I regarded him for a moment, and the words formed and reformed themselves in my head, but I was too much of a coward to tell him what Joss had told me—that he would never reach 1868 with me aboard. “As long as we can, Captain,” I said finally.
He blinked at me. “Well. That’s more than I hoped for.” Then he grinned and came at me low, wrapping me up in a hug as he had back outside of Christie’s, before we’d come to this place. I locked my own arms around his neck, and I didn’t let go until after he did.
Slate himself rowed us to shore, beating the water vigorously with the oars, as though he were trying to best it. When we reached the beach and stepped out into the warm water and the soft, shell-studded sand, Slate saluted us before he pulled away.
“He’s in high spirits,” Kashmir said.
“He’s happy it’s nearly over.”
“Aren’t you happy, amira?” Kashmir said.
“Sure,” I said, and I tried to mean it. Slate was right; I had an alternative. I could set out on my own if I liked. This was what I’d always wanted . . . only now I understood the meaning behind the old curse, “May your every wish be granted.”
I pushed the thoughts from my mind as I rolled down the cuffs of my trousers. I’d eschewed a dress for our hike, and packed simply: a change of clothes, a handful of coins, and a letter that I’d written in private, in haste, and shoved in the bottom of my bag.
Hana’uma had been formed by a volcanic cone, and it was a long, steep climb up a winding trail from the beach to the lip of the crater. We walked in silence, the path too steep to speak easily, but we listened to birds serenade from the scraggly trees that shaded the path. At the top of the dead volcano, we stopped to rest and drink. Below us, the water lay like a sapphire cabochon in a partial capture of the shore, marred only by the ships like flaws on the stone.
I sighed, and Kash quirked up an eyebrow. “It’s so beautiful,” I said, in answer to his unspoken question.
“This?” Kashmir shrugged. “It reminds me of Bengal.”
“It’s unique,” I insisted.
“Unique like everything else you’ve ever seen.”
I took another mouthful of water to consider my response. Then I reached out to grab Kashmir’s arm. “Look!” I pointed at a small black bird sitting on a branch above our heads.
Kash stared dubiously. “Does it heal things?”
“Wait till it flies away,” I said. “There are yellow feathers under each wing. The Hawaiian chieftains used them to make their golden cloaks.”
The bird called out, and Kashmir cocked his head. “Pretty melody, at least.”
“Fifty years from now, the last one will sing his final song somewhere on Mauna Loa.”
“Ah.”
We watched the bird fly. “Doesn’t that make you sad?” I asked, exasperated.
“Why? It’s here now, amira.”
We walked in silence almost directly west, over the black volcanic pumice of the crater’s edge, and down toward the water and the inlet of Maunalua Bay, where we passed a fish pond and a native village beside a stream where Hawaiians were shrimping with woven baskets. I stopped for a moment to watch, and a man offered us some shrimp. They were about the length of one of the joints in my finger, translucent pink, and still living as he crushed them between his white teeth. I took him up on his offer; they were salty-sweet and bitter, all at once.
We continued for a while along the shore, giving wide berth to basking sea turtles and startling a small gray monk seal. We crossed a flat of tide pools where tiny red crabs scrambled in and out of the pocked holes formed by ancient bubbles in the superheated liquid stone, and I made Kashmir stop to watch as a woman and her daughter pried opihi off the mossy rocks with dull flat blades. We passed a thicket of Kona oranges and pulled fruit from the trees, filling my bag near to bursting. Kashmir offered to carry it, and I handed it over gratefully. Finally we turned inland to avoid hiking up Diamond Head—or Leahi, Blake’s map had labeled it—jumping over streamlets and tramping down tall grass.
The sun followed behind for a while and then overtook us, leading us along like a beacon as we approached Waikiki, where white peacocks walked at a stately pace under the tall trees. I led Kash onto the sand to walk along the water’s edge. I knew it was the longer route, but I felt an odd reluctance, a push and a pull, running away and running to. I shied away from the natural end to our journey, and I gave in to the draw of seeing all I could in the time I had left. My native time.
Kashmir must have noticed me dragging my feet. The last few miles he’d been quiet, his usual humor fading with the afternoon, but he hadn’t made any effort to hurry me. The sun dipped into the ocean as we caught sight, in the distance, of the black forest of masts in Honolulu Harbor, and it was just a slip of molten red above the horizon by the time we reached the last stretch of beach before the blasted coral of the esplanade.
I stopped on the sand. Kashmir continued a few steps, then turned around.