Okawii Read online

  “Grandmother? I was under the impression from watching Filipe the night before that all mermaid tails were green and blue.”

  “You are referring to your golden tail.”

  “Yes.”

  “Everyone’s tail color is as unique as their fingerprint. You are right in that for the most part the tails are shades of green, blue, brown, and other sea-like colors. Pinks and reds do appear, but are a bit more rare. Your golden color refers to your ancestry.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Golden tails typically appear in the chieftain line. Your mother and grandfather both had golden tails. It is very helpful, actually, in determining the next chief because if a chief has more than one child, only one will have a golden tail and it is usually that child that has the best qualities of a chief.”

  Chapter 5

  David Young had always wanted to go to Fiji. As a child, he saw pictures of the white beaches and deep blue waters in a National Geographic magazine and carefully clipped them. So when his father, David, Sr., asked him where he wanted to go for his 25th birthday, there was no hesitation. He didn’t mind traveling alone. Sure, it would have been nice to have a wife, or even a girlfriend to take along, but he had always been an introvert, and he looked forward to these two weeks to clear his head and forget all about the banking industry.

  His blond hair and blues eyes earned him stares on Fiji, and he had a natural innocence about him that attracted the sellers of tourist-wares. And he bought from all of them without fail, too nice to deny any of them the tiniest portion of his family’s fortune.

  On the fifth day of his trip, David had returned from a scuba diving tour and was excited to add sea turtles and the ruby snapper fish to his list of things to research when he got home. There were plenty of other types of fish his guide had mentioned, but that was the only one he remembered. The shower behind the scuba shop was warm, and he lingered longer than his allotted three minutes. Sneaking out somewhat guiltily, he caught sight of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen walking between the snack-tables toward the beach. She had jet-black hair and olive skin, obviously a Pacific islander.

  David followed her to the beach, but she had disappeared.

  The next morning he was enjoying breakfast at a small restaurant when the same woman walked in. He almost spit out his coffee in surprise. David watched her for a full two minutes before he realized that this was fate. Normally a timid man, David wasted no time inviting her to sit with him. She obliged, somewhat warily, but ended up having the time of her life with this white American.

  He asked her about the local dishes on the menu and made her laugh by pretending to be squeamish about seafood. Her lilting accent and giant brown eyes captivated him, and she was taken with his pleasant manner.

  They were inseparable for the last week of his trip, and when it came time for him to go, it was the most natural thing in the world to discuss next steps.

  Eva had to go back to college; she was on her senior year spring break, and he had to go back to the bank in Arizona. He offered to meet her on Okawii after she finished college, but she explained that it was impossible because of all the paperwork and visas to get through the culturally protected status of the island. They made plans to meet in Hawaii after she finished school. During that second trip together, they got to know each other a lot better and both of them were falling deeper in love with each other. On the morning of their second last day together, Eva took him to a small, secluded island. She asked David if he could keep a secret. He answered ‘of course,’ and she told him that this secret was really big, that she was trusting him with her island’s way of life. Then the White Coral was consumed and she showed him her alternate form.

  David was in shock, unaware, like most people on the planet, that this could actually happen. She spent the day explaining her childhood and the Okawiian way of life. At first her tail was grotesque to him, but as he watched her move effortlessly through the waves, he was enthralled. He immediately got over his suspiciousness when she brought up two lobsters out of the waves, proceeded to dry off and get her legs back, start a fire, and cook the best, freshest meal he had yet tasted. Watching the whole process from under his umbrella, he saw that she was truly at home doing all this and her natural confidence made him love her even more. The next evening when they parted, she told him to watch his mail carefully in the coming weeks.

  Two months after his return to Tucson, a package from Eva arrived. It was a pile of stamped, official forms allowing him to travel to Okawii. At once he called his travel agent to make arrangements.

  His first trip to Okawii was one of the most interesting journeys of his life. Eva’s parents, Chief Konala and Nukuluve were cool toward him at first. They put him in the hut farthest away from them on the island, and when he showed up for Eva, Nukuluve would wordlessly hand him his food, refusing to sit with him as he ate. But Konala and Nukuluve watched how he treated Eva, and how they looked at each other, and how polite he was to everyone. They got a sense of his innate goodness and calmness, and began to trust him. He learned that he was now one of three outsiders in the world who knew the secret of the mermaids. The other two were an Island Council ally, who was an old friend of Chief Konala, and Rosemary, wife of the Okawiian Lepolo, now living on the island. It was made clear to David by the Chief that now that he knew, he and Eva could not break up; he was expected to marry her. This did not faze him as that was what he had intended to do since that first breakfast in Fiji.

  Thus David’s visit was consumed with plan-making. The fact that Eva was the daughter of the Chief greatly complicated things, and he understood that he could not just marry her and take her away. At the same time, he also had an obligation to his father, the “Chief” of Young Bank. Since the day he was born he had been groomed to take over the bank from David, Sr., whose own father had founded the bank. Dutifully David majored in finance and joined the firm after college. In three years he worked his way up to branch manager, and was proving himself at every level.

  The two sweethearts decided to live in Tucson for the first part of their marriage, and to move back to Okawii for good when their kids were ready for high school. For some reason it was important to Eva that the kids live on Okawii during high school. For the safety of the islanders, however, they decided that they wouldn’t visit until it was time to move back. They couldn’t risk the any of their children accidentally revealing the secret in a “what I did last summer” project.

  Eva had a huge falling out with Chief Konala over these plans. When he had told David that he was expected now to marry his daughter, he had assumed that David would just move to Okawii like Rosemary had. The Chief was not used to things not going his way, and he refused to legitimize this foreigner suitor’s other life by acknowledging that David had a family or even a family business. She finally was able to persuade her father that it would be better for the island in the long run because she could learn a lot more about the large world out there, and would be better suited to lead Okawii into the future.

  Standing in his dark home office, David lingered over his wedding picture, smiling at his younger, naïve self, adorned with a crown of white flowers. He remembered his wedding day with both fondness and awkwardness. It truly had been the best day of his life, up until the birth of Mina. The Okawiian ceremonies and feasts would have made any anthropologist drool and David, still reading his National Geographic magazines monthly, appreciated every minute. The awkwardness stemmed from the fact that his parents had not been allowed to attend. He told them about the culturally protected status of the island, and they immediately got on the phone with their senators and high-powered friends to get the paperwork pushed through. His well-connected parents were not used to being excluded from high-profile events, and they never expected to be denied access to their own son’s wedding. Finally David had to tell them a little white lie: that the presence of outsiders in an Okawiian ceremony would nullify the proceedings. He was able to somewhat app
ease them by promising that he and Eva would have another wedding at their country club for all of their friends.

  As he held the picture, his phone rang; it was an unknown number.

  “Dad?” A muted, far away voice asked.

  “Mina? Is everything okay? Are you okay?” He had purchased a satellite phone for her in case of an emergency; however, with the way things had been left between them, he didn’t expect to hear from her until she called from the Tucson airport to be picked up at the end of the summer.

  “Everything’s fine, Dad. Why didn’t you tell me I’m a mermaid?”

  David sank into his dark leather couch. “Honey, what was I supposed to do? Telling you was too risky for the other islanders. Even though you’re one of them, you were still an outsider until now.”

  Mina didn’t respond right away. She badly wanted to fit in with them, and it hurt for someone to say out loud that she was an outsider.

  “Why didn’t we just stay on Okawii, you know, when Mom died?”

  “There were a lot of reasons, Mina.”

  “Like what? Please tell me. Please.”

  David was so used to anxiously guarding his secrets that it was difficult for him to let his guard down. Fifteen years ago he had locked all things about Okawii in a mental vault and hadn’t thought about them since, let alone talk about them with someone else.

  “Well, first of all, I couldn’t live on Okawii without your mother. Technically I might have been allowed to stay, mostly for your sake, but I could never be a full man on that island, as you now know. I couldn’t provide for you by fishing with the others in the ocean, not the way they fish. I couldn’t be a part of that way of life. Next to your mother, it would have been different. She was the light of my life and I would have lived in Antarctica if that’s what it would have taken to be near her.”

  “I guess.”

  David was amazed at this answer from her. He couldn’t remember the last time that she seemed to understand things from his point of view. This encouraged him to go on.

  “Also, the way your mother died was so harsh and such a blow to the island that I just couldn’t stay after that. It would have made me even more of an outsider than I was already. People would have whispered behind our backs all the time, and I wasn’t ready to deal with raising a baby alone in a hostile environment like that. Plus, I promised your Grandpa Young that I would give him some more years at the bank.”

  After her encounter with Ana, and having endured the whispers and stares that come with being new on Okawii, Mina had no trouble imagining the hypothetical situation her dad was describing. Again, her dad’s allusion to her mother’s death stirred her curiosity.

  “Dad? How did mom actually die?”

  The line went so quiet that Mina thought she lost the call.

  “Dad?”

  She heard nothing for a minute, and then heard him blow his nose.

  “It’s fine,” she finally spit out, exasperated. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

  The secret of her mother’s death annoyed her as much as it intrigued her. And she still didn’t understand why nobody would tell her more about it, especially since she now knew about the mermaids.

  Keoni stood in front of the main lodge with a notebook and pen in hand. He rolled his shoulders, stretching his muscles after his long swim in the ocean that morning dragging back lobster and small fish. He didn’t mind having to provide for his mother and baby brother. It kept him busy and he found that most of the adults and elders respected him more for it.

  When Nukuluve had asked him to give Mina language lessons, he hesitated at first, citing his need to be available for his family should they need him. “Young man,” Nukuluve had replied, “Your mother asked me to ask you. She thinks you are available for them too much.” He knew they were right. And although fishing could be a challenge, he had missed school and exercising his brain since graduation last year. Trying his hand at teaching was just the thing he needed.

  Keoni smiled at Mina as she approached the main lodge. He knew that it must be hard to be new to such a small and unique community. Trying to fit in anywhere was difficult, without the added challenge of wrapping your head around two impossible facts: that mermaids exist, and that you are one of them.

  Mina pointed at the elders in the far corner of the lodge. “Can we be here? I thought this place was only for the men.”

  “It’s fine,” answered Keoni, sitting down on a bench inside. “Anyways it would be a lot worse if we were somewhere else alone. This is a pretty conservative community and supervision is standard for, uh, unmarried people.”

  Mina raised her eyebrows but said nothing. Oh my god! He alluded to the fact that we’re not married kind of awkwardly. So embarrassing! Could it mean anything?

  Keoni opened his notebook. “So I thought we would start with basic nouns and then work our way into verbs and conjugating them.”

  They worked for over an hour, with Keoni correcting her pronunciation as needed and diligently writing out the words they went over in case she was a visual learner. He was impressed by her quickness and authentic interest in learning the language.

  Toward the end of the lesson Mina leaned in so the elders wouldn’t hear her. “I’m sorry, but I’m just going to be indiscreet. What happened to your dad?”

  Keoni looked up at her. Nobody had ever asked him this before. Nobody had ever needed to because they were so isolated and everyone on Okawii knew everyone else’s business.

  “When Taha was still a baby, my father didn't come home from a routine fishing trip. He had sailed to a nearby island with three others; they had anticipated being gone for 6-9 days, depending on the winds and the availability of the fish. When he did not come home after twenty days, they began to wait the requisite fifty days before declaring them dead.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry I asked,” Mina said earnestly. She mentally kicked herself and vowed to be more careful with her curiosity. God, I hope he’s not mad at me for asking. Stupid, stupid, I could have just asked Grandmother…

  Mina looked down at the notebook of Okawiian words to try and get away from the topic.

  “It’s okay, really. Anyways, if anyone knows what it’s like to lose a parent, it’s you.” Keoni hadn’t spoken about his father’s death with anyone since it happened, and it didn’t feel as bad as he had expected. It was almost a relief to tell the entire story to someone who didn’t know about it.

  “I will also be indiscreet.” Keoni surprised himself with his own pluck. “Is it true that your tail is golden?”

  Mina blushed. “It seems word does travel fast here.”

  “Small island,” he smiled as they stood out and walked out of the lodge. He like her boldness in asking what was on her mind and looked forward to tomorrow’s lesson with her.

  On her way home, Mina kicked at the roots on the path. He was so nice, and so good-looking. She had done a good job of forgetting about her attraction to Keoni during the lesson and hoped she had impressed him with her intelligence. But then she ruined everything by asking about his dad. She couldn’t help herself, though. She was curious, and used to speaking what was on her mind. Keoni just seemed so perfect to her. Then again, she forced herself to think of Andrew. He was perfect too, sort of, he just wasn’t a mermaid, and he couldn’t be blamed for that. It wasn’t as if that was a personal fault.

  After things had died down at the resort bar, Simon knocked on Hector’s door, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He was excited about this sudden budding friendship with the leader of one of the world’s most exclusive clubs, but didn’t exactly understand Hector’s interest in him. His hunting experience was limited compared to most of the members’, and he didn’t own any land in exotic continents. While Hector had discussed a little business with him down at the bar, Simon got the impression that he was just being polite. Why would the mention of his boss and Okawii suddenly interest him? Simon figured that he was looking for new fishing grounds in the Pa
cific or something similar.

  “Come in.”

  Simon entered and found Hector sitting at the table with his tie loosened. The two scotches on the table each had two halfway-dissolved ice cubes.

  “I took the liberty,” he gestured toward the drinks with his disfigured left hand, “take a seat.”

  “Thanks,” said Simon, sitting down across from him.

  “So, Simon Lanza. I asked around about you. Simon Haight, was it?” Hector picked up his drink with his left thumb and forefinger and leaned back crossing his feet.

  Simon’s eyes widened and then closed slowly.

  “Now don’t worry, I’m not here to accuse you or bring you down or anything like that.” Hector’s drawl really came through when he had the power position in a conversation such as this. “I just wanted you to know that I know.”

  Simon knew he was in this man’s control now. “What can I help you with?”

  “Now who said I wanted anything? I asked you up here to tell you a story.”

  Simon sat rigidly, unable to relax. This was the first time since he had moved to Arizona that anyone had alluded to his past transgressions.

  “Just calm down now, have some more of that drink,” Hector said, refilling both their glasses.

  The Arizona banker let his shoulders drop and leaned back, sipping his scotch.

  “That’s better. Now I know you’re no fool and you probably figured out that Okawii is not some unknown dot in the ocean to me. What I’m about to tell you is top secret, and I have to ask you to keep it to yourself as well.”

  Simon nodded, wondering how he had earned this man’s trust so soon, especially when he knew about less trustworthy past.

  “Good. I’ve been hunting and fishing for 31 years now, and only one time,” he paused for effect, “one time has a beast of the earth or sea ever gotten away from me. It happened 15 years ago when I was on my yacht fishing in the South Pacific. I was gazing out at the water when I saw a strange fish near the surface. Now, normally you can’t see a fish under the surface of the ocean out so far from land, but this one was different: it had a large golden tail that dazzled and made it visible close to the surface. I followed it all the way to a small island,” he nodded at Simon, “Okawii.”