Chapter 1
One month earlier
This part of Kaua'i has no streetlights, which means the road to the Kaua'i Chinese Club is lit only by the waning moon's faint wash of silver. I don't need streetlights anyway, because no one's more familiar with this egg-shaped dot of an island than me. I especially know the area around Hanalei, my hometown, by heart. After all, I was born in Hanalei fourteen years ago, and I've never left Kaua'i, not even to visit a neighbor island.
The road is lined with tall coconut palms, whose fronds rustle in the light trade wind, matching the sweeping rhythm of the waves caressing the nearby bay. The warm breeze that shakes the palms is flowing over the mountains from the south, pulling the perfume of a thousand tropical flowers along with it. This night is as beautiful as a night can get, but I can't enjoy it, because I'm being followed.
I know who's following me. It can only be one person- one tenacious, single-minded person. He's been on my tail like a shadow for twenty minutes now, ducking in and out of the bushes along the side of the road. Another noise sounds from the foliage, closer now.
Escape isn't going to be easy, but I need to shake my pursuer soon, because I don't want him to figure out where I'm headed. I have a private matter to deal with at the Chinese Club; secret business I plan on doing alone and under the cover of night. I'm going to see Madam Chen, a local mystic who operates a fortune telling business out of the back of the club. She has no sign or regular hours, so I'd had to pay an old Chinese man five dollars to learn how to find her.
I force myself to walk at a normal pace in order to lull my pursuer's suspicion, hoping he'll think I haven't noticed him. Pretending to glance casually at the sky, I decide to make my move when the moon passes behind a cloud.
Wait for it, Lani...wait for it...
Finally, the cloud extinguishes the moonlight, and the landscape plunges from low light into pure darkness; my best chance to disappear has arrived. After dashing to the side of the road, I leap over a ditch and dive headfirst into a tangled mass of vines. The end of a low, sharp branch scrapes my calf as I plow through the thicket, drawing blood, but I refuse to stop. With my heart thundering, I break through onto a small path running alongside the taro patch. It's a path only I know about, or so I'd thought.
My pursuer is already there, standing a few feet away. His mouth is tucked in at the corners, and streaks of dirt line his cocoa-colored cheeks, which have only recently lost their last traces of baby fat.
I sigh and smack my forehead. Trying to elude a thirteen-year-old boy with nothing else to do might as well be impossible. "How'd you know about this path?" I demand.
He ignores my question. "I know you're trying to see Madam Chen. You gonna get in big trouble-trouble to da max!"
"Leave me alone, Pano."
Crossing his arms, he looks at me from under his thick lashes. "No."
"If you agree to go home, I'll let you pick the TV show we watch later."
"Who cares? I like to play video games better anyway."
I give up and start walking down the path again, still determined to get to the club before nine o'clock-Pano or no Pano.
He catches up with me, bobbing up and down as he matches my stride. His feet are too big for him, like a puppy. "I'm jus' warning you, if you go through with this, and Tutu finds out, whoooo boy. Dat's gonna be bad. She says fortune telling is the devil's work."
It's not fair of Pano to threaten me with upsetting Tutu, my adoptive grandmother. I'm instantly mad. "What did I tell you about talking in pidgin?" I snap.
He points his soulful brown eyes at the ground. "To stop."
"That's right! Pidgin isn't proper English. It's just a mishmash of languages. If you ever leave Hawai'i, people are going to think you're uneducated."
"Why would anyone ever leave Hawai'i?" he asks, truly curious. Then, he unsticks a half-eaten lollipop from his pocket and pops it in his mouth. Case closed. I don't criticize him, because he'd asked the question in proper English to appease me. He'd probably wanted to say, "You lōlō-crazy-if you leave Havaiee," which is how he pronounces Hawai'i.
A wave of frustration mixed with tenderness washes over me as I look at him, with his bare chest jutting out at a proud angle. He's the contented king of his own jungle, stubbornly unaware of the wider world out there. It's a much different posture than the one he'd had the first time I'd laid eyes on him, seven years ago. The memory of that moment lies always at the surface of my consciousness: a knock on the door in the middle of a stormy night, the dark lānai, empty, we'd thought, until Tutu switched on the light to find a dirty, black-haired child curled around a ragged blanket. A note was pinned to his shirt with just one word written on it: 'Olu 'olu-please.
I'll never be sure, but I could've sworn I'd seen one of the ancients, a Menehune, scampering off the edge of the lānai that night. Menehunes are like Hawai'i's leprechauns: little and mischievous, they're efficient builders who do their work in secret. Lots of Hawaiians believe the Menehunes were the original inhabitants of this island, before the Tahitians came.
I put my hand on Pano's shoulder. His skin felt warm, despite the breeze. "Listen, I know I'm forbidden to see Madam Chen, but everyone says she can see into the future and the past. I want to ask her about my parents. I'm gonna go through with this, no matter what-I have to. You can come with me if you agree to shut up."
He nodded in agreement, and we headed down the road, this time together.
At the club, all the lights were on. The front rooms were busy with people talking and playing cards in the communal rooms, but we were looking for a secret room, around the back. After some searching, we finally found a green door set flush against the back wall, hidden by an outcropping of bushes.
Pano popped out his lollipop. "Did you know that nobody knows how old Madam Chen is? My friend told me his great-grandmother said Madam Chen was already old when she was just a child. And his great-grandmother is ooooold."
My stomach flipped. "That can't be right."
"Well, if she's really in there, ask her how come your hair's red."
His suggestion made my cheeks flush. I'm 'ehu, the Hawaiian term for Polynesians with the rare traits of fair skin, reddish hair and honey-colored eyes. My looks always draw comments from people who wonder if I'm of mixed-heritage. According to Tutu, I'm not.
Taking a deep breath, I opened the green door a crack. Inside, it was as dark as a moonless night, even though the exterior of the club was well-lit. It was as though the light couldn't pass through the door frame. A shadow flitted across the far wall, in shades of black on black. Is someone in there, I wondered.
"You scared?" Pano asked.
"Of course not."
Now that I'd said I wasn't scared, I had to go in. Swallowing hard, I slid one foot over the threshold. "Madam Chen?" I called. My voice was as thin as the skin on a canoe plant.
No response.
I slid my other foot through and stood in the darkness. Without warning, the door slammed behind me. I fumbled for the knob with my hand and tried to turn it, but the door wouldn't budge.
"Madam Chen?" I called again, wheeling around. The smell of incense wafted toward me and a flame lit in the center of the room.
"Yes, my dear?" a voice croaked. A face to match the voice appeared, floating in the glow of the candle set on a table. It had to be Madam Chen. She was tiny, with narrow shoulders and small, wise eyes set in a round face. A black silk cap covered her sparse, wispy hair. She gestured to a chair across from hers. "Have a seat, Leilani Leia."
"You know my name?"
"Of course, my dear. I know everything about you."
Inching forward, one hesitant step at a time, I took a seat on the very edge of the chair. From up close, I could see she had sharp yellow nails, so long that they curled.
"I want to find out more about who I am," I whispered. "Can you tell me where my parents are?"
"Ah, your parents," she said, nodding. "Let me see your hands."
I turned my palms up, keeping them close to me, but Madam Chen reached forward and snatched my wrists in her claw-like hands. "No time to lose," she chided. She examined my palms closely while muttering to herself. "Interesting...very interesting. Now I must listen to the spirits."
She placed a bowl made of an old turtle shell on the table, and a pile of bones appeared in her hand. "Dragon bones," she said, catching my look. With a flick of her wrist, she tossed the bones in the shell. I leaned forward and saw what looked like a random stick pattern to me, but my destiny was in there somewhere.
After staring into the bowl for a few minutes, Madam Chen's face turned up again. Her tiny eyes were a bit wider, as if she was in a trance. She began to speak in an emotionless monotone, sounding out words like they were passing through her from another source:
"From an unruly forest erupts a beastly boar,
To set his Queen in flames once more.
A powerful union, yet mismatched and ill-fated.
A crystal green gem is the treasure created."
She fell silent and closed her eyes. I turned over each of her words in my mind, looking for meaning, but found nothing. "I-I'm sorry...I don't understand."
Madam Chen didn't respond. Instead, she reached for a bamboo cylinder by her side, shook it vigorously, and slid an incense stick from its interior. After placing it next to the bowl, her face turned white.
"I have more questions-" I blurted, but she grabbed my hands again. "We don't have much time left. You must listen!"
I nodded, too shocked to speak.
"I see danger. Beware the anger of the ancient winds! Wander not afar, child."
"W-what?"
Madam Chen's image began to flicker and dim in front of my eyes. I could no longer feel her hands on mine. "Please, don't go yet! I don't understand what you mean!" I cried, but the candle sputtered out and she disappeared.
A low light filled the room, even though nothing had been switched on. I could see now that I was sitting at a folding table in a storage room in the back of the center. Nothing magical about that.
I blinked my eyes and wondered if it had all been a dream. Suddenly, I realized Pano must be worried about me. I'd been gone for at least a half hour, maybe more. I ran across the room and tried the door handle; it turned easily this time. "Pano?" I called, bursting outside.
He was leaning against the wall, a few feet away. "No one's in there, huh?"
"What? But Pano, I've been gone for a while. Didn't you wonder what I was doing?"
"You've only been gone a minute." He tilted his head to the side and examined me. "You feeling okay?"
"Uh, yeah. Sorry," I said, smiling weakly.
"You goin' lōlō, huh."
I nodded, deciding I needed to get away from here, right now. "I might be going crazy, but I can still run faster than you!" I teased.
Pushing off with my toes, I tore down the hidden path we'd taken here. Pano followed me, letting out a whoop, and we ran the entire first third of the trail. With each stride, I pushed down the creepy feelings Madam Chen had given me, until I'd stomped them into the ground.
We raced as far as we could, but, finally, we both had to slow to catch our breath. We were arguing about who was fastest-me, of course!-when something on the trail caught my eye.
"Hold up," I said, throwing my arm across Pano's chest. "What are those?" I pointed at two sweeping gouges carved into the mud path.
Pano pushed my arm away and moved closer to study the strange marks. "It looks like someone pulled something huge across the path."
"But what? And why?"
Pano followed the marks to the side of the trail and parted the tall ferns there. His shoulders tensed. "I-I don't know why, but I think I know what."
Swallowing hard, I moved next to him. There was just enough moonlight to see a wooden tiki inside the thicket of ferns. It looked real, not like something from the tourist shops. At least six feet tall, it was carved in the type of primeval design made when primal fears were a daily reality.
It had a heavy forehead, a nose like a short snout and a wide, menacing grin that seemed to let loose a silent ancestral roar. Its body was stout and brutish, bordered with arms carved thick with bulging bicep muscles. The most striking feature was its almond-shaped eyes, made out of pawa shells the size of silver dollars.
"There's no way this tiki was alongside the path before," I whispered. What I didn't say was-What's it doing here now, out in the middle of the woods? Does it have something to do with Madam Chen's frightening prediction?-I didn't want to scare Pano.
Pano reached out to touch the tiki, but I slapped his hand away. "Don't."
He gave me a sour look. "Why not?"
I didn't have an answer; I could just sense that he shouldn't. "Did you hear that?" I asked.
"What?"
"I heard a sound, like someone's close by, in the bushes."
I tried to pull Pano closer to me to protect him, but he pushed me away. We were quiet for a minute, and I didn't hear any more noises.
"Hello?" he finally called. There was no answer. He shrugged. "Must be an animal."
"Or someone who doesn't want to answer," I said. I swept my eyes across the ground once more and spotted something beside the gauge marks. "Look!"
Pano crouched down. "Is that a footprint?"
"It's too small. Unless it belongs to a-" I stopped before I said the final word: Menehune. I was so creeped out that it felt like a million bugs were crawling underneath my skin. Too many weird things were happening tonight. Or had the experience with Madam Chen scared me so badly that I was overreacting?
When I looked back up, I saw the tiki's eyes had begun to glow. There was no light source reflecting off of them, so it couldn't be shine-the glow had to come from within, from some unknown force or energy. Suddenly, fire flashed out of the eyes of the old ancestor, and the wooden statue started to move backward into the woods.
Pano and I watched it go, too scared to move. If I'd come upon a cobra, hood flared and tongue flickering, I could not have been more transfixed. Each second felt like a minute. Then the ferns closed around the face of the tiki and I screamed, breaking the spell.
The only thing I remember about the run home was the one terrified thought drumming in my brain the whole way-don't look back, don't look back! I swear I didn't draw a breath until Pano and I had scrambled up the banyan tree outside our house and back into my room.
After he disappeared down the hallway, I flopped on my bed and covered my eyes with my hands, but still I saw that tiki, harkening back to the island's tribal roots, like an umbilical cord through time.