Chapter 25 The Guest Book #2
Uneasy, she fumbled around in the toolbox for the roll of heavy-duty duct tape. “For now, we can use this to patch it, and I’ll ask Nalu to bring another line when he comes back.”
Woody drove, with Minnow standing next to him at the center console, and Cliff sat on the cooler. Skies were a blue gray and
clouds seemed to be thinning toward Maui. Here and there, light poured down to the surface of the ocean in pillars of amber.
Once underway, Minnow asked, “Can you tell me more about Hina? When did you guys first encounter her?”
“When we was young, really small, like hanabata days, there was this old shark called Umi. Whenever my pops and his friends went out diving and they came back in, there
was always talk of this shark. A few years later, I remember suddenly it was gone. Pops was always asking if anyone saw Umi,
but he must have died. My father mourned that thing like it was a pet dog or something. But Umi had been around forever by
then, so it was just the natural order of things, you know? I never saw him, but not long after, Hina showed up.”
Cliff called from the back. “I saw Umi. Once. He was like one pit bull under watah. Fat.”
Woody smirked and said to Minnow, “Yeah. Cliff’s claim to fame. First time we saw Hina, he walked on water to get to the nearest
coral head.” He threw his head back and laughed. “She was interested in us for real, and my dad said we had to keep our eye
on her. He and I went back to back and she circled a few times at a distance, then swam into the cave, and from then on she
was just around. Sometimes we gave her fish, sometimes she stole it from our lines. But she nevah bothered anyone.”
“I didn’t realize tiger sharks lived in one particular area, especially a cave. From what we know, they roam,” she said.
He shrugged. “I don’t know what happens in the rest of the world, but here at Kalaemanō they do. Umi and Hina, at least. I’m
sure they travel, but this is where they return to.”
“What do their names mean?”
“Umi-a-Liloa was a Hawaiian chief who united the all the islands and Hina is the silver light of the moon.”
Cliff added, “Don’t forget she is also the goddess of the ocean.”
Minnow got full body chills. Anyone who named individual sharks and revered them as these two brothers did were her people.
“When I was young, on Catalina, I fell under the spell of a white shark I named Luna. She was huge and scraped up, but she
was mine. Or so it felt.”
Woody nodded, as though this was the kind of thing he heard every day. His eyes were on the ocean ahead, reading every ripple
and current.
She went on. “I never told anyone about her or that I named her. I think I had enough sense to keep all this to myself. I
knew my mom was not into me swimming alone and my dad might have understood, but he was so busy. So it was just me and Luna,
best friends forever.”
“How old were you when you left the island?”
“Seven.”
“It’s not every day a white shark becomes your guardian. It’s a high honor,” he said.
Minnow had never thought of Luna as a guardian, but it made sense. And now she was returning the favor. Trying to, at least.
They rode on in silence, every so often spotting a whale in the distance or a burst of flying fish—mālolo, as Cliff called them. Iridescent winged creatures whose tails left a zigzag pattern on the glassy surface before they lifted
off. More gliders than fliers, they were one of her favorite fish.
Minnow was still buzzing from the morning encounter with Hina and this new information about her mother. Like someone had
plugged her into an outlet in the wall at Hale Niuhi and she couldn’t unplug herself.
Twenty minutes later, Cliff said, “Look, over there.”
She and Woody turned. It looked like debris scattered along a current line. Plastic bottles, branches, coconuts. When they reached it, they turned and followed it out, staying just beyond it. Minnow had the binoculars and was looking for any sign of floats or a cage.
“Glass ball weather—keep an eye out. The Kona storms bring them in and we gotta get them before they hit the rocks,” Woody
said.
“That’s not what we’re here for,” she said, sounding bitchier than she intended.
“When the ocean offers up treasure, you take it, girl.”
“Sorry, you’re right. I’m just feeling pressure to find something that might give us answers and maybe stop the hunt.”
“Nothing we find is going to stop these guys. They pretend to listen to everyone, but they made up their minds already,” he
said.
“‘They’? Isn’t it all on Mayor Lum?”
“I think there’s more going on behind the scenes.”
“Like what?”
Cliff was suddenly on the other side of Woody. “Money. Guaranteed, one of these parties is paying someone off.”
“That’s a big allegation and would be hard to prove,” she said.
“I know people who know people who say Lum is a crook. A ranch down South Point and fancy trips and cars, and who’s paying?”
Woody thrust out his chin. “He don’t care nothing about the ‘āina, I tell you that.”
He turned to her and their eyes met. There was anger there but also a fire that made her feel like she had someone on her
team. An ally in the truest sense of the word.
“So if the mayor and his nephew were taking money—say, from these shark tours—it would definitely be in their best interest
to clean things up, and fast,” she said, not liking where this was going.
“Damn straight.”
Minnow brought them roughly to the location where she and Nalu had seen the chum, which she had triangulated in order to find it again. The current line was like a huge conveyor belt of flotsam and jetsam, running through the area.
“You’d think we would notice a cage that big with floats,” she said.
They drove in and out, back and forth, covering a large grid, but there was no evidence of a shark cage or chum.
“Maybe the guy was mistaken. Coulda been something that got loose and was traveling in this current,” Cliff said. “There’s
all kinds of weird shit in the ocean these days.”
Sad but true. The sea was home to unimaginable amounts of trash, from microplastics to airplane parts to automobiles. Minnow
had seen it all. On the surface, you would never know it, but go below and strange things turned up.
“Or maybe whoever’s cage it was pulled it up because of the storm,” she mused.
“Two o’clock,” Woody said, nodding starboard and veering that way.
There was something small and round, glowing a pale aqua green, and beyond that, two similar objects. He throttled down and
put the boat in neutral. They all leaned over the edge, tilting so far that Minnow had to grab onto the rail.
“Glass balls!” they all cried.
Cliff grabbed the net and gently scooped them each into the boat. Baseball-sized and covered in barnacles.
“One for each of us,” Woody said, smiling like a kid who had just reeled in his first fish.
“What’s that down there?” Cliff said, pointing up ahead.
Minnow squinted to see into the dark water. There, a foot or two below the surface, was something round and whitish. Woody
pulled forward, and again they all peered over the side. Cliff tried to scoop the thing in, but it soon became apparent that
it was attached to a line.
“It’s a buoy,” he said, eyes glinting in a ray of sun.
Something passed among the three of them, sparking inside Minnow. A sureness. “They tie off on this buoy and they can take the cage in when they need to. Maybe they brought it in because of the storm,” she said.
“Could be.”
“If someone is really running a shark dive operation here, this would absolutely draw large sharks to the area and keep them
hanging around. This is the break we needed.”
Woody scratched the silver stubble on his chin. “How are they getting customers, though? It’s not like they can advertise.”
“Fakkahs,” Cliff muttered.
“That’s not our problem.”
“We need to catch them in the act,” Cliff said.
“What about the cage? How would no one see it on the boat?” Woody asked, then emphasized, “I’m not doubting someone is doing
this, just trying to figure how no one has seen ’um.”
“Maybe they stopped when they realized people were getting bit,” Minnow said.
“You saw chum the other day, though, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
Cliff cleared his throat, gazing in at the coastline with a stormy look on his face. “Auwe. They not gonna get away with this. Not in our waters. “
Minnow smiled for the first time today and felt her salt-soaked lips cracking.