The Girl at the Center of the World

by Austin Aslan

  “You’ll regret this if it’s a trick.”

  The sheriff studies my red, puffy eyes. I look away from him to my loved ones crammed into crates up ahead. What have I done?

  We turn onto a rough path that winds up to a large yellow gate buttressed by great jumbles of impassible `a`a lava. The driver ahead stops and fumbles with Buzz’s keys until he finds the one that opens the gate. He smiles grimly at me and then gets back behind the wheel. Where do I know him from?

  Our train passes onto a primitive four-wheel-drive trail. No one closes the gate.

  “The Orchid is too important,” the sheriff says. “What we build needs time to settle. Hawai`i can be free. If the power comes back on, then the superpowers come back. I can’t allow it.”

  You’re not going to like that battleship, I think.

  “These islands are ours now. We will not give them up again.”

  “You’re not building anything. Don’t you get it?”

  “You and I both, Leilani. We do more good than harm.”

  I choke back a growl.

  “I know that wildness in your eyes, Leilani. I’ve seen it on many faces. You think I’m insane. But tell me: how many people have perished in the past five months because you’ve shanked those creatures to our sky?”

  The radiation. “More would die if I let them go. I’m saving people. But I’m also making it so they can leave. I’m looking for solutions. You’re just looking for power.”

  “No. No. We do the same thing. The difference is that I’m stronger than you. I recognize the real threat: the modern world. In your weakness and ignorance, you would usher it back, allow us all to return to our vices.”

  I clench my fists. Don’t you dare use that argument against me. “You are mad.”

  “You think I’ve done more damage to these islands than the Star Flowers? Was it my iron grip that whittled away half a million islanders this summer?”

  I watch the road ahead, steadying my eyes on Dad and Grandpa. I don’t know if they can see me, but I search for calm—for pono—by focusing on them. What is your plan, Buzz? Please, have a plan.

  It dawns on me: the sheriff believes what he’s saying. This evil man, whom I had always taken to be a shark, silent and deadly, is actually a snake. Quick to strike, sly.

  “This happened just before it was too late. The Hawai`i we build…it’s not just about our race; it’s about the survival of all races.”

  So full of it. “You don’t have to do this to my family, threaten my grandfather. You have no right to impose your will on the world.”

  “And you DO?”

  I shrink back. We rumble up Mauna Loa in silence.

  CHAPTER 18

  The path is jarring. The handcuffs are starting to cut into my wrists; I grit my teeth. After several miles the sheriff turns to me. “Your tūtū talked story about my little hobby back hanabata days?”

  “Framing haoles for crimes they didn’t commit?”

  He shrugs. “They had it coming. Tūtū share the other gig we had going?”

  I watch him closely. Some psychological game? But I think back to the conversation Grandpa and I had at Honoli`i. There was something else that he wasn’t mentioning.

  “I didn’t think so,” the sheriff says.

  I purse my lips. If he’s going to tell me, fine. But I’m not going to ask.

  We climb the volcano, winding up the trail as it gets steeper and rougher. The crater and its wide debris field loom large, but size has no meaning up here. It’s all just tricks on the eyes. The tunnel at the center yawns black, bored into the carved-out mountainside. We could probably drive this whole fleet right into it.

  Buzz shouts something from his cage. The line of trucks halts.

  “This is close enough,” Buzz calls out. “We hike in from here.”

  A half-dozen Hanamen pour out of the vehicles.

  “Wait,” I say.

  The sheriff ’s hand rests on the key in the ignition. He stares at me.

  “How did you know?”

  His lips pull slowly into a grin. He savors the anticipation. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about a pure Hawai`i or the future of humanity. This is all an amusement for him. The entire apocalypse is his playground. He can’t stand that I own the ball. That’s all this is about.

  “Keali`i?” I venture softly. But it feels wrong to say it. Nothing makes any sense.

  “Tami.”

  “What?”

  “Your friend. Tami Simpson. She told.”

  Panic swells again. “What have you done with her?”

  Now he smiles outright, looks away. “I’ve never met her. Never seen her. No torture, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not my bag. I work quickly and only when I have to. She betrayed you all on her own.”

  “No.”

  The sheriff gets out of the Humvee and slams the door shut. He barks orders, mostly in Hawaiian, points at the captives. A Hanaman opens my door and uncuffs me from the grip bar. I step onto the uneven surface of the lava, rub my bleeding wrists. The Hanaman goes to cuff my hands together again.

  “Please,” I say to him. “Look.” I show him my wrists. “What am I going to do? Run away? Wrestle that rifle from you?” He lowers the cuffs.

  Buzz and Grandpa, both cuffed from behind, are pushed to the center of a gathered crowd. Dad remains caged. The sheriff double-checks the lock and then abandons him in the bed of the black truck. He strides over to our group.

  “This pearl,” he says, “do what you need to. In and out. You try anything…” He examines the clip of his pistol and holsters it.

  “Lei,” Dad calls. I whip toward him. It’s difficult to watch him crouched in that dog cage. He doesn’t say anything, but his expression is firm. I know what it means.

  Be strong.

  Tami…betrayal. Absurd.

  We march in a tight group, leaving Dad. It takes fifteen minutes to navigate the lumpy flows of old pāhoehoe and step onto the much smoother debris field. We still have to hike uphill for several hundred yards before the slope levels out and begins to funnel gently into the mountain. I keep glancing at Buzz, looking for some sign, instructions, anything, but he’s poker-faced. The cinders slip beneath us as we trudge higher.

  Tami would never betray my secret. Give up my whole family.

  The man who drove the truck in front of us—I know him. My neck hairs tingle with alarm. I can feel the Star Flowers above me, near, bright, spring-loaded.

  Who is that guy? Did he teach at my high school? Run the surf shop?

  I move through town in blocks. Where did I know him? When my mind touches on the hospital, the answer slaps me in the face. He was the nurse administering Tami’s drugs when I arrived at the hospital! Herbert. He gave me the stink-eye in the lobby. I thought it was because of the IV meds. It was because he knew. I stop. Everyone lurches to a halt. I glower at the sheriff. “You son of a bitch.”

  Everyone takes a step back.

  “You wanted me to think my best friend sold me out. That’s a lie.”

  “Let’s move!” the sheriff barks.

  “That guy,” I point at Herbert. “He interrogated Tami when she was drugged. He had all the time in the world to extract information from her.”

  Herbert glances away.

  The sheriff smiles.

  We continue up the slope. It’s like walking up a sand dune. Two steps forward, one step back. The nurse was a Hanaman? Even that was part of the Manō-Hanaman war? My head spins.

  When we reach the gentle curve where the ground reverses direction and begins to slide in toward the hole, we see the crater before us, like a giant radio dish with a mining tunnel at its center. Buzz abruptly turns his back to the pit, fumbles with his handcuffs, pauses, and sits down on the ground.

  “Get up,” the nearest Hanaman says, and kicks him.

  “Quick rest,” he says, panting. “Off balance. Elevation. No water.”

  “Five minutes,” the sheriff says. He’s the only one of us whose
breath is not labored. Buzz seems relieved, still tense, uncertain.

  I see Hilo far below, the blue ocean beyond. We’re nine or ten thousand feet high. A water bottle is passed around the group. I take a few sips, careful not to guzzle. I’m out of breath; the sun is beating down and reflecting back up from the cinder floor, draining me. My stomach hurts. Lead in my abdomen.

  When do I push it out?

  Buzz jangles his cuffs behind his back. “Knock that off,” Herbert grunts.

  The sheriff ’s jaw is clenched. He smells Buzz’s trap. My breathing quickens. I use my shirt to wipe sweat off my palms.

  “Hey, Hawika. You ever gonna tell your mo`opuna the rest of the story?”

  Grandpa looks between us, livid. He holds the sheriff ’s gaze. “No.”

  The lead inside me hardens.

  “Bygones, eh?” Kana`ina asks him.

  Grandpa holds his eyes sternly.

  Buzz jangles his cuffs behind his back again.

  Herbert stands, presses his boot down on Buzz’s hands. “I said stop that.” Buzz cringes and grunts in pain. “Ow!”

  Kana`ina marches forward. “Enough.” His men rise.

  I go to Buzz to help him up. He gives me a discreet nod. “Twenty-one minutes,” he whispers, hiding the words with a grunt. “Be ready.”

  Ready for what!? I want to scream.

  “Get away from him,” Kana`ina barks. “Herbert, keep them apart, goddammit.”

  The nurse wedges himself between us, pushing me back.

  “Careful,” Buzz instructs. “We’re entering the crater now. Slow and easy toward the hole. I don’t know how stable the roof of the shaft is, and it’s vital we—”

  “No,” the sheriff counters. “We move. Get down there, get out.”

  The group marches forward, skip-sliding down the black scree. Buzz tries to hold back, gets pushed forward, breaks his fall with his shoulder. Herbert picks him up, and we continue to the threshold of the narrow shaft and peer in.

  From across the islands and the long months, Father Akoni’s final instructions to me echo in my mind: “…go up on the mountain. Stand at the mouth of the cave. And when you hear the whisper, see if you can’t answer back.”

  I don’t hear anything, though; just the pounding of my heart in my chest.

  “All right, Mr. Wizard,” the sheriff says. “You, me, Leilani, Tūtū, and you three”—he indicates three Hanamen—“we go in. The rest wait. Be alert.”

  Our smaller group advances. The shaft angles steeply down. It’s wide enough to drive the Humvee through, but just barely. The scree and the finer cinders give way once again to solid ground. The ancient layers of lava are like polished marble.

  “I can’t see ahead,” the sheriff grumbles. “Do we need lights?”

  “It’s burrowing.” Buzz’s voice rings around us. “Carving this shaft as it pushes toward the center of the Earth. It was only this far in last time I was up here. Shouldn’t be much farther.”

  “How is it doing that?” the sheriff asks.

  “Gravity. This thing is a perfect sphere, exactly as wide around as this shaft, but it’s extremely dense. Can’t you feel the pull?”

  We pause. I do feel heavier than I should. I actually feel drawn toward the darkness.

  “Whoa,” says one of the Hanamen. “That’s crazy shit.”

  The sheriff cocks his gun and points it at Grandpa’s head.

  I wobble. A cold flash runs through me, immediately replaced with boiling blood.

  “I told you you’d regret a trap.”

  “No!” Buzz says. “We’re all in here. Think about it.”

  The sheriff lowers his gun. I can’t do this. The constant threats claw at my mind, twisting my stomach.

  “Sheriff,” says the advance Hanaman. “I see it. It’s right here.”

  Kana`ina goes forward cautiously. I squint and see it, too. A gray-black spherical surface in the dark, gently reflecting the distant daylight.

  I follow the sheriff, stop before the mirror-like surface, trembling, reach out and gently touch the pearl. I pull back with effort.

  It has its own gravity. Wild.

  I touch it again. This is part of her. I’m physically touching her. I let the sphere pull my cheek to itself. It’s cool, perfectly smooth. We embrace. I feel it drawing me in.

  I love you. I pull away in curious shock. It’s true. It has been for some time.

  Flower of Heaven, I love you.

  Was that me, or her?

  It was both of us.

  When the time comes, I’m not sure I will let go of the Orchids.

  “So what do we do with it?” The sheriff is impatient.

  Buzz takes a deep breath. He opens his mouth, closes it. He looks between me and Grandpa slowly, his eyes filling with something I’ve seen only once before: the same expression Dad gave me when he knelt at the end of the sheriff ’s pistol four months ago.

  Recognition. Resignation. Acceptance. Pride.

  “If we had the right tools,” Buzz begins, “maybe we could jackhammer away at this. But I doubt it. It’s the most solid object to ever touch the Earth. Better to comb the region for fragments that came off during initial impact. That’s what I did before.”

  The sheriff draws his gun.

  “Mo`opuna,” Grandpa says. He glances at my necklace, then rests his loving gaze on my face. “Never forget. I’m your `aumākua now. Me and your grandmother both.”

  My heart races. I shake my head.

  “You intended to trap me here.” Kana`ina grips his pistol tightly. “This is your tomb, Hawika, not mine.” The gun rises. Grandpa does not flinch.

  I grow faint.

  The ground lurches. Trembling. Another seizure? It won’t work this time; it won’t stop him from killing my tūtū.

  The rumbling stops. I check my balance in the dark. I’m still conscious. No fit. I’m not the only one who felt it. Rubble flows into the shaft. The minor avalanche stops at our feet. Everything stills.

  Not a seizure. An earthquake.

  “Sheriff!” one of the Hanamen outside the shaft shouts down to us, his voice echoing. He yells something in Hawaiian.

  Kana`ina marches up the shaft toward daylight. Our three guards push us upward.

  We slip on the loose scree, then stumble into the open. I blink frantically.

  A sickly green-and-purple hue meets my adjusting eyes.

  All the Hanamen are looking straight up, shielding their eyes, alarmed. I follow their gazes.

  The baby Orchid is eclipsing the sun, radiant. She’s a fiery jewel in the sky. Near. Every emerald and amethyst tendril aflame.

  I can feel her warmth on my face and shoulders.

  I draw in a deep breath and then drop my gaze to the sheriff. He raises his gun and pulls the trigger. The shot is deafening.

  Fifteen feet away, Tūtū collapses, lifeless.

  CHAPTER 19

  I sink to my knees, claw at my hair. Buzz is screaming, but my world is mute. I’m screaming, my vision blurry, but I hear nothing.

  The black hole in my stomach implodes.

  I fall into the cinders, feel the glassy granules digging into my forehead. Grandpa dropping straight down. An unheard wail in my throat. I taste dirt.

  It is out, same as the hardness you pushed.

  I raise my head just in time to see the meteor hammer Mauna Loa.

  It strikes, out of sight over the close horizon of the crater we’re in. Away from us. Away from Dad. Incinerated earth immediately rises into view, a column of billowing smoke crowned in flying rock. The ground jolts. I’m bounced off my knees onto my side. The Hanamen, the sheriff, and Buzz stumble to the ground. A fierce wind howls above, eddies down the slope of our crater, blasting us with grit and pushing us over.

  All grows quiet.

  The bruised sky above is filling with black and brown and red ash. We all rise. I see Grandpa’s body, blown into a new position by the shockwave. I vomit into the sand.

  The sher
iff barks; his men scramble to action. One tackles Buzz. Instinct springs me to my feet. I run blindly up the slope. Was this Buzz’s plan? Is this distraction my only chance to escape?

  And then: Dad.

  I slip on the loose ground of the crater, reach for the near horizon. Get to him and get out of here. The sand slips as it does in a nightmare. But I’m tackled and dragged to the sheriff. My captor throws me at his feet.

  “Lei, listen,” Buzz huffs. “You run. Don’t think. Don’t try to help me. When it starts, you—”

  Kana`ina lifts Buzz up, grips him tightly around the neck. I whimper.

  He’s going to murder Buzz, too, isn’t he?

  “Stop this,” I pant. “I’ll do it again. Every time you kill one of my people. I’ll aim it right at us. I don’t care.”

  “We have a genuine problem, Leilani,” the sheriff begins, but he’s cut off by another rumbling. This one different. More distant. Deep.

  Just out of view we hear a deafening sound. We all look in the direction of the strike. My rib cage rattles. It makes no sense—

  And then a new plume rises into view above the crater, black as night, mixing with the high ash of the impact. The sound turns to an ungodly hiss. It snaps, then pops, and then, in the distance, a fountain of fire soars into the air.

  Mauna Loa has awoken.

  * * *

  “Move!” Kana`ina shouts. The nearest Hanaman reaches for me.

  Is this what Buzz meant? I scramble to my feet, but my captor has my shirt. I try to slip out of it.

  “MOVE!”

  The hissing in the distance grows fiercer. The fire rises higher. The Hanaman lets go of me as we all work to ascend the crater, glancing constantly at the fountain of lava arching up, rising, rising. I can’t see the ground yet, but the liquid rock, gushing like water from a shattered dam, must be spewing a hundred meters high.

  Suddenly Kana`ina’s pistol flies out of his hand, zipping backward toward the dark hole of the shaft.

  “LEI! NOW!” Buzz screams.

  Every Hanaman falls toward the darkness as if they’re tumbling down a cliff. Kana`ina has Buzz gripped around the neck. Together they whip backward as if yanked by a bungee cord.

  Within seconds I’m alone. Everyone else has been snapped into the shaft.