Page 46 of Talk Story

16

“Let’s meet the other team. I believe the ancestors will be okay with it,” Malia said.

She’d made the call to cross the line—so we did. We stepped into the narrow throat where the stream poured, making our way carefully into a stretch of passage whose walls gleamed with tiny streams of water. Protrusions of lava required squeezing past—and stalactites required ducking.

And suddenly the ceiling lifted and opened. Our beams flashed around a chamber where the sound of water filled everything as the stream tumbled into a large pool. Malia went first around the edge with her flashlight, then me, then Keone, single file along a floor that was tilted and slick under our feet.

The ti leaf offering was behind us at the entrance and Malia’s pule was still somewhere around us; I held onto that, because every step was taking us deeper into a place where the living were not meant to walk.

We made our way another ten feet past the pool—and then the floor ended.

Malia’s beam shot out into nothing as a pit opened across almost the whole width of the cave—a black gash maybe fifteen feet across.

I crept to the edge and peered in with my headlamp; the light couldn’t find the bottom. But along the right-hand wall, a narrow shoulder of stone ran partway down the drop. The ledge was maybe two feet wide and crumbling at the edge.

“There,” Keone said. His hand closed tight on my shoulder, turning me. “Point your light across.”

On the far side of the pit, another beam was coming toward us, jerking and swinging. A voice came with it, threadbare with distance and echo. “Peahi! That you?”

“Texeira!” Malia’s relief cracked through the name. “We’re at the pit—you’re across from us.”

Our beams found each other across the gap, and in the bounce and scatter of the doubled light I could see that both Lei and Pali had a coil of rope over their shoulders. Pali carried a rack of climbing hardware clipped at his waist that caught the light in small bright winks.

“I see Chang down there,” Lei called, after her beam had tipped down into the pit. “On a ledge. Maybe twenty-five feet from the lip.”

I edged out onto the narrow shoulder, Keone’s fist knotted in the back of my vest, and peered down.

Far below, where Lei’s light pooled on a shelf of rock above the deeper dark, lay Victor Chang. The man was crumpled on his side, one arm flung wide. His pale clothing gleamed with wet, and dark patches that were mud—or blood.

He wasn’t moving. His headlamp was smashed, though still on his head. And under him, half-hidden by his weight, was a large rectangular shape I couldn’t make out—something he’d landed on that had broken the meeting of his body and the stone.

“Is he—“ My voice was too faint; I raised it. “Can you see if he’s alive?”

“Can’t tell from here,” Lei called. “No movement, though. Pali’s going down.”

“Yes, I am,” Pali said, already checking through his gear and discarding what he wouldn’t need. He began feeding rope through his hands and making a loop with it, using the unhurried economy of a man who knew his way around caves—and cliffs.

I flashed to Elle and her many talents—she would appreciate this highly competent aspect of Pali Moku.

Pali found an anchor, a thick tooth of lava, on his side of the pit. He wrapped it with the rope, testing his knots with his full weight.

And then he was over the lip and descending into the dark, his headlamp dropping away from us foot by foot, his voice floating up steady and calm. “Talk to me from up there, Lei. Keep your light on him.”

We watched from our side as Pali lowered himself down, moving in short bursts, using his legs to mitigate the swing of his body toward the rock face.

My heart beat hard in my throat; Keone’s grip on my back never loosened as I watched the drama unfold.

Pali’s headlight reached the ledge at last. The small bright disc of illumination moved over Victor Chang—across his back, his throat, his face.

Then our view was cut off as Pali bent over the man, putting fingers to his throat.

“He’s breathing,” Pali called up, and I heard Keone exhale beside me. “Out cold. Pulse is there. Bleeding from the head, and his leg’s wrong. Broken, maybe his hip, too. He came down hard.” A pause, the light dipping. “He landed on this . . .” A moment of investigation. “He landed on a satchel. It’s an old, oiled leather satchel. It’s what broke his fall. Saved his fool life.”

Something went still and alert in me. “A satchel,” I called down. “Pali—what’s in it?”

A long moment. His light had stopped moving. When his voice came back up it had changed—lower, softer, the calm gone tight.

“Papers,” he said. “Oilcloth wrapping, parchment document sleeves.” Another pause. “It’s the archive. Hannah’s archive. It’s been down here the whole time.” The light moved again, decisive now. “I’ve got it. I’m putting it in my pack.”