Silversword

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  Where cinder cones were formed.

  Maui men, awaken! Maui women, come!

  The mountain sleeps, your island lives,

  And new days must begin.

  Koma’s own strong feeling for his island came through as he sang. There were more verses, and always the refrain that called the people of Maui—all the people—to save and protect the land. My resentment and antagonism faded. Koma and I weren’t likely to become friends, but I could understand a little better now what drove him.

  The applause was warm when Koma sat down and Noelle clapped along with me. Once more Ailina came to the edge of the lanai to speak to the audience.

  “We have a request tonight—for a special song. A tune that also belongs to our island, though it was written in the thirties by a malihini, it’s one that Noelle Kirby used to like. I understand she isn’t here tonight, but this is for her anyway.”

  So Koma had delivered my message, and I wondered if Ailina, with her special sensitivity knew very well that Noelle was here; had perhaps glimpsed her white dress in the shadows near the tree.

  The song was “Sweet Leilani,” and Ailina sang it tenderly, with Koma accompanying her on his guitar, and Eliki swaying gently, allowing her hands to ripple. When the second chorus came, all the audience began to sing with her.

  I was watching Noelle and now I sensed her growing tension. “I used to have a record of that song,” she whispered to me. “I used to play it over and over. Until I finally smashed it. Ailina used to sing it in those days, and that spoiled it for me. She shouldn’t have sung it here tonight.”

  “Perhaps she doesn’t know what it means for you,” I said. “Perhaps she only remembers that you used to like it.”

  Noelle rose from the grass. “I can’t listen anymore. Too much is coming back.” She held her head between her hands, crushing the ginger blossoms in her hair so that their perfume rose too sweetly. “My head feels stuffed with things I don’t want to remember. I’ll go to my room now. My mother mustn’t see me.”

  “I’ll come with you,” I said.

  We wove our way behind hedges and through the garden to the back of the house and entered a rear door. In Noelle’s room, she turned on a lamp and closed the blinds.

  “I’m tired.” she said. “Please don’t tell anyone I’ve come back. When Marla smuggled me out, I left Cousin Melly a note. But she goes to sleep early, so she won’t miss me until morning. By then it won’t matter. I need to be quiet now, Caroline—I need to think.”

  There was nothing I could do but leave her. “I’ll go back now before someone misses me. Is there anything I can bring you?”

  She stood before the strange painting of the endless windows, all done in their neutral beige tones. “Isn’t it strange? I didn’t paint windows looking out—only windows that looked in and back. Into what, Caroline? Back to what?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I expect you got rid of certain feelings by painting it.”

  She smiled at me—a smile tinged with sadness. For all those lost years?

  “I suppose it really doesn’t matter anymore,” she said. “It’s enough that I’ve found you again. You are my daughter. I keep telling myself that—though so much is missing.”

  When she held out her hand I went to her quickly, and this time she put her arms around me and held me tightly—almost fiercely, as though I might be taken from her again. The crushed scent of ginger blossoms was more like a miasma now, and almost sickening. Too much that was disturbing seemed to be rising in her.

  “Perhaps I’d better not leave right away. I’ll stay until you’re asleep.”

  She pushed me away. “No, that won’t do. Someone is always coddling me, protecting me. I have to find my way alone. I know that now.” When I still hesitated, she smiled again. “I’ll be all right, Carolinny.”

  Tears were wet on my cheeks when I went back to the gathering. There was too much sadness in this reunion with my mother, and I knew it couldn’t be any other way.

  I reached the lawn in time to hear Ailina bring the evening to an end with Queen Liliuokalani’s loveliest and most sorrowful of all farewells—“Aloha Oe.” A song she had composed when she was a princess. The guests were singing too, and I stood near the big tree and joined them. Ailina sang all the verses clear to the last moving phrase of the chorus, “Until we meet again”—the sadness of parting and the promise of return, all in these few simple words.

  David must have left, but I knew I’d see him soon. Marla was inside, helping to carry out refreshments, and the larger group was breaking up into small ones. Only Koma noticed me out near the trees, and he came toward me across the grass.

  “It was beautiful,” I told him. “Thank you—mahalo. Your volcano song is wonderful. Have you had it published?”

  He shrugged. There seemed a new uncertainty in him. “Ailina wanted to do this for you. She thinks a lot of you, Caroline, even though you’re his daughter.”

  “As you’re his son.”

  Again he shrugged that off. “Everyone likes you.” He sounded puzzled, and I laughed.

  “Some people don’t like me at all.”

  He gave me his sudden, flashing smile that always carried an edge of mockery. “Maybe I’ll get used to you—if you stuff enough envelopes. Hey—you’ve been crying.”

  “Doesn’t everyone always cry over ‘Aloha Oe’?”

  “Sure. But not as much as they used to. Only people who have strong feelings about Hawaii. Most of your years weren’t spent here.”

  “That doesn’t make me alien. Maybe I’ve always belonged.” Food had appeared on small tables on the lanai, and guests gathered around. Koma waved his hand. “I’m hungry,” he said, and went off with his graceful lope—natural perhaps because his people had run on beaches for ages back? A whimsical thought, but the stereotype suited him.

  I went to Ailina, to tell her how much I loved the music and her singing.

  “That pleases me,” she said. “Koma has told me that you know about him. I wish you had more time to get used to us.”

  “I have all the time there is now,” I said, and she understood.

  “I’m glad if you’ve decided to stay. But now, Caroline, look over there. Someone needs you.”

  I followed the direction of her gaze and saw Grandmother Elizabeth sitting a little apart, not belonging to any of this. Scott stood nearby, looking bored. Neither of them really knew how to let in new experiences that might open windows. For the first time I felt sorry for her in a new way, and I suppose I surprised her when I put an arm about her and kissed her cheek.

  “I know this visit has been disappointing for you, Grandmother Elizabeth,” I said. “But tomorrow you’ll fly home. The Prince Albert can’t get along without you.”

  She nodded stiffly. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I’ll bring your first great-grandchild home to see you,” I said recklessly.

  That startled her. Then a gleam I recognized came into her eyes—a planning look. But I wasn’t afraid of her plotting anymore. If there were ever great-grandchildren in the future, they would never be possessed by her. I would see to that.

  Scott still held himself apart, pretending not to listen, his expression blank until she turned to him. “I’m tired. I never like to eat this late in the evening, and I don’t know all these people.” Nor did she want to—that was the trouble.

  Under the spell of “aloha” I could make a last gesture with Scott, and I held out my hand.

  “I’m sorry, Scott. You’ll find a mainland girl who’ll make up for me. But I’m glad you came—it’s cleared the air a little.”

  He shook my hand indifferently, and I wondered if the air around Scott would ever be clear.

  When they’d gone in I stayed to meet several distant relatives, some of whom might be future friends. When I’d helped Joanna and Marla and Susy Ohara to clear up after the guests were gone, I said good night and went down the hall to Noelle’s room. I opened her d
oor softly to look inside. Pale light from glass doors showed her asleep—childlike, with a hand beneath her cheek. Her quiet breathing reassured me and I was about to close the door when I glimpsed Marla in a chair beyond the bed, lost in shadows. I beckoned to her, and she came into the hall. I pulled Noelle’s door shut firmly.

  “Leave her alone,” I said. “She isn’t going to have the relapse you wanted.”

  There must have been something in my voice that warned her, for she gave me a startled look and went away.

  I climbed the stairs to my room, glad that the evening was safely past, and that nothing disastrous had happened. When I got into bed full weariness took over, and I went to sleep at once.

  Somewhere in my dreams the scent of ginger blossoms intruded, as it had done once before in the night, and I woke up in sudden alarm. Noelle sat on my bed. She’d turned on a light, and I saw that she wore jeans and a sweater and had tied a scarf around her head.

  “Wake up, Carolinny,” she said. “There’s something we must do. Dress warmly and put on walking shoes. Don’t make any noise—I don’t want a hue and cry.”

  I sat up sleepily and looked at my watch. It was ten past four and would be daylight before long. “I’m tired,” I protested. “I don’t want to go anywhere. Can’t it wait till later?”

  “There’s something I must do—whether you come with me or not. If you won’t come, I’ll go alone. But I’d rather have you along.”

  She sounded perfectly sensible, but now for the first time I saw what she held tucked under one arm—the tapa beater. That brought me fully awake.

  “Tell me what you’re planning,” I said.

  “No more talk. Come or stay—take your choice.”

  The only other choice was to rouse the house, and that would bring Marla into this—which might be the worst thing I could do. Noelle seemed to be in the present and not at all confused, but the tapa beater frightened me. I got up and dressed as quickly as I could.

  We crept softly down the stairs, remembering the steps that creaked. Noelle had discarded the lei and the flower in her hair, but the scent of ginger still clung to her, and though it was the comforting scent of my childhood, it didn’t comfort me now.

  We went out the front door and it locked automatically behind us, so that I wondered how we were to get back in when this expedition was over. I didn’t become really alarmed, however, until I saw the jeep parked near the driveway. Noelle ran toward it and opened the driver’s door.

  “Don’t worry—I can drive it,” she assured me. “Just get in.”

  Whether this was madness or sanity, I couldn’t tell, but she sounded as though she knew what she was doing. I got in and she started the motor and we drove out on the road to Makawao. From that sleeping town, we crossed to the Haleakala Highway. We weren’t talking now, and Noelle was intent on her driving. I held my breath to see which way she would turn. If we turned makai—toward the sea—I could start breathing again. But I knew very well that this wouldn’t be her direction. She turned the jeep up the mountain toward the crater, and I settled back for the long drive ahead.

  Though the tapa beater lay inert on the seat between us, it seemed to have a life of its own for me, as though some terrible memory had been ingrained in the wood. We weren’t just going up the mountain—we were going back into the past. Because that was where Noelle had left her life a long time ago.

  The crater lay hidden high above us, Haleakala’s head standing free of clouds against a luminous, near-dawn sky. I thought of Koma’s song.

  Kahuna drums are beating

  Where the fires roared …

  I wanted to hear no drums at dawn on Haleakala—either real or imagined.

  19

  Cars were already on their way up the mountain to catch the sunrise, so we wouldn’t be alone up there, and that, at least, was reassuring. If something happened that I couldn’t handle, there would be other people around.

  Noelle managed the long loopings of the road with surprising skill, as though there’d been no hiatus in her driving. Our headlight beams shone clear of mist on the road ahead.

  Although Noelle couldn’t have been up here in all the years since the accident, she knew exactly where she was going. When she was young, she’d have gone camping in the crater, as Maui young people did, and all this was part of her, in her blood and instinct.

  Once when I stared at her intently, trying to read whatever her face might tell me, she sensed my look and smiled. “I’m all right, Carolinny. Really I am—don’t worry.”

  She found her way to the lookout buildings she wanted, and parked the jeep. When we got out it was cold and windy—bone-chilling. I looked longingly at lighted windows above, where visitors were gathering in warmth to view the sunrise. Noelle, however, walked to where a trail led away into the crater. Since day was about to break, the darkness had lifted, with promise of the sun to come.

  Within the great bowl, however, clouds were piled like white foam from cliff to cliff, though the sky above was clear. I hung back, and she gestured with the tapa beater. “Come along—this is the trail I want.”

  “We can’t go down in that! We’d fall over the first cliff. We could never find our way.”

  She didn’t seem to hear me, and I sensed that something in her had moved beyond reason, so that she was driven by a single purpose that nothing could deflect.

  I looked around for a park ranger—for anyone who might stop us, but no one seemed interested, and no authority was near. Noelle moved with such certainty that if I didn’t follow, she would take the trail down without me, and be lost at once in thick mist.

  “Wait!” I cried. “Wait for the sun—look!”

  That held her for a moment in wonder. No redness stained the sky for this dawn—it was pure gold beyond the far palis of the crater. The Midas light spilled over the distant rim and touched the cotton fluff below, turning it to gold as well, so that now it seemed that the sun itself was held in the bowl of the crater.

  As we stood looking down, a helicopter broke the silence noisily, bringing visitors to view the sunrise. It flew above molten gold, its tiny shadow following beneath.

  Noelle had no time now for the sun. “Come!” she said again.

  I still held back. “If you mean to go back to where it happened, it would take hours on foot. It’s too far, and much too cold down there at dawn.”

  She threw off my arm and started along the trail. And then the strange transformation that could happen so quickly in the crater began. A dawn wind whipped through one of the gaps, shredding the puffs of cloud so that they rose and flowed out an opposite gap, to be dispersed in a windy sky. It happened as we watched, and in a few minutes the crater below was clear and filled with the light of a rising sun. Only wisps clung here and there in protected crevices.

  Noelle hurried now, her footing sure, and I went after her. A red cone loomed below us, its head nearly as high as the trail. The sun touched it to a fiery hue, bright and blinding.

  “I know a shortcut,” Noelle called to me over her shoulder. “Dig in your heels and let the cinders carry you down.”

  She was already on her way, with sand thrown up behind her in two waves. I could only copy her. We went down through gray ash that whispered around our feet and left trails of yellow behind us marking our descent. Cold wind whipped us as we plunged down in an avalanche of cinder sand.

  At the bottom I sat down to empty my shoes, and Noelle did the same, for what little good it would do us. Walking was difficult with no trail to support us, and I knew we were probably doing something crazy and dangerous. People who wandered off the trails could be quickly lost in this vast crater. Already we were deep in the heart of a dead world, and out of sight of the rim and the observer buildings. This seemed a world far more empty than when we’d come into it by helicopter. Only Noelle and I existed—two tiny humans about to be swallowed into Pele’s mountain. Gusts of wind roared around us, rousing the echoes and pushing us back.

  Now
there was an expanse of rough breccia to stumble across. I’d read about these beds of small, irregular volcanic rocks caused by explosion, buried by mud slides, and then exposed by the erosion of centuries. They kept emerging, even on the trails, and it was a relief to reach more finely ground sand.

  Sometimes the wind hurled biting cinders into our faces, so that we had to turn our backs. Noelle, for all her determination, was tiring. When I put my arm around her I could feel her shivering excitement. For a moment she clung to me, less confident of her course.

  “We need to find shelter until the sun warms the mountain,” I told her. “Aren’t there cabins down here?”

  “Not near here.” Her teeth chattered as she spoke. Dawn shadows were long and black around us—cold shadows still hiding from the sun.

  Noelle shifted the tapa beater from hand to hand as her fingers stiffened with cold.

  “Why have you brought that?” I asked when we stopped again for breath.

  She held up the wooden object as though surprised to find herself carrying it. “I’m not sure. I just knew it had to come with me.” Once more she pointed with it. “There’s a lava bubble over there. Maybe it’s big enough for us to crawl into out of the wind. We could rest a little while and then go on.”

  On to what—to where? But I knew the answer very well. Nothing would stop her now in this journey back through the years.

  We reached the rough dome of lava and Noelle found an entrance to the hollow of the bubble, and we crawled inside out of the biting wind. There wasn’t much room, but the rocky dome arched over us and the cold air inside was still. We held each other for warmth, and in a little while our shivering stopped. I hoped we could stay until the sun rose high enough for the crater to warm a little.

  Then, as suddenly as the wind had risen, its fierce howling abated, and the roaring that filled the crater stopped. The new silence seemed to beat against the opening to our cave, and I was half afraid I might hear drums in the stillness—the kahuna drums of Koma’s song that had once sounded in this haunted place.

  I don’t know how long we sheltered before we heard the noisy sound of a helicopter, not flying over high above but circling into the crater—as if searching for something in this bowl of golden dawn. Suddenly I knew. I crawled out into the open and stood up, with Noelle right behind me.