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this in a lava tube. Do you think it’s a real talking board?” As she handed the older woman the piece of wood, Lehua depressed the record button.
    Annie said nothing as she held the board with one hand and gently passed the fingers of her other hand over the carved surface. She nodded, then turned her clouded eyes in Lehua’s direction. Seeming not to have heard Lehua’s answer to her question, she again asked, “Where you get dis?”
    Before Lehua could answer, Annie’s tone shifted. A strange falsetto crept into her voice. Was she reading it? Her hand moved over the board, but somehow it seemed what was coming out was memory and not a description of what the marks might have stood for. The language was Hawaiian—and yet not Hawaiian. Lehua knew only a smattering of the native speech, but enough to be certain no Hawaiian speaker would have understood the sounds coming from the old woman’s lips. The recital lasted a scant two minutes and, as it ended, Lehua could feel herself letting out her breath.
    â€œWhat does it mean? What language is that? Is that what it says?” Her questions tumbled over themselves.
    Annie handed back the glass, the paper and the board. “It’s dah old tongue. My gran’paw teach me. I nevah know what it mean.” She turned her fog-shrouded eyes toward her interrogator.
    â€œYou must know what it means. You just read it.”
    â€œI know da sounds.” Annie shrugged her thin shoulders. “Dat’s all.”
    â€œCould you read it again?” Lehua tried to press the board back into Annie’s hands.
    Something like fear flickered across the face of the old lady, and she pulled her hands back from the proffered object. “No! One time. Only one time.”
    * * *
    For the past six months Bill had been trying to shake Lehua loose from living in her apartment, but she had refused to budge.
    â€œIt just makes good sense,” he said, though knowing this independence, which at the moment was a source of annoyance, was also one of the qualities about her which so much attracted him.
    â€œUh-uh. The one thing I wanted most when I got home from college ten years ago was my own apartment. Mom wanted me to move back in with her and Sis, but I wasn’t about to. Besides, it’s more romantic to go to your apartment some nights and then to mine on others.”
    She laughed, and Bill again marveled as he had so many times before at the deep chuckle that rose up in such a small throat and seemed to be the very essence of amusement. It was difficult to deny this lovely, fragile creature anything she wanted. A separate apartment was, after all, a small concession.
    Tonight, they had gone to her place and were sitting at the kitchen table, her with the board and rubbing, and him with a series of printed articles.
    Lehua finally pushed the objects aside. “You packed?”
    He grinned. “Yup. All set to go come daybreak.”
    â€œWhat do you have to do when you get to Lagos?”
    â€œThere are eight of us. Three Americans, a Japanese and the rest are Europeans. We’re meeting some native geologists who are going to take us to two of the lakes that are the biggest problems. There are signs of increased carbon dioxide levels occurring simultaneously in them, even though they’re seventy miles apart. That’s what has them worried.”
    â€œThey think there’s an underground connection?”
    Bill nodded. “Yes, but that goes counter to the current theories on the origin of the CO2 and the plumbing under these guys.”
    Lehua looked thoughtful. “The earth’s such a mysterious and frightening thing. The first time I saw lava fountains coming up out of the rift on Kilauea I knew why some of my ancestors thought of hell as being down there some place. Now there are those terrible lakes. So peaceful one day, and then hundreds of villagers die from the poison they spew out on the next