Eden Burning

by Elizabeth Lowell

  She stared after him. Even Bobby had remarked on the attachment between the two children. They enjoyed a mutual-admiration society that had begun instantly and deepened every day. It had given both Lisa and Benny a confidence in themselves as people who delighted the adults as much as it bemused them.

  The cottage seemed very empty without Benny.

  Why isn’t Chase coming back to Hawaii with Lisa?

  Doesn’t he miss me at all?

  How can he ask me to marry him, make love to me as if I was truly Pele, and then just walk away?

  There were no answers but the ones implicit in the note he had left behind. He cared enough for her to want her to be happy. He believed she couldn’t be happy with him because she couldn’t trust him, really trust him, all the way to her soul. So he had showed her that she could trust herself. And then he had left her to find a man she could trust.

  Could love.

  It was all there in the note, along with Chase’s regret and pain and loss. She had all the answers. She just didn’t like any of them.

  Especially the certainty that in the end she had hurt Chase as badly as he had hurt her in the beginning.

  The thought of it went through Nicole like a torrent of molten lava, searing her until she wanted to scream or cry. But she couldn’t do either. All she could do was ache to be with Chase, to hold him, to comfort him and herself.

  Chase, I didn’t mean to hurt you!

  But she had. Badly.

  With a feeling close to desperation she looked around the cottage and tried to think of all the ways there were to kill time until the picnic tomorrow. Everywhere she looked, sketch paper lay crumpled, thrown in frustration at the corners of the room. She was afraid that the day and night to come wouldn’t be any better.

  Grimly she grabbed a sketch pad and began to draw. Even as she lifted her pen, she knew that tomorrow morning there would be an even bigger mess of rejected sketches littering the cottage.

  By the time Benny and three other Kamehamehas appeared at Nicole’s door the next day, wadded-up sketching paper studded the cottage from the highest shelves to the farthest corners. Failed watercolors torn to confetti added color and variety to the litter.

  Benny took one look at Pele’s smoldering amber eyes and decided that even one word on the subject of her housekeeping would be one too many.

  His sister, Mira, wasn’t that wise. “What happened?”

  “Nothing,” Nicole said tersely.

  “Oh.” Big black eyes measured the storm of paper littering every surface. “I used to tell Mama the same thing. She didn’t believe it either.” Mira hesitated. At fifteen, she was old enough to know that adults sometimes needed to be left alone. “We don’t have to go hiking today.”

  “I’ve been looking forward to it,” Nicole said flatly. “I need to get out.”

  Benny smiled with relief and hustled his sister and cousins out the garden door before Nicole could change her mind and cancel the hike.

  Hands on hips, she looked at the drifts of paper. They reminded her of the luau, when jacaranda blossoms had lain in fragrant drifts around the chaise and Chase had made her feel as beautiful as the night.

  More beautiful. In his arms she had truly been Pele, goddess of fire.

  The sound of Lisa’s excited laughter broke through Nicole’s seething thoughts. She reached the front door just in time to open it and catch a small, energetic body in her arms.

  “I missed you,” Lisa said, hugging her hard. “Is Benny here?”

  Nicole smiled despite the pain lancing through her. Lisa’s eyes were the same rain-clear gray as Chase’s. “He’s in the garden. Where’s Dane?”

  “He and Daddy let me off at the gate. They’ll pick me up there later.”

  Numbly Nicole released Lisa.

  The girl raced off to the garden, calling Benny’s name in a high, clear voice. Nicole barely heard. All she knew was that Chase was back. He had been only a few yards away.

  And he hadn’t even said hello.

  Doesn’t he want to see me?

  The answer came swiftly to her, like a black knife twisting. Did you want to see him again after you ran out of Dane’s house?

  Trying to get past the anguish of their mutual pain, she closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself.

  He was here.

  So close.

  She wanted to go to him, to hold him, to know if he had truly meant what he said in his note.

  A chance to love.

  “Nicole?”

  Slowly she opened her eyes and focused on Mark. “Oh. Hi. Is everyone here?”

  “All six of us. Sandi, Judy, Lisa, Tim, and Steve. We all crammed into the car with Dad and Uncle Chase. But don’t worry. We made lunch at home. Uncle Chase told us not to mess up your kitchen.”

  “Oh,” she said again. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. All she could think was that she had to see Chase again.

  A chance to love.

  Mark looked at her oddly. “You feeling okay?”

  “Sure. Fine. Just a little . . . slow.” She gestured at the litter of paper. “I worked late last night.”

  Mark’s eyebrows climbed as he took in the extent of the mess. “Who won?”

  “Not me.” Nicole’s mouth turned down. And not Chase. We both lost. We’re still losing.

  The agony of it was literally breathtaking.

  “Uh, you sure you’re up to a hike?”

  “First Mira, now you. I must look like death warmed over.”

  “Well, uh . . .” Mark changed the subject, because he didn’t want to tell one of his favorite people on earth that she looked like hell. “Uncle Chase told me to tell you to be sure to stay clear of the southwest rift zone. It’s not official yet, but they’re going to close that part of the mountain anytime now.”

  “So it’s finally singing in harmony,” she said, rubbing her arms as though she was cold.

  “Huh?”

  “Harmonic tremors. Swarms of them. That’s how they know the magma is moving up inside the mountain,” she said absently, still caught in the agonizing net of her thoughts. Then she shook her head and forced herself to concentrate on something besides her painful, consuming need to see Chase.

  “So where are we hiking?” Mark asked.

  “Kamehameha Iki. It’s nowhere near the Great Crack,” she said, referring to the fourteen-mile-long fissure that lay like an open wound down Kilauea’s southwest side. “Is anything happening on top yet?”

  Mark shook his head. “That’s where Dad and Uncle Chase are going later. Uncle Chase told me to bring a cell phone on the picnic, and Dad told him it was a waste of time.”

  “He’s right. The cell coverage where we’re going is a joke. A bad one. I’ll take a radio. One of the stations is sure to come through.”

  Nicole turned to rummage in her kitchen drawer for the tiny portable radio she rarely used. She found it, turned it on, and was rewarded by a blast of fusion retro-rap music. Quickly she turned it off.

  “What good will the radio do us?” Mark asked. “You can’t talk into it.”

  “If the mountain goes, it will be on the news. We’ll hurry back and drive up for ringside seats.”

  A swarm of kids came rushing in from the garden just in time to hear her words. Like the mountain, they were more than ready to go. They hustled Nicole out and didn’t give her a moment’s peace until the bus door closed behind them. All during the ride they talked in rising voices about the chance to finally see the fabled mountain blow.

  “Nah, it won’t blow,” Mark said. “Not like Mount Saint Helens did. Uncle Chase told me the lava that comes out of Kilauea is usually thin and fast, so it doesn’t get stuck inside the mountain’s throat and build up pressure like that mainland volcano did. Poor old Saint Helens literally blew its top. Kilauea just sort of lets it all bubble out quietly.”

  That started an argument about just what constituted “quietly.” Were fountains of fire eighteen hundred feet hig
h quiet? As several of the kids had parents who worked at the observatory, there were plenty of opinions to go around.

  Nicole listened with half her attention while she herded everyone off the bus, counted noses, and came up with the right number. Just ten, though it sounded like twenty. While the children chattered and hiked along the very faint trail that their summer picnic jaunts had made through the forest, Nicole kept counting kids and coming up with the right number. It was something she did so automatically that she barely had to think about it.

  That meant she could spend too much time thinking about Chase and what she would do when the hike was over. The thought of not seeing him was too painful to consider. She had missed him unbearably in the past few weeks. Each day had been worse, not better.

  Yet the thought of going to him and giving herself wholly to him terrified her.

  What if he doesn’t want me after all? What if that’s why he didn’t come to see me?

  Nicole stumbled and barely caught herself on the rough ground. The thought of being rejected by Chase was numbing.

  Trust him. Trust yourself. Take this chance for love.

  The arguments raged in her head without letup. She made the rest of the hike on automatic pilot, her mind locked between trust and fear. As usual, it was warm on the mountainside. As usual, it rained for a time. As usual, the small pool in the center of the kipuka felt like Eden reborn.

  What wasn’t usual was the sudden, sharp leap of the earth beneath their feet.

  Lisa screamed and tried to run toward Nicole, only to trip and fall.

  “Everyone sit down!” Nicole ordered as she gathered Lisa into her arms. “There may be aftershocks or even more quakes.” She sat down herself and bent over the little girl who was huddled in her lap. “Are you okay, honey?”

  Tears trembled in Lisa’s eyes. “My ankle hurts.”

  Nicole looked at the ankle. It was scraped, bleeding, and beginning to swell a little. “Can you move it?”

  The girl grimaced, but she wiggled her foot and ankle.

  “That’s enough,” Nicole said quickly. “It’s not broken.”

  The ground beneath them shivered and trembled as if the island itself was cold, but Nicole knew it wasn’t cold that caused the shaking. It was magma pushing up Kilauea’s throat, pushing and pulsing in response to shifts deep in the earth that no one truly understood.

  “Looks like someone will be claiming the hotshot pool anytime now,” Nicole said. “Want to go back and get good seats for the show?”

  “It’s probably just another intrusion,” Mark said.

  “I’ll see if anything’s on the radio.”

  Nicole turned on the radio and held the speaker to her ear. After a few minutes of moving the dial through the few stations she could receive, she lowered the radio and looked at the children.

  “Nothing about the volcano,” she told them. “I’ll try again in a few minutes.”

  Beneath them the ground shivered and trembled very faintly, a kind of deep humming that never really stopped. Despite her reassuring smile at the kids, Nicole wished desperately that there was someone along who knew more about Hawaii and volcanoes than she did. This might be perfectly normal behavior preceding a perfectly normal intrusion or even an eruption in the southwest rift zone.

  Or it might be a disaster taking shape around her and the children. The earth seemed to vibrate beneath her feet, but the motion was so subtle now that it was more sensed than felt.

  Nicole’s instincts stabbed her with sudden, sharp warnings. Get out. Get out.

  She didn’t question or fight her instinct to flee. She couldn’t. It was simply too powerful.

  “I think,” she said as casually as she could, “that if we don’t get going, the best seats at the top will be overrun by tourists.”

  “What about lunch?” Steve asked.

  “We’ll eat while we walk. Less to carry that way.”

  There were a few grumbles, but not too many. The faintly shivering ground whispered to instincts that were much older than logic. The children didn’t know why; they just knew it was time to go.

  Nicole took the scarf off her hair and used it as a makeshift bandage on Lisa’s ankle. “How’s that, honey?”

  The girl nodded and pushed to her feet. With breath held, Nicole watched while Lisa put weight on the ankle. She limped but was able to walk.

  “Okay?” Nicole asked.

  “Sure-sure.” The little girl managed a smile. “Like Benny.”

  The ground quivered, a beast testing its chains.

  “Fall in,” Nicole called.

  The children picked up their lunches and began walking. Lisa’s limp got worse with each step along the rough mountainside. Anxiously Nicole watched her. The little girl was still keeping up, but she wouldn’t be able to much longer.

  Radio held to her ear, Nicole worried about Lisa and the rest of the children. She impatiently flipped from station to station until she found one where an excited announcer was talking about earthquakes and Kilauea. What she heard made her heart stop, then beat with redoubled speed.

  Kilauea was waking up. The first sharp jerk of the earth had closed old fissures and opened new ones. No one knew how many. But they did know one thing: the eruptions were happening on a whole new section of the mountain.

  Suddenly the wind shifted, blowing down rather than up the mountain.

  “Something’s burning,” Mark called from his position at the middle of the column. “I can’t see it, but I can smell it.”

  The children agreed loudly. Nicole held up her hand for silence and listened intently to the radio. The description of the new rift zone made her mouth go dry even as her palms slicked with cold sweat.

  No, it can’t be. They must be wrong.

  Mentally she calculated the distance to the road as she listened to the announcer’s excited description of Kilauea coming apart and pouring fountains and rivers of incandescent stone over its flanks. Already the road to the caldera had been cut in several places by lava.

  Closing her eyes, Nicole prayed that Chase wasn’t on one of the sections of road that was barricaded by new lava flows. Then she forced herself to put her fears for Chase out of her mind. She couldn’t help him, but she could help the children.

  “Benny,” Nicole called.

  Her voice carried to the front of the hiking line, where the youngest Kamehameha was confidently leading them through the trackless forest of fern and tall ohia. He raised a hand to show that he had heard her.

  “Can you get high enough in a tree to see where the smoke is coming from?” Nicole asked.

  Benny didn’t bother to answer. He simply sized up the trees around him, accepted a boost from Mark, and scrambled up until the branches were too thin to support his weight. He looked around once, twice, three times, as though memorizing the land.

  “Mountain burning!” he said, his voice high.

  Nicole’s eyelids flinched. It was what she had expected, but she had hoped fiercely that the radio announcer was wrong.

  “Can you see any lava?” she called.

  “Smoke.”

  “Is it from burning trees or is it in great big plumes going all the way to the clouds?” Nicole asked, keeping her voice calm with an effort.

  “Trees.”

  “Can you see a way down to the road?”

  Benny hesitated a long time. “Sorry-sorry, Pele. Big line smoke between.”

  A chill went over Nicole.

  They were cut off from rescue, and all around them the land was on fire.

  Nicole forced herself to breathe past the freezing instant of panic. Ten young lives depended on her. She had to think and think fast. Chase and Dane knew where their children had gone hiking. The men would know the kids were cut off from the road.

  The radio poured static and excitement in her ear. She made out just enough words to know that they weren’t the only ones to be caught by the mountain’s sudden shift. Search-and-rescue operations were being mounted
by air, land, and even sea.

  In her mind she retraced the trail between where they were now and the road that they couldn’t reach. Somehow she had to get everyone to a place where they could be seen from above.

  And, if necessary, airlifted out.

  “Can we get to the slick pahoehoe flow that’s halfway back to the road?” she asked.

  “Yes-yes,” Benny said instantly.

  “Is there smoke in that direction?”

  He moved his hand in a circular motion that took in the land all around them. “Smoke everywhere.”

  “Do you see any helicopters or small planes?”

  He gave the sky the same careful survey he had given the land. “No. Just smoke. All-all, Pele. All-all.”

  “Come down, Benny. And thanks. You’ve helped us.”

  She turned and faced the children who were waiting anxiously in front of her. Sandi moved to stand next to her older brother. Mark bent over and said something as he put a reassuring arm around her. The gesture was so like Dane that Nicole wanted to smile and cry at the same time. She took several measured breaths. She had to stay calm. And she damn well had to appear calm.

  “The radio announcer said that Kilauea is splitting some new seams,” she told the children. “We’re supposed to go to a road or a clear area where we can be spotted from the air. Then a helicopter will come and get us. Benny, you take the lead again. Mark, help Lisa up onto my back.”

  “I’ll carry her,” he offered quickly.

  Nicole shook her head. “Thanks, but it’s not that far.” And I’m a lot stronger than you. I won’t be a year from today, but it’s not a year from today. It’s now, and we’re trapped on a burning mountain.

  “But—”

  “If I need help over the rough spots, I’ll yell for you,” she said, cutting off his objections.

  Unhappily Mark lifted Lisa onto Nicole’s back.

  She smiled over her shoulder at the girl. “Hang on tight, honey, but around my shoulders or my chest, not my neck. Ready?”

  Lisa nodded.

  “Benny, I want you to keep going until you’re in the center of that slick pahoehoe,” Nicole said in a tone that told everyone this wasn’t a suggestion. “When you’re there, sit down and wait for the helicopter.”