Racing the Dark by Alaya Dawn Johnson Read Free Book Online Page A

me."
    Kali opened her eyes and yawned. She looked at Kohaku and then Lana, and seemed a little startled at their grim expressions.
    "Are you two okay?"
    Kohaku ignored her. "Well, Lana? I need an answer."
    No, it was too soon-he couldn't force her to decide now. There were too many aspects she hadn't even considered, like convincing her mother to let her leave the island in the company of an outsider. Lana put her hands to her suddenly queasy stomach and avoided meeting Kohaku's challenging gaze. She had thought she would have more time. Things had been so hectic lately ... and now with the mandagah and the rains, how on earth could she leave the island now? How could she leave her parents, Kali, Okilani, and all the other people she loved here? It would be too much like abandoning everything she loved.
    She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Kohaku. I just can't now. Maybe in a few years I could leave, but not now."
    He looked as if he wanted to say something harsh, but just nodded. "May I ask why?" he said after a moment.

    "Things are changing. I can feel it. If I left now ... if I left now, it would feel too much like running away."
    Kohaku stood up. "Maybe one day you'll realize what you've just wasted."
    He walked out of the room and into the pouring rain. Lana felt like crying.
    "Lana?" Kali shook her by the shoulders. "What on earth was that all about?"
    "Kohaku asked me to come back with him to study at the Kulanui on Essel."
    Kali gasped. "Really? That's incredible. But ... you said no, didn't you? Why?"
    Lana felt a funny sensation in her chest, something that hurt too much to breathe around. Had she really just said no to Kohaku, to the chance to leave with him, be with him?
    "Well ... if I had gone to Essel with him, I couldn't have kept the pact."
    "The pact?"
    "Remember? We both have to be around if we're going to travel the world together."
    Kali laughed and hugged her. "You're crazy, you know."
    Lana silently agreed.
    Over the next two weeks, the rains pounded the island relentlessly. The ground wasn't visible over most of the island anymore. The men poled barges from house to house, checking on the older people and making sure the supports were sturdy. Even the oldest on the island said that they had never been through a rainy season like this one. Okilani looked grim, and when pressed would say only that the intense rains were part of greater changes to come. The feeling that had lodged in Lana's chest that night at Eala's wouldn't go away. And in the middle of everything, when Lana's life was changing so much she hardly recognized it, Kohaku left to return to Essel. She hated him a little for that, though she knew he felt no loyalty to her people or her island, and there was no real reason he should. To him, they were little more than unusual creatures worthy of study. Yet, he had offered Lana an opportunity for more than that, and she hated herself a little for refusing him. Was she stupid, she wondered that awful night after his barge left the island and she cried herself to sleep. He didn't love her, she knew that, but he had offered her a chance to see the world. Maybe she would always regret her decision, yet even when she thought about it now, she didn't know how she could have made the other choice. Because she couldn't abandon her island at a time like this? That's what she had told him. But that was too easy, wasn't it? Maybe the truth was harder. Maybe she was a coward, too afraid of what she didn't know.

    Her father had been acting strangely, too. Because their shed had long since flooded and his supplies had been moved into their house, he sat in the main room all day long, making his instruments. He worked on them with a single-minded intensity that Lana had never seen before. Part of it was that he couldn't take out the boat to fish with the rains falling so heavily, but there was something stranger in his fixation. She knew that her parents were fighting-they rarely touched each other anymore, and