Mistwalker

by Terri Farley

  Darby knew the story from her mother’s diary, but she let Ellen tell it just the same.

  “Even though Jonah hated paints and wouldn’t have a non–Quarter Horse on the place, I let down the rails on my mare’s corral—her name was Ebony—and hoped she’d have a foal that looked just like this.”

  “Did she?” Darby asked.

  “No,” her mom said, sighing. “She had a black filly, probably Luna’s, and I think we named her Crow—no, Raven. Moon Raven, or something like that. I didn’t get to know her very well.”

  Darby would have thought her mom’s daring had amounted to nothing more than a prank, if the black-and-white mare hadn’t stood before them.

  “This is the horse I wanted to be born.” Darby’s mom continued as she turned to look at her. “Are you surprised your mother was such a bad kid?”

  Darby smiled. She couldn’t admit that the shock had worn off after twenty-four hours, so she said, “Kinda.”

  “So am I,” Ellen said. “Today at lunch, I was braced against the table arguing with Jonah like we’d never stopped. But this time I’m fighting for you.”

  “I—you don’t have to, not about this,” Darby said.

  “Honey, ranching will break your heart,” her mother said.

  “I don’t care,” Darby said. And her mother must have heard her conviction, because they both watched the beautiful horse in silence as it inspected the saddle horses.

  The paint moved along Kona’s left side, walked behind the two geldings, then bumped Darby’s right stirrup before disappearing back into the foliage.

  “Have you ever seen her before?” Ellen asked.

  “Yes, but I thought she was wild, from the Crimson Vale herd. Their leader is Black Lava, a black with one blue eye. Actually, he was in Crimson Vale, but he’s penned up on the Lehua High School football field now.”

  “Really? Why?” her mother asked, and then she seemed to remember what she’d seen on television. “Oh, that’s where they funneled them to, after you and Cade and Kit—”

  “Yeah,” Darby interrupted. She didn’t want her mom worrying over the tsunami again. As a distraction, she grasped onto something her mother had mentioned earlier. “When you mentioned Luna, that was Old Luna, right?”

  “Big bay stallion? He’s the only Luna I know.” She shrugged.

  “About five years ago, Black Lava killed him.”

  Ellen winced.

  “Jonah tried to shoot Black Lava, but he only wounded him.”

  “He missed,” Ellen said in a wondering tone.

  “Yeah, and when he finally found him in the forest, the stallion was down, and Jonah decided not to kill him. He just marked his hoof, so that if he came back, he could finish the job.”

  A gust of wind startled a scarlet bird on the twig overhead. He gripped tighter, then gave up and flew away.

  “When did Jonah get so big on second chances?” Ellen asked, and she didn’t sound a bit sarcastic.

  “I don’t know,” Darby said. “We still have Old Luna’s son. He’s the ranch stallion now.”

  “Good,” her mother said, then added, “What I said about Jonah and second chances…I’m not complaining. It’s just that he was never like that before. Before, it was ‘what I say goes.’”

  “He’s still pretty much that way,” Darby said. “My very first day on the ranch, before I even knew who he was, he told me not to pet the horses.”

  Her mom didn’t look surprised, but then the wild cane plants rustled and an eerie howl came from the forest. Instead of looking scared or even startled, her mother let out a delighted cry.

  “It’s still there! Follow me!” Ellen clucked to Kona, urged him into a lope, and leaned into the gait.

  Looking for all the world like a cowgirl, Darby thought. My mother!

  “I can’t ride that fast in the fog,” Darby yelled.

  Navigator brought her close enough to see Kona’s tail fly around a turn, and Darby thought of Tutu. Hadn’t they met on this path? Hadn’t Tutu told her not to turn this way because it led to the old dangerous sugar mill?

  But maybe she was wrong. One forest path looked a lot like another, she thought as her mom slowed Kona, not in a single jerk, but gradually.

  Ellen’s hair curled in windblown disarray against her red cheeks. She looked younger than ever before.

  “What was that sound?” Darby asked as they jogged side by side. “Are you sure this is a safe place to ride?”

  “I know exactly where we are and what that was,” Ellen said. She drew rein, ducked her head, and pointed through a gap in the greenery.

  “It looks like—bricks? Some kind of brick tower?”

  “A chimney. The ruins of one, really, left over from the sugar mill. I always wanted to climb it when…Can you believe your mother started a thing called the Explorers Club? We dared each other to do so many dangerous things.”

  If Darby’s mom hadn’t looked so dreamy-eyed over her childhood, she probably would have heard what she was saying. She’d accused Jonah—more than once, and in both the past and present—of keeping her too close, not letting her do anything, but clearly she’d done a lot anyway.

  “Careful, there are old train tracks around here somewhere,” Ellen said as Navigator followed Kona. “Past this flume, I think. Your horse can jump right over it.”

  Kona leaned his head to one side, as if trying to read the faded, stenciled letters on the empty flume.

  “A-Z Sugar,” Darby read aloud.

  Kona sidestepped, rolled his eyes, and bent almost in half as Ellen urged him on. When he planted his hooves and refused, her mom did what Darby had done with Hoku just the other day: Shortening one rein, she clucked to Kona and made him turn in circles.

  “Let’s see if you like this,” Ellen said. It was weird, because until yesterday, Darby knew she would have laughed.

  Now it just looked to her as if her mom wasn’t giving Kona a chance to do the right thing. When he snorted, her mother evened her reins and Kona made a clumsy high step over the empty flume.

  I have to learn that bronc stop, Darby thought, but right now she had her hands full with Navigator.

  The gelding loved to jump. Though he didn’t have room for a running start, he settled for a trot, then blasted off with such energy, he cleared the flume by the length of his own body.

  Darby had held on tight enough to keep from falling, and her mom gave her a high five as she trotted past, trying to persuade Navigator that a walk was fast enough.

  “Now, we’re going to—okay, I remember. We’ll pass this weird tree we used to call the witch tree. It has this long, pale root that points out in front, and another root that looks like a snake.”

  Roots on top of the ground? Darby was skeptical, but only for a few seconds.

  “I see it,” Darby said.

  She also saw four stairs, probably made of stone, but it was hard to tell because they’d been blackened, maybe by a fire. The stairs climbed and stopped. Right there, along the third step, a root lay like a lounging snake.

  “What are those steps for?” Darby asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe part of the factory, or the plantation. There used to be houses here, too.”

  Darby nodded, remembering Tutu had said her cottage had been a worker’s shack. Darby was about to tell her mom, but Kona was spooked by the witch tree.

  He squealed and shied, then bounced off the ground, giving a few cranky crow hops.

  As bucking went, it wasn’t rodeo-quality, but that was her mom in the saddle!

  “Ride ’em,” Darby cheered.

  Giggling like a girl, Ellen managed to sound humble when she said, “I’ve still got it!”

  Darby applauded, then dismounted along with her mother.

  Once she was on the ground beside Kona, Ellen circled the gray’s sweaty neck with her arms.

  “I hugged Jonah’s horse,” she whispered to Darby. “Shhh.”

  “You don’t have to be quiet,” a voice piped up
from the forest of ferns. “There’s no one here but us.”

  Chapter Ten

  Menehune.

  Astonishment flashed through Darby. Menehune were early Hawaiians driven into hiding by tall warriors. Or helpful little people, finishing work by moonlight. Or imps.

  In Darby’s mind, they looked like Shakespearean fairy folk. Was she about to discover the truth?

  “Aloha,” Ellen called out. She looked at Darby with raised eyebrows. “Who’s there?”

  Her mom’s voice was playful. The ride had transformed her into a carefree woman, excited rather than unnerved by the voice.

  “Aloha, over here.”

  This time the voice was definitely human, a boy’s.

  As Darby and Ellen followed it, they came upon a trackside wooden dock. Legs dangling over the edge, Patrick Zink sat on the dock.

  “Patrick, right?” Darby called up to him.

  “Yeah, Darby and Ellen Kealoha Carter.” He bowed his head, which was topped with a pith helmet. “Welcome to the A-Z Sugar Plantation. I’m one of the Z’s.”

  Patrick appeared smaller than he had when he’d been all dressed up at Sugar Sands Cove Resort. Now his shorts showed skinned knees, and his hat—which looked like straw woven over a hard, ventilated helmet—dwarfed his freckled face.

  “One of the Z’s.” Ellen glanced at the faded letters on the flume.

  “Patrick Zink,” he announced, “at your service.”

  Pushing his palms on the wooden dock—which was about six feet high, Darby guessed—he launched himself to the ground in front of them. The jump was meant to look like casual gallantry, but one of his ankles twisted when his hiking boots hit the ground. He fell on the seat of his khaki shorts.

  Ellen’s arm barred Darby from going to help him.

  Patrick stood, brushed off dust, picked a sliver from his palm, then squared his hat on his head and began talking as if nothing had happened.

  “I’m glad you got here before the mosquitoes came out,” he said.

  Darby had heard some people attracted mosquitoes more than others. She was generally one of them, but she didn’t remember seeing any in the rain forest.

  “This was a sugar plantation village from about 1890 until 1950. A-Z stood for Acosta and Zink—”

  “Really?” Darby gasped. “How cool!” But then her mental picture of a plantation shifted from soaring white columns to slavery. “But, 1890”—she sorted through the history notes in her brain—“there weren’t slaves here, were there?”

  “Hawaii wasn’t exactly part of the U.S. then,” her mom reminded her. “I don’t think it was even a territory until about 1900.” Ellen frowned as if she should remember exactly, but Darby was impressed she knew that much.

  “No slaves,” Patrick said, lifting a Band-Aid on his wrist, then sticking it down again. “The Acostas had a history of using them, but my dad’s family voted for hiring sugar workers from Japan—like my mother’s ancestors—and China, Puerto Rico, the Philippines….”

  “That’s so interesting,” Darby said.

  “Hard on the land,” Ellen said grimly.

  Ellen’s tone reminded Darby of Megan’s, when she’d said Darby couldn’t imagine what Cade was “capable of.” It sounded like sugar farming was a crime. Or maybe it was the system her mom was thinking about, with a few rich owners who watched poorly paid people do all the work.

  “Probably no worse than cattle ranching?” Darby suggested. Something about Patrick made her want to stand up for him. Gosh, that Band-Aid didn’t cover half the red swelling on his arm. “What happened to your arm?”

  “Centipede,” Patrick said.

  “Aren’t their stings poisonous?” Darby said.

  “Bite,” Patrick corrected. “They use their mandibles.” He shifted his jaw back and forth, reminding her what a mandible was. “But it’s not toxic. Unless you’re allergic, and I don’t think I am.” He looked upward, scanning the air for insects, and his helmet fell off the back of his head. “But why take a chance and add any mosquito anticoagulant to the mix?”

  His pale, freckled skin looked even whiter in contrast to his black hair. He was accident prone. His ancestors had been both overseers and laborers. And he had a killer vocabulary. Darby was wondering about Patrick’s school life when he doubled back to her remark about cattle ranchers.

  “Cattle ranchers and sugar plantation owners both burned off the land, so the trees wouldn’t get in their way. They bought up taro land, too, and that was a native crop. But A-Z redirected the water to our fields and drained the Shining Stallion waterfall,” Patrick said.

  “Drained it?” Darby asked, thinking of the rainbow-spangled torrent that had hidden Black Lava’s cave.

  “Ran it dry,” Patrick admitted.

  “But that was before your time,” Ellen said in a sympathetic tone.

  “Yeah, but it was pretty bad. And most people remember,” Patrick said. “That’s why my parents are letting the forest go back to the way it was.”

  Darby looked around and decided the Zinks were doing a pretty good job. Except for the train tracks, the stone steps leading nowhere, the chimney jutting up from a grove of trees, and a few weathered wooden structures like the dock, most everything that was man-made was covered with vines, crowded by trees, and sprouting vegetation from age-old cracks.

  Darby felt a pulse of admiration for the Zinks. If this plantation sat in Los Angeles County, the owners would have ignored their consciences and sold the land for houses, malls, and freeway on-ramps.

  Navigator’s whinny broke off the conversation. Especially when he was answered.

  “The paint!” Ellen said, pointing.

  The black-and-white horse dropped a vine from her mouth and pushed her way through a wild mass of plants that were bright green with pink flowers.

  “Hey, girl,” Patrick said.

  “Is she your horse? She’s lovely,” Ellen said.

  “She came from your ranch,” Patrick pointed out.

  “No,” Darby’s mom said, “she couldn’t have.”

  But Darby imagined the horse without her black-and-white coat. Her conformation could be that of a Quarter Horse. Her tail was a little lower set than most ‘Iolani Ranch horses and her hooves were broader, but even with Jonah’s strict bloodlines, horses had individual differences.

  “What’s her name?” Darby asked.

  “I gave her a new one,” Patrick said, squaring his hat back in place on his head. “The name she had when my dad bought her was ugly—Mofongo.”

  The filly blew through her lips and shook her mane.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Ellen said, “but it doesn’t suit her.”

  “Is Carlos still on the ranch?” Patrick asked.

  Darby shook her head.

  “He’s the one who named her Mofongo. It’s a kind of Puerto Rican food, made with plantains and other stuff all smashed together. She was too flashy for Jonah, and he couldn’t register her because of her color. So when she reached two years old and still hadn’t turned bay like Luna or black like Raven—”

  “Raven?” Ellen interrupted.

  “That’s her mom,” Patrick explained. “Jonah said he’d give my dad a good deal if we took both of them. My parents aren’t into horses, but I promised I’d take care of them both.”

  “Mofongo, out of Raven, out of Ebony,” Ellen said. Smiling, she recited the filly’s maternal bloodlines to Darby.

  Raven’s sire was no mystery now, Darby thought. The paint stallion’s mark hadn’t shown on Ebony’s foal, Raven. But his black-and-white coloring had skipped a generation and reappeared on the wild stallion’s grand-filly.

  All at once Darby’s heart jumped in excitement as she pictured Hoku and this pretty paint picking their way through the woods together.

  “Do you ride—Mofon…?” Darby tried to ask.

  “I call her Mistwalker,” Patrick said.

  “So, that’s her barn name,” Ellen said.

  “I
guess, except, since she got loose, she’s not in a barn. I don’t keep her cooped up.”

  “How long ago did she get loose?” Darby asked.

  “About a year ago.”

  Ellen sucked in a worried breath. “She’d be a lot safer cooped up,” she said.

  “Mostly she follows me around and I never go near any roads. I used to worry about her wandering off, but then she’d just come walking out of the fog, chewing a piece of maile pilau. And she stays on our land.”

  “I’m sorry to tell you this,” Darby said haltingly, “but she doesn’t.”

  “No?” Patrick asked. Mistwalker had stepped up behind him. He raised a hand to touch her face.

  Darby shook her head. “She was in the fold, on ‘Iolani Ranch yesterday….”

  Patrick turned his chin to look at the equine face beside his. “Well, still…”

  “And I saw her up at Two Sisters, running with Black Lava’s herd, just before the eruption.”

  Mistwalker nibbled Patrick’s shirt collar and gave it a gentle tug, as if telling him not to believe Darby, but he did.

  “You ruffian,” Patrick said to his horse. Then, like an indulgent father, he changed the subject. Looking at Ellen, Patrick said, “You can ride her if you want.”

  “Jonah trained her?” Darby’s mom asked.

  Patrick nodded. “He said she was saddle broken but sassy. He’s right. She lets me ride her when she feels like it and that’s most of the time. At first my parents didn’t want her out here with me, because they thought she was eating the native vegetation they’re bringing back. But that stink vine isn’t native and she loves it. So, until they can get the leaf-eating beetles from Nepal that they want to use on this stuff, they’re happy to have her eat it.”

  Why hadn’t Darby met Patrick before now? Jonah knew him. So did Megan. What about Ann? She was still sort of new to the island herself, but Darby guessed the two would get along.

  “You go to Lehua High, don’t you?” Darby asked.

  “Sure, I’ve seen you there.”

  “What grade are you in?”