by Ellie Hall
With lowered eyes, Kora held out her hand. Noah slipped the folded white note into her cupped palm before he turned the halved pomegranate upside down and shook it. Six seeds dropped into her open hand, staining the white note red. Without meeting his eye, Kora picked up the seeds and popped them into her mouth, then curled her fingers over the note and placed her hand at her side to hide it.
Mission accomplished.
He yelled a war cry. “Are you ready for fire?” he asked, rhetorically, while he ran back down toward the concrete stage. Once he had his poi stick in his hands again, he lit fire in his mouth, then held up the end of the stick and blew, igniting the cloth tip with flaming breath. A few women gasped at that one. The welcoming smell of alcohol and fire warmed his soul. Turning in a circle with a wrist twist, he began spinning fire.
Every few minutes, he glanced up at Kora. Her facial expression gradually lightened to possible intrigue, which progressed into delight with a hint of pleasure. His blood pumped through his chest with increased vigor with the thought that he might be reaching her; he might be lighting Kora’s flame.
6
Every time I paint, I throw myself into the water in order to learn how to swim.
~Edouard Manet
The sun lit the horizon in magnificent shades of red, refusing to set. Keeping her arm down at her side, Kora rubbed the folded piece of rough paper in her hand. She hated to admit it, but watching Noah perform the electrifying fire dance, with the burning sunset as his backdrop, while holding a secret message from him in her hand, caused her heart to pound recklessly inside her chest.
She found herself drinking in the same addicting refreshment the rest of the women were dazed with: Noah’s intoxicating Kool-Aid. When she’d popped the pomegranate seeds in her mouth and his muscular thigh muscles flexed inches from her face, that’s all it took for her head to spin. Meditation had opened her mind to new and exciting possibilities. One possibility being Noah. She’d realized that she’d been limiting herself through her own misconceptions of who and what she ought to be.
Meditation had never been successful for her before, not until that last hour of silent introspection and prayer today. Releasing herself from her own limitations, she could now embrace new thought, transform her perspective in metamorphic ways.
Kora shifted in her seat to angle away from Birdie. With a sideways glance, she kept an eye on her friend so she could read Noah’s note in secret. She felt bad enough that Noah had chosen her and not Birdie to help him with his meditation sessions. If Birdie found out that Noah had also passed her a note in a mysterious and covert way, it might hurt Birdie’s feelings even more and damage their new friendship.
With one hand, Kora unfolded the note at her side. It read, “I have something to show you. Leave the show early. Meet me at the lava rock seascape overlook in the shadow of the night when the sun dips below the horizon.”
Anticipation pulsed through her. He wants to meet me at an overlook…in the dark? Hugging her knees to her chest, Kora fixed her gaze on Noah. There was a kindness in his brown eyes that told her she had nothing to be anxious about. She got the feeling that when he wasn’t dancing, he still performed. But why? She needed to know and there was only one way to find out.
A few minutes later, while Noah was drinking down a bottle of water between dances, the drummer announced, “This will be the last performance of the evening. Hope you’ve enjoyed the show. I’ll be here after to answer your questions, even if they’re inarticulate,” he said with a grin and a head shake, laughing at his own joke.
When Noah started into his last dance, Kora caught Birdie’s attention and motioned to her that she needed to use the restroom. No one seemed to notice Kora stand and walk out; all eyes remained glued on the fire performer. Kora had to admit, Noah’s fire dance was impressive. She’d never seen anything like it.
She hiked up the hill and through the peaceful meditative gardens in the direction of the jagged black lava cliffs. On her drive into the retreat that morning, a talkative, fellow Uber driver had taken her along a winding, desolate road. Thick overgrowth prevented her from seeing the entrance to the turnoff for the sanctuary. After the turn in, the view opened to a beautiful seascape with jagged cliffs. She’d asked her driver if he could take her closer. He’d explained to her that there had once been a dirt road leading to the ocean overlook. It had been a teenager hangout where foolish kids would cliff jump. After the death of a tourist, the private road had been blocked off and the only access to the lookout was through the meditation grounds. At sunrise, the vista had been awe-inspiring. She could only imagine what that same view would be at sunset.
Kora picked up her pace, not wanting to miss the last light of day as the sun threatened to disappear beneath the watery horizon. She sprinted the last few hundred yards to a gravel lot at the top of the cliffs. The sky exploded in an array of color. Green, blue, yellow, and red streaked the sky as the orange crescent sun melted into the sea. The most magnificent part of the exhilarating experience was a pod of whales swimming just offshore. The sight stole her breath anyway.
Thoughts of her father flooded her mind. On the precipice of drowning in her own sorrow, she pressed her hand to her chest. She hadn’t reflected on her parents in so long. After her conversation with Birdie about her parents’ passing, coupled with having been in a meditative state while staring out to sea, something triggered deep inside her. The whales, in turn, had brought every emotion to the surface of her conscious, reminding her of her buried needs and sorrow. Overcome with emotion, she dropped to her knees and closed her eyes, allowing the sweet smell of honeysuckle and salty seaweed, coupled with the sound of seagulls and the crashing waves to calm her weary soul.
A few minutes later, after she’d shed soulful tears, she opened her eyes to moonlight skipping across the rippling sea. Peace reentered her heart. She stood and walked closer to the lookout point. Large, misshaped boulders lined the outer edge of the ledge, making for what Kora thought were most likely the abandoned teenage diving spots her driver had told her about. White shells, glowing in the moonlight, specked the black lava rock at her feet. Out of nowhere, appeared a chrome artist’s easel with a cream-colored, stretched canvas. Other than a few streaks of blue across the top, the canvas was devoid of color. An assortment of paints and brushes lay on a paint-peppered dark towel with a note written in Noah’s handwriting that read, “Art is never finished, only abandoned. Leonardo Da Vinci.”
“I see you’ve found my abandoned work,” Noah said, stepping to her side.
Feeling his huge form next to her, she struggled to speak. For some reason he hadn’t seemed so large when they were side by side on the wooden yoga stage. She couldn’t seem to be able to unsee his huge thighs and muscular arms after his fire show. “This is where you paint?” she finally managed to say.
He did a double take. “You know that I paint?”
She coughed out a laugh. “You’re a popular topic of discussion, but I think you already knew that.” She walked around the easel with suspicion. She wouldn’t have set it up tilted that far back. At that angle there would be too much glare from the sun, rendering it near impossible to see the canvas through the sun’s brilliance. “What are you painting?”
He reached down, picked up a paintbrush, and held it out to her. “I was hoping you could help me. I heard you’re a painter as well.”
She rolled the paintbrush in her fingers, feeling a sense of euphoria at the touch. “I can paint? I didn’t think that was allowed here,” she said, looking off toward the gardens.
He touched her hand. “It’s allowed for instructors. And you’re an instructor-in-training.”
“Is this what you wanted me to see?” she asked, placing her hand on the top of the canvas. He had a gentler heart than she would’ve imagined for such a big, seemingly cocky guy.
Noah rubbed his chin and stared out at the ocean. “This place is special to me.” He touched his necklace. “And my painting doesn’t d
o it justice. I’m hoping you can do what I can’t.”
She rubbed her arms, warming them in response to the increasing chill in the air. “Right now?”
“No. I was thinking you could take the supplies back to your room and work on it when you have free time. In the evenings, between meditation sessions and breakout workshops. I’ve heard of your talent. Which makes me wonder, why you would come to a place that doesn’t allow for you to paint when meditation can stir up artistic juices,” he said with gusto, speaking with his hands.
She picked up a tube of oil paint from the towel and held it up in the moonlight. Green, an easy color to mix. Why did he have green paint? To return to his question. Why am I here? she asked herself. She’d gotten so caught up in the excitement of the evening that she’d almost forgotten who’d sent her there and why. “I guess I was sent here to find true love.”
Noah took a step back. “At a retreat where men and women are separated and forbidden to be in the same room? Where speaking to anyone is forbidden?” He scratched the back of his neck and looked down at his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said with a cough. “I wasn’t expecting that response.” He lifted his palms in the air and sighed. “But to each his own. I’m happy for you.”
Kora found his reaction amusing. “No. It’s not like that.”
He held a finger up in the air as if remembering something. “You said someone sent you here?”
“Yeah,” she said, pretending to be enthralled with the inexpensive oil paints while she contemplated whether she should tell him about Charlotte. Obviously, he’d thought Charlotte had passed, but why? Maybe he could shed light on that for her. “Charlotte Terrence sent me here. That’s why I was confused when you’d said that the gardens were named after her.”
“And she sent you here to find…love?” he asked with a look of distrust.
She crossed her arms in front of her chest, annoyed by his surly tone. “Aside from myself through meditation, what else would I find on a romantic beach in Hawaii?”
He stared into her eyes as if trying to read her. “You really think you’ll find love?”
“Someone was supposed to come with me,” she said, wringing her hands. “I think he might still show.” She threw her arms in the air. She didn’t want to think about Johnny not coming. “Why did you bring me out here?”
Without a word, he leaned down, rolled the paints and the brushes in the towel and handed it to her. “To paint. Would you like to take these back to your room?”
She stared down at the towel in her hands and breathed in deep to release the tension. He’d given her a gift, a gift she’d accept graciously…on her own terms. “You don’t have to ask me twice.”
His forehead wrinkled. “I did have to ask you twice.”
“I’ll accept your gift, but I won’t paint in my room.” She stepped closer to the ledge overlooking the water. “I want to paint this. Right now,” she said, motioning to the sea.
“Impossible,” he argued. “There’s not enough light.”
She raised a brow, then tapped her temple. “It’s all in here. But I don’t need to tell you that, a seasoned artist.”
“Alright,” he said with a sigh. “But please don’t go any closer to the edge. Sometimes a wicked ocean wind will blow out of nowhere, blasting people off these cliffs. I don’t want to be the cause of you plummeting to your death.”
She peeked over the edge at the pounding waves below, then turned to him and made an X over her heart. “If I fall, I promise not to haunt you.”
He blinked with an expression that said he wasn’t amused by her comment. “And that’s supposed to put my mind at ease?”
She laughed and patted his rock-hard bicep. An electric current zapped her. She jumped back with a yelp. She hadn’t been prepared for having that kind of reaction simply from touching him. “See,” she said, trying to convert the embarrassing moment into something not mortifying. “If I get close to the edge, I’ll hop back.”
Noah’s face lifted into the amused smile she’d unsuccessfully solicited earlier. “Yes, hop. It looks like the moon won’t be giving off much light tonight. You might need this later,” he said, handing her a small flashlight before he disappeared behind the garden wall.
For the next few hours, she poured herself into her painting. As if in a type of meditative state, she relaxed her mind and allowed her artistic brain to take control of her arms, hands, and fingers.
With the last swipe of her paint brush, she exhaled, “J’ai terminé.” Aside from Pablo Picasso, and Leonardo Da Vinci, her favorite artists were French, Impressionists to be specific. It only made sense that when she finished an artwork, she would mutter the French words for I’m finished.
The rest of the world came back into focus. Kora held the face of her watch up to the moonlight. It was nearly midnight. Time had flown by. Noah had been wrong. The full moon had given off plenty of light for her to paint under. She pulled her head from side to side, stretching out her neck while she pushed back her fingers.
She froze to the sound of a whale song. The music sounded like an inexperienced violinist pulling a tattered bow across the strings, sideways. That would explain why she’d liked playing the violin so much when she was a kid, but no one else liked to hear her play.
Being careful to watch where she placed her feet, she walked toward the distinctive sounds of whale breathing. The whales couldn’t be too far from shore if she could hear them blowing. With Noah’s words of caution repeating in her mind, she stepped with care until she’d reached the edge of the farthest cliff. The waves had calmed considerably since she’d stared down the same cliffside that she’d peered over earlier. She strained to see and hear, but the only audible sound was her own rapid breath, entering and expelling from her lungs. Dang her meditation lessons. She didn’t want to focus on her breathing now; she wanted to find her whales.
An unexpected splash came from below. A few seconds later, a body floated to the surface. She gasped and stumbled. Before she could catch herself, she plummeted off the cliff. Wind hit her face with suffocating force. A single thought played in her head: Greek tragedy.
7
As a happy day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
~Leonardo Da Vinci
The body flailed as it fell. The motion resembled an injured bird in flight, being stolen of its ability to fly, giving off the impression that the person had accidentally fallen, not purposefully jumped as Noah and his friends always had. Noah pumped his arms as he swam, praying he’d reach the person in time to save them.
Stupid kid. There hadn’t been a death in that area in over a decade but sometimes kids would sneak through the gardens at night, cloaked in the darkness, and jump. If this kid died, it would force him to abandon his shipwreck treasure hunt.
A head of black hair broke through the surface of the water.
Kora! “Koraka!” he yelled, reaching for her. Why wasn’t she back in her room? His adrenaline kicked in and his body went into autopilot; the most primeval part of him took control of his body. His arms churned through the water until he had her. He grabbed hold around her chest and kicked onto his back. Her respirations were faint, but she was breathing. Within a minute, he was at the jagged wall. A razor-sharp rock sliced into his side. He held back a scream of anguish as salt water burned deep inside his flesh.
With one arm wrapped around Kora, he used his other arm to push off the rocks. Luckily, he’d been in and out of the exit crevice so many times that he knew the topography and how to get to the exit. In his current position, he was blinded to where he was going, but getting to the exit wouldn’t be the problem. He had no idea how he would carry her out the steep rocks in the dark.
Tackle one problem at a time, he told himself, as he found his way to the exit crevice. Once he’d managed to pull Kora onto the safety of a large boulder, he said a prayer of gratitude.
“Kora,” he said, taking her head in his hands. “Can you hear me?”
Her breath staggered. Then suddenly, her eyes opened, and she grasped his arm. “I’m alive?” she asked, patting her chest. Visibly relieved, she stared up at him and sighed out, “romantic comedy.”
His relief quickly turned to irritation. She could’ve died and here she was making jokes about going to see a romantic comedy film. “You won’t be watching any romantic comedies for the foreseeable future if you don’t tell me what in heck you were doing jumping off that cliff when I told you to stay away from the edge.” He sounded angrier than he was. Fear had a funny way of coming out as anger.
“I saw a body in the water.” Her eyes went wide. “Was that you? Why are you out here?” Her brows knit together as she sat up. “And why did you call me Koraka?”
“I called you Koraka?” he asked with surprise. “It makes sense, but I didn’t know I’d said it.”
She looked at him as if she were waiting for an explanation.
“Do you recognize this line of poetry? ‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary.’”
She shook her head. “No but that sounds about right. It’s midnight and I’m weak and weary, and getting cold,” she said with a shiver.
“Koraka means Raven in Hawaiian,” he said, touching the side of her face to brush back her ravenous hair. “You must have looked like an injured raven as you fell.”
Her hand covered her mouth. “Kora means raven in Hawaiian? And what does that have to do with the poem?”
“Edgar Allen Poe wrote a poem titled ‘The Raven.’ It’s about lost love. ‘Take thy beak from out my heart,’ he begged in the poem.”
“Then what happened?” she asked, leaning in so that her warm breath fell on his chest.
“He died. ‘And my soul from out that shadow that lies on the floating floor shall be lifted—Nevermore.’”