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I’m pretty blissed out on the way back. I should be bothered – a singing shell. I haven’t dared put it to my ear but the music is loud enough to wrap me in a fug of introspection.
As I gaze out the window the world flies by – the sign to the Marine Corps Base, the turn-off to Kailua. We should be going straight ahead towards Honolulu, but Derek swings the wheel and takes a left.
People are grooming their gardens, tending their ponds and rockeries, sitting on lanais and under umbrellas. Simple pleasures. It’s a very different city from Honolulu, where relaxation often amounts to ‘entertainment’.
We stop in a quiet street. A private house, painted turquoise and white, with a glassed-in ‘shop’ in the front room. The sign on the gate catches my eye: Sleek and Unique. The front door is open, the white Roman blinds pulled up. Dresses are hanging in the window. Derek parks and Nigel opens the car door for me.
But this is too much. I just want to be left in peace.
“I’ve got the shell, Nigel. Why are we stopping at Davina’s?”
“You need a frock,” Derek says. “Every woman needs a frock.”
Nigel keeps holding the door.
While this power struggle goes on Davina emerges and stands by the car. Her green eyes look into mine. “Aloha, Selkie.”
How does she know my name?
Derek and Nigel confer. “Measurements,” Derek says to me. “Today she just needs your measurements.”
“Three minutes,” Davina says, winking at me. She knows how to get her way. “But you two have to stay here.”
It’s the best way to get out of here – give a little. I follow her inside, where the turquoise walls are draped in the most amazing garments – deep necklines, knots and cut-outs, tribal prints. She pulls out a tape measure from under the bamboo counter and quickly measures my bust, waist and hips.
“Just one more,” she says. “The shoulder to the waist.”
She puts her hand on my shoulder. My left shoulder. Can she see the entity? She stretches the tape measure to my waist. “I see you’re wearing the cowry shell.”
“A friend of Nigel’s just did the macramé.” And I just found out it sings.
When she’s finished I can’t help asking, “What would you charge to make me something...”
“Unique?”
I nod.
She hesitates. “Nothing, nothing at all. I’m not supposed to tell you yet but...those two outside...they’ve already paid for it.”
“For a dress? Before I’ve even said if I want one?” It’s the kind of thing Andrew did. To make sure I wore what he liked.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know.”
“I wondered how you knew my name. They told you.”
“That they did. It’s a grand name. A magical name.”
So she knows about selkies. Of course, she’s Irish.
“About the dress,” Davina says. “You could accept it as a gift, you know. From your friends.”
That softens my anger. They mean well, of course they do. It’s just their delivery that sucks.
“What if I draw up a couple of designs and email them to you? Then you can let me know what you think. No pressure at all. And we can meet up at the Swap Meet to tinker with ideas, choose a fabric, then later for a fitting.”
She’s making it sound easy and fun. Working on a design together, something made specially for me. My own choice. A gift from my friends. The singing takes on a note of longing and something inside me responds.
“OK.”
I say goodbye and return to the boys.
“I know what you’ve done. She’s not very good at keeping secrets.”
“You’re mad at us,” Derek says, biting his lip.
“Furious, DD.” I glare at him and he looks terrified. Meditation has turned him into a wuss. When Nigel says nothing, my eyes start watering. “I’m furious because you two are both so bloody...gorgeous. I don’t know how to handle it – this level of friendship – so I get angry, OK?”
“Are you still angry about the cowry shell?” Derek asks.
I hesitate. The macramé must have been Nigel’s idea. “Only a bit,” I whisper.
But is that true? In front of John’s mirror I plunged into a deep peace. And liquid notes are calling me back to the peaceful place as Derek starts the car.
***
The Pali Highway is in gridlock. A fall of rocks has blocked both lanes leading back to Honolulu. On an overpass across a valley we pull up behind miles of stationary vehicles. Around us people are turning off engines and getting out to enjoy the view. Far below, ridges and ravines intersect under drapes of green velvet.
Derek turns on the radio. Further on there’s a contra-flow onto the opposite carriageway but the Sunday traffic will take hours to clear. A reporter is interviewing motorists who just missed being crushed by the landslide.
“Three Sundays in a row,” says a guy whose car was written off. “Pele was standing here at this exact time. Hitchhiking. But no-one was stopping to pick her up. Now this.”
The journalist takes the sighting seriously. “Do you think the volcano goddess caused the rock fall or was she predicting it, warning drivers about it?”
“A warning, but no-one gave her a lift so the accident did its worst. She tried for three weeks, brah, but was anybody listening?”
“How did you know the hitchhiker was Pele?”
“I’ve met her before. She’s got a...look about her.”
“Why didn’t you pick her up?” asks the reporter.
“I met her once, I didn’t want to meet her again, OK? Lots of drivers going by. This ain’t my fault, brah.”
The reporter moves on and Derek turns off the radio. Nigel pulls some beers from the cooler. At the side of the road some local guys start to dismantle a jeep and others leave their cars to help. In the next lane a family is setting up a picnic table. Japanese honeymooners from a tourist coach start posing in front of the safety rail, but no arranged brides are plunging to their deaths today. It happens. Young women who can’t face a powerless future. Just another reminder of the cliff.
“Have you ever seen her, Nige?” Derek asks.
“Pele? No, but someone at work had the pleasure. He didn’t buy a house because Pele appeared and he felt a lot of heat. A few weeks later the house got struck by lightning.”
“The same kind of story I’ve heard,” Derek says. “She appears for a personal reason. But that motorist assumed everyone saw her. Maybe nobody picked her up because nobody else saw her. It was his car that got crushed. And now we’re all caught up in the consequences.”
I can’t stay silent any longer. “Wanda thinks the woman on the cliff might be Pele.”
They turn and look at me as if they’ve just remembered I’m here. I repeat my conversation with Wanda.
“From your description,” Derek says, “the woman didn’t look like Pele. Although they say she’s a shape shifta.”
“The warning fits,” Nigel says.
“Pele wouldn’t try to kill you,” Derek adds.
“But is she Pele?” I say. “Until I find that photograph I’ve only got my sightings to go on. Am I dealing with a murderer?”
“Or a guardian angel?”
“How many times have you seen her?” Nigel asks. “Only twice?”
“Twice too many. First in the mirror at home. Then last Sunday in the cemetery. About a week apart.”
“If it’s Pele she’ll be back. Three times sounds like the number.”
“That’s what worries me.”
To them this is a fascinating puzzle, but my mind keeps pushing me off the cliff as the sea rushes in with arms outstretched. Then watery footsteps tiptoe over my grave.
“Who else could she be?” Nigel is saying. “It sounds pretty personal so there must be some connection.”
“But I’m a stranger here.”
“In some stories,” Derek says, “it’s the malihini – the newcomer – who brings the truth.”
“If that’s the case,” Nigel says, “your connection won’t be physical, it’ll be psychic.”
“Try to go back,” Derek says, “see if you can pick up anything you missed.”
Meditate again. But last time it drew out impressions I’m not getting on my own. As I close my eyes the singing guides me down a long tunnel to a place full of stars. Then I’m back in the cemetery, looking at the woman, experiencing her presence as if it’s happening again, seeing her face, feeling her tension. Reliving my fascination and my fear.
“She’s looking over the edge,” I begin. “Looking for something...important, something she’s lost.” My next words surprise me. “Something that will make her real.”
I open my eyes.
“Last time you called her ‘timeless’,” Derek says. “If she wants to be real it’s a logical development.”
“But what’s it got to do with me? And it doesn’t explain the missing photograph. Or why she’s trying to kill me.”
“If she wants to be real,” Nigel says, “she could be a disembodied spirit...wandering around the fringes of the underworld, looking for a human ride.”
“And she jumped into the camera when you took her picture,” Derek adds, making it up as he goes along. “Never print that picture, Selkie. If you ever find it. The memory card might be containing her like a genie.” He laughs. “Let Nightingale print it. Cosmic payback.”
I shiver. I imagined the woman trapped on the memory card. Could printing her photo release some unstoppable force? My insight on the cliff comes back – the aerial view of my empty skin. Was I vulnerable at that moment...to a hostile takeover? Suddenly I’m aware of how attached I am to my body, to breathing. These theories are freaking me out.
“But what’s her connection to you?” Nigel sips his beer and thinks. “An entity from a past life? Back to sort out some unfinished business?”
An entity. Did he just say an entity?
“It’s...sitting on my shoulder,” I murmur to their stunned faces.
I tell them as much as I know. “I can’t see it, but I’ve sensed it at the edge of my vision. A shadow. Eugene called it a monkey.”
“You should have told us,” Derek says, frowning at the wrong shoulder. “It changes everything.”
“I didn’t tell you because someone’s trying to kill me. And the entity’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Why do you say that? Surely the entity’s the woman – like Nigel said – sitting on your shoulder. Looking to tidy up unfinished business. Getting in your face and warning you. Waiting to be acknowledged, made real. It explains everything.”
“No, it doesn’t.” I tell them how Suzi and Eugene saw me after I saw the woman in the mirror. “The entity wasn’t there then. It didn’t appear until...”
“When?”
“...Jerome cut my hair.”
At the mention of Jerome they share a look.
“What?” I say.
“Jerome’s given up hairdressing,” Derek says. “He says your haircut was his crowning achievement. When you achieve perfection you don’t try to surpass it or even match it. Like Harper Lee after she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird.”
This is sounding like so much gay histrionics but Derek is serious.
“So who’s going to cut my hair next time?” I say. Assuming I decide to stay prickly. “Jerome can’t do this to me and then walk away.”
“I haven’t explained. He’ll keep cutting your hair, just no-one else’s. From now on you’ve got your own private hairdresser.”
Bloody hell.
“The entity must have been hiding behind your hair,” Derek continues. That makes two of us. “So it could still be the woman. Can you see it, Nige?” Derek beams at me. “Nigel reads auras.”
“It was ages ago, DD. A weekend workshop. And it happens like spoon-bending – when you don’t care either way. We’ve got too much invested in seeing it, so we won’t. And,” he holds up his beer, “it’s a gift that’s positively drowned by alcohol.”
Derek bites his lip. He thinks Nigel’s treating his gift way too lightly but I suspect he’s just fed up with my demons.
“Davina probably saw it,” Derek says.
“Why would Davina see it?” I ask. She showed no sign of it when she was waving a tape measure in its face. If it’s even got a face.
“She’s Irish,” Derek says. “They’ve always had a handle on the spirit world. It’s their pagan heritage...overlaid with centuries of Catholicism. The Church hates it.”
I’m with them.
“Plus she’s clairvoyant,” murmurs Nigel.
Suddenly I don’t want to own one of her frocks.
“Entities,” Nigel continues, “are usually created in childhood. To get you through a rough time.”
“How does that work?” I ask.
“They act as a haven for bad feelings. Like fear. The entity minds your feelings so you don’t have to feel them yourself.”
A thought flies past but I can’t catch it. Just a feeling of panic. And the colour red.
“You won’t know why you’ve got one till you look,” Nigel finishes.
“How do I do that?” Not the mirror.
“I know someone. A hypnotherapist. You need to be deeply relaxed.”
“And if I ignore it?” My current strategy.
“That’s the coward’s way, Selkie. And the fact that it’s suddenly shown itself means it might be urgent, don’t you think?”
Before I can answer, the traffic begins to move. The dismantled jeep is restored, the honeymooners scramble onto the bus, the family folds up their table, and Derek starts the car. As we creep through the mountain tunnel and out the other side we eventually see the rockfall. It’s covered the road and one car.
The contra-flow is in place across the grassy median strip. It takes us a while to reach the crossover point. Then Derek steers between the orange cones and past the traffic cops, but when he reaches the other roadway he spins the wheel in the opposite direction. Back towards Kailua.
“Hey!” I call from the back seat. “Where are we going now? I’m supposed to be going to Roger’s.”
Too late. We’re heading east, past miles of cars still stopped on the opposite roadway.
“The cemetery,” Derek says. “If it’s a week since you last saw the woman she could be there right now. Waiting for you. But this time we’ll be with you while you take another photo.”