Lei and the Fire Goddess, page 5
It made no sense!
“Aaaaarrrrrggghhhhh!” Anna shouted out, punching a fist into the ground next to her.
She was tired, and she wasn’t making any progress. She should have made it to the collapsed tube by now. She felt moisture seeping through her jeans where they touched the wet ground, so she pulled her rain jacket out of her backpack, spread it on the path, and sat cross-legged with her backpack in her lap. Okay, Anna, pull yourself together. There has to be a reason why you don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Maybe you just need to clear your mind. Focus on something else to get unstuck. She pulled and snapped at the extra hair band on her wrist and tried to clear her mind.
“Oh sure, Anna. Just focus on something other than your missing friend.” The fern in front of her bobbed in the wind, looking like it was either agreeing or laughing at her. She stuck her tongue out at it and instantly felt ridiculous. If Ridley and Hennley could see her now . . .
Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. They couldn’t see her now now—she still didn’t have reception—but it’d be good to start capturing this journey. She pulled her bag around and grabbed her phone. Confirming it was on airplane mode and battery saver, she snapped a quick selfie in front of a wild orchid and ferns. The lush greenery was definitely way different than the aspen, pines, and columbines she’d see on hikes in the Colorado mountains.
Animals in both places were pretty different, too. In Colorado, they had to use bear bags to protect their food from brown bears on backpacking trips. Mountain lion and coyote warnings were posted at trailheads. Here, the scariest thing to run into would be a wild boar, a puaʻa. Anna put her phone back and thought back to her encounter with one in this very jungle.
It also happened to have been the first time she’d met Kaipo.
A Bat
It was Anna’s first summer after moving to Colorado—right after kindergarten and her first snowy winter that seemed to stretch on and on. She’d been so excited to go back to what she still considered her home to stay with Tūtū for three weeks. Tūtū had all her favorite meals planned, and they hit the shave ice place on the way to Tūtū’s from the airport. It was basically heaven.
A couple of days into her visit, Tūtū was hanging laundry, making the most of the sunny day while Anna wandered around the corner of the house to explore the edge of the jungle. Anna could hear Tūtū humming in the distance, and she hummed along, collecting wild orchids into a bouquet. Sudden movement in the ferns snared her attention.
A puaʻa.
The wild boar was partially hidden—only its two tusks and wiry black mane poking off the top of its black head was visible. Anna froze. She’d only ever seen them from the kitchen windows as they trotted across Tūtū’s lawn from time to time. This close, it was huge, especially since she was so small. She slowly backed away, but her shoe got caught on something and she’d fallen. Her sudden movement caused the boar to toss its head. It snorted and took a step toward her, coming out of the brush.
Anna remembered sucking in a huge lungful of air, sure she’d be able to scream loud enough for Tūtū to hear her, but it all went whooshing out when a boy stepped out of the jungle between her and the wild boar. He was just a little taller than her but didn’t seem worried about the mean-looking pig at all. He offered her his hand and helped pull her to standing.
“You see that guava tree over there?” he asked in a quiet voice, pointing behind her. Anna could still recall the eerie calm that emanated from him. It felt like a weighted blanket, holding her together. A warm hug.
Super weird to feel after being terrified a second earlier. She’d wondered about it later, but in the moment, she was grateful to have help.
Anna had looked quickly over her shoulder to the tree and nodded. “Good. Go slowly and climb it.” Anna focused on his face for a minute, then decided it seemed like a good-enough plan and backed up a few steps. As she moved away from the boy, the sense of calm dissipated, and her fear broke back through. She turned and wanted to run. All her muscles twitched and jumped; her brain screamed, Get away!!!
“Slowly,” the boy reminded her, staying where he was by the pig.
How could he be that chill? Anna clenched her fists and took huge, slow steps. As soon as she reached the tree, she took hold of the lowest branches and pulled herself up, up, and up.
Suddenly, his voice came from right under her. “That’s enough.” She almost let go of the branch in surprise. How’d he get to her so fast?
She looked down into the calm eyes of this strange boy.
“The puaʻa is gone.”
Anna looked back, and sure enough, the wild boar had disappeared. Relief was so strong that she promptly forgot about any weirdness. She lowered herself out of the tree and ran to the laundry line, pausing only once she reached Tūtū’s skirt to look back. The boy lifted a hand and turned back into the jungle. When she questioned her grandma, Tūtū said the boy was Kaipo. She said he was safe and lived nearby. Anna remembered watching the edge of the jungle, sure she’d see either the boy or the pig pop back out.
Kaipo kept her waiting till the next day. He showed up at Tūtū’s door, inviting her to go pick blackberries. Since then, Kaipo had been a near constant fixture at Tūtū’s house. And Anna hadn’t run into a wild boar since.
Movement from above caught her eye, dragging her back to the present. A wild boar had found her! Anna zipped straight into flight mode as she backpedaled frantically before realizing pigs didn’t fly. And they certainly weren’t smaller than her face.
As her heart restarted, she studied the small flapping creature. It darted about, circling above her head before descending lower and lower until it landed on a skinny branch in front of her and hung upside down. It was as small as her hand and kind of furry. It was mostly brown, with a patch of white behind its left ear. She’d seen bats before, typically at campsites zigzagging back and forth above their heads at twilight when they camped in Colorado. The tiny creatures never stayed in one place long enough to get a good look at them, but this one was pretty still now. Anna froze, afraid to scare it off. Hawaiʻi had bats? Huh, she never knew.
Its tiny eyes seemed to be watching her intently, so Anna slowly packed up her bag. Maybe she was close to its house or something. Were bats territorial? Dusting off the bottom of her jacket, still damp from the ground, she tied it around her waist and slowly scooted around the bat, giving it as much space as possible on the narrow footpath. The bat took flight again, swooping up the trail, and stopping once more to hang from a branch at Anna’s eye level, just ahead of her. Anna paused and looked at the bat.
“Okay, I see you. I’m not trying to bother you or your family, little guy,” she said as she moved carefully around it yet again. Don’t bats have rabies or some other bad disease? Could this one be sick? Maybe it is stalking me and wants to bite me. Where IS that sinkhole?
The bat flew ahead again, this time brushing Anna’s shoulder. Anna did a full-body shudder and rubbed the spot of contact. No traces of drool or foam. There’d be drool or foam if there was rabies, right? Or was that a mad dog?
The bat landed on a guava branch in front of her and started to open and close one of its wings, as if trying to get her attention.
“Just stay back! I’m trying to give you your space. You can fly off and go find some bugs to eat somewhere.” Anna ducked under the bat and kept walking only to feel a bump on her shoulder. “Okay, now I KNOW you did that on purpose,” she said, checking the spot again. “What the heck?” She stopped and the bat flew in front of her again and hung upside down on a branch, frantically opening and closing both wings.
Anna huffed. “So you’re just going to come with me, then? Are you trying to tell me something? Should I know flagging code like those guys at the airport who direct the planes that I always try to decode on my flights over here? Okay, two wings—left wing—right wing—left wing—two wings—right wing— Hey!” The bat flew right at Anna’s head. She ducked, almost losing her footing as it flapped around in her hair, then returned to a tree in front of her. Anna pulled out her hair band and quickly gathered the loose flyaways before drawing it back into a tight ponytail. I swear it looks like its little hands are on its hips and it’s glaring at me.
“I don’t know what you want!” Anna shouted at the tiny bat, putting her own hands on her hips. “Why are you getting mad at me? I’m stuck in the jungle on a path that doesn’t seem to be taking me anywhere, trying to find my friend who was kidnapped by a giant hawk, who I guess could be tied to Pele. And I haven’t found the sinkhole, let alone started to make any progress on hiking up the volcano, and now I’m talking to a bat and half expecting an answer! What do you want from me?!”
“Ho, it’s about time!” the bat said.
The Fissure
Anna stumbled backward, tripping over a root in the trail, and landed on her butt, which was thankfully still covered by her rain jacket that she had tied around her waist.
“Wha . . . wha . . . what?! Did you . . . did you just . . . No, I must have imag—” The talking bat was likely a stress-induced hallucination, like the stress-induced headaches her mom sometimes got when she was working on some big physics problem. Yeah. That made sense.
“Oh, for flap’s sake!” the bat said in a girl-boss-vibey voice, waving one of her wings in Anna’s face like she was shaking a finger. “Don’t even think about going back down that road. I mean, I know Kaipo said you were a struggle, but I didn’t think you’d be this obstinately oblivious.”
Obstinately oblivious? Wait. “You know Kaipo?”
“Keep up. I said I did. Oh, are you, like, one of those kids who likes to play jokes on people? And I thought I had it rough with Kahi.”
Kahi? Who? What? Anna’s brain scrambled to keep up.
“Come on, kuewa, we go. You do want to find Kaipo, right? I would think you’d want to help him out before Pele gets bored. She’s ended many ʻaumākua that way.”
Anna, thinking she’d lost her mind, looked up from her spot on the jungle floor. The bat used “we go” like Tūtū did.
“Right. Sure. Ended ʻaumākua,” she repeated. The word tickled something from her memories, but she ignored it, closed her eyes, and counted to ten the way she’d seen her mom calm herself.
“Kuewa, you coming or not?” the bat said. This time, Anna picked up on the word but not the meaning. Kuewa? Anna opened one eye. The bat was still there. Very persistent hallucination.
“Okay,” Anna said. She nodded really fast and frowned, trying to think it through. Right. If at first it doesn’t disappear, maybe go with it? “So we’re going to go together. Because you’re a bat. So yeah, nothing weird at all about me following you to search for Kaipo.” This is the most bizarre day ever.
“Finally,” the bat said, and she unlatched from the tree and flapped her way down the trail.
“I wasn’t serious! That was sarcasm!” Anna called out after her. “I’m defending my sarcasm to a bat,” she muttered as she got up, dusted off her butt, and jogged down the trail after the winged mammal.
“Hey, if you’re really a bat, and I’m really talking to you, go grab that purple orchid and pick it,” Anna said, testing the creature.
“Are you like this all the time? No wonder Kaipo is the master. You’d drive me batty in a day.” The bat dove close to Anna’s face and fluttered there a beat.
Anna blinked. Kaipo was a master what?
“For real? Not even a smile at the ‘batty’ thing, huh? Figures you don’t even have a sense of humor. I’m so not picking a flower for you,” the bat said.
“Ha! I knew it,” Anna said, relieved. “You’re imaginary. A weird stress creation. Don’t know why I felt it when you bumped into me, though . . .” Anna pondered this, and her jog slowed to a walk. The bat grumbled some Hawaiian under her breath that Anna couldn’t pick up and flew to the purple orchid. She started patting at it with one wing while the other wing flapped furiously, keeping her up.
“Here! Happy now? Is this good enough for you?” Then the bat flew up and continued down the path muttering to herself about having to cooperate with a human that wasn’t even her human.
What in the name of sandy beaches was going on? With all the things she’d seen and, well, heard, Anna felt like her brain was swelling so much, it’d pop out of her ears. Apparently the bat was . . . real? If that were true, then . . . crud. Anna’s armpits started sweating, and she knew it wasn’t just the humidity. Definitely in over her head here. But maybe the bat—and she couldn’t believe she was thinking this—could help her. She snapped the extra hair band on her wrist, the sting grounding her in her new reality, and started jogging again.
“Hey, how do you know about Kaipo?” Anna asked when she caught up. “Have you seen him? What’s going on? And what’s a kuewa? My tūtū didn’t teach me that one.”
“You acted all akamai when you picked Pele’s lehua, why don’t you tell me?”
Well, she had her there. Picking the flower was proving to be the least-smart thing Anna’d done in a while.
“I didn’t mean for Kaipo to get taken,” Anna said. Mega understatement.
“Oh greaaaat. You didn’t even mean it, and you managed to call the goddess of the freaking volcano. Next time, keep your Doubty McDoubterness to yourself,” the bat said.
Fair point. “You said you know Kaipo? Kaipo’s talked to you? Do you know where he is? Can you help me find him?” Anna asked, following the bat.
“I don’t know, can I? Do you think you need help? Or are you too all knowing, all powerful, all human?”
“Ummm, I mean, I am human . . . ,” Anna said, not sure how to respond.
The bat flipped over so she was flying backward, like a backstroke in midair, and watched Anna. “Are you always like this?” She shook her little head. “Look, I’ll try to explain it nice and slow so even you can understand: I need. To get. Kaipo. Back.”
“Watch out for the—” Anna interrupted, but the bat zipped over the frond that extended over the trail right before crashing.
“We fliers stick together,” she continued, fully into her rant. “He was helping me with something. Something important. Something I need him to complete. But I can’t complete it, can I? Because somebody ticked off Pele and had him kidnapped.” Was the bat glaring at her? Her furry face was so little, it was hard to tell. What had she called herself?
“Wait, what do you mean, fliers?”
“Fliers? Did I say fliers? I meant . . . Breyers. Yeah, we have an ice cream of the month club.” She turned to face away from Anna again. “Whatever, stop interrupting. If Kaipo didn’t tell you, it was probably because he knew you wouldn’t listen. You don’t deserve him.”
Whoa. Anna stopped short, feeling the quick burn of tears prick her eyes. The bat flew on for a bit before she stopped and hung on a branch, facing away. Mean talking bat. She didn’t know what Anna was like. Anna wouldn’t have ever hurt Kaipo on purpose.
Sure, there was the time she squished his fingers when he tried to boost her up into the guava tree and she accidentally stepped on his hand. Or the time they had pails of rainwater they were randomly swinging around to see who’d get dizzy and fall down first (the lack of things to do led them to try some truly interesting things), and she accidentally let go of the handle, and he tried to catch it before it went through Tūtū’s window, and it hit him in the head. Okay, and yeah, there was that time that a wasp in the blackberry bush freaked her out, and she essentially shoved Kaipo out of the bush ahead of her, and he got scratches on his arms. But those were never intentional.
Anna’s stomach turned like she’d eaten some bad mango, the sweet memories overpowered by her bruised pride. She knew what she had to do. Kaipo was this creature’s friend, too. With her crummy attitude, maybe the bat didn’t have too many. It’d explain why she was so mad at her. Anna knew what being friendless was like.
“I’m sorry.” Anna looked at her toes as she apologized. “I hate that he’s gone. I didn’t know.”
“Don’t get all mushy on me. Let’s go. I don’t want you out here in the dark. Guessing you can’t see as well as I can,” the bat said.
“Wait, I thought you were blind and used echolocation?” Anna couldn’t help herself.
“Musubi, musu-bye,” the bat said. “Same difference. It’s how I don’t bang into things. You coming?” The bat flew down the trail.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Anna asked.
“I’m a talking bat, what do you think?”
Anna hesitated. The bat didn’t answer her question. Really, she hadn’t given her any information at all. But she was a talking bat who was a friend of Kaipo’s. The odds of that happening had to be, like, a gazillion to one. So, the tiny mammal had to be special, right? And special creatures knew things, right? Why else would the bat have come to find her? Obviously they were going to form some amazing team and go rescue Kaipo. Like Batman and Robin, but more just Girlbat and Human.
Anna made to move forward, but her pack snagged on a branch behind her. She turned to free it and gasped.
“My arrow!” Anna said.
“What now?” the bat groaned from up ahead.
