Rain Forest Rose (2 page)

“Which horse is Megan's?” Darby asked.

“What do you mean?” Jonah replied, without looking at her.

“She told me she was training a horse with her dad. Was it Biscuit?” Darby knew Megan's dad, Ben, had ridden the buckskin named Biscuit.

“No, Megan had a wild horse. A pink one.”

“Pink?” Darby was surprised such a thing existed.

“A rose roan, they call 'em, but yeah, Tango pretty much looked pink.”

Tango. Darby pictured Megan on a high-stepping
mare with hooves clattering like castanets.

“Was she sold?” Darby asked, but Jonah was shaking his head before she finished.

“Megan's horse was in a bad accident.”

“What happened?” Darby pressed him.

“You know on the map, it shows the
kipuka
? It's sort of an island within an island, yeah? Lava flows around a piece of earth and a rain forest grows up on that earth in the middle. This
kipuka
you're going to,” Jonah explained, “you've got to cross some
‘a'a
—the rough kind of lava. After the accident, she took off that way. We found blood,” he said grimly.

“Why didn't someone go after her?” Darby gasped.

“It was the same day Ben died. We kinda had our hands full,” Jonah said.

Darby sucked in a breath, glad that Jonah hadn't let her rattle on thoughtlessly.

“After things settled down, Mekana said to let the mare go back to the wild. She didn't want to ride ever again, she told everyone.”

Jonah gave her a grateful smile after he said that, crediting Darby with Megan's return to riding, so Darby didn't say what she was thinking.

You let her have her way?
Jonah must be leaving something out.

If Megan didn't want to ride, if she'd lost her nerve after her father died in a horseback accident, okay. But finding the horse—especially if it was
injured—was the humane thing to do. Besides, every animal on the ranch was valued in dollars. There must be more to Tango's escape and Ben's death than Jonah was telling her.

They rode in silence until Jonah muttered, “Look at that.” He pointed out a haphazard gouge through the grass, cut through to the damp earth. “Pigs. Like Cathy told you, be careful.”

“I will.”

“And if you think you hear them, you probably do.”

“Okay,” she said. “But I'm not such a city girl that I wouldn't recognize a pig.”

“These are different from pigs in kids' books,” Jonah said. “They're not cute. They gobble up birds. They're bristly and black. They go rooting day or night.”

The gash through the grass had looked like a furrow dug by a drunken plowman. Swiveling in her saddle, Darby looked back and asked, “Why do they do that?”

“Looking for food, like the rest of us,” Jonah said, “but they're a menace. How'd you like to be on a running horse when he stepped in a rip like that?”

Darby didn't want to think about it. She was still awkward riding a horse at any gait. It would be bad news if Navigator stepped into a hole that deep.

“I'll watch the ground,” Darby promised.

“You watch the space between your horses' ears,”
Jonah corrected. “He'll keep watch of the ground.” Jonah looked over his shoulder as Hoku shied at a swooping yellow bird.

When Hoku felt his eyes on her, she flattened her ears.

She pays such close attention,
Darby thought.
Even a beginner like me should be able to teach her.

Jonah squinted toward the rain forest ahead. “I wouldn't let you go out here if I thought there was any danger. Much safer than crossing a street in Pacific Pinnacles.” He pronounced the name of Darby's hometown in California in a pointed way. “You won't get run down by some movie star's limousine.”

“It's not that kind of a neighborhood—” Darby began, but Jonah cut her off.

“Just stay back, out of their way, and they'll leave you be. Don't let that filly go after one, either.”

“Would a horse chase a pig?” she asked incredulously.

“It's in her nature to protect you.”

“I thought you said she hadn't forgiven me for trying to tame her,” Darby said.

“All animals are walking contradictions. Horses and humans are born that way. Fierce and gentle. Wild and protective. Not many have the brains to back up their actions.” Jonah studied Hoku. When the filly snorted, one side of Jonah's black mustache lifted with his smile. “That's why they need us.”

“I think she knows more about the wild than—”

“No.” Jonah halted Kona across the path and pointed his index finger at Darby as she stopped Navigator. “You know more, and this is why you're going out here.” He shook the finger three or four times, then drew a deep breath, and when he talked again, the irritation in his voice had faded.

“Remember I told you about
mana
?” Jonah asked.

Darby remembered when Jonah had made the strong stallion Luna behave for the farrier, just by sheer force of will. Jonah had said that was mana versus mana, but it hadn't meant much more to her than any of his other Hawaiian teachings. She was interested, of course, but he expected her to keep track of so much.

Still, Darby nodded.

“Well, there are two kinds of mana. One's your own power, a strength of spirit you're born with. The other mana is what you've learned from the mouths of others.”

Jonah let her mull that over for a few seconds before he asked, “Which mana is stronger in you?”

Self-conscious and not really sure what he wanted from her, Darby shrugged her shoulders up until they almost touched her earlobes. Her mother had once told her she looked like a turtle withdrawing into its shell when she did that. Now, that's how she felt.

“I don't know.”

“The learning from others—you're good at that, and you know it,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“And you're particular about who you believe. That's good,” Jonah said, and then he glanced down at her wrist. “But that ancient necklace you found. No one told you it had power, and yet you sensed it.”

“I only wore it as a good-luck charm,” Darby protested.

“And once you learned it belonged in the
ali'i
's cave, how did you feel?”

“I wanted to put it back—”

“Because you felt superstitious? Or you were afraid you'd get in trouble?” Jonah asked her.

“No! Because it was the right thing to do.”

“That's your own mana,” Jonah said, as if it was obvious. “Like the way you bonded with the filly.”

Darby opened her mouth to remind him, again, that he thought the filly still held a grudge.

“Who does that, Darby? Lies down in the snow with a wild horse, and stands up its best friend. You have a lot of pals, yeah, in California, who do that all the time?”

“No, but it's not like magic—”

“Mana's not magic. It's an instinct, a silent power, an understanding. You have it for horses, and so do I. But you don't trust your mana. I do.”

Once more, Darby remembered the stallion Luna
facing Jonah. Like silent thunder, the man's will had rolled over the horse. And Luna had obeyed without hesitation.

“So, when I come back from the rain forest,” Darby spoke slowly, thinking before each word, “how are you going to tell if I figured out my two manas?”

“This isn't school. There's no test.” Jonah smiled. “Or if there is, you'll be the one to recognize it. Not me.”

My “instinctive” mana and my “what I've learned from others” mana,
Darby thought as they rode on.
Okay, that shouldn't be too hard.

“When you get where you're going,” Jonah said over his shoulder, “put Navigator's reins up and turn him loose with a slap on the rump. He'll head for home. And Cade will be bringing you more food and checking on you.”

“Okay,” Darby said. But as the vegetation narrowed the path, she realized Jonah's instructions probably meant they'd reached the spot where he'd turn around and go back to the ranch.

They hadn't ridden that far. Surely, she thought, as her mind darted back to Megan's lost horse, someone should have seen Tango in almost two years. And even in wild Hawaii, shouldn't the police have looked over the scene of a sudden death? Maybe they had. Maybe Jonah didn't want her to hear the grisly details of a paniolo's death,
when she was still just learning to ride.

“This is where I leave you,” Jonah said, halting Kona at the gate out of the broodmare pasture.

“Okay.” Darby heard the faintness of her own voice as she pictured herself riding on with the two horses. Then walking on, with one.

“Thanks, Grandpa.” Darby surprised even herself by saying it, and she would have hugged him if she could have done so without falling off her horse. “I'll do my best.”

Jonah made a
hmph
ing noise, before he said, “There's mostly geldings in Pearl Pasture.”

A twitch of reins made Kona sidestep until Jonah could open the gate for Darby to ride through. “Being the tomboy she is, Hoku won't likely flirt with 'em, but she might want to join in a run. Don't let her. Stop her before she jerks you off Navigator's back, yeah?”

“I will,” Darby said. She gave a quiet cluck to encourage Hoku to follow Navigator through the gate. Hoku came along, but her narrowed eyes said she did it because Darby asked her to, not because she trusted Jonah enough to turn her tail on him.

“Gonna be one strong mare,” Jonah said approvingly, and then he made the one-handed gesture with three fingers folded inside and waggled it from side to side. Megan had told her it was called
shaka
and it meant “hi” or “good-bye” or any kind of greeting in between.

Holding Hoku's rope tight in her right hand, Darby returned the gesture with her left and made Jonah chuckle.

Jonah's laughter still echoed in Darby's ears long after the gate to Pearl Pasture was locked behind her.

W
hen Darby first noticed she was wheezing, she was glad there was no way for her mom to give her one of the stinging injections she'd learned to administer. There'd be no late-night trip to the urgent-care clinic, either, and though she probably shouldn't have felt relieved by that, Darby did.

Besides, she had the medihaler in her pocket, just in case. The tight feeling in Darby's chest vanished as a beautiful troop of horses, led by a palomino, suddenly appeared.

Hoku gave a neigh. Her head bobbed and she pulled at the rope as snorts answered her.

“Oh my gosh,” Darby whispered to Navigator, though the gelding didn't act as awed as she was or as
curious as Hoku. “Who are you guys?” she whispered to the new herd.

Darby knew the answer. They were in Pearl Pasture, so these were two- and three-year-olds in training, but she kept talking to keep the horses' attention.

“They're just about your age,” Darby told Hoku.

With her brown eyes fixed on the other horses, Hoku weaved from one side of the path to the other at a shifting gait.

The horses of Pearl Pasture pranced with exuberance. Delighted to have visitors, they pressed close to Navigator and Hoku.

Careful,
Darby reminded herself. Jonah had warned her not to let Hoku jerk her out of the saddle.

Steadiness on horseback wasn't something she could always count on, and she had the bruises to prove it.

Darby watched Hoku for signs that she might lunge. At the same time, she imitated Jonah's matter-of-fact way of talking to horses.

“Get back, guys,” Darby told the young geldings. “We're following this path to a clearing. Then we're turning right and going to the
kipuka
. Just passing through.”

The horses took no notice of the directions she'd memorized from Jonah's map, but they didn't correct her pronunciation, either.

She admired their wet, healthy coats. Bays, a
black, and a blue roan she recognized as Buckin' Baxter surrounded them, but the palomino kept forging to the front.

All at once, Darby's back twisted, then snapped up straight, and her teeth clacked together. As the faint, red trail widened, Navigator burst from a walk into a full lope.

“How'd you skip over a trot?” Darby yelped, and then she gasped.

For a few strides, Hoku had kept up with Navigator, but now the filly had noticed the young geldings falling in behind. She wanted the comfort of the herd.

Hoku balked.

Navigator kept moving.

Between them, the horses stretched Darby's arm. She pictured a cartoon character's arm lengthening like rubber.

“Whoa!” she shouted, and then, tightening her reins with her other hand, she yelled, “Hoku!”

Darby figured it was her commanding voice, or the suddenly narrowing trail—not any kind of mana—that made the horses obey. Whatever caused it, Darby was relieved that Navigator didn't bolt into a gallop, but slowed to a hammering trot, and Hoku mirrored his gait.

“Good boy,” she congratulated the coffee-colored gelding. As the young horses caught up, he stayed in the lead, changing his trot into a floating gait she
didn't recognize. “Really good boy.”

Navigator's hooves sounded like faint applause on the forest floor. And Hoku's hooves were their echo. Darby sighed and forgot about her arm as she drifted along.

She might have been riding in a dream, until Hoku gave a pleased buck and Darby lost her left stirrup.

“No,” Darby snapped. Scuffing her boot back into place broke the spell, and Navigator returned to his uneasy jog.

The other horses' glossy shoulders jostled them, but Darby heard something beyond the hoofbeats and rushing leaves.

What was that sound? Darby wished she could prick her ears up like the horses. Was someone talking?

Voices on the wind spoke to Darby.

I've been here before,
she thought.

The jungle left just a single-file passageway for the horses. The geldings took their cues from Navigator, but even as they settled into a flat-footed walk, their tails twitched and their forelocks flew. They snuffled, testing the air currents.

The horses' multicolored backs moved so slowly, Darby counted them.

“One, two, three—” Darby broke off when Navigator crowded past the black horse and pinned Darby's left leg between the two warm bodies.

Alarm made her pulse speed up and the tightness in her chest grew worse, but only for a second. Hoku mirrored Navigator's free-striding walk and Darby felt like one of the herd. She lowered her head from drooping branches as Navigator shoved ahead of the black, a bay, then forced the blue roan to give way.

Scarlet blooms like those she'd seen in the waterfall valley whipped Darby's hair. She ducked as they rushed past.

Wind kept the tunnel of trees in motion. Maybe a storm was brewing, she thought, watching green stems bend under leaves that looked like inside-out umbrellas.

Hoku and I came this way, finding our way home from Crescent Beach,
Darby realized.

Ahead, leaves streaked with salmon-orange stroked the palomino's flanks.

He kicked, then nipped at the spot the leaf had tickled, and Darby, Navigator, and Hoku went ahead.

All at once, the wind stopped. The forest seemed to hold its breath.

Darby tightened her reins. Navigator halted. He arched his neck, stamped, and blew, but Hoku didn't make a sound.

Darby glanced over her shoulder. The filly looked hypnotized.

By what? Darby wondered, until she followed the mustang's gaze.
A dazzling sunbeam stabbed through the trees. It shone on a cottage.

Navigator bowed his head three times, asking her to loosen the reins.

“Sorry, boy.” Darby's voice might have boomed from a loudspeaker.

It had rained more here than at the ranch, she noticed. A falling leaf plopped onto a deep puddle.

A metallic ping made Darby look back to the clearing.

How many times had she had dreamed of rain dropping from that rust-red roof? As many times as she'd seen that white curtain billowing out that window. But she'd only
dreamed
of the cottage in the clearing, and now she was wide awake.

Darby tapped Navigator's sides with her heels. She had to know what waited behind that door!

When it opened, not creaking, but swinging wide on well-oiled hinges, Darby had already slid down from Navigator, still clinging to Hoku's lead rope.

Silhouetted in the doorway, the woman in the long dress could have been any age, but when she stepped into the sunlight, Darby felt like she'd ridden into the future.

The oval face, heavy brows, scarf-bound hair, and startling smile could have belonged to her mother, grown old.

Or me!
Darby jerked back in recognition. Though the eyes watching her were brown, not blue, the face
before Darby looked an awful lot like the one she saw in the mirror.

“Aloha, Darby.”

The melodious voice should have come from someone big and jolly, but the arms that swooped around Darby were thin inside the floating pink dress.

“Aloha,” the woman repeated as she kissed Darby's cheeks. “I'm your
tutu
.”

As she held Darby out at arm's length to look at her, Darby felt at home, as if she'd always known this woman everyone called Tutu, as if she were their great-grandmother as well. People on ‘Iolani Ranch spoke of Tutu with reverence, mentioning her healing skills and insight, acting as if living in the jungle, alone, was the way of such wise women.

And I know why,
Darby thought with a dizzy smile. The loneliness she'd felt since leaving home faded under this outpouring of love from a total stranger who reminded her so strongly of her mother.

Hoku hadn't moved or made a sound. Anxiously, Darby glanced back. The filly had every sense focused on the human before her, but she wasn't braced to bolt. She looked—Darby searched her vocabulary—peaceful.

“I dreamed of being here,” Darby admitted.

She couldn't help it. Instinct told her that her great-grandmother wouldn't label her a nutcase, but she hadn't meant to let the words just tumble out.

“And I dreamed of having you here,” her great-grandmother said. “You and your horse with the golden tail.”

Darby broke out in goose bumps.

“You really dreamed of Hoku?”

“Dreams, visions…” Tutu wafted her hand through the air. “They're very much alike.”

“They are?” Darby asked. “I have dreams every night, but I've never had a vision.”

“They're not so mysterious,” Tutu said with a mild smile. “But if no one around you feels anything when you do, or if they're destructive, you're not having a vision. You're just—” She broke off to tap her temple.
“Hewa-hewa.”

Darby grinned. She didn't need a Hawaiian translator for that. It had to mean
crazy
.

What she did need was a puff of her asthma inhaler. It was a terrible time to be wheezing. She felt like she could really talk with Tutu and ask her things—about her mother and Jonah, about Ben Kato's death and Megan's lost horse—but Darby could barely catch her breath. Having a long chat was out of the question.

“Yam root tea will help your breathing,” Tutu told her. “I'll make you some.”

“I have medicine,” Darby gasped, but when she patted her pocket, it was empty.

No! She stuck her hand all the way to the bottom of her pocket. She checked the other one. There was
nothing there, either. The inhaler was gone, and she really didn't want to backtrack along the trail looking for it.

“Yam root tea?” Darby asked. She was willing to try anything to keep from going back.

“I'm an expert after making it all those years for Jonah.”

“That's right.” Darby forced out the words, remembering asthma was something she shared with her grandfather.

“I plant yams every other year,” Tutu said, then recited, “root toward the mountain, root toward the sea, root to the windward, root to the lee.”

Darby thought the rhyme was another link to her family. She often used rhymes to help her remember things she was studying. Like
i
before
e
, except after
c
, she thought.

How cool was it that her great-grandmother was using such memory tricks in Hawaii?

“Just let your horses go. He'll stay, won't you, boy?” Tutu cupped her empty hands and Navigator nuzzled them in greeting. “It's not the first time Navigator's brought me company.”

“But Hoku…?” Darby couldn't think what to do with her filly, but she didn't have the breath to explain how much she didn't want to stay outside and hold the filly's lead rope.

Still, she hadn't yet trained Hoku to stand while tied. A nightmarish image of Hoku flinging her neck
back, trying to break loose, invaded Darby's mind.

“She leads well,” Tutu said, and her tone sounded like a hint.

Darby nodded, then wondered what would happen if she tied Hoku's rope to Navigator's saddle horn. Darby made a loop in the end of the rope, stood on tiptoe to reach the horn, and flipped it over.

“Is that safe?” Darby gasped the three words.

“Here, it is,” Tutu said.

Darby rubbed her breastbone as if that would loosen her tight chest, but of course it didn't. It wasn't terrible pain, but each breath felt like the creak of an unoiled door hinge in a horror movie.

Darby watched Hoku. The sorrel didn't seem to notice she was restrained. She fell to grazing beside Navigator.

A cacophony of brass, glass, and bamboo wind chimes drew Darby's eyes back to the front porch of the cottage. Her great-grandmother wasn't there. She must have gone inside to make tea, Darby thought, so Darby followed her.

Darby remembered to take off her shoes before going inside. She'd been so embarrassed when she hadn't noticed the custom the first night she'd entered Sun House.

One step inside this house made her glad she was barefoot.

Tutu's cottage was carpeted with a woven rug that felt nubby and smooth, like intertwined sea grasses.
The room smelled of herbs and honey, which made her certain that she'd be breathing more freely soon.

A copper teakettle sat on an old-fashioned stove in the corner. A plume of steam already rose from its spout.

Darby didn't have much faith in home remedies, but Tutu moved with the competence of a pharmacist. She reached up to one of the shelves lining the cottage walls, took down a glass jar, and held it at eye level before measuring dried leaves into a green teapot.

Vapor clouded the corner as Tutu poured boiling water into the pot.

“Now that will steep,” Tutu said, then gestured widely. “Please, have a look around.”

Darby laced her fingers together behind her back, feeling awkward. A glance showed her no television, telephone, or computer, but she noticed a lei-draped, black-and-white photograph of a man. He looked a lot like Jonah.

“Your great-grandfather,” Tutu said, as if she was introducing them. “A scallywag and a smuggler with a million schemes, but I've always had a soft spot in my heart for pirates.”

Darby didn't know what to say to that. It was a strangely, well, romantic thing to hear from an old lady.

“I love my little house,” Tutu said, looking around.

“Me too,” Darby managed.

“It was a sugar plantation house at one time. Housing for the workers, not the bosses,” Tutu said as Darby looked around. “It had neighbors, but after the tsunami, only this one was left.”

“Tsunami?” Darby said. They had earthquakes in Southern California, but Darby thought tsunamis were worse, kind of like an earthquake and flood combined.

And then her gaze settled on Tutu. Was it safe for a woman of her years to live all alone in a tsunami zone?

“It happened nearly a hundred years ago,” Tutu reassured Darby, as if she'd spoken her concern. “But these are young islands—formed by fire, shaped by earthquakes, floods, and yes, tsunamis, and I'd live here even if such events happened every week.”