Rain Forest Rose Page 4

  “I know pueo is our family guardian, but is that one a pet?” Darby asked.

  Tutu tsked her tongue, then said, “More of a burglar.”

  Darby shivered, noticing the sky outside had gone cloudy. “I should probably get going. I’ve got a map, but I’m not too sure how far it is to the corral.”

  “I am,” Tutu said. “You’re very close, and I’ll help you on your way.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Darby said, and her spirits soared at the security of having a guide.

  “I’ll finish making lunch while you send Navigator home,” Tutu said.

  As quickly as her mood had soared, it plummeted.

  Once she sent Navigator back to the ranch, she’d be a pedestrian again. Plus, she’d miss the brown gelding’s sureness in finding his way home. But she’d promised to send him off when she got where she was going. If she didn’t do it soon, Jonah would worry and come after her.

  Hoku watched Darby emerge onto the cottage porch. Sorrel ears pointed at the girl as she balanced on one foot, then the other, tugging on her boots.

  “Really fascinating, huh?” Darby teased her horse.

  Hoku shook her head, then lowered her lips to the grass. The reins that were looped over Navigator’s saddle horn barely allowed her to graze.

  “How am I going to eat and keep hold of you at the same time?” Darby asked the filly, but it was Tutu who answered.

  “Wait a bit more to send Navigator home. We’ll sit on the step and watch them while we eat.”

  With none of the stiffness Darby expected from someone so old, Tutu sat on the wooden step, holding a plate of food. “Please help yourself,” she said graciously.

  First, Darby settled beside her great-grandmother and took a deep breath. She smelled ginger and sweet fruit, and her lungs expanded without a twinge.

  “That tea was amazing,” she said politely.

  Then Darby picked up one of the smooth, white dumplings Tutu called a pork bun. Even though she was a pretty adventurous eater, Darby started with a slice of mango before taking a polite nip of the unfamiliar pork bun.

  “Oh my gosh, you made this?”

  The half-sweet, half-savory bun was delicious.

  “It’s nothing. You just put barbecued pork in a sweetened dough, roll it up like a ball, and cook it over steam.” Tutu smiled as Darby popped the rest of the bun into her mouth. “You can get them in any Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles, I’m sure.”

  “Maybe,” Darby said, “but I’ve never had one. Or two.”

  Darby ate more mango before reaching for another pork bun. Then she stopped snacking. She didn’t want to waddle all the way to the kipuka corral.

  “Ready to go?” Tutu asked after she’d returned the plate to the house. One hand covered the top of her walking stick. Her shapeless dress and scarf ends floated on wind Darby couldn’t feel as Tutu took strong strides toward her.

  “Sure,” Darby said, then began talking to Hoku. “My favorite mustang,” she smooched as Hoku nickered.

  Only Hoku’s eyes moved as she tracked Darby, lifting Navigator’s reins over his head, then unhooked the loop of Hoku’s lead rope from his saddle horn.

  Navigator swallowed his last mouthful of grass and trotted off before Darby could swat him on the rump as Jonah had told her to do.

  “Let’s go,” Tutu said, not giving Darby time to cast a melancholy look after the gelding.

  They’d been walking only a few minutes when Darby heard something following them.

  “That’s Prettypaint,” Tutu said, but the horse was gone before Darby saw her.

  “Is she a pinto?” Darby asked.

  “No, I’ve never known what color to call her, or which breed she is. She came to me as a pale gray with blue-gray spots on her heels, and your mother named her Prettypaint.

  “She never wanders far, in case I want to ride, but she seems to know when I want to walk. I think she notices my stick,” Tutu said, giving the ground a thump with her staff.

  Darby was trying to do a quick calculation of her great-grandmother’s age—her mom, Ellen, was thirty-five, so Jonah had to be at least fifty-five—when Tutu interrupted her thoughts.

  “What? Are you surprised that an old lady like me still rides?”

  “Not really,” Darby said, thinking that Tutu must be over seventy-five years old, “but I think it’s cool that you do. Not many ladies your age—whatever that is—are equestrians.”

  Tutu’s laugh made Hoku turn with pricked ears.

  “Hello, sweetheart.” Tutu offered her palm for the filly to sniff, then whispered to Hoku, “Tell your girl that a woman raised on the Island of Wild Horses would be a sorry soul if she didn’t learn to ride early and well.”

  Hoku glanced at Darby for permission, then extended her nose. Taking a noisy breath, the sorrel inhaled Tutu’s scent, then allowed the old woman to stroke her mane.

  That’s how I want to be when I’m old, Darby thought. Exactly.

  As they walked, Tutu told Darby that everything had come to Hawaii by wind, water, or wing.

  “A seed could be blown here from another island, or washed up ashore or carried in the feathers of a bird,” Tutu said. “But it took so very long for meat and plant eaters to arrive, most of our native plants and animals are defenseless.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Our briars don’t have thorns. Our stinging nettles don’t, either, and neither do our raspberries. Even the mint plants—which most animals shy away from—don’t taste like mint. When pigs and chickens landed here, native plants served themselves up like a salad bar.”

  Darby frowned. She’d never thought of plants protecting themselves. Still, she’d bet poison oak would get trampled a lot more often if people weren’t afraid of breaking out in an itchy rash.

  “And the poor birds.” Tutu shook her head. “They lived here so long without predators, they became flightless. When explorers from other islands arrived, all they had to do was walk up and club birds over the head.”

  Darby winced.

  All at once, Hoku stopped. The white star on her chest rose as she breathed deeply and turned her head from side to side, nostrils flared.

  “I don’t see anything,” Darby told the filly, but Hoku wasn’t comforted.

  “The rain forest is a good place to use senses other than your eyes,” Tutu said. “You can’t see more than a few yards in each direction anyway, since the trees stand so close to one another.”

  “I’m not sure my other senses are much good,” Darby said.

  “They are,” Tutu said. “You’ve already learned to question what you think you know. You’re open to other languages, like that of your horse. That’s what being a horse charmer is about, yes?”

  “I’m not sure I’m really a horse charmer like Jonah,” Darby said, ducking her head. Even though her grandfather had said much the same thing to her this morning, she still didn’t trust her mana enough to accept Tutu’s praise.

  Darby pulled gently on the lead rope, but Hoku still wouldn’t follow.

  “You have more confidence in my horse charming than Hoku does,” Darby complained, but quietly, so that she might pick up what the filly’s swiveling ears heard.

  “Here’s where I leave you,” Tutu said, giving Darby a hug. “Which way does your map take you from here?”

  Darby slid the map out of her pocket. “From here,” she said, turning the map so that the inverted V symbolizing Tutu’s house was behind her, “I go past Pele’s Porch?”

  “It’s just a hillside,” Tutu clarified.

  “And the Steam Vent?” Darby raised her eyebrows.

  “Just what it sounds like,” Tutu told her.

  “And then over to the camp.”

  “Easy enough,” Tutu said, “if you keep going downhill toward the sound of water.”

  Tutu’s thin arms wrapped Darby in a hug that smelled of cookies and violets. Then she stepped back. “Don’t forget, I’m only fifteen minutes away if you ne
ed me.”

  “I won’t forget,” Darby said, and then an exhilaration of being on her own sparked through her, and Darby led Hoku away.

  A little while later, Darby noticed a notch in the hillside and decided that must be Pele’s Porch. It was a good place to stop and scope out the place where she and Hoku would be camping. That way, she could see what she was walking into.

  When she paused there, she had a view of the kipuka below.

  The lush, primeval wood could have existed forever, wreathed by lava that stuck up like broken crystals around a forest of yellow and red flowered trees. Right in the center, almost like a bull’s-eye, was the spot where she’d sleep tonight.

  A bull’s-eye? How ominous was that?

  This is Hawaii, Darby lectured herself. There’s nothing to be afraid of down there.

  But she was taking no chances. She was in charge. If she led Hoku into danger, she’d have no one to blame except herself.

  Okay, so the rain forest looked as if there was no threat in it.

  Darby closed her eyes. There was no one around to make fun of her if she used her other senses the way Tutu had told her to do.

  Darby sniffed. At first she caught nothing but the lush smell of green plants. Then, there was a dry, Halloweenish smell of brown leaves, and a moist smell like a shower that had misted up a mirror. Closer, she breathed in the sweet, leathery scent of Hoku.

  Darby listened. Rainwater gushed gurgling over stones. A bird said, E e vee.

  “I’m not like a snake,” Darby told Hoku. “I can’t flick out my forked tongue and taste danger.” She didn’t see, hear, smell, or taste anything wrong, Darby thought, so that left—

  “Ow!” She gasped as Hoku lunged forward and stepped on the toe of her boot.

  At the same time, she heard something crash through low branches in the rain forest below.

  She held a finger to her lips for quiet, and made a quick, fruitless survey of what lay below, before trying to jerk her boot’s toe out from under Hoku’s hoof.

  Her foot was trapped, but luckily Megan’s hand-me-down boots were a little too big. Most of Hoku’s weight rested on empty leather.

  Darby pushed her palm against the filly’s shoulder.

  “Hoku, get off. Why do you pick now not to shy when I touch you?”

  But the wild filly’s attention was fixed on something in the rain forest.

  For a creature that looked so weightless in motion, Hoku’s single hoof was heavy. Darby imagined herself with cracked toe bones, limping to her destination.

  “That’s not going to happen,” Darby told the filly.

  Darby wrapped the striped lead rope around her hand, then leaned her shoulder against the filly’s. She pushed with all her weight until finally, looking insulted, Hoku stepped away.

  Darby would have grabbed her crushed foot and groaned in relief if Hoku hadn’t slipped past her, stalking whatever she’d sensed ahead.

  “Is this it?” Darby asked. The unexpected sight transfixed her, too.

  Steam came wavering up through a crack in the bottom of an indentation. She didn’t know what it was called, but it looked like someone had dropped something big and heavy—like a truck—on the ground.

  It was like something she’d see on the Discovery Channel, Darby marveled. Logically, it had something to do with volcanoes, but the Two Sisters were far off on the horizon.

  Darby veered around it, and kept going downhill toward the rushing of water. Once the ground leveled out, Darby kept Hoku from eating some yellow flowers Auntie Cathy called Madagascar daisies, and then led the filly over hardened black lava.

  Some of the lava had cooled in waves, but most of it had broken into shards. Still, Hoku picked her way over it, following Darby, as if she trusted her.

  Then, there were trees crowded side by side, with branches poking out from ground level, instead of up on the trunk like Darby would have expected. And, finally, a clearing.

  Someone had cut back trees growing around the corral and wooden lean-to, and the flat patch was overrun with grass, vines, and creeping plants.

  Darby heard a splash. Her gaze followed the trail of longer, greener grass. It showed where water pooled, became a rivulet, and wandered, losing its sense of direction, then going off on a tangent before it gathered enough water to become a real stream.

  Head bobbing up and down, mane flowing in the waves, Hoku pulled Darby along.

  At last, almost by accident, they both saw the place where the trickling water turned into a silvery moss brook, and a creature that almost had to be a mythical beast.

  Not a unicorn. There was no such thing. But Darby decided it was a creature just as rare.

  Drinking with her muzzle thrust into her rosy reflection, a pink horse stood.

  Chapter 4

  Darby placed her hand over Hoku’s nose, forming a grip of gentle dominance so the filly would stay quiet. Without looking, she knew the filly was about to greet the strange horse. She’d heard Hoku’s lips move in the beginning of a nicker.

  Puzzled by her human’s use of horse sign language, Hoku lowered her head a little, but still watched the pink horse.

  They both had a pretty good view, though the horse was about a quarter-mile downhill, in the center of the forest.

  As the horse raised her head from drinking and backed away from the water, Darby saw she had large, wide-set eyes that suited her dished, Arab head. But her resemblance to an Arabian ended there.

  The mare’s black tail was low-set. Her black-maned neck wasn’t high flung. Though she wasn’t tall, her hooves looked nearly as big as Navigator’s.

  A different kind of beautiful from you, Darby thought. Her fingers tousled Hoku’s mane as the filly nudged her knee, trying to pull Darby’s attention away from the strange horse.

  Sturdy and intelligent looking, the mare would be a horse you could count on in rough country. Or going over slick rocks near waterfalls.

  Could she be a wild horse from Crimson Vale?

  If she was, why had she wandered to a campsite with a corral and lean-to that must smell strongly of humans?

  The mare had come for the water, of course. Jonah had said the stream ran pure and sweet. But the horse didn’t take quick sips, then glance around warily as you’d expect a mustang to do.

  She could be feral—once owned, then free—as Hoku had been.

  Darby tried to think like a horse, but she didn’t have much luck. She was too busy wondering if Manny, Cade’s cruel stepfather, had managed to drive the entire wild herd from Crimson Vale. If the horses had split up, this could be one of them.

  Or maybe the mare had wandered off on her own. Darby had read that wild stallions drove their male offspring away to live in little herds called bachelor bands. Could this mare have left with her girlfriends to explore the island?

  Darby was thinking so hard, she wasn’t ready for Hoku’s whinny.

  The pink mare looked right at them and trembled. When Hoku lifted her front hooves from the ground and gave a bad-tempered neigh, the roan backed through a thin spot in the foliage, which closed over the place where she’d been.

  Darby released a sigh.

  “Thanks, Miss Cranky Mouth,” Darby said.

  Hoku’s unapologetic snort made Darby rub the sorrel’s withers. She didn’t have to be a horse charmer to understand that.

  I’m not supposed to be petting you for no reason, Darby thought, but jealousy translated easily in any language. She wanted Hoku to know she had nothing to worry about.

  All at once, Hoku’s expression changed. She stepped forward, nostrils quivering with a longing that Darby recognized right away. As clearly as if she’d spelled it in the dirt with her hoof, Hoku had said “hay.”

  Darby sighed at her mistake.

  Cade must have left some down there in the corral or lean-to. The filly loved hay above all other foods.

  “So you weren’t jealously guarding me,” Darby said, but Hoku was in no mood to be teased. She stared at the le
an-to, refusing to turn her head at Darby’s tug on the lead rope. “You were worried that horse would get your hay, weren’t you? Well, we have a way to go before we get to it.”

  They had to trek downhill, cross the lava rock, and walk through the rain forest before they reached the campsite.

  You can’t miss it, Cade had told her, but Darby still wanted to get going. If they hurried, they could get there before the sun set.

  Just then, Darby spotted the perfect shortcut. A log had fallen in the rain forest and spanned the lava rock underneath. Not quite perfect, Darby realized as she took a closer look. It might be wide enough for Hoku to walk across, but the log was coated with moss. One misstep would send them both plummeting to the sharp lava rock below.

  “C’mon, girl,” Darby said, and Hoku must have understood her urgency, because she obeyed at once.

  As soon as she and Hoku began picking their way down the hillside, they lost their overhead view of the campsite. At ground level, the trees formed a brown-and-green hump before them on the other side of the black lava rock.

  Placing their steps carefully, they didn’t make a single slip. Once they’d crossed the hard surface, Darby decided to pick up the pace.

  It wouldn’t be long before the sun sunk too low to penetrate the canopy of leaves.

  “Let’s hurry,” she told her horse, but Hoku tossed her head, eyeing the wall of trees warily. Then the filly stopped.

  Darby stroked Hoku’s sweaty neck and looked at the forest as she would if she, like Hoku, had lived most of her life in Nevada. Even when Shan Stonerow had held her captive, the filly had been able to see open rangeland.

  “I don’t blame you, girl,” Darby said.

  Hoku had been in the forest before, but it had been with Navigator and the young geldings, so she’d felt the safety of a herd.

  And sure, she and Hoku had walked through a forest in darkness, but it had been at the end of a day of fighting the sea and trotting over beach. Hoku had to have been as dazed as Darby was by the strangeness of their island initiation.

  But she wasn’t dazed now.

  Twilight hung lavender in the sky, but there was still enough light for Hoku to know she shouldn’t enter a place where she’d be surrounded. A prey animal wouldn’t willingly walk into a trap.