"We’ll be glad to pay you for the ride," Frank told him as he climbed in.
"No way, frien'. I’m always picking up folks out this way. Not too many people realize how empty the back country is. Mostly they just stay in Hilo or one of the big resorts." He eased back out onto the highway.
"Daddy," Wendy whispered to her father, "we’re in Hawaii!"
Cars began to appear, not many, but enough to be reassuring. Frank felt like a moviegoer who’d spent a year inside a film, only to finally have climbed back down off the screen to resume his seat in the real world. He leaned against the bench seat.
"Burnfingers, how about giving us a tune?"
"Sure, my friend." The Navajo extracted his flute, set it against his lips, and began playing. It was an invigorating song, alive with jaunty triumph. A thousand trumpets playing fanfare at a royal coronation could not have been more thrilling.
In a few minutes they were all singing or humming along, including the driver. Off in the distance the world’s tallest active volcano, Mauna Loa, smoked threateningly but otherwise behaved itself.
Frank found himself watching the waves that broke against the rocky shore. It was a rhythm he recognized, the rhythm of the Spinner. His heart kept time with the waters, all entwined with the breeze whipping past the speeding van, with the pattern of the volcano’s breath fashioned in the clear blue sky. All were part of one and the same thing: volcano, heartbeat, wind, and wave. One world, one reality, one song.
Probably Mouse could have put it better, could have explained what it all meant, but she was on her way elsewhere. Home, or to another demand on her special talents. A singer she’d called herself, and a singer she was, though on a scale no words existed to describe.
In spite of everything it had cost him, he found that he was glad he’d been invited to the concert.