Wind Raker - Book IV of The Order of the Air (20 page)

"Father of those who harken, of we humans who think and are fruitful, Father whose eyes are everywhere, have mercy on Thy children!" The woman's voice rose above the drums.

The singers replied, the drums louder still.

Stasi shifted, her hand tightening on his, and Mitch looked sideways at her. Her eyes were defocused and wide. "There are others here," she whispered. "The Dead have come to dance."

A chill ran down his spine. And yet there was nothing to see, nothing he could see besides the older woman beginning to sway. It was nothing like the dance the girls had performed when the steamer came into port, slow and careful, her feet barely moving on the damp sand, her back straight. Her hips moved, her arms moved, both with a grace that belied her age.

This was what it must have looked like on so many beaches since the world began, Mitch thought, in so many now deserted temples. This was the dance of birth. This was the dance of waves on the shore, of rain on trees. The other three women standing joined her, Dr. Buck having stepped entirely aside. One of them was Beatrice. Her flowered white summer dress ought to be incongruous, but it wasn't. Each step was decorous, and yet it made his blood sing.

"Will you?" The man to his left held out a small drum.

"Yes," Mitch said. There were more drums now, eight or ten, some keeping worse time than he would, the power growing with each addition. A heartbeat. A drum beat. He looked across at Jerry, the sharp lines of his face suffused with joy, and he tried to follow Jerry's movements. Beside Jerry Alma met his eyes, her cheeks flushed.

The other three women were coming forward now, and with a smile Bea reached out a hand to draw Stasi to her feet, still keeping the rhythm with feet and hips.

"I don't know the dance," Stasi said.

"It's all one dance," Bea said, and Stasi took her hand, rising from the wet sand which stuck to her bare feet.

Heartbeat. Heartbeat. All the women were standing now, dancing with more or less skill but no less beauty, turning and turning about each other in improvised figures. Alma rotated slowly, the torchlight turning her light colored dress to blood. Stasi turned next to Beatrice like her shadow, black dress and white, revolving around and around each other like life and death entwined.

The song rose higher and higher. The lead woman turned and began to dance toward the sea. The other women followed, the waves splashing over their ankles.

Heartbeat. Heartbeat. The drums quickened, a heartbeat racing in love or danger.

The waves were to their knees, Stasi dancing in the waves completely disregarding her dress. One crested later than the others, flowing in white foam over the dancers, wetting them to the waist or higher. And now they were taking off their leis, putting them reverently on the breast of the water, flowers of every color borne in wreaths on the depths.

The drums rose to a crescendo. With a shout of "Ai!" they stopped, Mitch stilling his hands before he made one last strike out of order. Jerry's hair fell out of its usual combed and Brylcreemed lines, drooping forward over his face which was all sharp intensity. Mitch took a long breath, drained as if he'd been running. "Wow," he said.

A
fterwards, Stasi borrowed a fuzzy white bathrobe to put over her damp dress while everyone ate baked ham and potato salad. Well, Stasi ate the fish instead, but not so anybody would notice. She was beautiful soaking wet, laughing and talking with the other women in a way that seemed unusually relaxed for her. Generally she was tense as a cord in company.

Bea had changed into a bright pink dress, apparently forewarned that she'd be soaking wet. She had a glass in one hand and a plate in the other as Mitch found himself next to her and her husband at the end of the sideboard set up as a self-serve bar. "That was something," he said.

"I'm glad you liked it," she said.

"I just wondered about one thing," he said. "Weren't you worried about sharks feeding at night when you walked into the water like that? I've seen a bunch of shark warnings posted."

"Hardly," Bea said. "Emma — Mrs. Taylor who was leading it — is of the blood of the shark. No shark would bother us with her."

Jerry had come up beside Mitch, also looking relaxed and drained, almost post-coital, not that Mitch would know. "Is that a clan designation?" he asked keenly.

"Something like that," Bea said. "It used to mean literal descent, though most people don’t take it that way today." She smiled. "It's also the title of my book, the one that comes out next year, The Blood of the Shark."

"Congratulations on the book," Mitch said. "Have you started another one?"

"About twelve," her husband said, not looking up from where he was mixing a drink.

"I was working on another book about a very different subject," she said. Her smile faded. "But I've put that away since Ford Maddox Ford's
A Little Less Than Gods
came out. It was unpublishable."

"Why is that?" Jerry asked.

Her husband straightened up grinning. "It's indecent," he said. "Based on the life of a notorious courtesan."

She gave him a sharp look. "No, because it uses much of the same material that Ford Maddox Ford did, and nobody is going to publish another book based on the same events when his just came out. I'll have to wait until everyone has completely forgotten about
A Little Less Than Gods
."

Jerry frowned. "But Ford is a bestseller. That could take decades."

Bea's smile returned. "Well," she said. "I've got time."

Chapter Nine

J
erry was a little startled the next morning that Beatrice had brought George with her to drop off the box of stones Hansen and Gray had sieved, but she waved away his surprise quickly. "We were just on our way to the club for lunch, and you're right on our way. We're ridiculously early." She was wearing a white straw pancake hat with a spray of white silk camellia blossoms on the side, a delicate flower that seemed nothing like her. A less likely Dame Aux Camelias he couldn't imagine.

Alma had come to the door behind him. "Please come in," she said. "We were about to take the children to the beach, but I know Jerry and Dr. Radke would be happy to offer you coffee." She gave Jerry a sideways look as if to ask if he'd completely forgotten his manners.

"Of course," Jerry said, stepping back. "Please take coffee with us."

He expected Bea to politely refuse but instead she smiled hugely and came right in, George following after like a dutiful escort, his hands in his pockets. "I hoped you'd have a few minutes," she said. "Peter told me all about your stone. So I've brought you a story."

"A story?" Jerry wondered if he looked as bemused as he sounded.

"Coffee on the lanai," Alma said. "I'll get you all set up before we leave for the beach. Lewis is staying here too if you need anything."

"About the navel of the world," Bea said. "There's a Hawaiian story about it. I thought you'd like to hear it."

"Very much," Jerry said quickly, feeling the familiar prickle of anticipation. "I’ll call Dr. Radke down this moment."

It was very quiet in the house once Mitch, Stasi, Alma and all four children piled in the car and left for the beach. Jerry sat on the lanai with Willi, Bea, and the coffeepot, all small talk concluded.

"Once, in the time when all the stories happened," she began. Bea had a melodious voice, Jerry thought. She could have been an actress, if that were a job for a respectable woman. Instead, it wove with the sea wind through the palm fronds, whispering across the quiet lanai, the distant shouts of the children playing outside.

"In the time when all the stories happened, there was a floating island. The gods had made it that way, an island with no roots to the bottom of the sea, and so it drifted on the currents beneath the sky, guided by Lono until it came at last to the lands of the People."

Willi shifted in his seat, his coffee cup clinking against the saucer as he put it down, and Jerry steepled his hands.

"Now this floating island had people as well, and they were brothers and sisters to the golden lizard, and their chief was a man who was not a man. Seven moons they had floated beneath the sky, and their stores were depleted, so when they came to the lands of Hawai'i they came to shore immediately in their boats, bearing baskets and casks of leather. They sought the navel of the world."

"I don't…" Willi began.

"All human beings have a navel," she said. "Omphalos. The ancient Greeks set a stone before the cave of the Oracle at Delphi."

"The gates of the underworld," Jerry said, and for a moment it seemed that a chill crawled down his back. "The inward passage. The descent."

Bea smiled, and it ought to have been reassuring but it wasn't. "The gates of birth and death. We all carry that mark on us. Our navel, the twisting passage that marks where we were joined."

"The navel of the world," Jerry said softly. He lifted his head, eyes rising toward the distant ridge of Diamond Head against the sea. So many patterns, so many stories. Volcanoes and underworld passages….

"Did they find it?" Willi asked abruptly, his glasses sliding down his nose. "In the story, I mean. The center of the world?"

She nodded, a sideways smile, her eyes looking unnaturally dark even in the shade of the lanai. "They did. They found the navel of the world and it was here."

"The navel of the world…." Jerry said. There were too many thoughts, too many patterns, a crowd of stories that would take days to put in order.

"Very good for them," Willi said briskly, "But what does that have to do with Mr. Collins' porcelain? A story proves nothing."

"A great deal. Or nothing." She shrugged, an ordinary woman in an overdone hat, white camellias at her brow. "And there’s more than one version of this particular tale. Some say the floating island was wrecked here or that it ran aground and became Ni’hau. But it has been my experience that sometimes stories hold truth. Wrapped in metaphor, perhaps, but stories have a way of being true."

"There is no such thing as the navel of the world," Willi said. "It is a mythological conceit, Mrs. Patton." He shoved his glasses up on his nose, his voice unaccustomedly passionate. "Underworld passages and mysterious places and all the rest are part of the fodder of mythology, but that is all they are, the shared neuroses of primitive peoples."

"And magic?" she asked.

"There is no such thing as magic," Willi said shortly. "Come. Be rational."

Her smile didn't change. "Do you agree, Dr. Ballard?"

Jerry swallowed. "I think very often stories hold the key to history," he said. "After all, consider Schliemann and Troy."

"That is not the same thing," Willi said hotly. "There was a long and well documented history of occupation on the site of Hisarlik."

"Isn't it?" Bea asked. "You have a site and a story. Surely these things do bear examining against one another."

"We have some porcelains that have no business being where they were found," Willi said. "And we have one stone with ambiguous scratches. That is all we know we have. Let us not hare off on stories about floating islands and bizarre hypotheses about Chinese explorers in Hawaii. We must be conservative in our conclusions, and as yet we have nothing to support these strange theories." He took a quick gulp of his coffee. "I do not put any stock in these theories fashionable today about Aryan supermen responsible for strange sites all over the globe or odd Oriental geniuses who left mysterious puzzles! There is no evidence, just the wishful thinking of people who want to see a connection between a rune in Tibet and one in Norway that happen to bear a passing resemblance to one another."

"And yet we have fifteenth century Chinese porcelain found in Hawaii," Jerry observed.

"It very well could have been brought by nineteenth century missionaries," Willi snapped.

"Very true," Bea conceded. "It may be early nineteenth century. And there were certainly missionaries who had been previously in China."

"And the only way we will know more is to dig." Willi got to his feet swiftly. "It was lovely to see you, Mrs. Patton, but I fear I must get back to the dig."

"Go on then," Jerry said. He looked at Beatrice, hesitating a moment. "I'll be along later."

"We really need to go on too," she said, smiling to show Jerry she wasn't offended by Willi's abruptness. "We have a luncheon date. I'll collect George from wherever he's gotten to."

L
ewis wasn't entirely surprised to find George in the kitchen, since he'd just passed Jerry and Willi having old home hour with Bea on the lanai over whatever they'd dug up the day before. He was reading the paper and looked up when Lewis came in. "I hope you don't mind," he said, gesturing at the Sunday paper spread on the table.

"Not a bit." Lewis poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove. "It's a little early for fishhooks and rocks for me."

George snorted. "It's always early for fishhooks for me. You'd think it was Tut's mummy."

"Yeah, well." Lewis sat down at the table with his cup. "That's Jerry's department, not mine. Anything good in the paper?"

George tossed the first section across the table. "Maginot Line. The French have opened a new section with all pomp and circumstance as befits deterrent defensive weaponry." He shook his head. "Have you ever seen a bigger waste of money and time?"

"How's that?" Lewis said.

"It's a wall. Essentially. It has phases, like old school star fortifications, but it's essentially a wall of fortifications along the entire Franco-German border, hundreds of miles long and several miles deep. It's the trench system to end all trench systems. It's supposed to be utterly impenetrable. To go through it you'd need to get through an outer perimeter that's heavily defended and covered by heavy artillery, then through a series of trenches, underground bunkers, and blockhouses connected by light rail. All of it defended by 19 divisions, roughly 90,000 men."

"That sounds impossible," Lewis said, taking a drink. He hadn't been in the trenches. He'd looked down on them from above, miles and miles of blasted landscape in the Somme, not a tree standing for miles, a desert created by men in which nothing could survive.