Sharks In The Time Of Saviors

Hoku gives Malia a tour of his farm. Malia describes it as “all aquaponics and biodigesters, build-outs just getting started for a solar array and micro-windmills that hang like tree leaves and spin the smallest breezes” (354).

Malia is impressed by the farm and thinks it’s good for Kaui. She notes that she’s “never seen Kaui this way, never felt her this way: the whole farm, the whole situation, like an extension of the tendons and muscles of her body” (356). She notices Augie standing amid bins of kalo (the Hawaiian word for taro) and sees that the plants have a healing effect on him.

Kaui sees the farm as a transformational project: “The kalo and the fish and the flowers. Much from little land. It’s going to change what these islands are, I swear it” (362). She believes the farm is her calling and notes that other local farms are sprouting up nearby, claiming they’ve also been called by a voice, “[t]hat same voice, the one that came to [Kaui] like a hula” (362).

Kaui talks to Dean on the phone. He has been making money and sending it to their parents. Kaui notes that they never ask where the money came from, so they are not sure if it is from legal or illegal work. Kaui asks Dean to come home, and he says he will consider it.

Augie, Malia, and Kaui hike in the Waipi‘o Valley where Nainoa died. Augie is answering a calling: “They are growing in me every day the voices all these days since Nainoa left” (368). He knows what he is waiting for even though Malia and Kaui do not.

They come to the top of a ridge, apparently the same one from which Nainoa fell to his death. They see the night marchers. Then, Augie sees Nainoa walking with the night marches. Seeing his son with the legendary ghosts fills Augie with joy: “And so it is with Nainoa. There he is. He never left us” (373).