The sharp blue of the sky seemed in direct contrast with life below. At least the sunshine would bring warmth to the house and help Mochi thaw out. Lana worried about him as she drove home across the last stretches of lava. Maybe Mrs. Kano would have suggestions on who could help him. Behind her, the mattresses and bed frames she had dragged into the back of the truck flopped around, the ones on top ready to bounce right out. Once in front of the house, she honked.
Sailor, who had been perched on the porch like a sphinx, stood up and bounded down the steps, barking as though Lana were a dangerous stranger come to steal all the dog food in the house. The three kids rushed down to get a better look at the cargo.
“A successful mission! I got nails and beds,” Lana said, happily.
Coco was holding her stuffed owl. “What about our parents?”
Every time Coco asked about Fred and Ingrid, Lana could feel the pain oozing from that little heart of hers. Mentioning Mr. London would only cause them more apprehension, so she left that part out. “There was no answer, which for now just means they aren’t home. I wish I had better news.”
“Can we try tonight? With curfew, they would have to be home, wouldn’t they?” Marie asked.
“True, but we’re stuck out here at night, so it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
Coco put her head down, shoulders shuddering. Lana made a move toward her. Just before her hand touched her shoulder, Coco spun and took off in a sprint down the path toward the horse paddocks. She wasn’t wearing shoes. A moment later Sailor followed.
“Coco, come back here!” Lana yelled.
“She does this,” Marie said. “At our place, when she’s upset, she goes into the field behind our house and either sits in the tall grass or climbs the old lychee tree. Sometimes she stays out there for hours.”
Lana thought back to her own childhood. Without a mother, when her father wasn’t quite enough, she had found solace with the crabs and the shorebirds. Or searching for shiny cowrie shells and blue eels in the tide pools along the bay front. All her cares and worries soaked up by the sea. On sunny days she would lie down under a coconut tree and watch the clouds change form. Whales, dragons, waves. This sometimes went on for hours, and when she was done, the world seemed back on its axis again.
“I just don’t want her venturing off too far and getting lost,” Lana said.
“She’ll probably find a comfortable spot and hole up. Let her be for a bit,” Marie said.
Good thing one of them knew what to do. Inside, Mochi was reading by the fireplace with a steaming mug in his hands. Somehow life had been breathed back into his thin body. Lana got busy fixing lunch, determined to put some weight back on his rack of bones. Thick slices of bacon sizzled in the skillet, while she fried rice with bell pepper, chopped green onion and eggs. Hopefully Mrs. Kano or Iris would know where to get a couple of hens, since she had only six eggs left.
When they were done eating, Marie offered to help Benji finish the wall. The boy seemed to go mute in her presence, though she hardly seemed to notice. Lana gave them the nails, then set out with a peanut butter sandwich and a tangerine in search of Coco.
The kikuyu grass had dried out and she marched down the pathway, enjoying the burn of sun on her shoulders. Little red blurs sped past every so often, wings whirring. If things had turned out differently, Lana would have wanted to be an ornithologist and a volcanologist. Wings and lava were two of her favorite things, and fortunately, both were plentiful here. The creaks and groans of trees and the scent of fresh foliage helped her forget the outside world and all its troubles, if only for a moment.
At the barn, if you could call it that—it was really more of a giant shed—there was no sign of Coco. Under the roof, though, she noticed fresh manure and the recent smell of horse. Her mind immediately went to Major Bailey. In his buttoned-up uniform, he was intimidatingly appealing, but in jeans and on a horse, well, that would be another matter altogether. She walked on, lost in a daydream, past the paddock and into the pasture.
Once she rounded a small bend, she spotted Sailor sprawled out under a towering Sugi pine, while Coco sat on a fence post stroking a black horse. Lana stepped back against a tree trunk and watched for a while. Coco’s lips were moving and her head bobbed along in conversation. The horse stood completely still, ears and tail twitching every so often. Lana wanted to bring Coco her lunch, but she hesitated to interrupt. Several times Coco leaned over and wrapped her arms around the horse’s neck. The horse stood there and let her.
Rather than announce her arrival, Lana walked toward the center of the pasture where she would be easily seen, making a point to step on twigs and dried leaves. The horse heard her first and spun her head around. Coco’s followed.
Lana waved. “Hello, there! I brought you a peanut butter sandwich.”
Sailor sat up, looking dazed, and the horse raised its head and trotted off into the forest with a pronounced limp. Even from a distance, the swelling in its knee was noticeable. The animal was small enough to be an adolescent, and so shiny it looked to be oiled.
“Sorry to scare away your friend,” she said.
“Her name is ‘Ohelo.”
“That’s a cute name. Did you pick it?”
Coco stayed on the fence with her back to Lana and didn’t respond. From the back, she looked as though she could have been a feral child—curls smashed up and sticking out in twenty directions, no shoes, and overalls that were four inches too short.
Lana tried another tactic. “Do you think ‘Ohelo would like some apples?”
A small nod.
“I know where we might be able to find some.” Lana leaned against the fence several posts away. “Tomorrow we’ll go look, how’s that?”
“Her knee hurts,” Coco said.
Lana hadn’t been able to tell the sex, but she trusted that Coco knew the difference.
“I noticed that, poor sweet girl.”
This time Coco looked right at Lana with pleading eyes. “We have to help her. I promised I would.”
There was absolutely nothing they could do to help this horse, but Lana found herself nodding anyway. “A promise is a promise. I guess that means we have to try.”
“Promises have to happen, don’t they?”
“Promises can be tricky things. Sometimes the maker of the promise has every intention of following through, but the world gets in the way and complicates things.”
“My dad promised this would be over soon,” Coco said, in a very small voice.
Out of nowhere, an ‘alalā—a Hawaiian crow—landed on a branch not ten feet in front of them, on the other side of the fence. The soot-black bird watched them intently, ducking and nodding its head. Lana had never seen one this close or at the volcano. They tended to be seen down south. Coco seemed unfazed and greeted the bird with a nod of her own head.
“He meant that with every bone in his body, but right now it’s not up to him,” Lana said.
“But my dad is always the one in charge.”
“Right now the government is in charge.”
Coco jumped off the fence and moved toward the crow. “Well, I hate the government.”
Lana thought the bird would fly away, but it merely fluffed its feathers and settled onto the branch.
“I can see why you’d feel that way, but things will work out, you’ll see,” Lana said, silently praying her words to be true.
Coco walked right up to the crow on the branch and said, “What’s your name?”
Lana half expected the crow to answer. “These crows are quite rare. Did you know that?” she said.
“I’ve never seen one before.”
“They don’t live in Hilo. Seeing one is a good sign.”
Coco went quiet for a few breaths. “Not this one,” she finally said.
A chill ran down Lana’s neck. “What makes you say that?”
“I just have a feeling.”
By the time Lana, Coco and Sailor returned to the house, Benji and Marie had made great progress on the wall. Some pieces were nailed on crooked, but no one cared. When it got to the last nail, they still had a one-foot space to fill. They all scrounged around for nails or screws or anything to plug the hole with, and it was Marie who found a narrow piece of corrugated roofing that they managed to wedge in for the time being.
“My father would be proud, and so would yours,” Lana told her.
It was hard to know whether to talk about the Wagners. Sometimes when she brought up their names, the girls perked up and wanted to talk about them, while other times, mentioning them seemed like rubbing grit in a wound.
After a dinner of meat loaf, steamed sweet potato and rice dripping in butter, they huddled by the fireplace and stared into the flames. No one said a word. The wood spit and crackled. Just to be sure the wooden shutters worked, Lana slipped out the front door and walked into the yard, looking back at the house. Only on one side, a thin sliver of light escaped. This far out in the boondocks, she’d risk it. Anything for a warm night’s sleep.
Nearby, the bushes rustled. Something big was out there with her. She turned and bolted back into the house, skipping all the steps and slamming the door behind her. Everyone in the room turned to stare, eyes wide.
Lana waved it off. “Probably just some pigs. They startled me.”
“It was ‘Ohelo,” Coco said.
“‘Ohelo?”
“The horse.”
“I wasn’t going to wait to find out. And what makes you so sure it was ‘Ohelo?” Lana asked.
Coco just shrugged.
“In Japan, people believe there are places that have a very sacred spirit about them. Places where you are closer to the great Mystery. And there are animals, too, protectors and holders of the divine that have influence over us. There is a strong sense of that here. Any of you felt it?” Mochi said, looking directly at Coco.
“Like an aumakua?” Marie said.
Mochi nodded, and for a moment, Lana was surprised that a German girl would know about Hawaiian animal guardians, but then she remembered that the girls had been born and raised in Hilo; they were kama‘āina. Hawaii would have rubbed off on them by now.
“There’s a crack in the sky down that way, that’s why,” Coco said, pointing south.
Lana tried not to act surprised, though half the things that came out of Coco’s mouth surprised her. “I’ve always been drawn to the volcano, even when I was young. So that makes perfect sense. Though I haven’t noticed a crack in the sky. How do you know about it?”
“I saw it today.”
Mochi glanced at Lana, a thin smile forming.
“Maybe tomorrow you can show us,” Lana said.
Marie put her arm around her sister. “There’s that overactive imagination again. Remember what Daddy said about talking like this, Mausi.”
Coco’s shoulders wilted.
“What did he say?” Mochi asked.
“That the crazy talk—as he calls it—makes her sound crackers. The kids at school started calling her names, and my parents got called in every few days because of one squabble or another. She’s supposed to keep the crazy talk to herself.”
Lana could feel the shame radiating off Coco in thick layers. “That’s plain wrong. I think what you have is a gift. When people don’t understand something, they sometimes get frightened and react badly.”
Marie looked taken aback.
Mochi spoke softly. “This war is a good example of that.”
“Exactly. Your parents and all our neighbors being rounded up like cattle... The whole thing is about fear and people not stopping to try to understand,” Lana said.
Coco’s lower lip trembled, and she bolted from the room. Sailor, who had been lying on the warm planks next to the fire, followed Coco with her eyes, then got up and slowly trotted after her. Thank goodness for this dog.
At every turn, Lana felt inadequate to help this poor child, but she felt she had to try. When she moved to stand, Mochi held her arm. “Let me,” he said, and went.
Lana stretched and said to Benji and Marie, “Lord only knows how long we’re going to be up here together, so let’s make the most of it. Whatever quirks we all may have, get used to them, I say.” They both just stared at her, mute. This whole kid and teenager situation was going to take a lot of practice. “Come on, let’s get ready for bed.”
Earlier they had set up the girls in their own room with the queen mattress from Volcano House and given Mochi and Benji the twins, and Lana kept the master bedroom with the mattress on the floor. Heat from the fireplace had made it into the far reaches of the house, but there was no light. She ran her hands along the walls in the hallway, hearing whispers from Mochi and Coco as she passed. In her room she shuffled along until her foot hit the side of the mattress. Weariness pulled her down. And then a sound. Someone was snoring in her bed.
Sailor.