But I’m different now.
The new Kolabati would have stayed and helped Jack, or at least called a doctor for him despite the cruel things he had said to her.
Maui had worked a change in her. Maui and Moki. A place and a man. Together they had given her what little peace could be found in this world.
Here on Maui, clinging to the breast of the world’s largest dormant volcano, she had all the world within reach. If she tired of watching the valley below, cloud-dappled on sunny days, lashed by rain and speared by lightning when storms marched through, she could travel to the mountain’s windward east coast and visit the jungles above Hana; farther around on the south slope she could pretend she was in the savannas of Africa or the plains of North America, grazing cattle and all; or she could travel across the valley and wander among the rich Japanese and American vacationers in the resorts at Ka’anapali and Kapalua, or travel into the Iao Valley and beyond to the rain forests of the second wettest spot in the world, or return to Haleakala itself and walk the floor of its desolate crater, wandering among its thousand-foot cinder cones and imagining she was exploring the surface of Mars.
Wonders were close at hand too. Directly below the lanai her silversword garden grew. She had transplanted the seedlings culled during her explorations of Haleakala’s slopes and was perhaps unduly proud of her collection of the rare spiky clusters. Each would grow for twenty years before producing its one magnificent flower. Kolabati could wait. She had time.
She glanced down at the cup in her hands. Oh, yes. And coffee from the big island’s Kona Coast—the richest coffee in the world. She sipped.
No, she could not see herself tiring of living here, even if she didn’t have Moki. But Moki was here, and Moki gave meaning to it all.
She could hear him in the back now, working in his shop. Moki—her kane, her man. He carved driftwood. Together they would scour the beaches and the banks of Haleakala’s countless streams and waterfalls, searching for branches and small trunks, the long-dead pieces, bleached and hardened by time and the elements. They’d bring these gnarled, weathered remains back to the house and set them up around Moki’s workshop. There he would get to know them, live with them. And gradually he would spy things in them—the wrinkles around the eyes of an old woman’s face, the curve of a panther’s back, a lizard’s claws. When he’d spied the form hiding within, he would bring his small ax and array of chisels into play, working on the wood and with the wood to expose the hidden form to the light of day.
Moki was modest about his art, never taking credit and refusing blame for the nature of the works he produced. His stock phrase: “It was already there in the wood; I simply cleared away the excess and set it free.”
But he deserved far more credit. For Moki wasn’t content to leave his work as simple sculptures. They were Hawaiian wood carved by an almost full-blooded Hawaiian, but that wasn’t quite Hawaiian enough for Moki. When each was finished he shipped it to the big island and carried it to the fiery mouth of Kilauea, the active crater on the southeastern slope of Mauna Loa. There he trapped some of the living lava, poured it into a shape that complemented his sculpture, allowed the lava to cool to a point where it wouldn’t damage the wood, then set his sculpture into the gooey stone.
Kolabati had first seen Moki’s work with its intricate cuts and swirls and unique lava-rock bases in a Honolulu gallery. Fascinated, she had asked to meet the artist. She commissioned a piece and visited Moki many times during its fashioning. She found herself as taken by the man as by his work. His intensity, his passion for living, his love of his native islands. He was complete. In that sense he reminded her a little of her dead brother, Kusum.
Moki wanted her, but he didn’t need her, and that made him all the more attractive. Theirs was a relationship of passionate equals. She didn’t want to own Moki, didn’t demand all his passion. She knew some of that had to be funneled into his art and she encouraged it. To dominate him, to possess him would risk destroying a wild and wonderful talent. By demanding all of him, she would wind up with less than she had begun with.
Moki needed his art, needed to be Moki, and very much needed to be Hawaiian. He would have loved to have lived and worked on Niihau, the forbidden island, oldest of the Hawaiian chain, but had not been able to wrangle an invitation from the last of the purebred Hawaiians living there in the old, primitive ways. Like most Hawaiians, Moki was not purebred—traces of Portuguese and Filipino slunk through his bloodline.
But he remained pure Hawaiian in his heart, dressing the part around their hale or house, speaking the old language and teaching it to Kolabati.
His pieces, the graceful and the grotesque, were scattered about the islands, in galleries, museums, corporate offices, and on every available surface in their house. Kolabati loved the clutter, which was unusual for her. As a rule she preferred an ordered existence. But not in this case. The clutter was Moki. It put his stamp on their home, made it truly theirs. No other place on earth was quite like it.
Kolabati did not want that to change. For the first time in her many years the nattering inner voice of dissatisfaction had fallen silent. For the first time she no longer hungered for new people, new sensations, new feelings, the Next New Thing. Continuity counted most now.
“Bati! Hele mai!”
Moki’s voice, calling from his workshop, telling her to come to him. He sounded excited. She started toward the rear of the house but he was already coming her way.
The old Kolabati used to tire of a man after two weeks. They were all the same; so few had anything new to offer. But even after more than a year with Moki, the sight of him still excited her. His long, wild, red-brown hair—he was considered an ehu, a red-haired Hawaiian—his lean, light brown, muscled body, and his eyes as dark as her own. An artist, a sensitive man, as attuned to the mysteries of the wood he worked as to the mysteries within her own psyche. And yet he still retained an untamed quality, as witness the brief, loincloth-like malo he wore now. No two days were alike with Moki.
Which was why Kolabati called him her kane and allowed him to wear the other necklace.
And she loved his lilting accent.
“Bati, look!”
He held out his left palm to her. A ragged red line ran across it.
“Oh, Moki! What happened?”
“I cut myself.”
“But you’re always cutting yourself.”
She looked at the cut. It was barely bleeding. He’d done worse to his hands before. What was so special about this?
“Yes, but this was a deep one. I slipped badly. I thought the chisel went halfway through my palm. Blood started spurting a foot into the air—and then it stopped. I squeezed it for a few minutes, and when I checked again, it was half healed. And in the time it took me to come in from the workshop, it’s healed even further. Look at it. You can almost see it closing before your eyes!”
He was right. Kolabati watched with uneasy fascination as the wound stopped oozing and became shallower.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
He touched the necklace around his throat—a heavy chain of sculpted iron, each crescent link embossed with pre-Vedic script; centered over the notch atop his breastbone lay a matched pair of bright yellow elliptical stones, like thumb-sized topazes, each with a black center. Moki’s necklace perfectly matched her own. They’d belonged to her family for generations … since before history.
“You said these things would help heal us, keep us young and healthy, but I never—”
Unease tugged at her. “They don’t work like this. They’ve never worked like this.”
The necklace could heal illnesses, prolong life, stave off death from all but the most catastrophic injuries. But it worked slowly, subtly. The healing of Moki’s hand was crude, garish, like a sideshow trick.
Something was wrong.
“But they work like this now,” Moki said, a wild light in his eyes. “Watch.”
That was when she saw the wood knife in his other hand. He jabbed it through the skin on the underside of his left forearm and into the tissues beneath.
“No! Moki, don’t!”
“It’s all right. Just wait a minute and I’ll show you what I mean.”
Wincing with the pain, he dragged the blade upward until a four-inch wound gaped open. He watched the blood spurt for an instant, then squeezed it shut. He smiled crazily at her for a moment or two as he pressed the skin edges together, then he released it.
The wound had stopped bleeding. The edges were adhering as if they’d been sutured. And the wild light in his eyes had brightened.
“See? The necklace has made me almost indestructible. Maybe immortal. I feel like a god—like Maui himself!”
Kolabati watched in horror as Moki cavorted about the great room. First the sun, then the wind, and now this. She could not fend off the feeling of impending doom. Something was happening, something had gone terribly awry, and the necklaces were responding. Their powers were increasing, as if in preparation for … what?
And then she heard it—the ceramic tinkling of the wind chimes on the lanai. She turned and hurried to the railing. Thank the gods! The wind! The wind was back!
But the wrong wind. This blew from the west. The trade winds came from the east, always from the east. Where did this wind come from? And where was it blowing?
At that moment Kolabati knew beyond a doubt that the world was beginning a change. But how? And why?
Then she felt rather than heard a deep seismic rumble. The lanai seemed to shudder beneath her feet.
Haleakala?
Could the old volcano be coming to life?
THURSDAY
WFPW-FM
FREDDY: Hey! What’s going on up there, man? It says here sunrise was late again this morning. C’mon, sun! Get your act together. You were fifteen minutes late this morning. Get a new alarm clock already!
The Village of Monroe
Bill barely recognized his hometown.
He stared in awe as he cruised Monroe’s morning-lit harbor front behind the wheel of Jack’s Crown Victoria, borrowed for the trip. New condos crowded the east end, the trolley tracks had been paved over, and all the old Main Street buildings had been refurbished with nineteenth-century clapboard façades.
“This is awful,” he said aloud.
In the passenger seat, Glaeken straightened and looked around.
“The traffic? It doesn’t look so bad.”
“Not the traffic—the town. What did they do to it?”
“I hear lots of towns are trying to attract tourists these days.”
“But this is where I grew up. My home. And now it looks like a theme park … like someone’s idea of an old whaling village.”
“I never saw a whaling village that looked like this.”
Bill glanced at Glaeken. “I guess you’d know, wouldn’t you.”
Glaeken said nothing.
Bill drove on, shaking his head in dismay at the changes. At least they’d left the old bricks on Town Hall, and hadn’t changed the high white steeple of the Presbyterian church. He noticed with relief that Crosby’s Marina was still there, and Memison’s was still in business. Some of the old town was left, so he didn’t feel completely lost.
But he’d come here today hoping for a burst of warmth, for a sense of belonging, a place to call home. He knew now he wasn’t going to find it in Monroe.
Still, better than sitting around waiting, letting the unease within bubble and stew. Probably nothing he could do would block out the growing dread, especially after hearing that sunrise had been even later this morning.
“I still don’t know why you need me along, other than as a driver.”
He was uncomfortable wearing a cassock and collar again. The clothing fit, but only physically. He no longer considered himself a priest, not in his mind, not in his heart, not in his soul.
“Your mere presence will help me.”
“But you’re going to do all the talking and what am I going to do? Stand around and look holy?”
“You may say anything you wish.”
“Thanks loads. But I’ll be afraid to open my mouth because I don’t know what’s going on. You’re playing this too close to the vest, Glaeken. You ought to know by now you can trust me. And maybe if I knew a little bit more about what we’re doing here, I might be able to help.”
Glaeken sighed. “You’re right, of course. I don’t mean to keep you in the dark. It’s just habit. I’ve kept so many secrets for so long…” His voice trailed off.
“Well?”
“We’ve come to Monroe for the Dat-tay-vao.”
Bill had to laugh. “Well! That clears up everything!”
“The name is Vietnamese. In truth, the Dat-tay-vao has no name. It is an elemental force, but it has wandered around Southeast Asia for so long that it’s convenient to refer to it by the name the locals have used for centuries.”
“Dat-tay-vao.” Bill rolled the alien syllables over his tongue. “What’s it mean?”
“Loosely translated, ‘to lay a hand on.’ There’s an old Vietnamese folk song about it:
It seeks but will not be sought.
It finds but will not be found.
It holds the one who would touch,
Who would cut away pain and ill.
But its blade cuts two ways
And will not be turned.
If you value your well-being,
Impede not its way.
Treat the Toucher doubly well,
For he bears the weight
Of the balance that must be struck.
It has better meter in the original language.”
“A bit ominous, don’t you think?”
“The song is a celebration and a warning. Twice a day, for an hour or so at a time, the one who possesses the Dat-tay-vao—or is possessed by the Dat-tay-vao, depending on how you look at it—can heal wounds, clear cancers, and cure illnesses with a touch.”
Not too long ago, Bill would have scoffed. Today he remained silent, listening. His scoffing days were over.
“The Dat-tay-vao came to Monroe last year and became one with a local physician, Alan Bulmer.”
“Sounds vaguely familiar. Wasn’t he associated with Doc Alberts for a while?”
“Possibly. He’s on his own now. Out of practice since the Dat-tay-vao enabled him to heal with a touch.”
“That’s it—People did an article on him last summer.” He remembered leafing through the issue during a work break at Darnell U. “Hinted that he was a charlatan.”
“He wasn’t. And isn’t. His cures were very real. He lives now with Sylvia Nash and her adopted son.”
“Out on Shore Drive, you said?
Glaeken nodded. “Two ninety-seven.”
“The high-rent district.”
The old Hanley mansion was out on Shore Drive too. Bill repressed a shudder as memories of the horrors he’d witnessed there in 1968 flashed within his brain like distant lightning.
“The estate is called Toad Hall.”
“Never heard of it. Must be new.”
But as soon as he saw Toad Hall, Bill knew that it wasn’t. Only the brass plaque on the right-hand brick gatepost was new. He recognized the place as one of the Preferred North Shore’s most venerable mansions: the old Borg Estate. Three acres on the Long Island Sound surrounded by a stone wall and dense, insulating stands of white pine.
He turned into the driveway. The house itself was set far back, close to the water; a many-gabled affair, flanked by weeping willows. He hated the thought of someone renaming the old Borg place, but as he turned off the ignition and heard the briny breeze whisper through the swaying willow branches, he conceded that the new name might be right on target.
He accompanied Glaeken to the front door.
“It’s a household of four,” the old man said as they walked. “Mrs. Nash, Doctor Bulmer, a Vietnamese houseman named Ba Thuy Nguyen, and Jeffrey, Mrs. N
ash’s adopted son.”
“You said yesterday we’re looking for a boy. Is he the one?”
Glaeken nodded. “He is. And his mother is not going to like what I have to tell her.”
“Why? What’s he got that—?”
The front door opened as they stepped onto the porch. A tall, gaunt Asian towered in the doorway. This had to be Ba. His age was hard to judge: might be fifty, sixty, maybe older. His high-cheekboned face was expressionless, but his eyes were alert, active, darting back and forth between Glaeken and Bill, picking up details, assessing, measuring, categorizing. Bill knew someone else with eyes like that: Glaeken.
“Yes, sirs.” His voice was thickly accented. “May I be of service?”
“Yes, you may.” Glaeken fished a card out of his pocket. “My name is Veilleur. I believe Mrs. Nash is expecting me.”
Ba stepped aside and ushered them through a marble-tiled foyer and into the living room. Doo-wop was playing softly through hidden speakers. A wave of nostalgia swept Bill away as he recognized “Story Untold” by the Nutmegs. He and Carol had danced to that song at CYO dances in the gym of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow, not a mile from here.
Ba’s voice yanked him back to the present.
“I will tell the Missus that you are here. Do you wish coffee?”
They both agreed and remained standing by the cold fireplace as Ba turned and left them alone.
“That’s one powerful-looking fellow,” Bill said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Vietnamese that tall.”
Glaeken nodded. “A one-man security force, I would say.”
A slender woman with short black hair, blue eyes, and finely chiseled features strode into the room. She wore loose black slacks and a white blouse buttoned all the way to her throat. She moved with complete self-confidence.
“I’m Sylvia Nash. Which one of you is—?”
The Complete Adversary Cycle: The Keep, the Tomb, the Touch, Reborn, Reprisal, Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) Page 191
