Authors: Alaya Dawn Johnson
She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Kohaku. I just can't now. Maybe in a few years I could leave, but not now."
He looked as if he wanted to say something harsh, but just nodded. "May I ask why?" he said after a moment.
"Things are changing. I can feel it. If I left now ... if I left now, it would feel too much like running away."
Kohaku stood up. "Maybe one day you'll realize what you've just wasted."
He walked out of the room and into the pouring rain. Lana felt like crying.
"Lana?" Kali shook her by the shoulders. "What on earth was that all about?"
"Kohaku asked me to come back with him to study at the Kulanui on Essel."
Kali gasped. "Really? That's incredible. But ... you said no, didn't you? Why?"
Lana felt a funny sensation in her chest, something that hurt too much to breathe around. Had she really just said no to Kohaku, to the chance to leave with him, be with him?
"Well ... if I had gone to Essel with him, I couldn't have kept the pact."
"The pact?"
"Remember? We both have to be around if we're going to travel the world together."
Kali laughed and hugged her. "You're crazy, you know."
Lana silently agreed.
Over the next two weeks, the rains pounded the island relentlessly. The ground wasn't visible over most of the island anymore. The men poled barges from house to house, checking on the older people and making sure the supports were sturdy. Even the oldest on the island said that they had never been through a rainy season like this one. Okilani looked grim, and when pressed would say only that the intense rains were part of greater changes to come. The feeling that had lodged in Lana's chest that night at Eala's wouldn't go away. And in the middle of everything, when Lana's life was changing so much she hardly recognized it, Kohaku left to return to Essel. She hated him a little for that, though she knew he felt no loyalty to her people or her island, and there was no real reason he should. To him, they were little more than unusual creatures worthy of study. Yet, he had offered Lana an opportunity for more than that, and she hated herself a little for refusing him. Was she stupid, she wondered that awful night after his barge left the island and she cried herself to sleep. He didn't love her, she knew that, but he had offered her a chance to see the world. Maybe she would always regret her decision, yet even when she thought about it now, she didn't know how she could have made the other choice. Because she couldn't abandon her island at a time like this? That's what she had told him. But that was too easy, wasn't it? Maybe the truth was harder. Maybe she was a coward, too afraid of what she didn't know.
Her father had been acting strangely, too. Because their shed had long since flooded and his supplies had been moved into their house, he sat in the main room all day long, making his instruments. He worked on them with a single-minded intensity that Lana had never seen before. Part of it was that he couldn't take out the boat to fish with the rains falling so heavily, but there was something stranger in his fixation. She knew that her parents were fighting-they rarely touched each other anymore, and her mother would often stare at her father while he made his instruments, looking as though she were about to cry. Then one day, when Lana was given a ride back from Kali's house earlier than normal, she overheard them arguing.
"It's all you do, these days. Cure the tails, string the instruments, play the instruments, tune the instruments. You never pay any attention to me anymore. Me or Lana."
Kapa shrugged. "There's nothing else to do on this damn island, Lei! Not with these rains. And after they end, it'll be back to the same thing-catching fish, bringing them back, waking up early the next morning. Don't you think I wanted to do something more with my life? At least when I'm making these instruments, I feel like that. Just a little."
Leilani chewed her tongue. "How can you say that, Kapa? You are doing something with your life ... just like your father did and his father. You were born on this island, your life is on it. Do you hate it so much?"
Kapa looked at his wife and his expression softened. He walked over to her. "I don't hate it, Lei. But I don't want to waste my entire life here either. Since these rains came, since the mandagah have started dying ... I've been thinking that there's nothing left for us, anyway. I've been thinking ... I've been thinking that we should leave. I could sell my instruments on Essel. We could start a different life."
Leilani wrenched herself away from him. Lana had never seen her mother look so angry before.
"You expect me to abandon my home, my life, for some crazy dream you have of selling your instruments? How can we leave when things are like this? It would be running away."
"Fine. Let's run away, then! It would be like running away from nothing."
Lana couldn't stand hearing anymore. She pushed the door open all the way and stalked inside. Her parents stared at her, surprised.
"How ... how long have you been standing there, Lana?" Leilani asked.
Lana just shook her head and walked into her room. "Mama's right," she said finally. "I don't want to run away, either."
She pulled back the curtains and rolled out her sleeping mat.
"Why does everything have to change?" she whispered to herself as she sat shivering on the floor.
Three weeks later, the rains hadn't even paused. If anything, they had gotten stronger. Lana stared out her window, and barely registered the familiar wash of dread. The sun should have begun drying up her island by now. The houses, though designed for floods, wouldn't be able to hold up much longer in this kind of deluge. What if the rains never stopped and her island remained flooded forever? Okilani was right-something was happening. Something to do with the water spirit, maybe, but what?
It was Kali's birthday. Lana had promised to visit, but she wondered how her parents would feel about her leaving in this kind of rain. The water had gotten too deep and choppy for all but the largest barges to work, but her family owned a small canoe that ought to get her there.
She walked into the main room, and her father glanced up from his instrument.
"You're not planning on going somewhere, are you?" he said.
"It's Kali's birthday. I promised I'd visit."
"How are you going to get there? Swimming?"
"That little boat of ours."
He frowned, then shrugged. "Just don't tell your mother. She'll be upset."
Lana glanced at the kitchen where her mother was cooking. "All right. I'll be back soon."
She tied her sandals and then put on her cloak. The boat was perched on the roof, tied down with rope that her father had fastened when the rains first started. She scrambled up the side of the house, almost slipping several times. The wood was soaked and slippery. The waterlogged knots were impossible to untie, so she reached into the pocket of her leibo and pulled out a small knife that she kept for diving emergencies. She cut one of the ropes and then let the boat slide off the roof and into the water. Then she positioned herself right above the tethered boat and slid down the roof herself. Once she was sitting in it fairly comfortably, she cut the second rope and took the paddle.
It was slow going-it took her nearly forty-five minutes to reach Kali's house. She was soaked through by the time she began to see the brown blob of the house through the rain. It looked strange, though. More lopsided than she remembered. She paddled closer. It looked as though one of the supports had crumbled in the rain. Her chest tightened-was Kali's family okay? It must have happened recently, because as of last night she hadn't heard any news of people's houses collapsing. As she moved closer, she saw two figures huddled on the roof of the side that hadn't fallen. Lana felt a little relief-at least they had all gotten out.
Then she realized that she couldn't see Kali.
She paddled faster until she was about ten feet away from the house. Kali's parents were so agitated that she had to shout and wave her arms to get their attention.
"Hey! What happened? Where's Kali?"
"The whole thing went down a few minutes ago. We can't find her!" her father called. "We're afraid she got caught somewhere."
The terror that had settled in Lana's stomach threatened to make her whole body numb.
"She was in the house?"
He held his wife while she began to sob. She wasn't a diver. They had probably tried looking for Kali and couldn't dive deeply enough.
Lana pulled off her coat and shirt and took a deep breath. Then she jumped into the water. It was hard to see through the sediment and broken wood from the collapsed house, but she pushed her way through it ruthlessly, looking for any sign of her friend. She swam around the ruined supports, but didn't find a thing. Her hands were shaking. Where on earth would Kali be? She tried to picture their house in her mind. The kitchen was toward the right side-the part that hadn't collapsed. Kali's room was on the left side. Toward the back. Lana made her way to where the room might have fallen.
There too, all she saw was a mess of scattered debris. Had Kali gotten pinned underneath it? She blew out the pressure in her ears and dove to the muddy bottom and looked up. In the middle of the mess of the collapse, she caught a glimpse of Kali's brown hair. It seemed bright, as though it was caught on a piece of sunlight. Had it stopped raining? Lana swam as close to her friend as she could. Kali was pinned underneath two large wooden beams. Lana bit her tongue to keep from crying out. Was she still alive? She shook Kali's limp hand and was incredibly relieved when it tightened a little around her own. How long had she been pinned here?
Four minutes? Kali opened her eyes. They were frantic, but she seemed to smile a little when she saw Lana. Lana shook her head, trying to tell her to relax. She gripped the first beam-roughly as thick as her waist-and struggled to lift it. Although it should have been lighter under the water, it would hardly budge. She glanced at Kali. Her eyes looked familiar, and Lana realized it was because they reminded her of the eyes of the dying mandagah fish from her initiation. Renewed panic gave Lana the energy she needed to shove the beam off of Kali's body. She watched it fall and then felt her friend grip her hand. Kali's face was twisted in a grimace, as though she could barely suppress the pain. Lana's own thoughts felt burned through with fear. Was her best friend really going to die? She bit on her lip until she tasted blood, and started struggling with the second piece of wood. Kali suddenly gripped Lana's hand so hard she felt her bones grind against each other.
She had the sudden impression that Kali wanted to say something, but of course she couldn't speak underwater. Instead, she bent Lana's head closer to hers, and kissed her gently on the forehead.
How had she known? Then Kali gasped, and Lana realized that she had finally given into the temptation to suck water in the place of air. Lana pushed the second log off of Kali in one mighty heave and picked up her friend's limp form. She struggled through the maze of supports, back to the surface.
It wasn't raining anymore, she noticed vaguely, even as she struggled to hold Kali's limp body above the water. She heard some cries and a splash behind her. Someone pulled Kali from her grip and onto a barge. She treaded water next to it, staring helplessly as Kali's father and one of the other men tried to breathe life back into her body. Was she dead? Lana didn't want to believe it, but she had understood that gesture. Yet how could Kali possibly have known? Lana was terrified-so scared that she could taste bile in her throat-that she had been given Kali's dying blessing. She heard Kali's mother, still on the roof, wailing. Her father was crying, too, but silent tears that seemed to fall from his eyes without him noticing.
The second man who had been blowing air into her mouth stopped, and laid her head back down on the barge. Kali's mother let out a sound that made Lana's brain shiver. She jumped into the water. The water swelled and a little spilled over the top of the barge. Kali's hair floated and turned a strange, beautiful iridescent burgundy. Lana looked at the sky.
The sun had come out.
They held her funeral that same day at sunset-one of the first real sunsets in weeks. Already the water level was beginning to recede. It was as though Kali's death had been a sacrifice of appeasement to the water spirit. Maybe now things would go back to normal.
She hadn't managed to cry yet. Not when they had told her that her best friend was dead, when she already knew. Not when her parents had finally heard the news and her mother had hugged her tightly. Not when she had tried to explain to Kali's mother why it had taken her too long-just seconds too long-to remove the logs that were pinning her daughter below the surface. Not even when she thought of how Kali had kissed her forehead right before she died.
They held the funeral high in the great, sacred tree of the kukui groves. It was a place of high honor-normally, only elders and divers had funerals held there. Lana appreciated, vaguely, the honor they were giving Kali, who had been neither. But Lana knew how long Kali had stayed alive under the water. If she had wanted to be a diver, she would have been a fine one.
Everyone who could leave their houses had come. They climbed up the tree silently, wearing their best clothes. Lana hadn't changed. She climbed the tree without a shirt, wearing the same leibo and sandals she had worn when she dove in after Kali earlier in the day. Every person brought a covered lamp, and as the crowd grew the great tree began to look mystically illuminated, as though there were hundreds of spirits gathering among them to see Kali away. Okilani and the other seven elders stood on the platform built in the middle of the upper regions of the tree. Kali's body lay there as well, naked except for three large leaves covering her torso. Lana had a good view because people seemed eager to let her through to the closest branches. She wondered what they had heard about her dive. She wondered if they blamed her for Kali's death.
Her hands started trembling on the branches and she forced herself to stop. Okilani glanced at her from the platform with an expression of pure pity. Lana found herself growing angry. Why did everyone seem to pity her? She didn't deserve it. If anything, she deserved their blame. She hadn't been able to save Kali ...