Siren (8 page)

John gulped. He wanted to run and snatch her up and carry her off to the sea. Her green eyes laughed at him while the rest of her face was solemn.

John could feel the agitation in the villagers. But Hiapo sat calmly on his platform, listening to the white men through the interpreters as if he could not understand anything the
haoles
said. John had also learned much of the Hawaiian language, but he'd made a point of not telling the white men that, either.

He recognized the shorter man who was speaking to Hiapo as one of the town businessmen. "So that's her, is it? I'd say she's a white woman. You there, come here."

Siren's face was the model of incomprehension. She looked to Kekoa.

Kekoa spoke to her in the Hawaiian tongue and she nodded to him, and walked up to the owner of a dry goods store north of the harbor.

"What's your name, girl? Where do you come from?"

Kekoa spoke to her, and Siren responded to him in Hawaiian words that flowed as smoothly from her mouth as from an islander.

"She is Na-Maka-o-Kaha'i-Kaikamahine-o-Kuwaha'ilo-a me-Haumea. She is from the sea."

"Say what?" said another of the white men, his brow wrinkling like a furrow plowed by a drunken mule.

Patiently, Kekoa repeated himself.

"No, no," said the shopkeeper. "What ship did you come on, girl, whatever your name is. What does this man John Wall call you?"

"I call her Serena," said John. "And she comes from the sea." He moved sideways to be closer to Siren, ready to cut off the committeemen, or whatever it was they called themselves. Bartholomew moved along with him.

"What are you doing keeping a white woman among these natives, Wall?"

"She's not white. And she didn't come on any ship. She belongs here."

Bartholomew muscled in, frowning and folding his arms as he studied Siren's face. "What is she, some kind of albino? Looks like, maybe. Ain't seen those kind of lips on a white woman. Could be a mixed breed. Quadroon, maybe?"

In another time and place, John would have slugged the man, but he picked up the creative thread. "Take a look," he added. "Just change her skin and hair color and she looks native."

Bartholomew nodded, his brow wrinkling further. "More like albino than mixed, I'm thinking. Look at that hair. Ain't Irish. Too thick and long. She could pass, though."

To a man, the committee turned as pale as an albatross's belly. "Pass, eh?" said the shopkeeper. "Just what're you up to, Wall? Don't know how you got her here, but don't think you're going to foist this colored woman off on decent white folk."

"Wouldn't think of it."

The faces of the islanders were unusually blank as they all watched the men in their somber black suits climb back into their carriages. The whips cracked over the horses' backs and the teams plodded up the long path to the hill that separated Hiapo's village from the flat plain of the harbor.

"Ain't no missionary ever treated these folks as bad as them folks do," Bartholomew grumbled.

He was an odd man, John decided.

When the back of the last carriage disappeared beyond the crest of the hill, John let out a huge sigh and wrapped Siren in a bear hug. The islanders burst into raucous laughter. Bartholomew stood aside, shifting awkwardly between his two big feet.

John turned to Bartholomew and clapped him on the back as he walked with Siren back through the gathering of villagers, who performed little dance steps and jiggled aloft whatever tools they had in their hands. John could see a hula organizing itself in their minds. It would be a secret tale for the night dances that would vanish whenever the white men came over the hill.

Kekoa grinned widely, a complete contrast to the solemn face he had shown the
haole
committee. John laughed back at him. "Where'd you get that name you called her?" he asked.

Kekoa shrugged. "It is not a lie. I only tell of her lineage. It is not so unusual to add parentage to a name."

"For a king, maybe," John said. Then the flicker of a smile curled his lips. "Or a goddess. But you could have just called her Namaka, as you usually do. Why did you invent that?"

"You would not understand. It is too hard for a
haole
."

The laughter roared through all. Even Bartholomew laughed.

John introduced the man, telling how he had warned John of the danger. But Hiapo and Kekoa only laughed harder.

"We know of Tom Bartholomew," said Kekoa. "He is a
haole
like you, John Wall, but he is also a good friend like you."

But Tom Bartholomew was a man with hidden sadness. Hiapo asked him to stay, but the man only shook his head and soon was gone, over the road to Honolulu and wherever it was he had found to live in the hot, dusty town.

As the evening grew long and they had passed their evening meal, Siren rose and walked along the crescent-shaped sandy beach to the point, looking out toward the leeward side of the island, past Honolulu Port and out to sea at the rapidly setting sun, turning the sky so deeply orange, it hurt John's eyes.

He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. Often he found her staring at the sea like this, and he would see the longing in her eyes. He kissed her neck, and saw the tilt of a smile on her lips.

Hand in hand, they walked along the rugged point as the tide quietly receded, baring the black rocks and showing the tops of the coral barely beneath the surface. The bright fireball sun dropped rapidly below the horizon, and darkness came quickly. Although they heard other couples near them making love in the darkness, they just lay quietly on the dark rock and watched the stars come out.

"Where is your Summer Sea, Siren?" John held her graceful hand and stroked over her palm with his thumb.

"It is wherever I wish it to be."

"Where is that? Can you see it from here?"

"It is far away."

"You miss the sea," he said.

"I am Siren," she said quietly. "I have decided."

Yes. She had. She had decided to give up her Summer Sea. For him. Could she never go back? He knew if he asked that question, she would not answer. Had she become mortal? She would not answer that either. He would have to be more oblique, or change the subject.

"When I sailed the
Telesto
, sometimes I would climb up to the crow's nest just so I could see the sea all around me. From there, when the day is bright, it sometimes looks like the ship is in a bowl, with dark blue water high up around it on all sides."

Siren twisted her hand in his and wove their fingers together, but she said nothing.

"But I think the Diamond Head must be many times taller than
Telesto's
mast. Seven or eight hundred feet, I'd guess."

She turned her face toward him, her green eyes lit with curiosity. "The Summer Sea cannot be seen, John Wall."

"But think how much of the ocean we could see from there. Do you want to climb it?"

"I have not seen the sea from such a place."

"Then tomorrow, let us climb the Diamond Head."

In the morning, they filled gourds with water and wrapped some food and a papaya in bark cloth, and began the climb. Under protest, Siren wore the shoes, but John refused to go if she did not. The day grew hot, for there was no shade from the time they left the forest for the high slopes. As the day wore on, the sun grew hotter. His fear for her fair skin proved valid, for it was reddening. Perhaps it was a sign that she had indeed become mortal. His own skin had long since been leathery brown from all his years on the glaring sea, but hers, fair though it was, had not changed, until now. In the village, he had noticed the pinkish color, but the shaded shoreline and the frequent clouds of the island's windward side had kept her from burning badly. Now he began to worry.

He was prepared. He produced a smock shirt he had found for her in Honolulu Port and a hat woven from palm fronds. She frowned, but accepted the gift. He thought then it must be so, for Siren would not tell him of her vulnerability, yet she would know of it.

By mid afternoon, they had reached the rim on the low side, and descended into the ancient crater, having followed an overgrown trail that switched back and forth, along the mountain's steep side. They rested in the only shade available, provided by the flat-floored crater's steep wall to the summit, drank water that had grown warm and ate the fruit that had gone soft. As the evening approached, they returned to their climb, this time more strenuous, and long before sunset, they stood on the summit and gazed out over an ocean that was as majestic a deep marine blue as he had ever seen.

The setting sun turned her long, long hair shining gold and copper as the stiff wind whipped it about. She stood tall and straight, breathing in the glorious beauty of her view. The sea darkened, the sky became orange, with deep purple stripes and bulbous clouds that reached upward from glowing sunset into night. Briefly, so quick, he almost doubted he saw it, green fire flashed at the horizon, then the ball of fire that was the sun dropped as if it fell into the sea.

Siren removed the hat she had tied to her head, then the smock and the
muu muu
beneath it. Lastly she bent to untie the shoes she found so clumsy and set them atop her garments to weigh them down against the wind. Quietly, John stripped off his garments and stood nearby, feeling almost the intruder in her silent prayer to the sea.

In the growing darkness, she extended her arms straight ahead of her to the distant horizon, by now a nearly invisible line between darkening sky and darker water. Then the song began.

It was not a song he had heard before, yet it rang with the exquisite, clear beauty he remembered. It rolled over the cliffs and down through the valley to the sea, undulating, scaling up and down, and echoing off the clouds. John stared in awe at the beauty of song that tore through his heart, feeling the depth of her longing for her beloved Summer Sea. And rolling back over the waves came the deep male response of the seas, pouring out its love for its beautiful Siren. Tears filled John's eyes and were blown away by the savage wind that raked the crest of the Diamond Head. The sea had always been one with her, and now they were rent apart.

Whether she was the goddess of the sea or not, he could never say, for whatever Siren was, was beyond his comprehension. Hiapo called her Namaka-o-Kaha'i. Others in other places, she said, called her Kaah, or by myriad other names he could not pronounce. He only knew she was more than he could understand. She had said Sirens were not immortal, yet she had also told him of lifetimes beyond his own, so he could not imagine what she had given up.

She had come ashore to live with her lover, the penniless
haole
. She had truly breathed life into him when he would have died from the sea's ravages. Given him a new life beneath the sea where they had lived in perfect harmony. And it had not been enough.

And then she had given all of that away. For him. And he had nothing to give back.

For hours, Siren sang, and John listened, captured and enthralled by her music. The clouds bloomed against the bright silver disk of the moon, and the waves crashed their lacy white caps against the pale crescent of sand at the ancient volcano's feet, and all of it sang together, an exquisite harmony of love and longing.

Yellow streaked dawn came, then brightened in hibiscus colors. Siren lowered her arms to her sides and smiled.

"I am Siren. I have chosen."

"Have I also any choice in this, Siren?"

She turned to him with a cross frown. "Have you chosen, John Wall? If you have not, then I do not want you."

Had he? Yet, yes, he had. Perhaps he had chosen the very moment his lips had first touched hers and they had slipped into the sea. Why, he realized, he might never know, but it no longer seemed important.

When the sun shone bright enough for them to follow the narrow, gravelly path, they began their descent, and they reached the path from the coast road to the village in late afternoon. As they straggled wearily into the village, eager to reach the hut and rest in its shade, John spotted a stocky sandy-haired man talking to Hiapo. He felt a thud of trepidation hit his heart.

Tom Bartholomew.

Chapter 12

A fierce possessiveness swept over him at the sight of the man he'd decked in the tavern. No matter that the fellow had more or less managed an apology. John glanced at Siren, glad to see she had not removed the smock shirt he had given her. The odd jealous protectiveness surprised him, for the man had done nothing but help Siren.

Bartholomew saw them approaching, and he made an obeisance to the old man that surprised John, for few white men would know or even trouble themselves to learn the native way of showing respect to an elder. But then, Kekoa had said they considered him a friend. Bartholomew turned and walked toward them, his eyes fixed on Siren as if she were some sort of ghost.