Storm paused and decided to head toward the thicket, where the fog was thinner. She took a few steps, then came to a standstill. Had the kiawe moved?
Storm froze, then saw a form behind the leaves. A dark figure, on two legs, smaller than the beast, she thought. Its arms were shorter and it stood more upright.
Storm smelled the flowers again, cloying, almost gagging her with their sweetness. She bolted for the uphill trail, winding through stands of wizened koa trees. Her chest burned with exertion and fear, but she kept her feet pounding along the trail.
The fog thinned. Gauzy wisps floated by, specters of the thick odorous stuff behind. Storm glimpsed the posts of a fence. Thick, flowering vines wound around the barbed wire between the weathered pickets. Koali, the morning glory that Aunt Maile had wanted. Storm sniffed the air. Nothing. The blue flowers were odorless. Nor could she smell the over-ripe gardenias.
“Aunt Maile!” Storm ventured a whisper. Her eyes scanned the fence line. Only the incline of the lava rock-strewn meadow stretched on both sides of the fence. She to run along its length, then stumbled to a stop. Something had moved ahead, next to the path. A lone cow on the other side of the fence lowed and ambled away from Storm. She moaned with relief.
“Aunt Maile?” Storm’s voice wavered.
“Here!” Maile’s voice was a distance away, but sounded strong. “Over here.”
She walked toward it, still gasping from the mad sprint up the hill. She searched the horizon, but saw nothing but a huddle of cattle. “Keep talking to me,” she called.
“Go straight until you see the stream bed, then turn right from the path.” Maile sounded close, but Storm still couldn’t see her. “Down here.” The voice came from so close, Storm stopped and scanned the rise and fall of the landscape.
Between the intermittent banks of clouds, she began to make out the terrain. Twenty feet ahead of her, a thick hedge jerked erratically.
“Where are you?” Shrillness wove through Storm’s voice.
A flannel-sleeved arm popped out of the bushes and Storm heaved a whoosh of gratitude. She began to rant to the waving plant. “I’ve been scared to death. The fog got so thick that I…I saw something very strange.” She made her way to the bush. “I think we should go home.”
Maile’s head bobbed among the leaves. “I know.” Her head disappeared and the bushes shook harder. “Honey, I need your help.” Her voice got more muffled. “There were these plants I wanted, but someone left a pile of barbed wire and I’m stuck.”
A clot of vapors drifted between Storm and the line of vegetation. In its thick moisture was the sulfurous aroma she’d smelled earlier.
Storm skidded down the creek embankment and landed on her rear end in a mini-avalanche of gravel. She nearly collided with her aunt, who had one leg wrapped past the knee in spiky metal teeth.
She sat for a moment, gasping. At her aunt’s knee-level, Storm could see rips in Maile’s overalls and spots of blood dotting the denim. She pulled at a couple of strands of wire, but tightened a few others around Maile’s calf.
“That’s what I kept doing,” Maile said. She looked down. “I can’t sit because I’d land on top of that tangle and never get up. I’m twisted around here all funny-like. You think you could reach the ties of my tennis shoe?”
Storm looked up at her aunt’s face, which was perspiring with the effort to stay upright in her awkward position. The air had become heavy around them and wisps of acrid moisture drifted through the creek gully.
“I think so.” Storm snaked her hands into the nest of spikes and winced at the gouges, but kept going and snagged one of the laces. After it was untied, she held the shoe down while Maile wiggled her foot out. Storm kept her eyes on the mess in front of her and resisted looking over her shoulder, but the stillness disturbed her.
“Ouch, ouch,” Maile muttered. “Gonna have to use some of these plants on myself.”
“Aunt Maile, have you had a tetanus shot?”
Maile glared at her niece. “Of course. I believe in modern medicine, too.” She shook her head and made a snorting noise. “I’m not takin’ any chances on that lockjaw disease. You think I’m stupid or somethin’?”
“Uh, definitely not. Let’s just get you out of here.” Storm spoke to Maile’s kneecap. It wasn’t as grumpy. Her aunt’s testiness was a welcome switch from the dry-mouth terror of twenty minutes ago, though the hairs on the back of Storm’s neck still prickled and rain was starting to fall in earnest. Water crawled across her scalp and snaked into her eyes.
Her hands were occupied trying to push barbed wire in two directions. Maile leaned over and maneuvered her hands opposite Storm’s. Slowly, the two women jiggled some of the teeth over one another and gave Maile’s leg another inch of space. Storm picked ragged denim away from the catching points. With some hopping, flailing, and muttered curses, Maile wiggled her bare foot up through the tangle.
“Lordy, aawil” Maile rolled up her tattered jeans and looked at her skin. “Ouch.”
Storm lifted up the mass of wire to work the shoe free of the nest of spikes. She winced at the narrow rivulets of blood that tracked down her aunt’s scratched and punctured calf. “Think you can walk?” she asked.
Maile grimaced and nodded.
“I’ll help you. Let’s get the hell out of here.” Storm stuck the shoe under Maile’s bare foot and together they shoved it on. “Hold onto my shoulder,” Storm said and stood up slowly.
“Superficial cuts. They sting like the devil, but I can walk.” Maile stooped to pick up her basket and a number of plants that had fallen out.
Storm looked around them. Maile watched her.
“Do you know another way down?” Storm asked.
Maile looked at Storm, her gaze dark and serious. “Yes.” She grabbed Storm’s arm for support and led her across the stream bed in the opposite direction they’d come. Despite her scratches and scrapes, she walked quickly. “What did you see? I need to know.”
“Did you see something, too?” Storm gave a little shiver. “The fog distorted my vision. I was getting nervous alone, that’s all.”
“Tell me.” Aunt Maile’s voice was low and serious.
Storm’s hands became clammy. The creature’s shadowy image was so real to her that she glanced behind them on the trail. She didn’t want to talk about it.
Maile led them into a forest of eucalyptus and large-leafed plants Storm couldn’t identify. The leaves and brambles lay so thick on the ground that only someone who knew the forest intimately could have found the trail.
“I need to hear about it.” Maile squeezed Storm’s hand as if she were a reluctant child.
Storm told her about the muscular, unworldly creature that moved silently through the meadow.
“I think there was something else, too. I heard a noise, but couldn’t see anything. The thing I saw didn’t make a sound.” Storm swallowed hard. “Then the smell of gardenias, or some sweet flower, got so strong I could nearly taste it. I knew I had to get out of there.”
“The thing you saw, did its feet touch the ground?” Storm couldn’t read Maile’s shadowed eyes in the gloom, but she could see the grim lines in her face.
Storm stared back at her aunt.
“Did they? Did its feet touch the ground?”
Storm looked around, then whispered. “I…I’m not sure. I just know it didn’t make any noise. I was scared to death because it was going in the direction you’d taken and you wouldn’t hear it.”
The lines in Aunt Maile’s face deepened. “What did you hear, then?”
“Rustling, but I didn’t see what did it. I saw a shape, but I don’t know. It might have been human.”
Aunt Maile looked at Storm and her eyes narrowed. “Stay with me,” she ordered. She dropped Storm’s hand in order to wind through the trees. The older woman moved her flannel and denim bulk with less crackling and footfall than Storm. Storm
had to trot to keep up.
Her aunt’s overalls were a benevolent blue smudge in the woodsy darkness of taupe and moss. The forest darkened as the mist coalesced into heavy clouds that began dropping an earnest rain on the leafy canopy. Sporadic chilly splats found their way through to the ground. Like a ghostly reproach, they tapped Storm’s shoulders.
Storm hustled to catch up. “What was it?” She wished her aunt would talk to her.
“I don’t know.” Maile spoke in hushed tones without looking back.
Storm frowned and glanced at the dense, dripping foliage. The rough scales of tree trunks rubbed against her swinging arms and left their streaky rebuke; briars snagged at the legs of her jeans. She felt like a trespasser in the territory of a spirit who restrained the devilishness of the woods out of respect for Aunt Maile’s presence.
When they reached the open field that led to the main road, rain pounded them in earnest. The air temperature rose and Storm stopped shivering despite the water that plastered her shirt to her chest and shoulders and streamed from her wet hair down her back. She drew abreast of Maile.
As if a veil had been lifted from their eyes and a harness from their bodies, relief lightened the air around them. They grinned at each other’s appearances, then broke into laughter that caused them to stop walking and turn their faces to the streaming sky.
When they walked through the kitchen door, Uncle Keone rose from his reading chair with a snort, shook his head, and went to find towels. After the women had changed, he helped Maile treat her barbed-wire punctures and scrapes. When Maile put the teapot on to boil, he went back to his reading chair, harumphing gently under his breath.
Storm bent her head gratefully over her mug. The aroma of green tea bathed her in a sensation of safety. She wiggled her toes in Uncle Keone’s borrowed wool socks and peered over the rim at Aunt Maile, who sat across from her.
Maile took a sip, then leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “That gardenia smell. You know what that meant?”
“Yeah. To get the hell out of there!”
“Yes, it was the warning of the ancients.” Maile took a sip of tea and spoke gravely. “They were looking out for you.”
“For me?”
“You, or you never would have smelled the warning.” Maile narrowed her eyes over the steam of her tea. “Something bad’s going on, Storm. I don’t like this at all. That rustling in the bushes….” She shook her head.
“I wasn’t as worried about the noise. Whatever it was sounded clumsy, like a human or a cow. What do you think?”
Maile got up to fiddle in the sink. “Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that you were supposed to get away from it.”
“And the creature? Any idea what it was?”
Maile sat down at the table, looked onto the surface of her tea, and gently blew the steam into whorls. She spoke softly in the comfortable kitchen. “Late one night when I was about ten, my grandfather and a friend of his got to talking about a god who was half man, half wild pig. Their low voices made me peek from my sleeping bag next to the beach fire. Grandad’s friend sketched a picture in the sand; said it was a beast that walked partly upright, partly on its arms. He said it was Kamapua’a, and told Grandad that he would come out of the volcanic vents when he was angry.”
“Kamapua’a? Pele’s lover?” Like other kids growing up on the Big Island, Storm had heard tales of the various gods. She’d even seen the altar in Waipio Valley, where humans were sacrificed to placate some of them. It was said that gods, who could be either malevolent or kind, depending on their mood, could walk among the humans. But their feet didn’t touch the ground. Many people claimed to have seen the volcano goddess, especially on the Saddle Road, which traveled between the two majestic volcanic mountains.
“He was also her enemy. Pele was a volatile sort.” She chuckled at Storm’s rolling eyes. “I couldn’t resist.”
Storm didn’t want to be distracted with corny puns. “Why do you think he’s angry?”
“It was said that Kamapua’a would come out to destroy or defend someone. He could be called by an ‘aamakaa. Especially the pig.”
“Aunt Maile…”
“Storm, these are old stories.”
“I know, but please. You really think some old legend was out on the mountain today?”
“Listen to your gut, Storm. When we were on the mountain, you told me the creature looked otherworldly, unlike any beast you had ever seen.”
Uncle Keone appeared at the kitchen door. “Storm, I almost wen’ forget. You had one phone call. From a guy named Hamlet…somethin’ like that. He sound pretty serious. His voice shook.”
Chapter 18
Hamlin picked up his office phone on the first ring. “Storm, thank God you called. Lorraine’s been in an accident. Some drunk ran a red light in his pickup and hit her while she was crossing the street.”
Storm bit down on her lower lip so hard she drew blood. “Where was she?”
“At the farmer’s market. About ten this morning.”
Storm’s knees threatened to buckle and she grabbed at the counter top. “Oh God.” Her voice shook. “How badly is she hurt?”
“Bad. She’s in intensive care. Storm, before she lost consciousness, she said your name.”
“Hamlin, I tried to call her.”
“Why?”
“Last night, someone chased me on the road to Pa’auilo. I should have warned her.” Storm’s voice broke as she told him about her harrowing experience the night before.
“You couldn’t have changed anything.” Hamlin’s voice was soft. “Storm? You there?”
“Sorry, Hamlin. I’m coming back. I’ll get the next plane.”
Storm hung up and rubbed her eyes. She dropped into a chair and wondered if Lorraine knew about Tom Sakai’s file. The file was confidential, yet Lorraine and Uncle Miles had worked together for over thirty years. She had to know something. She had mentioned that Hamasaki had started—what were the words she’d used?—to look after a cancer patient who came to see him. Then Lorraine had changed the subject.
Storm dialed the airline desk in Kona. There was no way she was going to drive the road back to Hilo. There was still a seat on the next-to-last flight, at six-thirty. She called Hamlin back. “Can you meet me at the hospital? I should be there by eight.”
She looked at Uncle Keone and Aunt Maile. “I’ve got to go.”
Keone nodded. “We know. Storm, be careful. Please.”
Maile’s eyes were dark with worry. She left the room, then slipped back in. “Come on, I’ll help you pack. I’ve got the plants boxed for you. Just stick them in the refrigerator when you get home. Maybe you can take them to Bebe tomorrow.”
Ten minutes later, Storm spewed gravel down the road to Honoka’a where she would connect with the paved two-lane highway to Kona. Although narrow and curvy, the route had fewer hairpin turns and no sugarcane scum to slick the blacktop. Storm drove five miles over the speed limit and prayed that the few local cops on duty were on the Hilo side of the highway that afternoon. When she turned south at Kawaihae and the road became flatter and wider, she sped up and prayed harder.
An irate car rental company agreed to call Chief Mendoza for the police report and turn the damage issue over to its insurance company, which left Storm free to get into one of the lines of happy, relaxed tourists. She stood there numb, and wondered if she’d ever again be able to share their sunburned nonchalance. In her seat, she observed the perfectly coifed guy and girl duo go through their flight attendant duties with the sincerity of Barbie and Ken dolls, and forty minutes later, the plane glided into Honolulu International. Storm watched the sun bleed its dying rays over the Wai’anae Mountains and wrestled with guilt over Lorraine’s accident. Instead of sleeping until eleven, she should have gotten up and called her.
Hamlin stood in the almost deserted lobby of Queen’s Hospital, arms folded ac
ross his chest, and gazed into the yellow-lit parking lot. When Storm stepped through the wide-open door, she moved to within a couple of feet of him before the drawn expression on his face melted in recognition. He wore a Thai silk aloha shirt that was coming untucked from his pants. The gabardine trousers, a nice cut, bagged at the knees. Deep lines bracketed his mouth.
“How is she?” Storm asked.
“No change. She hasn’t regained consciousness.” Hamlin led Storm to a bank of elevators.
“I thought she called me.”
“One of the doctors reported that she said something about a coming storm. We thought she might have meant you.” They got on an elevator and Hamlin pushed a button.
“How’d you find out about the accident?”
“Her husband called the office. Meredith was there, so she called me at home.” He stared into the blankness of the stainless steel doors.
“So Lorraine was alone when it happened?”
“Ben was waiting in the car for her, reading the paper. Looked up in time to see the truck go through the light. Poor guy’s a basket case.”
“That’s horrible.” Storm’s throat tightened with sadness.
“I saw her hand you something before lunch on Friday. A half-dozen people were standing around the office.”
“Who was there? I can’t even remember.”
“A handful of us. Another associate was with me, a couple of secretaries, Ed Wang, Meredith…wasn’t Cunningham coming out of your office, too? What’s this list about?”
“Phone calls to Hamasaki. Mostly about a family disagreement over David and the will. There were some calls from clients, I guess.”
Hamlin’s eyes were bloodshot when he looked at her. “I want you to be very careful. A few days ago, I thought some addict broke into your house. I don’t think so anymore. We have to tell the cops about all of this.”
“I’ve been in touch with them.”
“Does HPD know about the driver on the Big Island?”
Storm looked at the toes of her tennis shoes. “Chief Mendoza and I go back a ways. He’d love to pin the accident on me.”
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