As soon as she jumped in, she turned a slow three-sixty, surveying her surroundings. The silent blue of the water immediately dissolved all thoughts of the world above. Toward shore, coral shelves and clumps and heads lay beneath schools of yellow tang and a whole menagerie of colorful reef fish. Her gaze swung around and followed a ledge with a narrow channel leading away from her, walls lined with red pencil urchins and spiny urchins bigger than her head. Visibilitywas incredible, an easy eighty feet or more. It was easy to tell where the surf break was—a large flat table of rock much shallower than the surrounding area sat just outside of them.
Minnow looked up at Nalu, who was still in the boat. “Looks beautiful, all clear,” she said.
“This is some of the clearest water on the coast. All rock, no sand.”
He slid into the water gingerly, like he was trying not to make any splashing sounds, and she wondered what was going on with him. Though she did have to admit, there was something unsettling about entering the water in the exact spot something so violent had happened.
“Let’s look around outside first and then follow the ledge in toward shore,” she said, ducking under and swimming toward the coral shelf where the waves presumably broke.
The way the sunbeams shone on the fish scales made them look like swimming kaleidoscopes, and the purple puffs of coral almost undulated beneath her. As surreal and lovely as it was, swimming in new waters always gave her a shiver of nerves. You never knew what was just over the next rock or moving in from the deep.
They swam across the shallow shelf, and Minnow counted four large tiger cowries, a small snowflake eel and one small octopus, who quickly turned from mauve to mottled brown, like seaweed. Nalu swam down and poked at it with his spear. Not wanting him to kill the little creature, she tapped his shoulder, causing him to swirl around fast and pop his head out of the water.
His eyes were big. “What?”
“Don’t hurt it,” she said.
He let out a big exhale. “Not planning on it. Sometimes they like to play tug of war.”
A big relief, since octopuses were one of her favorite animals—shy and inquisitive and feisty. She had gotten to know a few in her underwater ventures. One had even tried to steal her camera, grabbing on with two tentacles and refusing to let go.
By the time she put her head under again, Nalu’s octopus was gone. They swam to the far edge of the ledge, where the bottom fell away fast. Rays of sun disappeared in the abyss, and she understood very clearly why an attack had happened here.
While smaller sharks, especially blacktip and whitetip reef sharks, patrolled these rocky shallows, mature white sharks usually stayed in cooler, deeper waters. She could easily imagine a large white shark cruising along the drop-off, not actively hunting but with an eye open for seal, turtle or even a baby whale. Her large tail would have been swishing slowly back and forth, no hurry, nothing to fear. Stuart had definitely been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Minnow swam down six feet or so and hung there. Her body felt relaxed in the warm water, but her mind was acutely aware of that curtain of blue, the line where visibility ended, the space to always keep your eye on. Sharks were masters at approaching on the periphery, often from behind. Their vision was much better than a human’s, and you could bet they saw you before you saw them. But now, nothing moved in toward them. No dark shadow from the deep, no swift swimming ghost.
They circled around the coral mountain with Nalu staying close on her heels, and Minnow felt like it should be the other way around, with him being the local. As they entered the bay, narrow cracks opened up in the coral, and when Minnow dove down to peer inside one, she came face-to-face with a gold-flecked moray eel with half its body out of the hole. Reflexively, she backed away and then swam up for air.
Nalu came up a few seconds later. “Grandfatherpuhi,” he said.
“Puhiis ‘eel’?”
He nodded. From her brief time here, she remembered a few Hawaiian names of sea creatures.Honu, turtle.Humuhumunukunukuapua?a,triggerfish,mano, shark. She’d need to shore up on the multitudes of fish names with the books in the house, faded and water-stained as they were.
At its deepest, the bay was only twenty feet or so, and Nalu seemed more relaxed in the protected waters, going off on his own and pulling up a giant helmet shell to show her. The sun toasted Minnow’s back through her top, and she wanted to keep going, following every little curve and cove along the shore, but there was so much to do back on land. Arranging a visit with Angela Crawford was high on her list. As was getting in to see the mayor. If she could win him over, half the battle was won.
Journal Entry
From the journal of Minnow Gray
February 4, 1991
Galeophobia: an intense, irrational and persistent fear of sharks. Many scientists believe this fear is not innate in humans. That means we are not born to fear sharks. I believe I am proof of this.
Chapter 7
Settling In
Mano: shark
Early afternoon they unloaded at the boat harbor, Minnow feeling crisp and toasty and already turning pink. This time she dropped off Nalu at his hotel, stopped for groceries and headed back to the house. With no word when Woody was coming, she slithered onto the floor and tried to light the fridge. It took a few snaps, and then she saw the blue flame of the pilot light flick on. Same as yesterday, a thick layer of cloud cover had materialized midafternoon, stacking up against the flanks of Hualalai and spreading down the mountain minute by minute. Minnow ate her peanut butter and honey sandwich on the patio in the shade of the trellis above, a tangled thicket of woody vines.
In the light of day, she could tell no one had been here in a while. Leaves and sticks and sand had piled up on the concrete deck pad, and the grass out front toward the ocean was overgrown and strewn with coconut fronds. When she was done eating, she did a quick tidy up of the place, then called the hospital on the ancient rotary phone. Dr. Eversole had given her Angela’s room number and said not to ask for her by name but just to refer to her asthe shark incident patient.
“North Hawai?i Community Hospital. How may I direct your call?”
“I’d like to speak to the nurses’ station for room 206, please.”
