PoraBora

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Miimikani was tired. She had felt tired since chewing out U'ekeo for forcing her niece to watch the outsider boy be eaten by sharks. Since she'd been left with the dying bird. Since Pe had driven her boat off into a storm. Miimikani was used to going most of the year without seeing her niece, but this time was different.

This time, Pe made her worry.

"Don't worry," she tried to tell herself, stepping over a jungle fowl in the middle of Kuhale. Worrying was only good for wrinkles. And Pe would be fine. She'd been fine for the last three years. Better than Miimikani. Pe had actually finished painting something.

Of course, now Iumili was missing too. Her brother had said she left looking for Pe. Miimikani guessed where she'd be.

"Don't worry," Miimikani said to herself again, and a man passing her in the street gave her a startled glance. She smiled at him, and suddenly self-conversation seemed perfectly normal.

Miimikani wasn't headed to work, though she sometimes did odd hours in Kuhale, and odd jobs. She'd spent hours in fields, picking fruits and feeding fowl, and sometimes days on building projects, laying roof tiles and hammering steel. It was almost always tiring work, but she felt tiring work was the most satisfying, and kept her from being like Lea, who skipped a meal a day and spent her only efforts in searching for more tube coral.

Lea had her own problems, though. Miimikani reminded herself not to worry. Lea would be fine, and Pe would be fine, and she would be fine. They had coral and gods and seas, even if a boy had come and smashed their coral, and even if the rumors were that Keasau was angry, and even if the seas weren't giving them as many fish.

Have we done something? she wondered, and when another man looked at her, she wondered if she'd wondered aloud. No, she thought. It was just a man, looking at her.

It wore her out, day after day, the looks, the gifts, the quick conversations they wanted to desperately to go on longer. She wasn't interested. She had never been interested.

U'ekeo came to mind, but she grit her teeth behind her lips because U'ekeo turned into a ship taking her Numaba'i away from shore, a boy dangling in a cage, and a frenzy of bubbling waters and blood.

No. She was not interested.

She was only going now to chew his ear off. She'd said her piece already, but she was prepared to say it again. Louder. Whatever it took for an apology at least.

Instead of him standing there, stoic and cold, saying less and less every time they saw each other.

Not that she cared. She wasn't interested.

You sound like Pe, she told herself. But Pe actually liked Hui. Miimikani didn't blame her. Hui was a good kid. A bit tough to look at, after lunch, but even U'ekeo knew his name. He drilled harder and fought better than any of the other recruits. Or so Miimikani had heard, and never from Hui. He didn't visit much; only once in a while to verify when Pe was coming home so that he could make sure his break was lined up. He hadn't told Miimikani how he felt about Pe, either, and Miimikani worried the two of them would never be honest.

Don't worry, she told herself. They're children. They would figure it out. As long as Pe could make it back from chasing after the shark.

It couldn't be the same one. It was practically impossible. Sharks traveled across the entire ocean. There were millions of them. They didn't all look the same, of course. Even a four-year-old could tell the difference between an oceanic and reef white-tip. But every tiger shark looked like every other tiger shark, except for maybe a difference in length.