Chapter 1 #2
Someone knocked irritably on the glass doors out front; Mrs. Namura had likely used up her extremely limited allotment of patience.
“You better go let ’em in, Pua.”
“You always give me the fun parts.” She click-clacked to the front in her kitten heels.
I stacked the last of Tiki’s scattered envelopes. “On your way out, my furry friend, maybe you can show me how you got in here,” I told the cat.
Tiki ignored me. She’d arranged herself in my office chair and was now deeply asleep in a way that conveyed she’d done her job and the rest was my problem.
The bell over the door chimed, and the morning crowd filed in with the pent-up energy of people who’d been waiting three minutes longer than usual to retrieve their mail—but the person who entered first, ahead of the rest and full of dignity, was Uncle Kalani Opuna.
Uncle Kalani was a fixture around town (everyone in Ohia was, to some degree, once you knew them). He’d recently nabbed his own post office box after years on our notoriously long waitlist and had become a regular presence.
Today his thick white hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and he wore an aloha shirt faded to a softness that spoke of decades of wear and washing, the original colors somewhere between terra-cotta and rust. Around his neck hung an elaborately braided ti leaf lei, both humble and ceremonial.
His rubber slippers made soft shushing sounds on the linoleum.
“Aloha, Uncle,” I said, coming to the counter. The customers behind him had gone quiet, as if sensing something might be said that’s important. “I heard about the petroglyphs. I’m so sorry.”
Uncle Kalani’s weathered face was etched in lines from a lifetime of sun, wind, and holding things steady.
Those lines were pronounced today, deeper in the flat fluorescent light.
His dark eyes moved to the open door of my office, where Tiki had elected to stop sleeping and was now watching him with the focused, unblinking attention she usually reserved for geckos and suspicious packages.
“There’s more than that going on,” he said. And to Tiki: “Your cat has been busy this morning.”
My cheeks warmed. It was one thing to know your cat was conducting an independent investigation of the town’s sacred sites. It was another to have the town’s senior kahu confirm it while six people were pretending not to listen.
“She did bring something in,” I admitted. “I wasn’t sure what to do about it.”
“The old ones say cats walk between worlds,” Uncle Kalani said. “They know things we forget.” He stepped closer to the counter, his attention still on Tiki. “May I see what she found?”
“Of course.”
I grabbed a tissue and retrieved the stone from the desk drawer, realizing I shouldn’t be getting skin oils on it. The hush behind me deepened. Even the fan seemed to pause as I held it out to the elder on my open palm.
Uncle Kalani didn’t reach for it immediately.
He studied the carving where it lay: the spear-carrier, the zigzag shape.
“This is the wing of an ‘Iwa bird,” he said, pointing to the zigzag.
The great frigatebird was a large, graceful black seabird that soars on thermals over the bay; Josie had once called it a navigator of both sky and spirit.
“In the old way of carving, the ‘Iwa marked places of prophecy. Places where sky and earth touched.” His voice had dropped to the register that made the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up in a way that had nothing to do with cold.
“This piece was part of a larger story carved into the rock face of Awawakapu. It tells of a time when the people used the valley for ceremony and guidance, as well as home.” He looked up at me.
“Now that story has been broken. Stolen.”
“Should we call Detective Texeira?” Pua asked from behind me, crystal-embellished phone in hand. “Or the Hana PD?”
“Both,” I said. Lei Texeira was a friend and a homicide detective, a woman who had an uncanny ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and make it count.
She worked out of Kahului, but Ohia had a way of calling her back.
“Though we probably want to understand what we’re dealing with before we make official calls. ”
“Before that,” Uncle Kalani said, “there is something else you should know.” He glanced at the lineup of openly listening customers with the tolerance of a man who had long since stopped expecting privacy in a town this size. “Something bigger is going on in this valley.”
“Can we give ourselves a few minutes?” I caught Pua’s eye. “Let’s take care of folks and then hear Uncle out.”
Pua and I worked in our usual tandem—she handled the front counter with the cheerful efficiency of someone who had memorized every customer’s mail habits and personal drama, and I sorted and logged and generally kept the machinery turning.
The customers filtered through with their packages and their questions and their sidelong glances at Uncle Kalani, who waited with the unhurried patience of someone who measured time differently than the rest of us.
When the lobby finally cleared, I flipped the little sign on the door to the fifteen-minute break position and came back to the counter.
My phone buzzed. Keone’s face lit up the screen—a photo I’d taken two weeks ago when he’d flown us over to West Maui in his tiny kit plane, his grin wide against a backdrop of ocean, the feathered warrior helmet charm from his rearview mirror caught in the frame.
Mom wants you at the emergency council meeting. Bringing malasadas. Something big is going down with Sacred Valley.
Chicken skin, as advertised.
I showed the screen to Uncle Kalani. “Looks like Mayor Kaihale is already calling a meeting.”
“She is.” He wasn’t surprised. “There are people with plans for that valley. They may have had something to do with the desecration of the heiau.”
“Development?” I guessed.
“Development.” The word landed flat and final, the way he said things that were already beyond debate. “It must be stopped.”
Rain had begun to patter on the porch roof, building from a murmur to a drumroll. The first of the afternoon showers, right on the mountain’s schedule. The smell of wet asphalt mixed with wet earth drifted through the open windows—not entirely unpleasant once the asphalt got rained down a bit.
“I’ll hold down the fort,” Pua said, already typing on her phone with the determined speed of someone composing a message to approximately forty people simultaneously.
She’d no doubt have petition and a full report circulating to her network before I got to my car.
Pua was a force of nature that others called when they needed organizational backup.
Uncle Kalani picked up the petroglyph fragment from the counter and turned it once more in his calloused hands. A gecko chirped overhead—Ringo, registering his opinion.
“Your cat understands more than most people,” Uncle Kalani said. “About what was lost and what might still be saved. She brought you this because she wants you to look into the thefts.” He held it out to me. “You keep it for now. This piece of the story belongs with the investigation.”
“Okay,” I said, not entirely sure I was comfortable being the custodian of a piece of stolen sacred rock, but also not in a position to argue with a kahu priest and his reading of cat behavior. I rewrapped the stone in tissue, put it in a ziplock bag, and tucked it into my shoulder bag.
Tiki, from the office, gave a small chirp of what I chose to interpret as approval.
Outside, a rainbow had arrived right on cue—the Hana side of Maui specialized in these, fast-moving colored flags that arched over the bay in full glory for about three minutes and then dissolved back into cloud.
Red and yellow hibiscus blossoms shaken loose by the rain dotted the wet road.
The new asphalt steamed gently. Somewhere down the beach, the waves kept their time against the shore.
“Ready to face the council?” I asked Uncle Kalani, clicking the car open.
He looked up at the mountains, where thick clouds had swallowed the upper peaks entirely. The ancient stone up there, the stories carved into it, the pieces that were missing—all of it invisible now in the mist. He turned to me with eyes that seemed to be computing several things at once.
“Ready to face the future, Kat,” he said. “That’s what today is really about.”
Tiki had decided to join us. She materialized from the bushes beside the parking lot and trotted toward Sharkey with her kinked tail held high, a fuzzy divining rod pointed at whatever came next.
I followed my cat to the car. The mountains kept their secrets in the clouds. But change was coming to Ohia—I could feel it in the air as surely as I could smell the rain—and from the look on Uncle Kalani’s face, some of it had already arrived.