Fire in the Ocean Read online

  Finally, he rubbed his eyes and relaxed into his leather chair. He felt enormous relief. There was nothing he could see that indicated any financial discrepancies or irregularities of any kind. What was Chisholm playing at? Or had the younger man merely made an innocent mistake?

  The idea that any project under Roberts’ command could be operating in any way other than perfectly aboveboard filled him with anger. He worked hard to assure his company was squeaky clean and resented any implication it was otherwise.

  Chisholm. Roberts’ annoyance centered on him. The man had dared—publicly—to impugn Ahi Moana’s ethics. Chisholm was definitely a problem, but that kind of problem was easy to fix.

  • • •

  Sierra woke up. Her first take was confusion. She wasn’t in her bed at home. She wasn’t in the hotel in Honolulu. She shifted her position and winced. Her arms and legs were wrapped in large, wet leaves. She peered under a leaf wrapped around her forearm and winced again. There was a long scrape on her arm, raw, red and painful. It and multiple other scrapes around her body stung as she moved. She remembered being dragged across the lava rocks by the waves—the rocks might as well have been cheese graters.

  She appeared to be lying on a mat of some sort that rustled as she moved. She was covered with a sheet of—was that paper? It was thick, like handmade paper, and soft. Geometric designs had been stamped into it to make a textured pattern, and there were other patterns composed of red and brown triangles and diamonds that looked as though they were printed with some kind of tool. Sierra sat up and took stock of her surroundings.

  She was lying on the floor of a house, but it was a house made like a basket. Sturdy poles formed the framing, lashed together with thick, rough cord. The interior was one large room, with a peaked roof. The building was thickly thatched with dried grasses, from the peak of the roof to the ground. As Sierra clambered to her feet, the floor gave slightly beneath her, and she realized that there were many layers of mats beneath her. There were no windows, and the tall doorway in the center of one long wall had no actual door in it—Sierra could see the blue of the sky and the green of tangled growth outside. The papery stuff that covered her dropped to the sleeping mat, and she realized she was naked. Hastily, she retrieved the paper blanket and wrapped it firmly around her.

  The large leaves covering Sierra’s other wounds dropped to the matted floor as she moved. She hoped she wasn’t interrupting some important treatment in process. Then she saw Chaco.

  He was lying on another mat not far from hers. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be unconscious or sleeping. She forgot about the leaves and her injuries and went to his side. He didn’t look good, she decided. He was pale, his dark lashes lying quietly against his high cheekbones. He was covered with another papery blanket, and he also had large, wet leaves plastered against his body and around his head. But his breathing was steady. She checked his pulse and it seemed regular and strong. At least, she thought so. Her last first aid course had been a long time ago.

  Sierra placed a tentative hand on Chaco’s bare shoulder and whispered his name. No response. She shook him gently and said his name louder. Still no response. So he was unconscious, not sleeping. This was worrying, but there was nothing she could do about it.

  Sierra tucked her paper wrapping around her more firmly and went to the door. She could see what looked like a garden, and beyond it, the beach and the ocean, a few coconut palms fringing the sand. Behind the house was a thickly overgrown mass of trees and vines. The air was soft, almost syrupy with humidity, and smelled wonderfully of flowers and salt air.

  Then she noticed there was someone in the garden. She hadn’t seen him at first because he was wearing a hat woven of green palm fronds. Until he moved, he looked like another flourishing plant. Sierra cleared her throat, suddenly aware that she was extremely thirsty.

  “Er, ahem,” she croaked. Not her best effort, but the head turned, and the man began to make his way out of the garden toward her.

  As he emerged from the garden plot, it was all she could do to stop herself from drawing in a sharp breath. The man was as tall as Chaco, but more heavily muscled. He had thighs like a weight lifter, broad shoulders slabbed with muscle, and arms that looked as though they could pick Sierra and Chaco up together and throw them a seriously long distance. His body, arms, and legs were covered with black tattoos inscribing geometrical patterns composed of triangles, diamonds, and spirals, but his face was unmarked. Under the swaying fronds of his hat, his face was definitively Polynesian—large eyes the color of uncreamed coffee; a broad, flattened nose; sensuous, sculpted lips; and smooth bronze skin. He was wearing nothing but the palm-frond hat and a loincloth. Long, curly black hair cascaded over his shoulders, carelessly tied back with a length of rough cord.

  Sierra had trouble swallowing, which she put down to the fact that she was so thirsty. As the man approached, he began to speak. What issued from his lips sounded to Sierra like water running over smooth pebbles—and she understood every word.

  “Aloha! How do you feel?” he was asking.

  Sierra tried not to stare, but failed. “Are you, I mean, um, are you speaking Hawai‘ian?” she asked.

  The man grinned at her, teeth very white against his brown skin. “Yes, I am speaking Hawai‘ian. And you are too!” he said cheerfully. “How do you feel?”

  Sierra halted in confusion. “I…I am speaking Hawai‘ian?” To her knowledge, she knew three words in Hawai‘ian: aloha, mahalo, and mysteriously, pali. But the words she had just spoken were not English. Confused, she shook her head.

  “Not feeling too well, then?” the man asked, concern wrinkling his forehead. “Why? Other than your scrapes and cuts, is there something else wrong?”

  “Ah, no. The cuts hurt, but I feel okay. Do you have some water?” She felt she could not say another word until she had a drink.

  “Over here.” The man turned and walked behind the house where Sierra had awoken. He strode quickly down a narrow path between the trees, vines, and bushes. Sierra, unused to walking in bare feet, had more trouble. Her tender soles encountered sharp stones and thorny sticks, slowing her progress.

  When she caught up with the man, she saw they had come to the foot of the cliff forming the walls of this little valley. From a cleft in the rock above jetted a stream of water, pouring down into a natural rock basin. The overflow from the basin gurgled down a small channel that diverted it toward the garden. The man handed her a coconut shell cut in half, forming a bowl. He plucked some long leaves from plants growing by the edge of the basin, twined them together and dropped them in the water. The leaves floated around in the current created by the water pouring into the basin. As Sierra watched impatiently, parched with thirst, the man watched the bobbing leaves and finally indicated she should help herself to the water. She drank deeply and looked up in surprise.

  Given the humid heat of the day, the water was shockingly cold, as cold as though it had been refrigerated. It held a pure sweetness unlike anything she had ever encountered. Snowmelt from the peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains had never tasted this wonderful or been so refreshing.

  “It’s sweet!” she exclaimed, and drank until she could drink no more. As she set down the coconut shell on the edge of the rocky basin, she realized she must have been dehydrated. She felt immeasurably better, if somewhat awash.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “I’m Kama,” said the young man, accompanying this with a blinding smile that carved dimples into his cheeks and made Sierra a trifle breathless. “What’s your name?”

  “Sierra. Is Chaco going to be all right?”

  “You’re both going to be fine. We need to keep those cuts and scrapes clean, keep them from scabbing over. I’ve been bathing them in seawater and keeping them moist with tī leaf poultices. Your friend—Chaco?—got a pretty bad bump on the head, so he’ll need to take it easy for a while.”

  Well, she was all right, and Chaco was alive and accounted
for. But where was Fred? She couldn’t ask this nice young man if he had seen a smallish, green, blobby creature washed up with them.

  “Did you find anything else along with Chaco and me?” she asked. “Maybe a navy-blue duffel bag?”

  Kama shook his head. Sierra’s heart contracted with grief, but it wasn’t something she could share with Kama. She felt her paper covering slip a bit and clutched it to her. “Where are my clothes?”

  “I hung them up to dry, but I’m not sure they’re going to be good for much. Lava rock has a way of tearing things up—skin, clothes, whatever. You can use the kapa cloth instead.”

  Sierra realized he was talking about the papery blanket she was using as a dress. She pointed to it. “This? This is kapa cloth? I thought it was paper.”

  Kama laughed a rolling, infectious laugh. “I suppose it is paper. It's made from beaten mulberry bark. Let’s go back to the hale and get you some twine to help hold your dress up.”

  Clearly, Kama had undressed her and tended to her wounds while she was either passed out or lying in an exhausted sleep. Sierra was relieved that he didn’t make any knowing remarks. She followed him to the hale. Chaco was still deeply asleep or unconscious. Sierra remembered that people with concussions should not be allowed to fall asleep, at least not for a while.

  She turned to Kama anxiously as he handed her a length of coarse twine. “Is he asleep? Or unconscious?” She wound the twine around the kapa cloth above her breasts and tied it securely, folding the kapa over the twine to keep it from slipping.

  Kama glanced at Chaco’s unmoving form. “He was unconscious when I found him. He must have banged his head on a rock. I hauled him up to the hale, and he woke up. He was mostly worried about you, but I told him you were just sleeping, there was nothing he could do in his state, and to let me take care of you. I got him cleaned up and poulticed his head. He passed out again after that.”

  “Thank you. Thank you for saving our lives. I’m sure we would have died if you hadn’t been here. Mahalo!”

  “You’re welcome,” said Kama. “Let’s go outside so we can talk. I’ve got some questions, and I bet you do too.”

  They sat in the shade of an odd-looking tree with long, frond-like leaves and roots that sprang out from the trunk above ground before sinking into the earth around it. They could see the waves crashing on the rocks from their vantage point beneath the tree and Sierra shuddered at the memory of trying to swim through the rough waves and rocks to the safety of the beach. But this spot was gorgeous, she had to give it that. The water was brilliant turquoise, the sky was a soft blue with a few white clouds, and the repetitious roar and retreat of the waves was soothing. She could see how tiny this little valley really was, just a small pie wedge in the high pali, enough for a miniature jungle to grow up. Chickens clucked and pecked in the garden, jealously guarded by a magnificent rooster with a thick plume of blue-green tail feathers and a rainbow of orange, red, yellow, and green feathers embellishing its body. It looked more like the jungle fowl she had seen in zoos than a typical farm rooster.

  “How did you come to be swimming up my beach?” Kama inquired. “I don’t get a lot of visitors here, which is one reason I like it.” He didn’t sound annoyed by this; it was a statement of fact.

  “Sorry about that,” Sierra responded. She explained about the whale-watching expedition and getting swept overboard by a waterspout. This wasn’t true, of course, but she was not willing to start babbling to this stranger about a gigantic white octopus.

  Kama was quiet for while. Then he said, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Uh-oh. He’s not buying it. “Oh? Why not?”

  “If you were on a whale-watching boat out of Honolulu, there’s no way you could have made it all this way alive. It’s too far. The water is extremely rough out there. And then there’s the sharks.”

  “That’s what happened,” she said defensively. “I can’t explain it. It just happened.”

  Kama nodded, but said nothing.

  “And what are you doing here? Do you live here all alone?”

  “Yes. I’m living in the old way, the way of the ancestors. I make everything I use here.” He nodded around at the hale and the garden.

  “May I ask why?”

  Kama seemed a bit reluctant to answer. After a moment or two of thought, he raised his head and said, “I was in one of those toxic relationships. You know—fiery passion one moment and even more fiery rage the next?”

  Sierra nodded. She had been in one or two relationships like that herself. Not Clancy, of course. He was almost too calm and cool most of the time.

  “So I decided to get away from her. Trust me, when it comes to this lady, that isn’t an easy thing to do.”

  Oh, a stalker? Poor man.

  “I needed to find somewhere she wouldn’t track me down. And I wanted to live the ancient lifestyle, like I always have. So I came here. Believe me, no one else ever comes here. Until you and your friend.”

  “So, how do Chaco and I get back to Honolulu?”

  Kama shrugged, making his muscles ripple. He seemed utterly unaware of the effect this had on Sierra, who quickly, if reluctantly, glanced away. “I don’t think there is a way. There’s no way out of this valley by land—the pali here are two thousand feet and nearly straight up. You need a boat, but the only boat I have is my outrigger.” He pointed to an elongated canoe with an outlying arm resting on the beach. “I’m sorry, but I can’t give you that. I rely on it for fishing. Besides, as I said, the water between here and O‘ahu is really rough. It’s more than 50 miles to Honolulu from here. You need to know how to handle an outrigger—you and your friend look to be in good shape, but I don’t think you can paddle an outrigger from here to Honolulu.”

  Sierra quickly realized Kama was right. She and Chaco didn’t have the skills to handle a tiny boat in that vast expanse of turbulent water. Maybe if Chaco were himself again with the strength of an Avatar, but as it was…no. Did this mean they were going to live out their natural lives right here? Where was here, anyway?

  “What island are we on?” she inquired.

  “Moloka‘i.”

  Sierra didn’t know anything about Moloka‘i, except for the leper colony.

  “Could you take us in your outrigger to someplace on Moloka‘i where there are more people? And electricity and telephones?” And coffee?

  “No.”

  “Well, what would you do if you wanted to leave this place?”

  Kama looked at her frankly. “I might take my outrigger, but I’ve been using it all my life, and I know what I’m doing. I have some other ways, but they aren’t open to you.”

  “What do you mean, not open to us?” Sierra balanced on the edge of annoyance and alarm. What could Kama possibly be talking about? What is this guy’s deal? Who in this day and age doesn’t have a freaking cell phone?

  But Kama rose to his feet. He held out a large hand to her. “It’s time to treat your wounds. Sea water soak, three times a day.” He drew Sierra to her feet. They went back to the hale for gourds, then to the beach. Kama showed her a small pool among the rocks, full of clear salt water and deep enough to immerse at least one adult body. Kama dipped his gourds full of water, explaining he would bathe Chaco’s wounds with it, then told her, “Climb in there and soak for a while. No, don’t worry, I won’t peek.” He grinned at her. “You haoles. Always so worried about your bodies.” He turned and began to walk back to the hale with the gourds. True to his word, he never looked back. As Sierra eased out of her kapa covering and into the water, she watched his muscular rear, openly displayed by the loincloth, recede and disappear into the house.

  Chapter 7

  Polupolu was set to go out the following morning. Clancy wanted to spend more time searching the north shore of the island.

  “I didn’t think the Coast Guard went in close enough,” he explained to Auntie Keikilani, forking a piece of tender mahi-mahi into his mouth. He had purchased the fresh fish from a boat
earlier that day and brought it to Auntie Keikilani, along with vegetables from the farmer’s market. Auntie had been more than generous, and he didn’t want to be a freeloader. “I want to see if we can get closer in so that we can see better. The problem is, as far as I could see, the north side is pretty much pali, except for Halawa Valley and Kalaupapa.”

  Auntie Keikilani leaned forward with interest and said, “Not quite. There are a few little valleys up there that are accessible from the ocean. If you were far enough out on the water, you might have missed some of them.”

  “That seems promising,” said Clancy, his heart lifting a little.

  Auntie had invited a neighbor, Jack Kane, to share their dinner. Jack was a cheerful older man with two daughters living in Honolulu. As Jack explained, there had just been no jobs for the girls on Moloka‘i. Now Jack said, “You can borrow my binoculars, if you want.”

  “Thanks, Jack,” said Clancy. “That would be really helpful.”

  After a few more minutes of discussion about tomorrow’s plans, the conversation drifted on to other topics.

  “Anyone heard what’s happening out at the WestWind project?” asked Keikilani, passing around a pitcher of iced tea.

  Jack wrinkled up his broad nose and shook his head. “Nah. They don’t employ locals, you know, so we never hear anything. Sam says they’ve got at least two construction vessels working out there now.” He pursed his lips as though tasting something sour.

  “What’s the WestWind Project?” Clancy inquired.

  “It’s a big wind farm that they’re building out in the channel between western Moloka‘i and O‘ahu,” said Jack. “There’s an extinct underwater volcano called Penguin Bank. That makes the water shallower than you would expect, so it’s easier to build there. And there’s lots of wind. We’re not too happy about it, though.”

  “Why is that? I would think wind power would be ideal here in Hawai‘i—I mean, all the oil has to be shipped here, so electricity must be really expensive,” commented Clancy.