Free Siren by Delle Jacobs Page A

to the two men. She knelt before Bartholomew and sat the bowl before him.
    "Do not fear the Siren's call, Tom Bartholomew. If it is not your time, you will not go. If it is your time, you will go."
    His stare at her was a mix of deadly fear and horror, then softened to mere astonishment.
    "Hiapo calls you Namaka-o-Kaha'i," he said. The sea goddess." He sent a wide-eyed sidelong glance at John. "T'ain't possible."
    "I know," John replied.
    "How come you're alive, then, Wall? Is this it?"
    "I told you there's no explaining it."
    "Yeah. Yeah, I surely do see why you don't say much."
    "Do not fear, Tom Bartholomew," Siren said again. "There is much you do not know, but you will not regret what you must do."
    Then she returned to her place beside John.
    The drums, the deep-toned ones they kept hidden in dark caves, came out. The hula began. This time, when the singer began his tale of the sea goddess, three women wearing short, thickly bunched skirts and leis circling ankles and wrists and crowning their heads, began a fluid, swaying dance. The story, John now understood, was told in the hands.
    It was told in the hula that Namaka-o-Kaha-I, was sister to the goddess Pele, who was the fire of the great volcanoes, or the ancient homeland of Tahiti. When Pele stole her sister's husband, she fled, and Namaka-o-Kaha'i followed in anger. Pele came to the Islands of Hawaii, first to Kauai in the north, but her sister followed and everywhere Pele put her digging stick in the ground, Namaka-o-Kaha'i caused the waves to rise up and fill the hole. And so Pele fled to the next island, and the next. But each time the sea goddess raised the sea against her sister. Finally, when Pele reached the biggest island, Hawaii, she hurried high up the mountain to thrust her stick into the ground, flinging fire at her sister the whole way, and causing the sea goddess's hair to burst into flames. Try as she might, Namaka could not make the waves reach her sister, who thrust her stick into the land, and there she stayed, raising the enormous volcanoes that spew fire to this day. Namaka-o-Kaha'i returned to the sea, where she had dominion, and Pele never again dared to go near the water where her flame-haired sister awaited. And to this day, the sea goddess, Namaka-o-Kaha'i is recognized by her hair that burns in the daylight.
    John privately wondered what had happened to the lover, but he thought it wise not to make mention of it.
    "Is it true?" he quietly asked Siren, for he no longer thought such things were nonsense. He himself had heard the sea singing back to Siren.
    "Men tell the stories they can understand," she replied.
    It would have been proper for John to invite Bartholomew to stay the night in his hut with Siren, but it was the last thing he wanted to do. He had found it hard enough to sleep within hearing distance of the Oahuans. A white man, he didn't think he could handle. But Hiapo spoke of it first, and insisted the man not return over the coast road to Honolulu in the night when the spirits of the old warriors who had been slain by King Kamehameha roamed along the cliffs and valleys near the Pali. John breathed relief.
    Although he made love with Siren that night, it was very quiet, almost tentative, for something about Bartholomew troubled him deeply. John only wanted to hold on to his beloved through the night, more for fear that he would disappear than she, he thought.
    In the morning, he rose at dawn and saw Bartholomew waiting for him near the dusty road that wound up the hill and around the old crater called Diamond Head. He shrugged, and joined the stocky American he'd just as soon not see again. For a long time, they just walked, saying nothing.
    "No dock work today," Bartholomew said. "Don't know why we're going. The Galinda is still repairing her yardarms. Got the mast done, though. Hull scraped. She'll be going out in a few more days. Guess we'll load her by tomorrow, maybe."
    John grunted. He hadn't planned on working the docks