He headed there immediately, stomach already grumbling.
After breakfast in the yurt—coffee, bananas plucked from a rack hanging from a string, fried eggs and spam, and half a papaya with lime juice squeezed over it—he lingered at the table watching Robert tidy up.
Every time he offered to help, Robert refused. “You think I want Auntie Sasha on my ass? Sit down and don’t move your arm.”
The big Hawaiian man moved gracefully around the yurt in his flip-flops—no, slippers, Rory recalled from his last trip to the islands. They called them slippers here because you slipped them on. Which made more sense than flip-flops, he supposed.
“What’s your project, Robert?” Rory asked him. “Are you restoring the crow population too?”
“No, like I said, I’m an astronomer. Specifically, an archeoastronomer, studying the role of heiaus in ancient celestial navigation systems.”
“Hay-ow?”
How many Hawaiian terms was he expected to learn in one day?
“Like a temple made of dry-stacked lava rocks. The rest of the structure rotted away long ago. Heiaus can be quite large, big platforms with enclosures, or small shrines. There’s a midsize one near here that was only discovered recently, and I got myself a grant to study it.” He grinned broadly as he dried off the last mug and set it on the rack.
“How far is it from here?”
“About an hour’s walk. Some of my research is at night, so I’ll be taking off around dusk.”
Maybe he could encourage him to leave a little early. “If you’re sticking around just to babysit me and Rory, that’s not necessary.”
“It’s my night to cook dinner. I’ll leave after that.”
“I can cook,” he offered. Rory had paid his way through college and flight training by working in restaurants. He was an excellent cook.
Robert turned with exaggerated comical surprise. “You? You want to cook for the crew?”
“Absolutely. Don’t worry, I’ve watched my chefs in action. I won’t poison anyone. Just tell me the basics. I’ve got this.”
Robert went back to his sweeping up, muttering something about weird rich dudes. Rory assumed that meant they had a deal.
7
Mathilda focused her binoculars on the upper branches of a wild mango tree. She’d spotted movement there, and a flash of black. Of the four ‘alala, also known as Corvus hawaiienses, that they’d released a few weeks ago, three were already confirmed dead.
Only Hector’s fate was unknown. The tracking chip that she’d implanted in him had stopped transmitting, but that didn’t mean he was dead. She refused to give up on Hector until she had solid confirmation of his death. Maybe something had gone wrong with the chip. Maybe he’d pecked at it enough to damage it. Maybe he’d figured out a way to eject it from his feathered body. Crows were very smart. They were among the most intelligent of all bird species, similar to an ape or a seven-year old human. In fact, you never wanted to get on a crow’s bad side. They recognized individual human faces and could carry a grudge. They could even tell other crows about an untrustworthy person and convince them to target that individual.
She found crows to be fascinating, but she knew that not everyone shared her interest. Still, it always irritated her when someone like Lincoln Kerr got that patronizing look on his face when she mentioned her specialty. It felt like a silent pat on the head, an implied, “isn’t that cute, little girl, but you should stop wasting your time out here.”
Or maybe she was reading too much into it, since she’d had to deal with that attitude from her family.
A breeze shifted the leaves and the flash of black turned out to be more of a gray-brown: an ‘io. Her heart sank. The Hawaiian hawk was also a fascinating creature, but unfortunately it was the nemesis of the Hawaiian crow. Hector was mature enough that he probably wouldn’t be the target of a hawk. But he hadn’t been raised in the wild. He wasn’t savvy to the dangers of the jungle. There was a chance she’d released him to his doom, but that was the risk you took in restoration work.
In the old days, the native Hawaiian forests had been filled with the squawks and warbles of the ‘alala. They were key seed dispersers, important to the health of the forests, and revered by the Hawaiians. Restoring the ‘alala wouldn’t fix the entire world, but it would bring something back into balance, something important.
Another movement caught her eye. She focused her binoculars higher up, above the canopy, and saw a mechanical object cruising past. A drone?
“Hey!” she called to the others. “Do you guys see that?”
When no one answered, she dropped the binoculars and saw that the others had gone ahead to the waterfall. She must have missed the call, being so wrapped up in her Hector-hunting.
The drone dipped lower, as if it was checking something out. By her calculations, it was heading in the exact direction of the site of the plane crash.
She checked her watch. The route from here to the crash site was pretty direct. In fact, if she walked upstream along the waterway that became the waterfall, it wouldn’t take her long. She could still make it to the waterfall by late afternoon, in time for one jump, and then join the group hike back to the camp.
That way she could wave down the drone. It was probably looking for survivors. If it saw a live human at the site, then they’d know to send help. Maybe it even recorded video and audio. She could send a message that Lincoln Kerr and his pilot were alive.
