Mistwalker (9 page)

As bucking went, it wasn't rodeo-quality, but that was her mom in the saddle!

“Ride 'em,” Darby cheered.

Giggling like a girl, Ellen managed to sound humble when she said, “I've still got it!”

Darby applauded, then dismounted along with her mother.

Once she was on the ground beside Kona, Ellen circled the gray's sweaty neck with her arms.

“I hugged Jonah's horse,” she whispered to Darby. “Shhh.”

“You don't have to be quiet,” a voice piped up from the forest of ferns. “There's no one here but us.”

M
enehune.

Astonishment flashed through Darby.
Menehune
were early Hawaiians driven into hiding by tall warriors. Or helpful little people, finishing work by moonlight. Or imps.

In Darby's mind, they looked like Shakespearean fairy folk. Was she about to discover the truth?

“Aloha,” Ellen called out. She looked at Darby with raised eyebrows. “Who's there?”

Her mom's voice was playful. The ride had transformed her into a carefree woman, excited rather than unnerved by the voice.

“Aloha, over here.”

This time the voice was definitely human, a boy's.

As Darby and Ellen followed it, they came upon a trackside wooden dock. Legs dangling over the edge, Patrick Zink sat on the dock.

“Patrick, right?” Darby called up to him.

“Yeah, Darby and Ellen Kealoha Carter.” He bowed his head, which was topped with a pith helmet. “Welcome to the A-Z Sugar Plantation. I'm one of the Z's.”

Patrick appeared smaller than he had when he'd been all dressed up at Sugar Sands Cove Resort. Now his shorts showed skinned knees, and his hat—which looked like straw woven over a hard, ventilated helmet—dwarfed his freckled face.

“One of the Z's.” Ellen glanced at the faded letters on the flume.

“Patrick Zink,” he announced, “at your service.”

Pushing his palms on the wooden dock—which was about six feet high, Darby guessed—he launched himself to the ground in front of them. The jump was meant to look like casual gallantry, but one of his ankles twisted when his hiking boots hit the ground. He fell on the seat of his khaki shorts.

Ellen's arm barred Darby from going to help him.

Patrick stood, brushed off dust, picked a sliver from his palm, then squared his hat on his head and began talking as if nothing had happened.

“I'm glad you got here before the mosquitoes came out,” he said.

Darby had heard some people attracted mosquitoes
more than others. She was generally one of them, but she didn't remember seeing any in the rain forest.

“This was a sugar plantation village from about 1890 until 1950. A-Z stood for Acosta and Zink—”

“Really?” Darby gasped. “How cool!” But then her mental picture of a plantation shifted from soaring white columns to slavery. “But, 1890”—she sorted through the history notes in her brain—“there weren't slaves here, were there?”

“Hawaii wasn't exactly part of the U.S. then,” her mom reminded her. “I don't think it was even a territory until about 1900.” Ellen frowned as if she should remember exactly, but Darby was impressed she knew that much.

“No slaves,” Patrick said, lifting a Band-Aid on his wrist, then sticking it down again. “The Acostas had a history of using them, but my dad's family voted for hiring sugar workers from Japan—like my mother's ancestors—and China, Puerto Rico, the Philippines….”

“That's so interesting,” Darby said.

“Hard on the land,” Ellen said grimly.

Ellen's tone reminded Darby of Megan's, when she'd said Darby couldn't imagine what Cade was “capable of.” It sounded like sugar farming was a crime. Or maybe it was the system her mom was thinking about, with a few rich owners who watched poorly paid people do all the work.

“Probably no worse than cattle ranching?” Darby
suggested. Something about Patrick made her want to stand up for him. Gosh, that Band-Aid didn't cover half the red swelling on his arm. “What happened to your arm?”

“Centipede,” Patrick said.

“Aren't their stings poisonous?” Darby said.

“Bite,” Patrick corrected. “They use their mandibles.” He shifted his jaw back and forth, reminding her what a mandible was. “But it's not toxic. Unless you're allergic, and I don't think I am.” He looked upward, scanning the air for insects, and his helmet fell off the back of his head. “But why take a chance and add any mosquito anticoagulant to the mix?”

His pale, freckled skin looked even whiter in contrast to his black hair. He was accident prone. His ancestors had been both overseers and laborers. And he had a killer vocabulary. Darby was wondering about Patrick's school life when he doubled back to her remark about cattle ranchers.

“Cattle ranchers and sugar plantation owners both burned off the land, so the trees wouldn't get in their way. They bought up taro land, too, and that was a native crop. But A-Z redirected the water to our fields and drained the Shining Stallion waterfall,” Patrick said.

“Drained it?” Darby asked, thinking of the rainbow-spangled torrent that had hidden Black Lava's cave.

“Ran it dry,” Patrick admitted.

“But that was before your time,” Ellen said in a sympathetic tone.

“Yeah, but it was pretty bad. And most people remember,” Patrick said. “That's why my parents are letting the forest go back to the way it was.”

Darby looked around and decided the Zinks were doing a pretty good job. Except for the train tracks, the stone steps leading nowhere, the chimney jutting up from a grove of trees, and a few weathered wooden structures like the dock, most everything that was man-made was covered with vines, crowded by trees, and sprouting vegetation from age-old cracks.

Darby felt a pulse of admiration for the Zinks. If this plantation sat in Los Angeles County, the owners would have ignored their consciences and sold the land for houses, malls, and freeway on-ramps.

Navigator's whinny broke off the conversation. Especially when he was answered.

“The paint!” Ellen said, pointing.

The black-and-white horse dropped a vine from her mouth and pushed her way through a wild mass of plants that were bright green with pink flowers.

“Hey, girl,” Patrick said.

“Is she your horse? She's lovely,” Ellen said.

“She came from your ranch,” Patrick pointed out.

“No,” Darby's mom said, “she couldn't have.”

But Darby imagined the horse without her black-and-white coat. Her conformation could be that of a Quarter Horse. Her tail was a little lower set than most
‘Iolani Ranch horses and her hooves were broader, but even with Jonah's strict bloodlines, horses had individual differences.

“What's her name?” Darby asked.

“I gave her a new one,” Patrick said, squaring his hat back in place on his head. “The name she had when my dad bought her was ugly—Mofongo.”

The filly blew through her lips and shook her mane.

“I don't know what that means,” Ellen said, “but it doesn't suit her.”

“Is Carlos still on the ranch?” Patrick asked.

Darby shook her head.

“He's the one who named her Mofongo. It's a kind of Puerto Rican food, made with plantains and other stuff all smashed together. She was too flashy for Jonah, and he couldn't register her because of her color. So when she reached two years old and still hadn't turned bay like Luna or black like Raven—”

“Raven?” Ellen interrupted.

“That's her mom,” Patrick explained. “Jonah said he'd give my dad a good deal if we took both of them. My parents aren't into horses, but I promised I'd take care of them both.”

“Mofongo, out of Raven, out of Ebony,” Ellen said. Smiling, she recited the filly's maternal bloodlines to Darby.

Raven's sire was no mystery now, Darby thought. The paint stallion's mark hadn't shown on Ebony's
foal, Raven. But his black-and-white coloring had skipped a generation and reappeared on the wild stallion's grand-filly.

All at once Darby's heart jumped in excitement as she pictured Hoku and this pretty paint picking their way through the woods together.

“Do you ride—Mofon…?” Darby tried to ask.

“I call her Mistwalker,” Patrick said.

“So, that's her barn name,” Ellen said.

“I guess, except, since she got loose, she's not in a barn. I don't keep her cooped up.”

“How long ago did she get loose?” Darby asked.

“About a year ago.”

Ellen sucked in a worried breath. “She'd be a lot safer cooped up,” she said.

“Mostly she follows me around and I never go near any roads. I used to worry about her wandering off, but then she'd just come walking out of the fog, chewing a piece of
maile pilau
. And she stays on our land.”

“I'm sorry to tell you this,” Darby said haltingly, “but she doesn't.”

“No?” Patrick asked. Mistwalker had stepped up behind him. He raised a hand to touch her face.

Darby shook her head. “She was in the fold, on ‘Iolani Ranch yesterday….”

Patrick turned his chin to look at the equine face beside his. “Well, still…”

“
And
I saw her up at Two Sisters, running with Black Lava's herd, just before the eruption.”

Mistwalker nibbled Patrick's shirt collar and gave it a gentle tug, as if telling him not to believe Darby, but he did.

“You ruffian,” Patrick said to his horse. Then, like an indulgent father, he changed the subject. Looking at Ellen, Patrick said, “You can ride her if you want.”

“Jonah trained her?” Darby's mom asked.

Patrick nodded. “He said she was saddle broken but sassy. He's right. She lets me ride her when she feels like it and that's most of the time. At first my parents didn't want her out here with me, because they thought she was eating the native vegetation they're bringing back. But that stink vine isn't native and she loves it. So, until they can get the leaf-eating beetles from Nepal that they want to use on this stuff, they're happy to have her eat it.”

Why hadn't Darby met Patrick before now? Jonah knew him. So did Megan. What about Ann? She was still sort of new to the island herself, but Darby guessed the two would get along.

“You go to Lehua High, don't you?” Darby asked.

“Sure, I've seen you there.”

“What grade are you in?”

“Technically eighth, but I take some tenth-grade classes, too,” he said.

Had Patrick Zink read even more books than she had?
Bet on it,
Darby thought. And he wasn't ashamed to be smart.

The thought pleased Darby until she caught her
mom looking between the two of them, smirking.

No googly eyes,
Darby wanted to tell her mother, but that would have been embarrassing for all three of them.

So Darby just held her reins, leaned back against Navigator's solid shoulder, and said, “Mom, I don't have room for anything else in my life but horses.”

“That's how I feel about exploring!” Patrick told her. “You're going to hear that I'm accident prone—”

Darby didn't admit she'd already heard. Instead, she blurted, “All I've heard about is your barbed-wire fences.”

“Really?” Patrick said it in a contemplative way, as if he'd never thought of their fences. Then he nodded, as if making a mental note, before he continued. “It's not that I'm accident prone; it's just that I
do
stuff. I love exploring. The last time I had a cast, I was lucky—”

Darby doubted many people had ever started a sentence that way.

“—it was on my left arm. I wrote on it,
I was born for this
.” He closed his eyes, savoring the words, until Mistwalker nudged him.

Patrick's exploration fever was infectious. The vine-draped steps and structures tempted Darby to learn their secrets.

“My mom used to be in an explorers club,” Darby told Patrick.

When Patrick stared at her, wide-eyed, Ellen made
a “settle-down” motion with her hands. “We were little kids, Darby.”

“Who else was in it?”

“No one you know,” Ellen insisted.

“That's pretty implausible, Mrs. Carter. On this island, everyone knows everyone. Between the members of the Zink, Kealoha, and Kato clans, one of us knows someone from your club who's still around.”

“Well.” Ellen put her hands on her hips and said, “If they're responsible adults, they won't talk about it.”

“And that means you won't,” Darby confirmed.

“Right,” her mom said, but she looked past Darby at Patrick. He rubbed his hands together, as if anticipating a great meal. “Forget it.”

“Later, then,” Patrick said. He looked from Darby to his horse. “I usually climb onto her back from the platform.” He pointed to the thing Darby had been thinking of as a dock. “But it really is getting late. I'll saddle and bridle her and maybe you can give me a boost up?”

“Sure,” Darby said, but she was watching her mother and the paint mare.

Mistwalker nuzzled Ellen's hands until she rubbed behind the horse's silvery ears.

Darby knew just what she should do with the reward money she'd received for returning Stormbird. She should buy Mistwalker for her mother. She'd only phoned Ellen for Mother's Day, and that wasn't much of a gift. Wow, not only would the mare be a dream
come true for her mother, but Mistwalker belonged in Hawaii, not Pacific Pinnacles, so Ellen would have to agree that she, Darby, and their horses belonged together on Wild Horse Island.

The mare disrupted Darby's fantasy with a loud sigh. Okay, so Patrick probably wouldn't give her up. Still, it would be cool if Mom had a paint horse of her own.

“You sound like an old dog in the sun,” Ellen teased. She kept petting Mistwalker as she watched Patrick jog toward a ruined building. “That holds a big grinding wheel, if no one's hauled it out.” As Patrick slipped into the structure, Ellen shook her head. “He's not safe in there.”

When Patrick returned with a snaffle-bitted bridle and small saddle, Mistwalker backed away from Ellen and positioned herself in front of Patrick.

“That thing looks like it's ready to fall down.” Ellen nodded at the old building. “I'm surprised it hasn't been flattened by an earthquake or blown over in a storm.”