She thought back. Neither of them had used their dive knives while last in the boat. Had they?
“Something could have been resting against it and we didn’t notice,” she said, not sounding very convincing.
“Possible,” Woody said.
Cliff frowned. “My ass. Someone doesn’t want you, us, poking around.”
“So what do we do?” she asked.
“Keep our eyes wide open.”
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, likehanabatadays, 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 Kalaemano 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—malolo, 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.
