Rain Forest Rose (5 page)

With her second sock safely stretched to her shin, she eased her foot down so that she wouldn't tip over, and concentrated.

A squishy sound, like a foot pulling free of mud, came to her ears again.

Please, not Manny,
she thought, but nothing as big as Cade's creepy stepfather could move that way. She remembered the reek of perspiration coming from his tattooed and sweaty torso. Not only would she be able to smell him, Hoku would, too.

Darby heard no underlying plunk, like a horse hoof, splashing in the stream. And if it had been a horse, Hoku would have greeted it. Or warned it away from her hay.

No, the creature sounded too aimless. Equines didn't blunder around, between the stream and stream bank.

A sucking sound reminded Darby of the third set of tracks beside the water. Smaller tracks, and she'd thought it was marks from a fawn.

A fawn!

How dumb are you?
Darby asked herself.
Have you seen a single deer on this island?

What else had cloven feet and moved around the forest in the dark?

Darby heard quarrelsome grunting, and suddenly she knew.

I
f you think you hear one, you do.

That's what Jonah had said about wild pigs. He'd also told her they gobbled down birds and rooted trenches that she could trip over.

Darby took a deep breath.

Calm down and think,
she told herself.

But she couldn't help wondering how pigs did that rooting. Her curiosity wasn't the usual Discovery Channel variety, either. She pictured medieval tapestries with wild boars goring hounds and horses.

They couldn't do that ripping with their snouts. They had tusks.

She bet Hawaiian pigs had tusks, too. If so, how
long were they? Why hadn't she asked more questions when Kit, Auntie Cathy, Jonah, Megan, Cade, and, shoot,
everyone
around her had warned her about pigs?

Still listening to the muddy meandering, Darby wondered why this pig didn't move more stealthily. It was wild, or at least feral—a tame animal that lived free. It must have scented her and Hoku.

She stared into the darkness, wishing for just a pinch of Cade's famous night vision.

She shook her head slowly, trying to figure out why the creature didn't care if she heard it. Finally, Darby guessed it was possible that the wild pigs had no predators except for humans, and maybe this animal had sized her up as no threat.

It still didn't seem right.

At last, the squelchy steps moved away. Leaves rustled, then the quiet night pressed in around her once more.

Darby longed for daylight. She wouldn't fall back asleep, and she wanted to write down her questions about the pig.

Not that it had to be a pig. She didn't really know what was out there in the dark, but she'd figure it out on her own. Otherwise, Jonah might make her return to the ranch before her time alone with Hoku was over.

 

E e vee. E e vee.

Darby awoke outside of her shelter. Curled up on
one side, atop her sleeping bag, she yawned. Then she rolled onto her back and opened her eyes.

Nice bedroom ceiling,
she thought, taking in the interlaced branches and leaves overhead.

A red bird bobbed next to a red flower in a treetop. The bird and flower matched exactly.

A wavy branch returned to the very base of the trunk instead of sprouting from a bigger branch. The branch next to it did the same thing, gliding up to point out the royal blue sky.

In April, it was as warm as summer.

Impatient hooves tapped the earth and Hoku nickered.

“I'll be right there,” she almost sang to her horse.

Darby pointed her toes and stretched her ground-cramped legs.

It was Tuesday, but she had hours of freedom with her horse. Next week at this time, she'd be in school. Confined to a classroom.

Urgency replaced Darby's dreaminess. She bolted to her feet and started getting dressed.

As she slipped off her jeans and replaced them with shorts, Darby checked her skin for spider bites.

Not one! So much for Cade's warnings.

She slid her feet into tennis shoes and pulled the laces tight.

Her feet felt so light without boots that Darby skipped as she led Hoku to water.

Wavy marks showed where the stream had risen
during the night, then receded.
It must be fed by the ocean and respond to the tides,
she thought, trying not to care that pig tracks the size of her palm were imprinted on the damp dirt. Hoku sniffed them, flattened her ears, and snorted, as if blowing the scent from her nostrils.

“You've never smelled a pig before!” Darby realized. “I'll have to write to Sam and ask her, but I've never heard of wild pigs living with wild horses in Nevada.”

Darby tried to eat some granola before putting Hoku back in her corral, but the filly nudged at her hand and breathed in the smell of oats and honey.

“Hey, I want to
eat
my breakfast, not wear it,” Darby told her horse. When Hoku pulled back, wide-eyed at the girl's sharp tone, Darby added, “You're cute, but I'll be training you to be a brat if I let you have it after you've been so pushy.”

Fending off the filly's nose with her elbows, Darby ate a handful of granola before leading Hoku back to the corral.

There, she brushed Hoku all over, even her head, despite the filly's glare.

“I know you don't like me to touch your head,” Darby sympathized.

She still couldn't imagine a man cruel enough to whip the young horse in the face, but Sam's fax had hinted that it was likely Shan Stonerow had done just that. Jonah and Cade agreed that was the story the
filly's head-shyness told, too.

But Hoku was less fearful now. Darby could tell the filly wasn't afraid, just annoyed because Darby wouldn't do what she wanted, so Darby dusted the soft brush along Hoku's golden nose until the horse bared her teeth.

“Don't you do that!” she scolded the filly, then crowded in front of her and held both sides of her halter. “You know I'd never hurt you.”

Hoku rolled her eyes until the whites showed, then looked away, trying to duck behind her forelock. But she didn't struggle or try to shake off Darby's grip. When Darby didn't move away, Hoku swished her tail as if she'd been misunderstood.

“Let's try it again,” Darby said. She released her hold on the halter and began brushing Hoku's face again. This time, only the skin on Hoku's neck twitched.

“That's better, baby,” she told her horse.

Jonah had told her to accustom Hoku to a variety of sounds and textures before trying her with a saddle blanket, so she tried rubbing the filly all over with a burlap grain sack Cade had stashed in the hut for just that purpose.

Hoku didn't resist the burlap's scratchiness. In fact, she leaned toward Darby's hand as if the rough texture felt good.

“How about this?” Darby asked, trailing a piece of plastic bubble wrap over her horse. At first Hoku
jumped away, but then she nudged the thing.

Hoku found no danger in it, but when the beautiful sorrel let her ears sag to each side, Darby laughed.

Hoku clearly thought bubble wrap was a really dumb idea, and she wanted Darby to know she was only tolerating it because Darby had asked her to do it.

“Good girl. I think you're ready for a test,” Darby said.

She offered Hoku a clump of feathers to sniff.

It was the remains of an orange feather boa. Megan said her dog Pip had “played with it to death,” in protest over being left home alone.

Now, Hoku nosed the feathers, licked them, then shook her head.

“Well, you're not supposed to eat them,” Darby said.

Hoku didn't like the feathers tickling her flank, but she only kicked out once, straight behind, to tell Darby.

A few seconds later, Darby dangled the feathers in front of Hoku, then drew them gently over the mustang's face.

Hoku's tongue thrust from her mouth as she watched Darby.

Hmm. Kit had told her to watch the filly for “mouthing.” If she licked her lips, it meant she was giving in, like a foal to its mother. But Hoku wasn't licking, she was just trying to clean bits of fluff from her lips.

Finally, the horse sighed and her muscles looked looser, less tense.

That's trust,
Darby thought.

“And it's good enough for me,” she told Hoku.

Then she gave her horse a hug.

Darby's arms had just joined around Hoku's neck when a voice spoke from the forest.

“Make her into a pet, and you're going to be sorry.”

Darby whirled toward the sound.

It had to be Jonah, but what was he doing here?

The filly didn't bolt or buck. Far less spooked than Darby, she simply sidestepped a few yards away.

“Pretty good,” Darby told Hoku, trying to keep her voice from shaking. Then she marched over to the gate, leaving the corral to go tell Jonah what she thought of his surprise.

She would have, that is, if she knew where he was hiding.

The birds had stopped flitting around and calling, so they'd heard him, too, but that didn't help.

Too stubborn to ask where he was, Darby stood with her hands on her hips until Jonah said, “I don't want her to see me. Keep her focused on you.”

She followed the voice and found her grandfather. He stood beside a stone so bearded with lichen, it looked like an old man.

Jonah seemed relieved that she'd made it through
the night and Darby longed to tell him about the owl in Tutu's cottage, the log over the gully, and the pig in the night, but all that came out was, “I'm not making Hoku into a pet.”

“If she just stands around waiting for food like a poodle…”

Darby had nothing against poodles. She liked poodles. What she didn't like was Jonah's tone.

“…it'll be harder on her in the long run. Unless”—Jonah paused as if musing—“you're going to keep her in a stall all the time. Then it won't matter.”

Boarding Hoku in a stall in a Los Angeles stable would be a nightmare for the filly and everyone around her, Darby thought. Even if it was financially possible. Which it wasn't.

“But if she's going to live in an open pasture on the ranch, you don't want her to lose her fear.”

“Wait.” Darby grabbed her temples, as if she could squeeze understanding into her head. She let her hands drop when she realized she'd unconsciously copied one of Jonah's gestures. “I can see why I'd want her to be independent, but why would I want her to be afraid?”

“For the same reason you should be afraid of fire, traffic, things like that. They can hurt you. You can't train her to face every dangerous situation. It's not possible.

“Right now, Hoku has an advantage over domestic horses,” Jonah went on. “She's been wild. She's had to think for herself, yeah? Let her keep her instincts.”

“What does that have to do with hugging?” Darby asked.

Jonah gave her a look that was impatient, but not angry. “It's good that she trusts you, but if you give her attention for no reason, she may not listen when you need her to go against her instincts.”

Darby resisted the urge to tell her grandfather that he made her head hurt. Instead, she blurted, “I met Tutu.”

“Yeah?”

“I like her. She's so cool,” Darby said.

“Cool,” Jonah repeated with a smile.

“And she said I remind her of my mom,” Darby told him, and in that instant, he was harder to read than a horse.

She saw flashes of surprise, irritation, and regret cross his face before he abruptly changed the subject.

“Do you know what they call that?” Jonah asked as a yellow bird darted past them and disappeared into the greenery.

“I didn't get a very good look, but a
honeycreeper
? Or did that bird have kind of a crossbeak?” Darby used her hands to show him what she thought she'd seen, a bird bill that she thought only existed in kids' picture books.

Jonah nodded, smiling. “They call it the Swiss Army knife of birds.”

Darby laughed.

“It's true,” Jonah said, and then, clearly pleased by her interest in her Hawaiian home, he pointed at a tall fern. “Feel this. Right here. Pretty soft, yeah?”

Jonah stroked a knuckle over the tightly curled center of the fern.

“It feels like velvet,” she said, doing the same.

“These ferns grow near volcanoes. They were used to make shelters for those who came to worship Pele, the volcano goddess,” Jonah explained.

“But we're a long way from a volcano, so—Oh! The steam vent?” Darby asked, pointing back the way she and Hoku had entered the forest.

“Maybe, or maybe the pig-fish man just liked it here.”

“The pig-fish man?” Darby echoed. For one spinning second, she remembered those grunting, slippery sounds in the night.

“He was a shape-shifter in love with Pele,” Jonah said in the same offhand way he might say the guy was a plumber. “She got tired of him following her around and turned him into this fern.” Jonah nodded at her hand. “Soft as a pig's snout, yeah?”

“I don't know,” she grumbled, but suddenly the fern felt hairy, not silky. She crossed her arms and tucked her fingers inside her fists.

Each time she had a conversation like this—about
Pele, family guardians, or
menehune
, the island's little people—Darby felt confused. She wanted to honor her Hawaiian ancestors. Surprisingly, she really felt a bond with them. But did that mean she had to believe these stories?

It's all about mana,
she told herself. Some things she learned and others she felt, and she did not feel like believing in the pig-fish man.

“Don't worry,” Jonah said. He rubbed the pad of his thumb between her eyebrows, and Darby figured she must have been frowning. “The pig-fish man doesn't hold a grudge. Each year, the first frond from this fern is red.”

“For Pele?” Darby guessed, thinking red might be the favorite color of a volcano goddess.

“Yes,” Jonah said. “So, everything go okay last night?”

Darby drew a deep breath. If she told him about the midnight intruder, he'd tease her about the pig-fish man. If she told him about the pink horse, he'd have a story for that, too.

“Everything was fine,” Darby said at last. “Hoku ate one and a half flakes of hay, and I ate my sandwich and a third of my cookie stash.”

Jonah's brown eyes studied Darby.

Was she imagining that nerves had given her voice a higher pitch?

“That reminds me,” he said. “It was Megan's turn to make dinner last night, and she made something
she's calling paniolo pizza. No such thing, if you ask me. More like an inside-out pizza. She sent you one.” Jonah handed Darby a foil packet. “It's good, but cold now.”

“Cold pizza is one of my favorite things,” Darby said. “My mom and I used to have it for breakfast sometimes.”

“Do you think she'll—” As if the words had burned his tongue, Jonah sucked in a breath. “Don't matter. Something's wrong with the water heater in the bunk house. Go gossip with your horse.” He lifted his chin toward the corral. “She has time for it. I don't.”