Mistwalker

by Terri Farley

  Darby was about to try to pet Soda when Navigator protested the special treatment he was getting from Mistwalker.

  Tired of the paint grooming him with tiny bites that had moved from his mane to his tail, Navigator gave a short squeal and swung his head in her direction.

  “Hey! It’s not customary to snack on your friends,” Patrick scolded Mistwalker.

  The mare looked back at him and blinked. Then, not a bit ashamed, she feinted a nip at the toe showing through a hole in his sneaker.

  Ann and Darby laughed, especially when Mistwalker shook all over, from nose to tail, quite pleased with herself.

  Still, Darby couldn’t help recalling the lecture she’d received from her grandfather when she wasn’t wearing riding boots.

  She didn’t want to sound bossy, though, since she hardly knew Patrick. So she was happy when Ann suggested, “You might want to wear boots when you ride.”

  Patrick looked down past his khaki shorts to his matching sneakers, then up at the girls.

  “It’s my understanding that boots are only safer because it’s more difficult for the foot to slip through the stirrup, leaving the rider entrapped and in danger of being dragged to death,” Patrick said.

  “That’s what Jonah told me,” Darby agreed.

  “I’m riding bareback,” he pointed out.

  While he leaned forward to pat Mistwalker’s satiny neck, Ann’s eyes met Darby’s. Neither of them had a rebuttal for Patrick’s logic, but Darby wasn’t convinced. Patrick’s holey canvas shoes just weren’t suitable for riding, especially out in the rain forest.

  Birds took wing at the sounds of their conversation as they rode deeper into the rain forest. Ann and Patrick did most of the talking, because the whole time they rode toward the old plantation, Darby thought of Tutu.

  There hadn’t been time for her mom to see Tutu during their first ride, and Ellen had seemed down-hearted about it. But that wasn’t why Darby thought of Tutu.

  Her great-grandmother was a kupuna, a respected elder, and she’d warned Darby not to take this path toward the ruined plantation because it was dangerous.

  What kind of trouble had Tutu worried about? Maybe she was just afraid of Darby getting lost, because she didn’t know her way around. Patrick appeared to know every twig and trail on his family’s plantation, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

  Still, riding out here with Mom had felt different. Ellen had been there a million times before and she’d pointed out railroad tracks and rocks and vines. Patrick and Ann were preoccupied with their new friendship and discussing complex topics.

  “So, where did all the houses go?” Ann asked Patrick.

  He explained his parents’ goal of letting the rain forest reclaim human structures, and told her, just as he had Darby and her mother, about the cultural mix of workers in the plantation’s history.

  “And this is where my mom and her friends had their Explorers Club,” Darby said as they rode through a row of sunbeams that had struggled through the trees.

  “Hey, what are we going to do for initiation into our Explorers Club?” Ann asked.

  For a moment, Darby thought Ann’s blue eyes turned a little sly and her red hair, struck by the sun, appeared to be scattered with sparks. Patrick dropped his reins and let Mistwalker prance on without guidance, as he rubbed his palms together.

  He turned his freckled face toward Ann’s, clearly expecting her to lead him into some new amusement.

  Wild Ann. No one at school would believe that Patrick and Ann could lead each other into mischief, Darby thought.

  She noticed how the sun glazed over the lenses of Patrick’s glasses. Could he be blinded by having friends in this jungle where he was usually all alone?

  Patrick threw himself off Mistwalker. The mare lowered her head. There was a clang of teeth on metal as Patrick pulled off the black leather bridle, hung it on a low branch, and made a cluck that sent the mare trotting into the forest.

  Using neck ropes, Darby and Ann tethered Navigator and Soda to a length of pierced iron that neither of them could identify, while Patrick retrieved his pith helmet from the abandoned mill building.

  “It’s just electrifying to have partners in crime,” Patrick teased as the girls faced him with their hands on their hips.

  Ann’s wildness was contagious to Patrick, but had the opposite effect on Darby. She hoped her uneasiness didn’t have anything to do with her horse-charmer instincts, her ho’oponopono sensitivity, or wise-woman genes she’d inherited from her great-grandmother.

  Such thoughts were just ridiculous, but what was going on? She’d climbed the pali, swum in dangerous waters, and lain in the snow with a wild horse. She was not a scaredy-cat.

  Still, Darby heard herself speaking as if she were a chaperone for the other two: “It’s going to be dark in an hour or so.” Then she could hardly believe she added, “I’m not sure we have time for an initiation.”

  Ann and Patrick turned to look at her, as if she’d spoken a different language. But their stares only lasted a second.

  They returned to arguing. Patrick tried to make a case for “tightrope walking” the edge of the dock that had once served as a loading point for the narrow-gauge railroad that ran to a pier at Crescent Cove.

  “That’s enough of a challenge to start with,” he said sensibly.

  “I’ve got to climb that,” Ann said, pointing at a brick chimney.

  All three of them shaded their eyes and tilted their heads back to study the structure. About as tall as a two-story house, it soared through the trees, toward the sky.

  “Nothing else will do,” Ann said dreamily. “It looks like a red castle used to surround it.”

  “No way,” Darby said. She crossed her arms, then rubbed them, thinking of mosquitoes.

  You wimp, she called herself, but her mind wouldn’t be talked out of its anxiety.

  “I guess you’re right,” Ann said, then asked Patrick, “I don’t suppose there’s a haunted mansion? An overseer’s house or something?”

  “There was! Let me think where,” Patrick answered.

  This is like adding the vinegar, Darby thought. She frowned at Ann and thought of her science experiment. Any two of them would have been okay, but the three of them together—okay, just Ann and Patrick—were too crazy together.

  And being the sensible one was just no fun.

  “How about this,” Darby proposed. “We’ll do Patrick’s idea first, since he’s familiar with the area—”

  “Kind of like follow the leader!” Patrick rejoiced.

  “—and then we’ll climb the chimney next time we come.”

  “Let’s hurry,” Ann said, then called over her shoulder, “It’s okay, boy.”

  Her voice did nothing to calm Soda. His hindquarters swung against Navigator’s, and he pawed at the ground.

  “Excess energy,” Ann diagnosed, but Darby thought Soda was as worried as she was. When Ann looked back at the brick chimney, Darby decided Soda probably had better sense than his owner.

  “We’re agreed we can’t climb that thing after sundown, right?” Darby insisted, pointing at the chimney.

  “Right!” Patrick said; then he and Darby turned toward Ann.

  “Okay, I give in,” she said, “but I don’t know why. I’ll be dead if I get home after sundown anyway, so what do I have to lose?”

  As they climbed the wooden structure, snaking their fingers through vines, trying to get footholds on squeaky old crossbeams, Ann started talking like a pirate.

  “Patrick the pirate, argh!” Ann growled. “Watch where ye be putting yer scurvy feet or ye’ll crush me fingers.”

  “Avast, me ladies—”

  “You mean laddies,” Ann corrected.

  “No—”

  Darby stopped listening as Patrick began explaining the derivation of the word buccaneer. It had something to do with barbecued goats, and that was a topic she was trying not to think about, because Jonah claimed he wanted to cook Francie on the Fou
rth of July.

  So Darby was daydreaming.

  One minute, she was waiting her turn to “walk the plank” of the old loading dock. Filling the minutes while the others walked ahead of her, she’d stared past lehua blossoms to clouds following the summit line of far-off hills.

  The next minute would have been about the same if she’d known why Patrick ordered Ann to “Walk right on the edge, me hearty,” but Darby was wondering if a rainstorm was brewing, and trying to tell apart the calls of one honey creeper from another.

  Maybe the honey creepers’ calls were a warning.

  Darby heard a creak. She tried to see around Ann, but a rotten board had already cracked, and Patrick was gone. There was no time to grab for him or keep his yelp from being cut short by an awful impact.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The afterimage of Ann following right behind Patrick hung before Darby’s stunned eyes. Ann was about an arm’s length ahead of Darby. Ann wobbled a little, placing her boots where Patrick’s sneakers had skimmed on ahead.

  Darby didn’t know why they’d been walking on the edge of the dock. Though Darby’s view was mostly blocked by Ann, she’d seen Patrick’s arms fly out from his sides, fighting for balance, just before the crash.

  Who was screaming?

  Not Ann. She stood with her hands gripping her hips. Looking down, she shivered.

  “I can hear my d-dad now,” Ann tried to joke, so Patrick couldn’t have fallen off the edge. “If you k-kids hadn’t been—if—”

  Patrick’s groan didn’t sound human.

  Darby cut around Ann. It took her a minute to make sense of everything.

  At first, Darby had the ludicrous impression that Patrick was squatting like a laying hen. Except that Patrick’s right leg had disappeared from sight. It vanished into a splintered hole in the dock. He’d kept himself from falling the rest of the way through by bracing his hands on each side of the snug opening. His other leg was kinked up at a tight angle against his chest, and though his ripped sneaker was flat, his torso swayed as if he couldn’t hold himself up much longer.

  “I’m gonna fall.”

  “No, you’re not,” Darby said. She squatted next to him.

  Ann managed to make her way around them both. Then she slipped her hands under Patrick’s arms.

  Darby realized the screams were coming from Mistwalker. The black-and-white mare paced below them, neighing.

  “Don’t pull me up!” Patrick howled. “I’m caught. There’s wood in my leg! It stabbed into my thigh and it’s keeping me pinned here.”

  Sourness filled Darby’s mouth as she looked at the shattered dock. Wood in his leg. How big would the giant splinter be?

  “I won’t pull.” Ann spoke soothingly, but her eyes were wide as she stared at Darby over Patrick’s head. “I’ll just support you a little bit so that you can take some weight off your hands.”

  Ann crouched lower, but Patrick’s arms kept trembling.

  Darby wished she knew more about first aid. What she did know was that they were in big trouble and darkness was falling.

  “Patrick, can I get underneath the dock?” Darby asked.

  She didn’t want to jump down and start poking around, wasting time, when Patrick knew every inch of this place.

  “Not really.” Patrick’s pale face seemed to float above the rest of his body, but Darby heard him swallow and saw him make a shrug with one shoulder, as if he were trying to push his glasses up his nose.

  Repositioning his glasses was something he did when he was trying to think.

  Darby did it for him.

  “What’s the best way I can see your leg?” she asked.

  “In that building where I keep tack, there’s all kinds of stuff. A flashlight…” Patrick’s voice trailed off.

  “Do you think you’re losing blood?” Ann managed. Darby couldn’t see her friend’s face. Ann was bent forward, and the position of her frizzy red hair made Darby think Ann’s mouth was near Patrick’s ear.

  “At first I was afraid I’d cut my femoral artery. That big one in your thigh that gushes.” He gave a shaky laugh. “But that wasn’t it. Else I would have bled out already. So that’s good.”

  “You’ve got that right,” Ann said, and it was lucky Patrick couldn’t see her expression of horror.

  “So, really, I don’t know how important it is for you to go look—” Patrick gasped as the shoe he had braced on the dock shook and his knee wagged to one side. He might have impaled his leg even worse if Ann hadn’t held him tighter.

  Once more, it was a good thing Patrick couldn’t see Ann’s face, or he would have known what the effort had cost her.

  For a moment, fury replaced Darby’s fear. Why wasn’t someone here to help them? When would some adult arrive? Two eighth-grade girls couldn’t be expected to handle a life-threatening situation on their own, could they?

  “Hey, Patrick”—Darby tried to sound calm—“since you know about femoral arteries and stuff, I think you should help us out. Give the orders, you know?”

  Darby knew her own look was panicked as she met Ann’s eyes, but her friend nodded in instant agreement.

  “Good idea,” Patrick said. “I’m shocky already—you can tell by my clammy skin and stuff—but talking will help me focus. Uh, I think you’re supposed to keep me warm.”

  Beads of sweat looked sickly silver on his pale face, but Darby had read enough adventure stories to know he was right.

  “I can go get my saddle blanket and cover you, if Darby can hold you up?” Ann suggested. She must have shifted just a little in anticipation of doing that, because Patrick gasped in pain. “I’m sorry.”

  Patrick shook his head and began muttering. His voice went up and down as if he were really saying something, but the girls couldn’t understand.

  He really could be bleeding. Hemorrhaging. He could lose consciousness.

  “I think I’d better go under as far as I can with a flashlight and see if you’re bleeding. I can’t remember what the third B of the three B’s of first aid are, but you’re breathing, and bleeding comes next,” Darby insisted. “Can you hold him long enough for me to go find the flashlight in the shed and try to crawl under there?” she asked Ann.

  Ann nodded.

  “Why didn’t you answer?” Patrick yelped.

  “I nodded,” Ann said. “Don’t be so paranoid, buddy.”

  Even though she sounded jovial, Ann’s face was just as pale as Patrick’s.

  Paranoid. She’d used the same term with her mother. Darby wished as hard as she could that this was the day they were supposed to go riding and her mother was on her way.

  Ann mouthed the word hurry to Darby.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Darby let herself hang by her hands off the edge of the dock for a second, then dropped to the ground.

  Her mind pounded as her feet ran. Mistwalker trotted alongside her, frantic with worry. The other horses whinnied in puzzled distress. But the horses were all safe. Darby had to focus on Patrick.

  Why wasn’t someone—Jonah, Cade, Kimo, anyone on a fast horse, or in a truck—coming to see where they were? And now that she thought about it, too late, Mom had said she’d come ride on Tuesday. Today was Tuesday. Today had just felt like Monday because she’d missed the first school day of the week.

  So her mother really might be on her way. She could help. One of her part-time jobs had been as a clinical aide at an elementary school. That was sort of like a nurse, so she could help. Or she could go for help. Call the hospital in Hapuna, maybe.

  It would just make everything better if her mom were here.

  Out of breath, Darby stopped in the doorway of the old building. Twilight was falling and the structure predated electricity, so she couldn’t see much inside.

  Looking for a flashlight in the dark was an example of irony Miss Day would love, but Darby didn’t waste time enjoying it herself.

  There! A red cross on a white box indicated a first-aid kit. She gra
bbed it, muttering, “Good thinking, Patrick.”

  For all that the kid said he was just a risk taker, he knew he was accident prone, and since he spent so much time out here…

  A snort came from behind her and Darby whirled to face Mistwalker. The paint looked like a jigsaw puzzle of a horse. Her splotches of white shone and her black parts became part of the darkening forest behind her.

  Even though the horse had stopped neighing, she was nowhere near calm. Her eyes rolled and she tossed her head. She didn’t look quite sane. She acted as if she might charge, forcing Darby to do something.

  “Hey, girl, what do you think?” Darby was trying to soothe the horse, when she caught the glint of a metal flashlight. She grabbed it, switched it on, and sighed.

  Don’t congratulate yourself yet, Darby’s brain ordered. She swung the beam around, looking for anything that could help them out of this mess.

  Big metal wheels, ropes coiled on the ground, chains and tools hung on the wall. Shovels, rakes, a scary-looking sickle, wrenches of every size, a small hatchet…

  Get going, her brain demanded. Anything that will help is in that first-aid kit.

  But something held her here.

  Sorry, Ann, she sent her friend a mental message. There was something about that hatchet. It was small, the kind you used with one hand. But it was hanging way up on the wall, beyond her reach.

  “Darby?” a voice quavered through the rain forest. When she couldn’t tell if it was Ann or Patrick, she knew she had to rush.

  “Coming!” she bellowed.

  She tried jumping up high enough to knock the hatchet off its hook. She tried three times before she thought of Mistwalker.

  Jonah had trained her, and he always said he wanted a horse that would swim him to the mainland if he asked it to.

  “You don’t have to swim me to the mainland, girl,” Darby said.

  She grabbed a lock of the mare’s variegated mane, clucked, and led her forward, as if there were no doubt in her mind Mistwalker would come along. Then, before the mare changed her mind, Darby vaulted onto her bare back.

  Darby mumbled sweet nonsense to the horse. She stretched her aching arm as high as she could, and batted at the hatchet.