin those many years ago. “Take Lani to store wid you. She love to go.”

  “No way,” Pono had answered. “I no like my bradahs see me wid one baby. Bes
ide, I come back more fas’ wid out her.”

  He’d ended up taking her to the store, but refused to hold her hand and forced her to walk ahead of him. A tight knot formed in her stomach. Pono had grown older, spoke better, but he hadn’t changed that much. He still didn’t want to be bothered with her.

  “Thanks for finally having the courage to tell what happened.” Lani couldn’t stop the cold tone that had crept into her voice.

  Pono lit another cigarette with trembling hands. Smoke curled from an unfinished one in the ashtray. “I don’t know how to be a father to you at this late date.” His voice faltered. “But, I’d like a chance to get to know you, to be part of your life.”

  Despite hardening her heart against it, a part of her felt pity for him. “Family and my heritage mean a great deal to me.” She lifted her chin and exhaled, trying to purge the bitterness from her voice. “We can keep in touch.”

  ****

  In the taxi on the way to the airport, Cort felt vibrations from the pain rolling off Lani. He understood. When a dad fails his child, the backlash is hell. Cort’s throat tightened as he recalled his own father’s sins. He feared that to feel good about herself, Lani needed to feel good about her efforts to connect with her father. He put his arm around her. “I’m proud of the way you handled yourself with Pono.”

  She gave him a closed look that hurt like a slap.

  “Talk to me, Lani. Let me help you through this.”

  Her body stiffened, and she stared straight ahead. “Help me through what? I’m fine. Just peachy.”

  “The hell you are. You’ve closed down on me.” He turned her in his arms and forced her to face him. “Why is it so hard for you to let me in? I thought we were past the distrust.”

  “Okay. You want me to share with you? Tighten your seatbelt and hang on. For one thing, I think Pono is an immature phony. He no more wants to be part of my life than the man in the moon.”

  “But we sprung this on him—”

  “Sprung this on him? He’s had twenty-six years to get used to the idea of having a daughter.”

  Cort agreed, but he found himself defending the man for Lani’s sake. “Remember he was only sixteen. And then you were adopted.”