Wind Raker - Book IV of The Order of the Air (19 page)

Chapter Eight

A
lma came downstairs smoothing her blue serge dress, hoping it was nice enough for the evening's events. It was the best dress she had with her, bar the formal dress she'd brought for dinner on the liner, but it wasn't very up to date. The little girls were in bed, but Douglas was still going great guns in the dining room, running in circles around Mitch quite literally.

"But why can't we come?" he pleaded again.

"It's a luau," Mitch said patiently, walking into the living room with his little orbital satellite going around him again.

"What's a luau?"

"A party for grownups," Mitch said. He caught Alma's eye, and she couldn't help but laugh.

Douglas went around again. "Does that mean there's hooch?"

"Probably," Mitch said. "But you're not going. You're staying here with Miss Lee."

There was a knock at the door. "And that's her now," Alma said, hastening to answer it and leaving Mitch to the fun of explaining why Douglas couldn't have any hooch.

"Good evening," Miss Lee said, coming in and taking off her gloves.

"I'm afraid Douglas is still up," Alma said. "And bouncing around wildly. Jimmy's reading on the sleeping porch."

"I can handle Douglas," Miss Lee said cheerfully. "Don't worry."

"Are you going to hula dance?" Douglas was asking Mitch as he ran round and round the dining table.

"What's your secret?" Alma asked.

"Bribery," Miss Lee said. "Hey! Douglas! Come here and see what I have for you if you behave!"

Douglas swarmed her, and Mitch broke away to join Alma at the door. "Are you set?"

"Yep. Just waiting for the others," Alma replied.

They all jammed into the car with Jerry riding shotgun beside Lewis, as the front seat had the most room for his leg. Lewis glanced back over the seat at Alma. "So where is this place anyway?"

Jerry pulled out an envelope with his scribbles on it. "I have directions. It's at the home of some people called the Andersons."

"Are you sure it's all right for us all to come?" Stasi asked. She was powdering her nose with her compact open, perched in the middle of the rear seat between Alma and Mitch.

"She said it was fine. That it was one of the big rituals of the year and it was quasi-open," Jerry replied. "Apparently the full moon I went to was a much smaller group. This is much more public, like some of Henry's Lodge's rituals."

"Which means it can pass as theater," Alma said.

"Or quaint native customs," Stasi said. She frowned at herself in the compact mirror.

"I wouldn't bet on that," Jerry said. "Bea takes Hawaii very seriously, and I can't imagine Dr. Buck would be a part of anything demeaning."

"No, I wouldn't expect so," Alma said. "Personally, I'm excited to have the opportunity to learn something new."

"I expect it will be that," Mitch said.

A
t first glance it just looked like quite a party. The Anderson's house was beachfront, with a gorgeous view of ocean and sky and a somewhat rocky beach. The house itself was sprawling and one story, as though a hundred years ago someone had built a modest cottage and just kept on adding through years of monarchy and territory. The lot was large enough even now that there were no other houses close enough to see through screening palms. It must have cost a small fortune.

"Wow," Mitch said.

"Yeah." Lewis maneuvered his car around others parked in the circle drive, then started back toward the road. "I'm going to have to park back this way. Sorry, Jerry."

"Ok," Al said. There must be a dozen cars. So something like twenty people? Maybe more, if they'd all jammed in the way her group had.

"It's a nice flat drive," Jerry said. "Or you could stop and let me out here. There's Dr. Buck." He raised a hand to a tall, dark-skinned man in an impeccable summer suit walking up the drive with a red-haired woman in a peacock blue fascinator.

Lewis stopped the car as the Bucks waited, and Alma was glad Jerry had forewarned everyone that they were an interracial couple. It would be insulting to look shocked, even if it was just surprise.

"Good to see you, Ballard," Dr. Buck said, opening the car door for Jerry and offering him a hand with no ado.

"Thanks," Jerry said. "Dr. Buck, Mrs. Buck, these are my friends — Mr. and Mrs. Segura and Mr. and Mrs. Sorley. Mrs. Segura is our Magister."

"Pleased to meet you all."

"And you, Dr. Buck," Alma said from the backseat. "Jerry's spoken so much of you."

Jerry got to his feet with some difficulty, and Alma made note that the crushed shell of the drive was more treacherous than it looked.

"And here's Mrs. Patton," Dr. Buck said as another couple came up the drive from where a sporty white Packard was parked. "And Colonel Patton."

Mitch had unobtrusively gotten out of the car to give Jerry a hand, and now he opened the back door for Stasi. Lewis shrugged at Alma — he'd just go park then, since Mitch was handing the ladies out.

"It's good to see you," Jerry said, shaking hands with Mrs. Patton with some warmth, and Alma recalled that he'd stayed with them for a few days when he'd first arrived in Hawaii. "I'd like to introduce my friends. This is Mrs. Segura, Mrs. Sorley, and this is Mr. Sorley. He's also a major in the reserves," Jerry said aside to the colonel as Mitch shook hands. "And Mr. Segura is driving. I think he's going to go park."

"I'll be back in a minute," Lewis said, waving as Alma shut the door.

"I won't go far," she said, and he pulled out.

"What branch of the service are you in?" Colonel Patton was asking Mitch.

"Air Corps reserves in Colorado, Lewis Segura is a captain in the same unit," Mitch said. He looked at Mrs. Patton. "And we've met before!"

"Henry's party," she said, her eyes crinkling at the corners as she gave him a very genuine smile. "The burgled safe. Did you ever find out who did it?"

Stasi attempted to make herself as small as possible behind Alma.

"Never did," Mitch said pleasantly. "One of those things, I guess."

T
he house was pretty fantastic, Mitch thought. What he liked best was the long porch that ran the length of the living room on the seaward side. With the drapes pulled back, it showed a fantastic panorama of sea and sky. Candles in hurricane lanterns glowed on each post, and there were tiki torches set in the grass to light a path down to the beach. A pair of French doors were open, and people were coming and going with stuff.

"Is it outside?" Stasi asked.

Mitch shrugged.

"Yes, indeed," Mrs. Patton said to Stasi, stopping next to them to put her shoes under a chair. "And you'd better take your shoes and stockings off if you don't want to ruin them. I'm Beatrice Patton, by the way. Call me Bea." She extended a hand to Stasi.

"Stasi Sorley," Stasi said. She always looked like it was strange to say that. At least half of it was her real name. Their marriage license was valid even if none of her other papers were. "It's lovely to meet you, darling. Mitchell has said so much about you." Apparently she'd decided to brazen out being recognized from Henry's safecracking. After all, Beatrice had no way to know she was the one who'd opened the safe even if she recognized her from the party. Still, a little diversion might be in order.

"Should I take off my shoes too? I take it we're on the beach?"

"I would if I were you," Beatrice said. "Yes, we're on the beach. It's a very eclectic group, and I think you can see more of a Polynesian flavor in this celebration of the summer solstice than in most of our things. It varies by who's writing it, of course. This one is mostly Peter and Emma." She smiled. "But that's syncretic too, of course. The Maori and the Hawaiians are from thousands of miles apart, rather like lumping Norse and Greek traditions as the same thing because they're both European."

"I'm afraid I don’t know anything about Polynesian traditions," Mitch said. "I hate to go into this ignorant."

"It's all right." Bea smiled warmly. "There's nothing secret or difficult in this. Just an honoring of the season. And many different cultures have rituals at the sea on or around midsummer. I think Peter and Emma have done a good job of finding the common threads that link us."

"An advantage of having an anthropologist write the ritual," Mitch said.

"Exactly." She beamed. "We'll give thanks to sea and sky and to all the deities that they encompass with gifts of song and flowers."

"That's not so different than the epagomenal days honoring the Ennead in Egypt," Stasi said, and Mitch blinked at her.

"Have you been hanging around with Jerry?" he asked.

"I'm widely read, darling." Stasi tossed her head.

"It's very much like that," Bea said seriously. "But since Hawaii has an ocean, not a river, putting lamps afloat wouldn’t work well. They'd swamp. So here the gifts are flowers."

"That makes perfect sense," Stasi said. "I can't wait." She sat down on a little side chair to take off her shoes and stockings. Bea moved off to get a basket from Mrs. Buck and carry it outside.

"This is different," Mitch said.

Stasi looked up, squirming as she unhooked her garter without lifting the skirt of her black dress. "You haven't worked in many different traditions, have you?"

"Not really," Mitch said. "I mean, some variation within Hermetics, but not outside that. I've never done something explicitly pagan."

Stasi looked amused. "What do you think the classics are? Doesn't it seem to you that Jerry treats the classics as a living, breathing truth?"

"Sometimes I think Jerry lives in the Roman world," Mitch said. "In a play by Plautus, maybe."

"I think this is more
The Golden Ass
, darling." Stasi folded her backseam stockings carefully and tucked them in one shoe. "Do you have a problem with it?"

Mitch took a deep breath. "No," he said. "There's no difference between being a guest at a pagan ritual than being a guest in a Synagogue."

"And what would you know about that?" Stasi bent over to put her shoes under the chair with Bea's.

"I know I'd go if someone wanted to take me," Mitch said. "With a full and loving heart."

He couldn't see her face as she arranged her shoes carefully. Then she got up, an insouciant smile on her face. "What an interesting piece of trivia! Shall we go out?"

"Sure," he said, and offered her his arm.

T
he waning moon was high in the sky over the sea, just beginning its descent in the west. The air was very clear and warm, the stars incredibly bright over the ocean, bright as they appeared from a plane on a clear night. Mitch took a deep breath. The palm fronds rustled in the breeze, and the scent of frangipani wafted from the trees near the porch. The narrow path more or less forced everyone into single file. Mitch followed Stasi around the curving bushes no more than waist high.

Bea was standing with the basket where the sand began. She smiled and held out a lei for Stasi — white orchids, each large and beautiful enough to be a whole corsage at home.

"Oh my," Stasi said, bending her head so that Bea could slip it on her. The enormous fragile blooms were stark against her black dress, stark as Easter lilies in the darkness of a predawn church.

Mitch's lei was red hibiscus. "Thank you," he said.

A semi-circle of about twenty people were assembling on the beach, most of them sitting on large towels or blankets spread on the sand facing the water. The other half of the circle was empty except for slow gentle waves lapping up on the shore and receding, leaving behind the bubbles that showed where clams were hidden. Stasi claimed a seat on the right side and Mitch sat down beside her. Alma and Lewis were pretty much opposite them next to Jerry who was sitting in a folding beach chair instead of on the ground. An older Hawaiian woman was bending down talking to him, his glasses flashing reflection of the torches at the edge of the path. Both of them were smiling. She straightened up, leaving something in Jerry's lap. It looked like a drum.

"What…" Mitch began, but stopped as another drum began off to his left, a slow steady beat. Everyone who had not already sat down came in single file, one after another, their voices mingling in a song in a language he didn't understand. Stasi looked about avidly, and Mitch watched as they slowly came to stand in a line facing the semi-circle, four women and one man with Dr. Buck in the middle. The little waves flowed almost to their heels. The song ended on a high note, the drum ceasing.

"Welcome friends," Dr. Buck said. "I give you aloha, friends from all over the earth, from every land under the stars, of every people, who come here united by our love of this beautiful world." He raised his arms to the skies. "This Earth, this planet hurtling through space, is our home. We are part of it. Our breath is its skies. Our blood is its waters. Our flesh is its body. Our spirits are part of its immortal energy. We are alike — human beings, children of the gods."

The drum beat began again, a heartbeat in the darkness. Across the circle, Lewis was sitting up very straight, like a hound with ears pricked forward.

"This is the first sound you heard," Dr. Buck said. "You heard the heartbeat in the womb. We are all children of women, born to breathe air. We were born in blood. We took our first breaths, and we were on our own, independent lives. We took our first drinks, and we knew the world. We belong to it, to its mana. We are connected by our common humanity."

He stretched out his hands to either side, taking the hands of the woman to each side. All around the semi-circle hands reached out. Mitch clasped Stasi's hand, took the hand of a short, gray haired man sitting on the next beach towel. The energy was palpable, connections forming as the circle did.

The older woman who had been talking to Jerry stepped forward. "Oh Io, Oh Io! Thy servant calls Thee to the very housetops. Thou art Iolani, the eyes of gracious eternity!"

There was a response, the voices of the other women rising in song. The drums grew louder, three or four more instruments joining the heartbeat. Mitch saw with some surprise that one of them was Jerry's, his face intent as he matched the beat.