I stop and catch my breath. Tami’s still swimming, just ahead. Keali`i chugs along behind me. I watch the sailboat. It’s a sixteen-footer. Nothing too big. What are they doing here? Folks from Kaua`i, migrating to the Big Island like everyone else? I see the flag catch a bit of breeze on the mast. I can’t tell the colors, but the shapes are familiar. The bottom half is one solid color. Along the top half, stripes radiate from a five-pointed star set in the center. I know that flag from visiting Dad’s childhood haunts in the Southwest.
Arizona.
A sailboat from Arizona?
Doesn’t make any sense. But then it hits me: This boat’s from the mainland.
Adrenaline charges through me. I feel like I’m Popeye with a can of spinach. I need to talk to the people on that boat.
I bring my fingers to my lips and force a piercing whistle. I whistle again, and then I scream, “STOP! HELP US!”
I turn to Keali`i. “Shine your light at them! Flash them!”
I charge forward in the water, reach Tami. She pauses and watches me swim past. My friends shout pleas; Keali`i’s dive light illuminates the boat in jostled circles. In the distance, the Hanaman is silent. Either he’s given up or he’s racing back along the breakwater to his gang. I’m sure he knows that if we reach the boat, we get away.
A figure along the port side of the sailboat. They know we’re in the water. The mainsail swings to the side; the boat turns to port. They’re stopping! I barrel toward them.
“Please, help!” I shout as I reach the hull.
“Who are you?” A woman.
“I’m”—I cough—“just a girl. My two friends … chased. For fishing without permission. They’re gonna get you, too. You can’t dock here.”
Silence.
The woman says, “Wait there.”
“My friend is bleeding badly. Please, we need to get out of the water.”
“Wait there.” She disappears. Another figure is at the tiller, frozen, as if trying to remain unnoticed.
Tami swims beside me. “What are we waiting for?” She’s panicky. “Let’s go!”
“Shark!” Keali`i screams. “SHARK!”
“Oh, God.” Tami claws at the prow of the boat, pulling herself up.
Electricity surges along my spine. I scan the waves. Every shadowy crest looks like a dorsal fin. I slap the side of the boat. “Get us out of here NOW!”
The woman returns, pointing a gun. I want to scream, but it comes out as more of a whimper. It never ends.
“Hurry! What are you doing?” Tami cries. “I’m cut, bad. PLEASE GET ME OUT OF THE WATER!”
“Pull her out,” the woman with the gun says to her companion. “Slowly. Make sure she’s not hiding anything.”
Tami starts crying but chokes her sobs back. The other figure, a man—mostly bald, with a ring of white hair—lowers a metal ladder off the stern. Tami and I paddle to it.
“No quick movements. You hear? From either of you.” The woman with the gun is nervous. She reminds me of Dad back on O`ahu when we stole the fishing boat at gunpoint.
Tami removes her fins and hands them to the bald man. She pulls herself up and tenderly swings her legs into the boat with a grunt and a moan. She outran the sharks. Bravest thing she’s ever done, swimming away from dry land with a gushing leg.
Keali`i is yelling. I only hear one word.
“Fin.”
I jump out of my skin. The gunwoman’s “slow and steady” command is the last thing on my mind. I leap for the ladder and pull myself up, use my knees on the rungs and awkwardly flip into the boat with my fins.
Keali`i!
I look at the bald guy hovering over me. “We need to get him up here!”
Fin. He saw a shark.
The bald man nods, turns, throws the boom of the mainsail wide to the side. He pushes the tiller in the opposite direction. The sail and the jib fill with air and we cut left. The woman lowers the gun, her eyes everywhere at once—on us, on her shipmate, on the water.
I rip off my fins and spring to my feet. Keali`i is easy to spot with his dive light bobbing on the surface. He’s still and silent, drawing the boat toward him with a tractor beam gaze.
He’s white as a haole. He definitely saw something.
We glide beside him to port. The woman puts her pistol on the deck and leans over the rails, arm outstretched. We slow with a jerk. Keali`i reaches up and clasps the waiting hand of his rescuer. I scramble, hopping over Tami, and help the woman pull Keali`i, his dive light, and two big bags of slippah lobsters into the boat.
“Hoo!” Keali`i sighs. “Shark fo’ sure.”
My heart pounds. “Keep going,” I tell the bald man. “Don’t slow down.”
“Hold on a sec,” he says. “You’re—”
“Listen,” I interrupt, “you’ve been spotted by some very bad people. They plan to take your boat. If they have a motorboat waiting back in one of those inlets, they could still catch you. They’re armed.”
“And they’re good at what they do,” Tami adds.
“Ha,” says Keali`i. “Not as good as us. You did it, Tami! Those Hanamen gonna be so pissed!”
“Go,” the woman says, waving a hand to the man. She leans forward and retrieves her gun. Her grip around the handle is white-knuckled.
“Rachel …,” the bald guy starts.
“Just go,” she says. “We’ll figure it out.”
She turns back to the three of us and points the gun right at Keali`i. “Okay, talk. You better start making sense. You drawing us into a trap?”
Austin Aslan, The Islands at the End of the World
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