Eden Burning

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Sure-sure.”

  She smiled at him and turned to the rest of the children. “It’s very important that you stay together. If it gets too smoky, take off your shirts and breathe through them.”

  The kids all nodded.

  Mark whipped off his shirt and handed it to Nicole. “If I need something to breathe through, I’ll take some of Steve’s shirt.”

  She hesitated, then took the shirt. “Thanks. This will be easier to tear than my silk halter. And Mark, if I fall a bit behind,” she added casually, “don’t double back for me. Lisa and I will be fine. You bring up the rear of the kids.” She saw the quick concern for her and the protest forming on his lips. “You’re the strongest of the boys,” she said in a low voice. “If someone needs help, I’m counting on you to be there.”

  He wanted to object, to stay with her no matter what, but a single look at her eyes told him all he needed to know. There was no give in her.

  As Benny took the lead, Mark fell into place at the end of the line of hikers. Nicole walked behind him, carrying Lisa. They hiked at a good pace and without the usual jokes or sibling byplay.

  For the first time in her life Nicole was grateful for her unusual size, as well as for the years of dancing and hiking that had conditioned her body. Lisa might have been small, but she wasn’t a handful of feathers, and the miles they had to cover were on a path that was little more than crushed ferns pointing the way between trees, shrubs, and bigger ferns.

  The wind shifted again. Now it blew from behind Nicole. The air was rough with smoke, a reminder that somewhere above them, burning lava was spreading down the mountain.

  Nicole coughed and kept walking, hoping for another shift of wind. With every step she was falling a little more behind. She couldn’t see the children ahead of her anymore. She couldn’t even hear their occasional complaints about the pace Benny set. All she could do was follow the faint trail left by nine pairs of feet tramping in front of her.

  Gradually the forest changed, thinning out and then getting lush again according to the rhythms of old lava flows. The air stayed the same, thick enough to taste. Every shift of wind brought more smoke swirling down the mountain in billows. Despite the makeshift scarves Nicole had ripped from Mark’s shirt, she and Lisa coughed constantly

  And always, always, Nicole listened for the crackling sound of fire overtaking her. So far all she had heard was the roaring of her blood in her own ears. The forest was too wet and lush to catch fire from a few random blobs of hot stone raining down. But a river of lava was different. The intense heat of the molten stone dried out everything close to it. Plants heated to flash point and went up in small explosions along the edges of the lava flows. Both the lava and the burning forest pumped out a lot of smoke. It made a misery of breathing.

  Just when Nicole had begun to think she was lost, the plants around her thinned to almost nothing. The glassy pahoehoe ahead of her once had flowed like burning syrup down the mountainside, filling crevices and hollows. Though the lava had been fully cooled for more than a hundred years, it was still too harsh an environment for plants to take hold.

  Mark stood at the edge of the shiny flow, looking anxiously toward the thick forest beyond. When he spotted Nicole, he ran over and lifted Lisa from her back.

  “Hang on, squirt,” he said to Lisa.

  The girl wrapped her arms around his thin shoulders and hung on.

  Nicole smiled wearily and stretched the kinks out of her back. “Everyone here?”

  “Yes. They’re waiting in the center of the flow just like you said to do. A small plane flew overhead about twenty minutes ago.”

  “Did it see you?” she asked sharply.

  “It wagged its wings.”

  She closed her eyes, feeling dizzy with relief. Until that moment she hadn’t admitted to herself how frightened she was. “Thank God.”

  On the pahoehoe there weren’t any trees or tall ferns to block everyone’s view of the mountain. Even through the haze of smoke they could see long lines of more dense smoke writhing skyward, marking outbreaks of lava. The molten stone itself was still hidden, revealed only by the fires it set among the wet green forest.

  Nicole watched the smoke creep lower and lower down the mountainside. The wind was unpredictable. It pushed smoke here and there and back again, revealing and concealing the land at whim. The only certainty was that the air was getting thick enough again to make them cough.

  “Listen!” Mark said.

  The faint, distinctive whap-whap of a helicopter rotor came down through the murky sky. Soon a small chopper landed gingerly on the uneven ground. Nicole herded the kids toward the open passenger door.

  The pilot glanced from the ten children to the tall woman standing braced against the backwash of the rotors. She looked at the helicopter’s small interior and then at the pilot.

  Neither of them said a word.

  She stood at the door and boosted children inside until they were packed in the helicopter like fish in a tin. Mark was the last one in. He turned to help Nicole, only to find that she was hurrying away.

  “Where’s Nicole going?”

  The pilot didn’t answer.

  The helicopter shuddered up to full power, and Mark understood. “Nicole!” he yelled through the open door. “Come back! There’s room! You can have my place! Nicole!”

  With one hand the pilot held Mark in the seat. With the other he slammed and locked the door. Then he poured on more power and put the bird into the sky.

  Mark beat his fists against the transparent door and watched Nicole until he couldn’t see her any longer. But he could see a lot more of the mountain.

  And all of it was on fire.

  By night the lava would look like a wild network of liquid red and gold. By day it looked like a black, many-fingered hand wreathed in smoke. That hand was reaching down toward the island of pahoehoe where Nicole waited alone.

  “I’ll come back for her,” the pilot shouted over the noise of the engine.

  Mark turned away from the frightening view and looked into the pilot’s sympathetic eyes. With a jerky nod the boy went back to watching out the window.

  The pilot spent most of the short flight to Hilo Airport talking on the radio. He told the search-and-rescue coordinator that he had found the kids the airplane had reported. There were ten kids, not nine. He was bringing them in to Hilo, and would someone be damned sure there was a fuel truck standing by.

  As soon as the helicopter touched down, Mark spotted the tall figures of his father, his uncle, and Bobby running across the apron toward the chopper. The kids poured out of the helicopter and ran toward their parents. Mark carried Lisa to her father’s eager arms.

  Chase took his daughter’s small weight with a feeling of gratitude that made his throat ache. He surrounded her with a hug. She returned it with all the strength in her small arms.

  “She’s okay,” Mark assured his uncle. “Just a sore ankle.”

  Chase nodded and looked over Lisa’s black head for the fiery hair that had haunted his dreams.

  The helicopter was empty.

  There was no one else nearby but the pilot, who was hauling a fuel line toward the machine at a run. With growing unease Chase looked all around the apron. When he turned back to Mark, tears were streaming down his nephew’s face.

  “There wasn’t—enough room,” Mark said, his voice breaking. “She wouldn’t let me—trade places. It was burning—behind her. Everywhere. Burning.”

  Chase made a sound like he had been kicked. With a terrible effort, he kept his voice gentle while he unwrapped Lisa’s arms from around his neck.

  “Go to Uncle Dane, punkin,” he said, kissing his daughter, handing her into Dane’s arms. “He’ll take you home.”

  “I want Nicole,” Lisa said suddenly, and burst into tears.

  “So do I.”

  The pilot saw Chase running toward the helicopter. “That your wife back up on the mountain?”

  “I’m working
on it,” Chase said roughly.

  “Hell of a woman,” the pilot said, pumping fuel with grim haste. “She saw right off there wasn’t enough room. Didn’t say a word. Just stuffed the kids in the cockpit and jumped back out of the way. The boy damn near bailed out after her. Barely got the door locked in time.”

  “Was she hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Did you get GPS coordinates?”

  “Yeah, for all the good it will do me. Global positioning satellites in the sky don’t mean shit if you can’t see the ground.”

  “Smoke?”

  “Thick enough to chew.” The pilot jerked back on the fuel nozzle. “That should do it. It’s not far for a bird. Pure hell on foot, though. I’ll radio in as soon as I find her.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Too damned dangerous,” the pilot said bluntly. “That old mountain is coming apart all over.”

  “We’re wasting time,” Chase said as he jumped into the passenger seat.

  The pilot climbed into his own seat. “Good enough. I can use another pair of eyes. Even with the GPS . . .” He shrugged. “You ever used one of these helmets?”

  “Yes,” Chase said curtly.

  “Put it on. Can’t hear much otherwise.”

  With that the pilot concentrated on bringing his chopper back to life. The instant the machine was ready, the tower gave them clearance. The helicopter leaped into the sky.

  The panorama of the burning mountain unfolded below Chase. His trained eye quickly picked out the pattern beneath the chaos of billowing smoke. From a point just over halfway up the mountain, long fingers of molten lava were spilling out, setting fire to the forest wherever they touched. Several major fissures shot fountains of boiling lava into the air. Other fissures simply pumped rivers of lava quietly down the slope. Slivers of green forest lay untouched between the new flows.

  Potential islands of life were forming as he watched. Some of the kipukas were too small to protect their plants. Everything alive burned up in streamers of smoke. Other kipukas were big enough for some of the plants to survive between the molten pincers of lava.

  There was so much smoke it looked like everything was on fire, even the air itself.

  “How the hell did you find the kids in this mess?” Chase asked.

  “Observatory plane spotted them first. The woman had them parked in the middle of a big patch of pahoehoe. No trees to burn or to hide them. Good thing, too. Never would have found them otherwise.”

  The pilot checked the GPS reading, veered to the right, and skated down on a long descent, coming closer to the rivers of burning stone with each passing second. Heat rising from the lava buffeted the helicopter, but the pilot held his course.

  Chase throttled the impatience hammering at him, the raw fear that he was too late.

  He should have been down there with her.

  I was going to have it all my own way. I was going to heal her and set her free and then wait for her to fly back to me.

  But she can’t fly. She’s trapped down there, and I’m trapped up here in this goddamned tin can.

  “How much farther?” he asked, his voice harsh.

  “Under that smoke somewhere. We’re right on the coordinates.”

  Chase stared down into the rolling billows of smoke. “I can’t see shit from here.”

  “Going lower will be dangerous.”

  “Like being down there alone on the ground isn’t dangerous?” Chase asked savagely.

  “Just so you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Good enough. Keep your eyes peeled. I’m gonna have my hands full.”

  The engine noise changed as the helicopter dropped down through the smoke. The pilot kept one eye on the GPS readout and the other on the altimeter.

  Chase stared out into the murk. A blur of smoke-mantled green forest unreeled dizzyingly beneath the helicopter. The chopper’s skids were barely above the tallest trees.

  After a few minutes the pilot switched directions and flew another leg of an imaginary grid. The forest raced by, green on green. Smoke swirled up wildly. Eden burning.

  The thought of Nicole alone down there made sweat gather along Chase’s ribs and slide coldly down his spine. The helicopter was dangerously close to the treetops, and still it was all he could do to make out shapes on the ground. The air was thick with ash and sometimes reeked of sulfur.

  His hands clenched into hard fists. The sulfur smell told him that there was a fissure nearby pouring gases into the air. Some of them would be poisonous.

  Hurry, he yelled silently to the pilot. Hurry!

  The forest vanished.

  At first Chase thought it had been blacked out by the smoke. Then he realized that they were skimming over a cooled lava flow.

  Pahoehoe, where nothing could grow.

  Long minutes went by while he stared at the ground through shifting veils of smoke and saw nothing but shades of black, slate, gray, everything but the colors of life. Suddenly he caught a shimmer of red-gold in the midst of black and gray, old lava and new smoke. At first he thought it was fire. Then he knew.

  “There!” he said, pointing. “Two o’clock!”

  The pilot switched directions and swooped down like a hawk. The closer they got, the greater Chase’s fear, until it was a hand wrapped around his neck, choking him.

  Nicole lay facedown on the lava, motionless but for her hair rippling like a banner over the dark rock.

  Chase leaped from the helicopter before it fully settled to the ground. Calling her name, he ran to her. Finally, painfully, she turned toward his voice. He lifted her into his arms and buried his face in her hair. She coughed terribly, unable to speak, clinging to him as he carried her into the helicopter.

  They were barely strapped in before the helicopter shot upward, tunneling through smoke toward the clearer air of Hilo.

  Fountains of lava danced against the night sky, sending dazzling rivers of stone burning down Kilauea’s seamed flank. When the outside of the lava flows congealed into dark rock, it formed a shifting, temporary lid on the seething rivers. As the volcano continued to pump out more molten stone, the dark lid of each flow broke many times. The burning rock inside made patterns that were like captive lightning. The sight was both savage and beautiful, a view back through time to the birth of the land.

  In awed silence Nicole watched from a safe vantage point. It wasn’t merely the distance from the incredible upwelling of molten stone that made her feel safe, it was Chase’s arms around her and his voice murmuring in her ear, telling her what was happening to the mountain beneath them.

  “There’s a new Great Crack pouring out lava for half the length of the mountain. Already one of the lava tongues has gone all the way to the sea.” He brushed his lips over Nicole’s hair and smelled her ginger shampoo. He still went cold at the memory of seeing her laid out like a sacrifice on the black lava. “The island will be a little bigger come morning.”

  The fountains gushed higher for an instant, pulsing with rhythms alien to man, incandescent with the violence of creation.

  Nicole trembled.

  He nestled her closer against his chest. “Don’t be frightened. Every last person who was trapped on Kilauea has been rescued. No one was even hurt. You saw Lisa tonight. She’s running around like a little gazelle.” He laughed softly. “So is everyone else on the island, trying to find the best place to watch the mountain dance.”

  “It’s so powerful. So beautiful. Unearthly.”

  “It’s the beginning of everything.” Softly he kissed her hair and let the scent of her reassure him at the most primitive level. She was alive. Unhurt. In his arms. “Without the volcano there would be no land, no trees, no ferns, no flowers, nothing but the sea. Eden was born in fire, and only fire keeps it alive.”

  She shivered again and leaned back against him. She enjoyed sitting cradled between his long legs, her back against his chest, his arms around her, his breath stirring warmly on her neck.
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  It was as though the last three weeks had never happened, as though he had never gone to the mainland, as though she had never huddled in the middle of black stone and prayed that she would live to see him again.

  So much had happened.

  And nothing had changed.

  In the hours since he had lifted her into the helicopter, he hadn’t said anything about his trip to the mainland. She had been afraid to ask him when he was going again, if he was glad to see her, if he wanted her to stay with him tonight.

  He hadn’t asked her anything at all. He had simply held her, watched her reunion with the worried children, and then asked everyone to come up the mountain with him again after dinner. He wanted them to see how beautiful the volcano could be. When the children had finally tired of the spectacle, Dane and Jan had taken them back down the mountain, leaving Nicole and Chase alone on a mound of picnic cushions.

  “Chase?” Nicole asked, her voice suddenly uncertain.

  His arms tightened around her. He didn’t want to hear her next words, her hesitant thanks for rescuing her and then a plea to be set free again.

  He couldn’t let her go. Not now. Not ever. He would take whatever she could give and try not to ask for more.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “You’re safe.”

  As he spoke, he lifted the silky mass of Nicole’s unbound hair and let it fall over his shoulder and down his back like a fiery cape. The red-gold lights of Kilauea gleamed within her hair, reflections of the dancing fountains of creation.

  His mouth found the soft skin at the nape of her neck. He tasted her delicately, testing the smooth flesh with his teeth and tongue. He heard her breath catch, felt the tiny tremors of her response. When his palms found the full curves of her breasts, she sighed and let her head fall back on his shoulder.

  “Yes, butterfly,” he breathed into her ear, “come to me. Drink the sweetness.”

  Beneath the long black muumuu she wore, her skin tingled as though brushed by fire. His hands moved lovingly from her shoulders to her thighs, pressing against her, urging her even closer to his heat, caging her gently between his legs.