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After the Gold Rush	By : christinecornell Category: M through R > Night at the Museum Views: 5 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Just an idea that came to me last Thanksgiving after watching the Night at the Museum movies and Steve Coogan on a rerun of Top Gear where he mentioned Around the World in 80 Days, and I thought to combine both worlds. I own nothing!

Chapter List
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The summit of the volcano before us made me think of the fin of a shark, and more so when Leilani nudged the next palm frond away from me. I could feel the sweat already burgeoning on the back of my neck, even whilst in the shade of the other palms around us. I desperately needed something to drink at that point: it was too humid for me to even have clothes on at that point.
The ridge line of the volcano extended across the sky in a near perfect straight line, to which it tapered out to that one bluff off to the left.
“Is this where we can find a drink of water?” I asked her.
“Yes,” Leilani promised me with a quick flash of her eyebrows. At that point, I figured I could probably go off into the shrubbery and be slack-jawed drunk especially when I reached into my pocket and felt Monique’s letter against my fingers once again, but I had to have some water, however. “Find some water and have you lay down on the grass to rest your world-weary head.”
“This is a fascinating formation here,” I declared with a gesture to the volcanic cone in front of us,
“Your people call it ‘Diamond Head,’” she told me. “We call it Lē’ahi.”
“Yours sounds poetic,” I confessed to her. “‘Diamond Head’ sounds like some whiskey I would find back in Oxford.”
She giggled at that, and I showed her a little grin in return. We plunged through the lush greenery, and at that point, the hunger was beginning to sneak up on me. If nothing else, I wanted to lay down and help myself to a cup of tea. Being out in the wilderness gave me this newfound love of everything that came with Britain, but I may as well relish in what Leilani had in store for me. As far as I knew, it could have Britain absolutely pegged.
It was then I remembered that my coat still laid on the beach back from whence we came before, even if I could feel the sweat dripping down along the back of my neck. My stomach turned and my head was starting to hurt, and I held my fingertips to my temple; indeed, she looked on over me with a knitting of her eyebrows at me.
“I kind of need my coat, though,” I confessed.
“Here? No way you are having a coat of any kind.”
“No, but it’s my coat,” I insisted. “I had it when I left England and I had it when I landed here last night.”
“Allow me to show you around first, though,” she promised me with one hand on my shoulder. “My goodness, you are drenched! Let’s stop here. Let me apologize.”
I took my spot on top of a stump there on the side of the trail, and I could feel the rush of blood straight to my head and shoulders as if I had been running the whole entire time. I ran my fingers through my hair, and I could feel the beads of sweat at my roots. Between the hunger and the feeling that the sticky hot air of the islands was sucking me dry, it began to well up with a vengeance at that point. My heart pounded in my chest and my ears, and my head spun in circles. I wanted to take my shirt off, but I also wondered if I could possibly lose my shirt at any given point: if I had left my coat back there in the trees, then I had no doubt in my mind that my shirt would become a part of the scenery there at the base of Lē’ahi.
I could however open my shirt some more, and I began the process of doing so. My heart kept on pounding in my chest as I opened my shirt down at the bottom and I arched my back and rested my hands on either side of me. I let the island air caress over my skin: it was moments like that where I felt like a small boy again. All my kiddish wonder and I found myself on an island in the sun.
The trees rustled in front of me, and I hesitated lest a creature find me. Leilani then returned to me with a smile, a coconut in hand, and a rather burly gentleman next to her: long black dreadlocks down to his shoulders and big elaborate tattoos all up and down his arms as if they were sleeves and skin like the smoothest tea straight out from the kettle. I took the coconut with both hands and held the edge of it up to my mouth for a good long drink.
The purest and coolest of water since Passepartout, Monique, and I flew out of Turkey. I scooped a small handful of the water out of there so I could feel it on my skin.
“Thank you so much for this, Leilani and—” I cocked my head to the side at the sight of the man right next to her. “And—?”
“Oh, how rude of me,” she quipped with a chuckle right then, and she turned to him with a smile on her face.
“This is my fiancé,” she announced to me in a light voice, to which I gaped at her.
“Your… fiancé?” I stammered, and she linked arms with him. I splashed some of the water onto my head when she said that. The water dripped down around the sides of my head onto my shoulders.
“Yes,” she said without even so much as a batting of a lash. She reached down and linked her fingers with his own there at his side. “He does not speak English but we are arranged to marry come the longest day of the year.”
The moment I believed that I had found a lovely new woman here on an island archipelago out in the middle of the ocean, and yet there I was, meeting the man whom she was set to marry like a damn fool.

*****************

I had no desire to be near their village, but I had to be there at some point or another, however. Leilani and, she told me her fiancé’s name was Ailani, insisted that I be there with them lest something happen to me out in the trees. I felt sick, like I had thrown away my own time as well as my own chances of anything of substance. She seemed so unperturbed by my own feelings as well as the look on my face.
Everyone paid no attention to the forlorn Englishman lain out on a makeshift bench there in the trees: the villagers all believed that I was another Polynesian chap, anyway. A Polynesian in a shirt and trousers who was sweating in such profuse fashion.
I laid flat on my back with the coconut underneath me because I knew in my heart as it beat out of time that I was going to need more of that. I let the warm breeze blow over me, over my damp head and shoulders as if I had dunked my head in the warm ocean waters beyond Lē’ahi and the beach.
She had been so open to me, and I simply could not stop thinking about the way she had welcomed me, and with those bare breasts out in the open. Maybe I was a scoundrel after all: I had managed to charm Monique for long enough, but I apparently wasn’t as filthy as she had claimed that I was.
If my encounters with Kelvin and Fix were anything to go by, it was that every human had a darkness within them, even the biggest of cotton balls such as myself.
I had to sprout a spine at some point. I had been given a fresh slate with the Hawaiian Islands: I promised myself that I would take advantage of that.
I rolled my head over the pillow of palm fronds and watched a man with long nappy dreadlocks down to his waist sit off to the side with a long knife as well as a long root-looking plant in one hand. I examined the side of his thigh and the way his lacy cloak covered his back and shoulders. He only covered part of his body even as he proceeded to whittle at the tuber with the big knife. He seemed completely unbothered by the threat of splinters or even cutting his own thumb: when I was back in my laboratory, I treated all my instruments with utmost care and delicacy. I knew that glass could break if I turned the dial on the burner too high, and I knew that grease spread about like syphilis even if I wore gloves and washed up afterwards.
That was a level of confidence that I simply did not have.
I opened my shirt all the way. I was completely exposed, and yet no one seemed to object to me laying there in the comfort of the shade. The breeze kicked up a lock of my hair and spread it over my face, right over the bridge of my nose. I had had a big drink of water, and it was enough to calm down my stomach as well. I could lounge there for a moment, but then I realized that the warmth of the islands acted as akin to my mother’s arms. She was rocking me to sleep, as was the Hawaiian goddess of the island. I closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew, I had fallen asleep.
Prince Hapi had his arm linked around that of Monique, with all of that gold and those rubies all around them. She had been pushed into his arms without even so much as a second thought. I wanted to declare my love to her, and in fact, I had the right plan to do so when the time came about.
But then she slipped through my fingers.
How does it feel knowing that the woman you love had slipped away through your fingers like the sands of time itself, and then you became the laughingstock of the entire empire. It left me with a sickly feeling, and a feeling that I did not to want to face once I woke up again.
And I was left behind, left there on my back under the Pacific sun.
I opened my eyes whereby I came face to face with the fluttering of the fronds over me. The sky had been painted a rich royal blue and the intense sun had moved over to the other side of the island. The village had grown rather quiet at that point, such that I lifted myself into an upright position. My head spun again, but at least the sweating had stopped somewhat.
I could hear their singing through the trees before me, but I had no desire to join them. They had their ceremonies and I did not want to tread on that at all.
My hands shook and quivered, and I knew that I needed something to eat and quick, otherwise I was going to be in more dire straits than back in San Francisco: at least there, I had a choice to where to go. I ran my fingers through my hair again, and I caught the sound of rustling in my trouser pocket.
I reached in and unfurled the letter. I had no memory as to how Monique had slipped it in, but I had the letter on eggshell parchment written with scarlet red ink:

Phileas—
I’m afraid I am having to write this to you in haste as there are hatchets being thrown at my head and I don’t know how much time I may have left. I hope you can find this in your pocket at any given point wherever you end up on your journey, be it back in England or elsewhere. Oh, I can’t help but think of the way you examined my paintings the first time, and I knew you were of good calibre.
Hapi has the biggest ring of rubies and diamonds ready for me on the way back to Turkey, and then we marry in India. I am not too sure as to what will happen to Passepartout… I honestly don’t know what his name is, I’m only going by what you have been calling him. He took the jade Buddha with him back to his village and that seems to be it.
Please allow me to say this:
There is nothing I want more than for you to be happy. Remember my last kiss, Phileas, and taste it when you feel sick; feel it when you’re dizzy with the rivalry between you and Kelvin; and hold it to your chest and your belly when there’s no one there to hold back your long beautiful hair when you employ one of your experiments. Please think of me if and when you can.
Looking at my engagement ring at the helm, and I’m afraid I am going to have to let you go.
But always think of me and the way I taste, wherever you find yourself.

I stiffly clasped a hand to my head and then I let my shoulders relax from that.
“Oh… Monique,” I breathed out. “How could I have been so foolish.”
At the same time, however, there was something about the final sentence that nudged me in the wrong direction, especially when I read it a second time.
“Wherever you find yourself.” I never learned as to when she had written the letter, but I had learned of the arrangement and of the fact that she had slipped away from me.
She knew that I was going to wander off alone. She knew that I was going to duck out of it. She knew that I was going to throw in the towel because I had spent all my money in San Francisco. I had spent all my money on the gold rush.
The gold rush, of course.
“How could I have been so foolish,” I repeated it, and I folded the letter again, but that time I tucked it under the fronds. Paper to return to nature.
I rested my elbows upon the crests of my knees and gazed on at the trees where the singing, the chanting, and the music was emanating from. I had no desire to interlope on their traditions, but it was either sink or swim, and I had done a great deal of swimming at that point.
Another run of my fingers through my hair and I stood to my feet, albeit with a slight spin to my head again. I kept my shirt wide open as I made my way over to the fronds. I nudged them out of the way to behold the villagers congregated about in a circle.
The women donned grass skirts while the men put on some sort of fabric that made me think of silk. Pineapples stood about the circle, as did plumes of lapping fire and the aroma of something spicy and nutty. I lingered back as I simply did not want to impose at all.
I was about to back on out of it when I felt something brush against my shoulder.
“I see you woke up.” I turned my head to find Leilani right there behind me with what appeared to be a mango in hand.
“Yes!” I babbled as my head still spun about from the heat. One of these days, I was going to get back into the game of invention. When my head stopped spinning, I could find a means of writing up plans again. I knew it was going to be one of those things where I woke up in the middle of the night and had to write it down, the biggest bolt of lightning straight out of the sky to hit me sideways.
“Come,” Leilani encouraged me, and I bowed my head at that. Despite her holding onto my arm, I wanted to be there on the edge of the circle. I was an outsider and I had only gone there because I had no money, the complete greedy bastard who walked right into a wall.
She brought me to a cluster of women in grass skirts clapping, but behind them stood a large ceramic bowl filled with some sort of brown substance tinged with violet. It reminded me of melted chocolate, but I knew right away that it wasn’t that.
“What’s this?” I asked her as we knelt down on the ground together.
“Poi,” she replied in a loud enough voice for me to hear her. I glanced about for something like a spoon to try it for myself. “What’s the matter?”
“Do you have a spoon or something?” I asked her.
“Use your finger,” she advised me with a gesture to her face with one finger. I looked on at her, her deep eyes and flawless skin, those dark nipples and the way she had welcomed me to the island as if I was just another visitor. Indeed, I lifted my finger and took a dip. It was thick enough to stay there.
We had jellied eels, black pudding, and haggis back in Britain. Surely, this couldn’t be too terrible.
I ran my tongue over the poi. It tasted like unwashed potatoes without any salt, and I nearly upchucked right then and there before her. I leaned off to the side so no one would have to see me.
“Are you alright?” she asked me, slightly concerned. I could feel her hand on my back.
“Bloody hell,” I groaned out with a cough. “What on earth is that?”
“Taro root,” she duly replied. She lingered close to the side of my head, and I looked back at her face close to my own. Maybe I was an idiot, but the sight of her face by me made me think of kisses while up in a hot air balloon.
“Leilani… you’re engaged,” I whispered to her.
“I know,” she whispered to me, and she lightly kissed me on the lips. The kiss of the ocean and the kiss of sin and decadence, and something that gave me a feeling that I never found with Monique.
“Let’s go slowly with the poi,” she suggested, and she stroked my back again, especially when she helped me sit upright once again. “Be careful with the men around here, too. They all want a little bit of the outside as it finds its way inside.”
I raised an eyebrow at that, and I wondered what it was that she meant by that, but there was no easy way for me to ask that, especially with the ceremony going on all around us.
But I was definitely going to be there a while, and I may as well make myself at home there.
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After the Gold Rush