Fire Maiden (5 page)

But the two fillies had lived in the wild. They stood firm, guarding each other.

If some flip of forelock or widening of eyes signaled their defiance, Darby missed it.

Hoku charged past Luna. Maybe she was trying to lead him away, but the stallion rushed to Tango.

Whirling around, Hoku moved into position to kick Luna.

But the stallion had eyes in the back of his head, or he heard what Hoku was doing, because, instead of touching noses with Tango, he lashed out his own hind legs at the same time as Hoku.

Neither connected, so the moves were just warnings, but Darby bolted to her feet, afraid for either horse to be hurt.

“Stop it!” she yelled. “Luna!”

Darby waved her arms, hoping to distract the
horses, but she might as well have been mute and invisible.

This was bad. Luna outweighed Hoku by hundreds of pounds. If his sledgehammer hooves landed, they could break her slim legs.

Why would Luna fight a filly he'd been courting just last week?

Was it because Hoku was what Jonah had called a tomboy mare? The mustang filly had challenged two stallions: Luna and Black Lava.

Now, Luna reared and kicked out once more, then screamed his dominance.

Hoku sprinted away, but just when Darby's shoulders sagged in relief, she realized Hoku wasn't fleeing. She was galloping a protective circle around Tango.

The fillies made a game of their defiance. Heads tossing and eyes sparkling, they taunted the stallion.

But what if the stallion decided to discipline them?

He didn't. Luna gave a snort that might have meant disgust or amusement. Then he shook his mane and jogged back to his knoll.

When Darby realized both hands were flattened over her heart, she forced her arms to hang loose at her sides. Then she cleared her throat and whispered, “That could have been worse.”

With both fillies safe from their own mischief, Darby smiled.

Watching the horses communicate had been fascinating. Of course she'd missed much of what was going on. It was like watching a play performed in another language. She'd understood enough to follow the basic plot.

I could watch wild animals for a living,
Darby thought. Biologists and naturalists and all kinds of scientists did it.

So pay closer attention in science classes,
she scolded herself. Like Ecology.

She still didn't know how she'd managed to forget a major assignment. It just wasn't like her!

Losing track of time wasn't like her, either, and she must have done precisely that, because now Jonah was watching her from the bluff.

“Expecting me to return at the head of a line of horses,” Darby grumbled to herself. And that wasn't going to happen. Although, maybe…

She had one thing left to try. And it wouldn't work while Hoku and Tango faced away from her, nosing each other in congratulations over Luna's retreat.

But horses' eyes were on the sides of their heads. They had great peripheral vision, right?

“C'mon, Hoku,” Darby whispered. She tightened her ponytail. “Hoku, my sweet, strong girl, you showed Luna who's boss. Now, come show me you're my friend.”

Hoku's head swung around and she stared at
Darby. Hoku took deep breaths, and with each one her head rose higher. She knew Darby had freed her from the corral. Maybe that comforted her enough to return, because Hoku danced on nervous hooves toward Darby, circling her as she had Tango.

“That's my beauty,” Darby said. “You are such a smart girl. You know I didn't cause all that shaking, don't you? And I let you run when you felt like you had to get away from it.”

Good thing no humans stood near enough to hear, Darby thought. Her gushing sounded crazy, or at least peculiar.

“Abnormal.” Darby pronounced the word with exaggerated precision and Hoku shook her head, making a blizzard of her blond forelock in front of her eyes. She looked like she was laughing, and when Darby started walking, Hoku followed her without the lead rope looped around her neck.

A deep neigh made Darby turn.

Luna gazed toward Sun House. He'd spotted Jonah. With no more than a snap of his fingers, her grandfather could probably call the bay stallion to him. But he wouldn't.

The man and the stallion had an understanding. Luna guarded the mares and foals while Jonah ran things up at the ranch.

Darby had climbed halfway back to Sun House, when she heard the rasp of more hooves. She glanced back to see Navigator and Biscuit pass Hoku. Then
they were right behind her, and after giving her hair a sniff, the two geldings paced ahead, returning to their home and hay.

They trust me,
Darby thought.

Without meaning to, she walked a little taller, but when she reached the top of the path, Hoku stopped.

The filly glanced right, looking down the driveway as it became a street to the highway. She looked left, at the two geldings, Jonah, and her corral. Then the filly swerved toward Darby, but questions clouded her eyes.

“C'mon, girl,” Darby whispered. “It'll be okay.”

Would it? Darby wondered. What if there was an aftershock while she was at school? Cade was gone, Aunty Cathy might go to the doctor, and Kimo was already later than usual. Kit was under his house, assessing damage, and Jonah was now squatted there, too, talking to him.

Darby turned cold, thinking how helpless they'd be if there was another serious quake.

She looked back at her horse and wondered. Would anyone think of freeing Hoku from her corral a second time?

Darby couldn't promise her horse safety, and Hoku sensed it, turning her gaze back to the pasture.

“I understand,” Darby told Hoku. Then, even though she dreaded trying to explain this silent conversation to Jonah, Darby made a vague shooing motion to let the sorrel know she was free to go.

Lady Wong uttered a whinny, stretching her long, gray neck in a way that made it seem as if she was calling Hoku.

The filly stood so close, Darby could have swung the lead rope around her neck, or touched the white star on her sorrel chest.

“I think you're better off down there for now, but you'd better remember this when I come to get you after school,” Darby warned.

Hoku made no promises. She simply wheeled on her back hooves and galloped down the trail, before Darby changed her mind.

D
arby expected Jonah to be angry.

What do you have to say for yourself?
he'd probably demand.

So Darby prepared excuses as she walked.

She hadn't caught Hoku, but she had gotten him a horse—a choice of two, actually—to ride to Tutu's cottage.

Besides, she'd
allowed
Hoku to go. It had been her decision, not the filly's. And Jonah always claimed he wouldn't second-guess her when it came to Hoku.

But it turned out her excuses weren't necessary.

Maybe the earthquake had shaken a little sarcasm out of her grandfather, Darby thought.

As they met in front of Sun House, Jonah only
said, “You open the cage and a wild bird will fly out.”

“I let her go, after she came to me.”

“I saw.” Jonah nodded, looking weary. The hair at his temples looked grayer than usual.

“Hoku would have come all the way back up here, if I'd asked her to,” Darby said. When Jonah gave a skeptical smile, she insisted, “Really, she would have.”

“If you say so.” Jonah yawned, then pointed at his brown Land Rover. “Looks like Megan's ready to go.”

Alarm crackled through Darby. Megan. School. Aunty Cathy. And she still hadn't called her mom. How could her mind have floated so far away?

Aunty Cathy was walking toward the truck, so Darby waved and hurried up to her.

“How do you feel?” Darby asked first.

“Okay,” Aunty Cathy said, then admitted, “A little weird. Kind of like I'm looking at things from a distance.” Hearing what she'd said, she amended, “I'm fine to drive, but I think I'll take Jonah's advice and stop by the doctor's office, just to be—Darby, what are you doing?”

Darby had been standing on tiptoe, trying to see past Aunty Cathy's messy brown-blond bangs, but she hadn't meant to be obvious. “I was checking to see if your pupils were both the same size. I've read that when people get head injuries, that's one of the first things you're supposed to do.”

Aunty Cathy squeezed Darby in a one-armed
hug, then opened her eyes wide, and let Darby look.

“They seem the same,” Darby told her.

“Thanks, honey,” Aunty Cathy said, then glanced at her watch.

Darby said quickly, “I'll be right back, after I call my mom—”

“The power's out and the phone lines are down, even in Hapuna,” Cathy said sympathetically.

Darby sighed. Her mom would understand.

“I'll just get my stuff, then.”

And put on clothes, brush my hair, and grab some food,
she added to herself, but when Aunty Cathy opened the Land Rover's door and made a sound of admiration, Darby stopped.

Hands on her hips, Cathy looked at the clean upholstery and dashboard smelling of coconut polish and mused, “Don't rush. This appears to be the one place on the ranch I won't have to clean up. Take your time and let me enjoy it.”

Just the same, Darby sprinted toward the house.

 

“This was smart,” Megan said to Darby as they walked onto the campus of Lehua High School.

“What was?”

“Starting with Nutrition Break instead of first-period classes,” Megan said, waving as she glimpsed her friend Elane. “We can find out what's up with everybody—”

“And eat.”

Megan saluted Darby's firm tone.

“I'm starving,” Darby explained. “I bet it's some kind of survival response, so you'll be strong after an emergency and—”

“You could have eaten at home. I mean, there was food all over the place,” Megan teased.

“I know. Do you hear that?” Darby asked, looking down at the gummy sound of each step she took. “I think my soles are coated with pineapple juice.”

As her stomach growled, she mentally thanked Aunty Cathy for reaching into the ranch cash box to give her and Megan enough money to buy food at the snack carts.

Most students had been shaken from bed by the earthquake and many of them had been awake ever since, but you wouldn't know it, Darby thought, by the noisy chatter as they waited in line for food.

Darby had just noticed that her cousin Duckie stood at the front of the line, already chugging milk, when an arm reached out to grab Megan's elbow.

“I saved you a place,” Elane said, dragging Megan into line.

Darby flashed a sheepish look at the guy they'd just cut in front of and asked, “Is it okay?”

Shoulders hunched, hands shoved deep in the pockets of baggy shorts, the guy looked like he was asleep on his feet.

Darby smiled at his black hair, rumpled into something like a cockatoo's crest. In slow motion, he
looked up, blinked as if she'd wakened him, and gave a “be my guest” wave of his hand, so Darby tucked in behind Megan.

“…almost six point zero on the Richter scale,” Elane was saying. “Centered on the Big Island, near Hilo, and why do I know that? Oh yeah, you remember how much my mom and dad laughed when I spent all my summer job money on a special cabinet with baby-safe locks for my computer? Turns out they're earthquake-proof, too, and my computer's not facedown with a cracked screen like the television.”

Elane looked pleasantly smug, Darby thought. The girl, with her short brown hair and glasses, loved her computer. She was so skilled, teachers consulted her all the time for troubleshooting.

“Hey dude, howzit!”

“Hey! Bet you was scared?”

“Nah…”

Darby didn't look back, but she was pretty sure the denial came from the cockatoo-crested boy who was in line behind her. He and another guy must be doing some friendly scuffling, too, she thought, because one of them bumped her shoulder.

“No shame, you can tell me.”

“Nah, I went back to bed. That's why I'm so messed up!”

Darby sneaked a glance over her shoulder to see the cockatoo guy tousling his own hair, making it even worse, as he talked. She was returning his grin when
his friend, a guy in a gray hooded sweatshirt, wheeled on her, sneering, then turned back to his friend.

“Haole girl's givin' you the stink eye!” he hooted.

“I am not!” Darby snapped, but just then Megan jiggled her shoulder.

“Order,” Megan said.

“Really, I wasn't,” Darby said, still looking back at the boys. Despite her protest, the guy in gray was still doubled up, laughing at his friend and pointing at Darby.

“Haole crab!”

Darby couldn't tell which of the boys had said it, but Megan was not pleased.

“Come on!” Megan raised her voice to Darby, gestured toward the snack-cart lady, then turned on the two guys and barked a few words Darby couldn't understand.

Darby wasn't nearly as hungry as she'd been a couple of minutes ago, especially when she realized that the guy in the hood was in one of her classes.

“What did you say to them?” Darby asked Megan.

“Never mind,” Megan said, hiding a smile behind her breakfast wrap of Spam and eggs. “There are a few Hawaiian phrases you'll have to learn on your own. And that was one of them.”

 

Miss Day's English class was a madhouse. Darby noticed that at the same time she saw her friend Ann's seat was empty.

Darby was looking around, searching for Ann amid all the students gathered in the back of the classroom or between the rows of desks, when Miss Day bustled in.

The teacher almost immediately decided to give in to a period of noisy conversation.

Calling it a lesson in oral expression, Miss Day went around the room, asking students to describe their earthquake morning.

A few students were more nervous about what would happen next than what had already happened. Some repeated their parents' stories about earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis of the past that had begun just like this, while others argued over conflicting radio or TV reports about the quake's magnitude.

Monica Waipunalei, a girl Darby knew from P.E., said an earthen dam had broken above her house and filled the subdivision she lived in with slimy chocolate-colored water.

Cheryl Hong, another girl from P.E., said her brother had gotten up early to work on his car and his arm had been broken when the car fell off the jack, pinning him there until two neighbors lifted it off him.

Darby kept glancing at the clock, hoping Ann was safe. And she kept thinking about the guy in the gray sweatshirt.
Haole girl's givin' you the stink eye,
he'd said. But she hadn't given him a dirty look. And did
she qualify as a haole if she was one-quarter Hawaiian?

Never mind,
she told herself.

Then, because her turn was coming and she didn't know what to say, Darby listened uneasily to Morris, a guy who reveled in being the class clown as he confided that his pet mynah bird had screeched “Nevermore!” all night.

Darby was rubbing superstitious chills from her arms when Morris added, “Of course, my mynah only knows three words, and
nevermore
is the only one we can understand.”

As the class's laughter subsided, Darby decided to tell about last night's dog howls and Navigator's bucking.

“I don't know that much about it, but I've heard animals can kind of predict earthquakes,” she finished.

“You should ask Mr. Silva about that,” Miss Day told her.

“I will,” Darby said, but she was glad three other students began arguing whether or not such a thing could be true, and if it was, should it be attributed to the animals' instincts or physical sensitivity.

Mr. Silva was her Ecology teacher. In his billowing white lab coat and shoulder-length, gray-streaked black hair, Mr. Silva looked like he should be teaching wizardry rather than science. He was one of Darby's favorite teachers ever, but her stomach hurt
when she imagined his reaction to her missing homework.

Darby was picturing herself walking into Ecology to see
ALL HOMEWORK DEADLINES EXTENDED BECAUSE OF EARTHQUAKE
written on the board. That way Mr. Silva wouldn't know she'd messed up.

Just then, the bell to end class rang, and Ann Potter popped through the door.

Ann was greeted with a spontaneous round of applause. Darby smiled. Apparently she wasn't the only one who'd noticed Ann's absence and was worried about her.

Blushing so that her freckles stood out even more than usual, Ann patted her red hair as if she could subdue the curls into order, and then she bowed.

 

Because Darby and Ann had their first three classes together, by the time they reached Ecology, Darby had managed to tell Ann about her adventure in setting Hoku free, then rounding her up, about Aunty Cathy's accident, and about Megan's crack-the-whip episode with Francie the fainting goat.

But she hadn't told Ann that she'd forgotten to interview Tutu. She just didn't know how to say it, especially since Ann seemed a little, well, spacey as she talked about the strange pre-earthquake behavior of the Potters' horses.

“Soda, who's never cribbed before, was eating wood like a termite. So, yeah…” Ann's voice trailed
off as if something worse had happened.

Darby hated the idea of making a bad day worse for her friend. She found herself depending on her daydream that Mr. Silva would put off the assignment.

“It was just a little teeny fire,” Ann explained as they walked toward Lehua High's science wing, “from an electrical short, I think, so…”

“A fire?” Darby yelped, and her reaction worked on Ann like a bucket of cold water.

“Really, it was just a little flare-up. Moving the horses was a precaution. Of course we wanted to get all of them out of the barn, anyway, but they wouldn't go!”

“Not even Sugarfoot?” Darby asked. Although she hadn't met Ann's caramel-and-white pinto, she couldn't believe he wouldn't follow Ann out of a burning barn.

“Nope,” Ann said.

“I've heard of that before—”

“Of horses being stupid? Yeah, me too.”

The voice that interrupted belonged to Darby's cousin Duxelles Borden—nicknamed Duckie by Darby.

The big girl shortened her strides to walk next to Darby for a few steps and Darby wondered if she'd ever get used to Duckie's appearance. A sheet of metal-bright blond hair fell to her shoulders. The hem of her denim skirt was about five feet off the ground
and though her white blouse might have looked Victorian on some girls, the size of Duckie's biceps made her look, well, not so demure.

I'll stick with my first impression,
Darby thought as her cousin strode past.
Duckie looks like a Viking.

“Anyhow,” Darby said, shaking her head to dispel the image of her cousin, “I don't get why horses do that.”

She was stalling, making Ann linger outside the door of their Ecology class, because what if Mr. Silva hadn't postponed the assignment? Ann didn't seem to mind. In fact, despite the hot wind that whipped hair into their faces, Ann seemed no more eager to go inside than Darby.

“My mom says it's because the horses think they're safe at home, but my dad sees it a little differently,” Ann said. “He says it's a choice between ‘the devil you know and the devil you don't know.'”

Darby tried to puzzle that out.

“I guess no matter how bad it is in the stall with a fire burning toward them, they still think it might be better than what's on the other side of the door,” Ann explained.

Darby looked at the classroom door. Ann had given her the perfect opening to admit what she'd done.

“Speaking of…” But Darby couldn't make the confession. “I mean, that's not true for all horses, is it?”

“Well, this is the first barn fire I've ever seen,”
Ann admitted, as two girls, almost late for class, slipped past them, “but I think—no. You've got to remember that most of our horses are rescues. They've had bad experiences with people. But if the horse really trusted you—like Hoku does you—I think it would know you wouldn't make it walk through fire!”