rises and falls of the road, the fragrant air, and the long, long views down to the slowly darkening sea.
“Dagmar,” John said. “Torkel’s and Magnus’s sister. Remember? She’s eighty-something now.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Pay attention, now.”
“Sorry, I’m doing my best. So, is there a family feud? Between Auntie Dagmar and Hedwig?”
“Nah, nothing like that. It’s just that Auntie Dagmar doesn’t go anyplace where they won’t let her drink her schnapps and smoke her cheroots, and smoking and booze are
Gideon sat up a little straighter and peered at John. “John, you wouldn’t be pulling my leg just a little, would you?”
John laughed. “See for yourself, buddy.”
AT forty or so, Inge Torkelsson, the proprietor of the Kohala Trails Adventure Ranch, was a rangy, wind-seared woman, as sinewy and tough as a stick of beef jerky, with a small, active head, short, graying blonde hair, lean hips, and little in the way of breasts. In her jeans and checked cowboy shirt, and with her swaggery, slightly straddle-legged walk, anyone seeing her from behind would have taken her for a man; a cowboy. Given a few yards’ distance, most would have thought so from the front as well.
Taking Gideon by the arm with a grip like a barroom bouncer’s, she heartily dragged him around the handsomely rustic living room—deer-antler chandeliers, woven floor mats, heavy, polished, matching koa wood furniture, paintings of Hawaiian queens and Swedish kings (unlike those in Axel’s house, these were framed originals, neatly hung; the whole place was like a sanitized, coordinated, updated version of Axel’s house)—to introduce him to the others. There were six of them all together: the five blood-related Torkelssons—siblings Axel, Felix, Hedwig, and Inge, plus Auntie Dagmar—and Inge’s Hawaiian husband, Keoni, who had arrived only seconds before John and Gideon. Obviously, they had been told about Gideon, because several of them made some small witticisms about bones or skeletons, which he took in the amiable spirit in which they’d been intended.
Inasmuch as Hedwig was the last person he was introduced to before Inge was called to the telephone, Gideon was left pretty much in her clutches. Hedwig, knowing he was an anthropologist, had expressed open-mouthed astonishment at learning that he was unfamiliar with the differences between Celtic and Druidic shamanism (“I’m not quite up to the minute on that,” he had admitted) and was doing her best to repair this sad hole in his scholarship, gesturing where necessary with a glass of frothy pink liquid that looked to Gideon like Pepto-Bismol over ice. A large, flowing woman with cropped blonde hair, and wearing a large, flowing, purple-flowered muu-muu, Hedwig had a tendency to overwhelm. Partly, this was because she had a disconcerting way of standing too close when conversing, in addition to which she favored an incredibly potent jasmine scent. As a result, they had done a sort of tango across the floor, with Gideon slowly backing up, and Hedwig relentlessly tracking, until he ran out of room, bumping his hip against a table holding appetizers and drinks.
“Well, this has really been fascinating, Hedwig,” he said brightly, leaping in at one of the infrequent pauses. “I guess I’ll get myself a drink now—”
“Gideon—oh, my God!” she exclaimed delightedly. “You have an aura!”
“Pardon?”
“An aura!” Hedwig repeated, leaning even closer to sniff at him, to peer at his ears, his shoulders, the top of his head, drowning him in jasmine. “And not your everyday, low-level bodily kind, either.” More sniffs. “It’s wonderful! A high-frequency UV thing, a real astral-plane consciousness-level entity. It’s
Gideon was practically bent backward over the table. “Well, actually, Hedwig, I can’t say that—”
“My friends call me Kuho-ono-enuka-ilimoku, Gideon. It’s my past-life vision name.”
“Uh...past-life vision name?” he said and bit his tongue, but he was saved by the appearance of Auntie Dag- mar, a diminutive, erect, elderly woman with a well-tended but slightly askew black wig and piercing, intelligent gray eyes in a lean, Swedish face. In one hand was an unlit black cigarillo; in the other a cordial glass of amber- colored liquor. Her clothes looked expensive: a plum-colored pantsuit, silk blouse, and turquoise earrings in the form of tortoises. Around her neck was a carelessly knotted blue Hermes silk scarf with small white stars. (Gideon knew it was a Hermes because she had put it on inside out and the label showed, which merely added to her queenly air, as if she were above the need to dress in front of a mirror.)
“And what exactly is wrong with ‘Hedwig’?” she demanded. “It was good enough for your grandmother.” Gideon heard the gliding, lilting vowel-sounds of Swedish in her speech. “It was the name of royalty.”
“So you’ve told me, Auntie Dagmar,” Hedwig said with her too-bright smile. “Three or four hundred times. But the fact is, I don’t like it because it sounds like ‘earwig.’ ”
“That’s ridiculous, and you know you just say it to annoy me.”
“Besides which, it’s too hard to pronounce. It’s very tiring when everyone asks if the “w” is pronounced
“Oh, I see. But ‘Kuku-ono-mono-eenyweeny,’ that’s easy to pronounce.”
Hedwig threw Gideon a “see what I have to put up with?” look and changed the subject, grimacing at Dag- mar’s glass and cigar. “You have to be more careful at your age, Auntie Dagmar,” she said lightly. “I keep telling you. You’re getting on now. You’re not the woman you were.”
“No, and I never was.” She turned to Gideon. “Young man, can you light this damn thing for me? There are matches on the table over there.”
“Of course,” Gideon said.
Hedwig shook her head. “Darling Auntie, I hope you don’t expect me to stand here and watch you kill yourself right in front of me.”
“You mean you’re going to pester someone else? Excellent!” said Dagmar. “Thank the Lord for small mercies. Goodbye and good luck to you.”
