Rain Forest Rose (6 page)

He turned to go and Darby, despite her confusion, heard shifting hooves and knew Jonah had tied Kona where Hoku wouldn't see him.

“You don't forget, though,” Jonah said, not turning around. “If you let that filly keep a few of her instincts, she'll live longer.”

He made sense, Darby thought as she began walking back toward the corral and Hoku, but sometimes she had trouble putting his advice into action.

She must have been concentrating on his steps moving away, because suddenly Darby heard Jonah make an expression of surprise, and she stopped.

Darby's lips were pursed to say his name, when she recognized a voice she didn't expect to hear.

“Son,” Tutu greeted Jonah.

Why would a note of reprimand be mixed with Tutu's glad tone? Probably it wasn't, Darby thought,
but when Jonah responded “Mother,” and moments of silence followed, Darby wished she could see their faces.

At last Jonah cleared his throat and said, “I'm not interfering. Just bringing her food.”

Darby jumped in surprise. She had to be the “her” Jonah was talking about.

“I thought that was Cade's job,” Tutu said.

“He had other work,” Jonah said, and Darby felt suspicious all over again.

If Cade had done something that contributed to Ben Kato's death, he wouldn't like returning to the clearing.

“She knows how to work with horses,” Tutu said, and Darby heard pride in her great-grandmother's voice.

“She's coming along,” Jonah admitted.

And that, Darby told herself, was the perfect time to creep away. But her feet stayed still.

She looked down at them and caught her breath. Jonah had mentioned how small rain-forest spiders were, and he was right.

A tiny spider leg—so small, she wouldn't have seen it if she hadn't been focused on her feet—trembled to get a grip on the toe of Darby's white sneaker.

“Are you saying I have nothing to offer her?” Jonah asked.

Darby listened, watching the brave little spider climb the Himalaya of her shoe.

Finally, the spider was up. It rested before tackling the hills of her shoelaces and she saw the minuscule white markings that made the spider have a “happy face.”

“You always told me, ‘without the trunk there are no branches,'” Jonah pointed out.

The saying made Darby look up and smile.

That Hawaiian proverb was pretty easy to understand, and a lot nicer way to train kids to respect their elders than some she'd heard.

“Ohia branches spring from the same root as the tree,” Tutu said.

I saw those,
Darby thought, wondering if the trees she'd been studying when half awake that morning were the ones Tutu was talking about.

“But the trunk has been around longer,” Jonah joked.

What is this, dueling proverbs?
Darby wondered, but now that Tutu and Jonah were both laughing, she remembered to look back down at the spider. It had almost reached her bare ankle.

I admire your determination,
Darby thought,
but you're not crawling on my skin.

Darby lifted her foot and gave it a gentle shake.

With the willpower of a pit bull, the spider held on.

Darby shivered, but she couldn't dance around to dislodge the spider, while she was eavesdropping.

Get off!
she commanded silently, then planted the
heel of her shoe and jiggled the toe back and forth. She realized her mistake when the spider lost its grip and landed on her shin.

Darby squinched her eyes closed and jerked the neck of her T-shirt up to cover her mouth against a silent scream.

You're just a little spider.

You don't bite.

I'm not afraid of you.

Some distance off, Kona snorted and saddle leather creaked. Jonah must be mounting his horse to ride back to the ranch.

Good. Then she could get rid of this tiny trespasser.

But Jonah didn't move off before Tutu had the last word.

“It will be better for all of us if you don't forget another of my favorite sayings, which you brushed aside while you were raising her mother.”

Her mother. Darby really wanted to hear this.

“What's that?” Jonah sighed as if Tutu was picking on him.

“Without subjects, there is no king.”

Okay, she'd mull that over later, but she couldn't take time to make sense of it now, because Kona's hooves were thudding away and the thump of Tutu's walking stick followed.

At last, Darby bent down and grabbed a leaf. She held it against her shin.

“Crawl onto this,” she whispered, offering the happy-face spider an alternate route to wherever it was going. “That's it. Yes!”

Careful not to drop the creature, Darby placed the leaf on the rain-forest floor. She exhaled, shook her arms crazily, as if spiders had been creeping all over her, then ran back to Hoku as fast as she could.

P
enny-shaped leaves puffed up from Darby's shoes as she jogged back to camp.

A little out of breath, she stood waiting, but no one came after her.

So Tutu wasn't coming to visit. Maybe she, like Jonah, had just been making sure her city slicker great-granddaughter had survived her first night in the rain forest. And, since Jonah had taken care of that, she'd returned home.

Overstuffed with all she'd heard, Darby's mind craved a simple task.

“I'll think about all that mother and son, father and daughter stuff later,” Darby told Hoku as she passed the corral. “Now we're going to do something fun.”

She dug into her backpack and pulled out the brown paper bag Megan had given her. Some kind of fun training tool, Megan had promised.

Darby sat back on her heels. It was a plastic jar of bubbles.

“Okay,” she said to herself, then backed out of her hut and stood before unscrewing the lid.

She extracted the slippery pink wand and blew.

Three of four iridescent bubbles popped almost as soon as they formed, but one drifted away, rising on tropical breezes.

Hoku nickered, then bolted away from the bubble.

“You're safe, girl.” Darby walked closer to the corral, drew a deep breath, and blew a long stream of bubbles.

Wide-eyed, Hoku launched a kick. When she turned her head to check on her pursuers, an aqua-pink bubble bumped her nose and burst.

Halfway into lowering her head for a buck, Hoku stopped. Her tongue wagged out to lick the bubbles' residue. She shook her forelock and shuddered.

“Not too tasty?” Darby asked.

She blew flocks of bubbles, including one as big as her head, before she dipped the wand, held her arm straight out, and spun in a circle, letting the breeze create a silvery school of bubbles, accustoming the wild filly to another strange thing.

When Hoku finally stopped noticing them, Darby
dropped the wand back in the jar and screwed the lid on.

“I'll be right back,” she said, then returned to her hut to get her diary.

She wanted to write down what Jonah had told her about preserving Hoku's wild instincts. She should remember, but it had sounded like one of the mana lessons and it was a little confusing. Sometimes writing helped her sort out complicated ideas.

She had to write down the conversation between him and Tutu as well and make notes about the wild horse. In fact, she had a lot to think about, and there was no reason she couldn't do it inside Hoku's corral.

Darby knelt on her sleeping bag inside her house of ferns. She found her notebook and was about to crawl back outside, when she heard the breath of a winded horse.

Had someone ridden into her camp? Or was it the wild horse?

Darby flattened herself against her sleeping bag, keeping out of sight. The horse was riderless. With her coat sweat-drenched and shaded by the trees, she didn't look pink. She was the deep red of a gemstone whose name Darby couldn't quite recall.

From her ground-level position, she had a much closer view of the mare than she had yesterday from the steam-vent ridge. The mare was so still, she might have been carved from garnet.

That's it—garnet,
Darby thought. The motionless
mare hardly seemed to breathe.

But then, looking alert but not afraid, the mare raised her head and searched the clearing. Her wet neck twisted from side to side and she ignored Hoku's nickers.

What are you looking for, girl?
Darby wondered. Somewhere in her mind, she knew what, besides water, had drawn the mare here. She just hadn't figured it out yet, because she was fixated on the feud between Megan and Cade.

Deep-chested and broad-hooved, the mare's conformation was a match for the form of Black Lava, the stallion from Crimson Vale.

Except for her scars.

Darby winced at the slashes scoring the mare's stomach and hind legs. They cut through the horse's pink hair, down to her black hide.

Wild horses ran at the first sign of danger. So why had the mare stayed still long enough to be ripped that way?

Maybe she'd been protecting a foal. Or she might have fallen. A vine might have acted as a snare and some predator, seeing her apparently helpless, had attacked.

Before Darby reached a conclusion, the mare picked her way to the corral. She and Hoku touched noses, squealed, and shied. Their hooves clattered and tapped, but they moved only a few feet from each other, then returned to sniff each other's necks.

Lifting her chin as high as she could, Hoku looked past the roan to Darby. Hoku's look-at-me snort made the other horse turn.

A whorl of hair on the roan's forehead had the effect of making her look friendly. The mare spotted Darby and studied her.

Since she'd already been noticed, Darby crawled out of her hut and straightened, inch by inch, until she stood at her full height. The mare blinked. Muscles in her shoulders tensed, but Darby stood absolutely still.

The mare didn't bolt until Darby spoke.

“Tango—”

The first syllable of the name had barely left Darby's mouth when the roan recoiled and collided with the fence. Then, Tango backed away, head jerking skyward, still scrutinizing Darby.

She'd been expecting Megan, of course, because this was the rose roan, the pink horse Megan had lost on the day her father had died.

It made sense that the horse would mistake her for the other girl. Megan must have grown in the last eighteen months, but the mare remembered her as she had been.

Darby lifted her hand from her side and extended it toward the confused roan.

Tango was a tame horse. Or had been. So it shouldn't be that hard to lure her closer.

It's okay,
she told the mare silently.
You're safe here.

Someone, probably Megan's dad, judging by those scars, had ridden Tango on the day of the accident. Carrying a rider, the mare wouldn't have been able to flee when she sensed danger. Reins would have held her in place until the pain came and it was too late.

This time, nothing will hurt you.

The mare had bad memories of this place, but she'd returned.

If only I knew what drew you here,
Darby thought,
maybe I could remind you what gentle human hands feel like, and give Megan a head start on winning you back.

A slippery sound came from Hoku and Darby noticed the filly licking at her nose where the bubble had broken.

The bubbles! Of course. Megan had told her she'd used bubbles with Tango. She hadn't said Tango by name, of course; she'd just mentioned using them with her horse.

What if Tango had caught the bubble scent, so different from anything else in the rain forest, and sought out the kind human with the bubbles?

Still facing the horses, Darby bent her knees and reached behind her for the plastic bottle.

Hoku's rapt expression made Darby smile, but then she wobbled, knocking over her backpack. It hit the camp lantern and it struck the jar of bubbles, which rolled out of reach.

The noise was bad enough, but when Darby
swiveled to grab the jar, the mare jumped a full length away from the corral. With her second leap, she was gone and the rustle of leaves faded into silence.

Oh yeah, I'm some horse charmer,
Darby thought. It was a good thing Jonah hadn't been here to see the mess she'd made of trying to trust her mana.

Hoku neighed after the mare. She paced along her fence, shot Darby a glare, then neighed again.

“I know, it was my fault this time,” Darby confessed.

Jonah had talked about letting Hoku keep her instincts. This must be what he'd meant. Tango might have been drawn to the clearing by food and company, but her wild instincts told her not to take any chances with strange girls who made loud noises.

 

It was late afternoon when Cade showed up.

He emerged from the rain forest so silently, he was in the middle of Darby's camp before she noticed him.

Had he gotten over feeling guilty about this place where Ben died? Darby wondered. Or maybe he'd gotten over his sadness.

It wasn't like he was a suspect, Darby thought, but all the same it was relief that made Darby blurt out her news before Cade said a word.

“Megan's horse isn't dead. I found her. Well, saw her. At least, I'm pretty sure I did.”

Cade went so still, he could have passed for one
of the rain-forest trees.

“A rose roan,” Darby rushed on, “about fourteen hands high, with a little”—Darby pinwheeled her index finger on her forehead—“twirl in her hair, here.”

Cade carried a rifle. Darby blinked, amazed she'd just noticed.

Everything about the young paniolo was meant to blend in. His pullover shirt was a shade between buff and faded green. His tanned face was a close match for his brown hat. His short, vaquero-style braided hair, which would have looked startlingly blond, was tucked up, out of sight.

His arms hung at his sides. He held a packet of something that smelled delicious and was undoubtedly for her in his right hand. But he gripped a rifle in his left.

“That horse skull wasn't hers,” Cade muttered, and Darby had been so distracted, it took her a few seconds to remember the rumor of Cade's stepfather having a horse skull nailed up on a barn wall.

She thought of the tales of the Shining Stallion, too, a horse Jonah had reportedly shot, and Cade's comment didn't make much sense to her.

“Why would the skull be hers? Didn't it show a bullet hole?”

“Forget it.” Cade gave his head a quick shake. “How long ago?” He pushed the food parcel at Darby. “I've got to go get her.”

“Let's do it together,” Darby said, and though she took the parcel, she ignored the aroma of chicken and sesame.

“I lost her; I'll catch her,” Cade snapped.

“You lost her?” Darby asked. “Were you riding Tango?”

Cade looked right at Darby, but his eyes lost focus. She had the feeling he was reliving that day.

He looked almost bewildered. But just for an instant. Then his expression hardened and he said, “Megan wasn't riding Tango and neither was I. Ben was….”

And Ben died.

“But I lost her.”

With Cade standing right in front of her, Darby couldn't find the solution to the mystery. If Cade said he'd lost Tango, he probably had. But why had Ben died?

“Well, I saw Tango about three hours ago,” Darby estimated. “So you might as well keep me company while I eat.”

Cade started to refuse, but then he lowered himself to sit on the sleeping bag she'd dragged out of her hut so they didn't have to sit on the dirt.

“Is that why you didn't want to come out here?” Darby asked.

Cade frowned, then shook his head. “I was helping Kimo fix the idiot water heater.”

“Oh,” she said.

Darby didn't expect Cade to be a chatty dinner companion, and he wasn't, but she was too busy unwrapping the package of Auntie Cathy's spring rolls to interrogate him any further.

Her mouth watered with sudden hunger and when Cade motioned her to go ahead and eat, she did.

For a second, Darby considered unearthing the chocolate bar she'd hidden.

Feeling guilty and a little greedy, she didn't, but she did offer him her last coconut cookie—which he accepted—before she bit into her spring roll.

“Mmm,” Darby said. “Thanks for bringing this.”

Cade gave a half smile. He sat cross-legged with the rifle across his lap. Darby trusted him to be careful, but the weapon made her uneasy.

“Why didn't you leave that on your saddle?” she asked.

“In my scabbard,” he corrected.

“Okay,” Darby said, biting her lip for a second. “Or why didn't you just ride in here?”

“You're not supposed to ride in this forest. Jonah and your tutu don't allow it. And there's no way I'd leave my rifle unattended,” he said. The way he stroked a hand over his polished wooden stock made Darby think he was proud of it, but he added, “Besides, what's the sense in carrying a rifle if it's out of reach?”

Did he mean Joker could spook and the rifle could fall? Or did he think he might need a gun?

Darby didn't ask, and Cade shifted the topic to her homework from Jonah. She was supposed to write down twenty-five things Hoku did tomorrow.

“Anything?” Darby asked. “Like scratching her neck on the fence?”

“Yeah,” Cade said.

Darby thought about this as she chewed her spring roll and drank gulps of water. She could see the sense in Jonah's assignment. Observing Hoku's sounds and movements was something Darby did instinctively, but she'd probably think about them more carefully if she wrote them down.

With her stomach full, Darby noticed the thoughtful way Cade broke a piece off his cookie. He popped it into his mouth, but Darby didn't think he savored it.

He's still brooding over Tango,
she thought, but then Cade began talking about something totally different.

“In the old days, when paniolo were just getting started, they'd find bulls in the forest. They were too wild to herd back to the ranch, so they'd rope 'em and tie 'em to a tame ox overnight. The calm creature soothed the rough one, yeah? And when a rider came back out in the morning, he could lead 'em both home.”

Cade took a breath and looked at Darby to see if she understood.

What in the world did this have to do with Tango? Darby wondered, but she nodded, encouraging Cade to go on.

“Just for a little experiment, me and Ben tried that….”

Darby felt chills, thinking Megan's dad must have been a kind man, to work with the abused boy Cade had been when Jonah first adopted him. In just a few words, Cade had implied that Ben had taught him paniolo ways and treated him like a partner.

“Ben was nice to you,” Darby said.

“Ben was nice to everybody,” Cade snapped, but he looked a little confused. “The only thing anyone could fault him for was being a little too thrifty.”