Mo`opuna, the hospital says I can’t bring food or plants inside the building. What is their medicine, compared to ours? I brought a jar of homemade māmaki brew too, but with those tubes in your mouth I don’t know how to make you drink it. Good thing I brought the salt and ti. But now that I’m looking at you I don’t know how I’m going to lomi your body with them either. You’re covered in so many wires and tubes that it looks like you’ve turned into a very sad and broken marionette—Pinocchio in reverse. Even your legs are bound, can you feel that? Each wrapped hip to ankle, in something like the oversized cuffs they use to check your blood pressure. For circulation, the nurse tells me.
The nurse on duty is a small Filipina lady wearing scrubs printed with baby ducks. They remind me of the rubber ducky you used to chew on when you were small enough to bathe in the sink. When I think of how much of your life you’ve spent in water, I just don’t know how this could happen. Going to Queen’s Bath at night. I could maybe understand a tourist being so stupid. But a local kid from Kaua`i is supposed to know the island better than that. What could you possibly have been doing down there? The cops interviewed those ragamuffin friends of yours, as if they’d ever tell a cop anything. Wait until I find them. They’re going to talk to me or else.
The nurse checked all your bells and whistles and plugged notes into your chart before noticing that the tape holding your breathing machine in place needed adjusting. How come they can invent all these fancy machines and give people new body parts but nurses have to carry around tape in their pockets to hold things together?
Why is your face still blue, your fingers still pruney? You’ve been out of the water for hours now. Give me your hands. We’ll start there. Does that feel okay, is the salt too rough? Maybe I’ll just go over your body with the ti today. I can put the salt in the corners of the room, try to clear it out that way.
Your cuticles are raw. Looks like you started biting them again. Something about them makes me feel old and helpless. I want to ask you why you’d hurt yourself like that. I want to clean your owies and kiss them better as if you were small. Tomorrow I’ll come with wipes and hand lotion. Maybe some polish for your nails. Give you a manicure and get you all fancy. Your feet are banged up in ways that can’t just be from this. I heard you’ve been sleeping in your car, but your feet make me wonder if that’s true. Maybe it’s better I don’t know. My heart hurts. I want to brush your hair and wipe you down so the nurses and doctors here don’t think you are forgotten or lost, that you have someone praying for you, but they were the ones to put you in this bed and cover you with these blankets so it’s already too late for that.
I keep a picture of you in my purse, from May Day the year you lost both your front teeth. You were always kalohe, but through that gap the rascal in you came out full throttle. Back then your mama was always asking me what she did that she was being punished for. (Why she bothered asking, I dunno, she knew just as much as all of us how good her snout was for rooting up trouble.) Then she would laugh and laugh. You know her, before everything happened she was always laughing. Underneath she was a good person, right to the end.
The nurse says everything is looking A-okay even though you look terrible. I’m sorry for saying so. What am I supposed to do with her words, celebrate? She only means nothing has gotten worse. She patted you on the shoulder before she left, as if you’d accomplished something.
Your security guard is the opposite of the nurse. A stone face that wouldn’t laugh at a joke if I hit him over the head with it. He’s informed me that he’s under strict orders to never leave your side because they think you jumped on purpose. Since one of the walls of your tiny room is glass he’s agreed to sit on the other side of it and watch you from there when I’m visiting. He doesn’t need to know our business. At least he respects his elders. It’s not like you’re going anywhere. Who’s he protecting anyway? Us from you, or you from yourself? You wouldn’t have jumped on purpose. I can’t ever believe that. I remember the last time we talked. It was when the hotel fired you.
“Because nobody wants to come to Hawai`i for vacation when there’s a war going on,” you explained, when I asked why. You were so excited to work there. Always telling me you couldn’t come visit because you had to work. Didn’t ever call in sick or come in late.
I wasn’t good about paying attention to the news on TV, but you went on about Desert Storm, how a war in Iraq was to blame for The Coco firing your entire crew.
“The state is giving six million dollars to the Visitors Bureau to run commercials on the mainland to try to get more tourists,” you said. When I asked why the state didn’t just put those six million dollars into helping everybody losing their jobs throughout the islands, you laughed. You were angry. Not suicidal.
You’re so still. I don’t trust the monitors. I watch them but I’m not sure what I’m hoping they will do. Maybe that they will tell me something God isn’t.
From the other side of the window the guard is giving me funny kine looks. I’ll slide the ti under your arms and tuck one under your lower back when he’s not looking. That will have to do for now.
The ICU is on a floor of the hospital I have never been before. The rooms here are different from the ones downstairs, different from the open room with the big wide window facing the ocean where I gave birth to your mama. Less light, more whispers. This room has only one window and it’s facing inside, imagine that, eh? From in here it’s impossible to know which way is east, which way west. I wish I could bring in some fresh air for you, get some makani into your hair and sweep all these bad things out of your room. They were clustered thick when I first came in, this cloud I’ve been watching slowly accumulate around you in the years since your mama died. I wish I had done something then. I was so hardhead.
Yes, you’re not the only one with a head too hard. Where do you think you got it from?
I thought you just needed time. I know I did. Needed to let the bleeding stop.
Your tutu needs a cigarette. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be mad or sad right now. Forgive an old lady her pilau habits. I’ll be right back.
*
Charlie Boy was downstairs, trying to convince the receptionist to tell him what room you were in. She wasn’t budging on the only family rule. He looked destroyed. He’s always been sweet on you, I think.
“Hey, aunty,” he said after kissing my cheek. “Can I see her?” “Come have a smoke with me,” I told him.
He hadn’t been at Queen’s Bath, but he saw you at the party before. Didn’t want to admit how trashed you were. He was worried he’d get you in trouble. I said we were past that.
“I heard the talk that she jumped on purpose. I wanted to come find you. I didn’t want you to believe it. She didn’t.”
“Tell me what you know, Charlie Boy. Whatever we can tell the doctors about what happened the better they can help her.”
I didn’t think that was true, but I needed to know.
“She’d been drinking a lot,” he said. “The cops came and broke up the party. Everybody scrambled as soon as we saw those blue flashing lights coming up the road. I thought I saw her jump into a guy’s car with a couple of other girls. One of those girls, Iwa, lives down the street from me. I saw her when she got home. She said they had all pretty much sobered up by the time they got to Queen’s Bath. They parked at the top of the trail to hang out and smoke a joint. No one planned to hike down to the water. They ended up going down the trail anyway. Iwa was slower than the rest of them, the moon was out but wasn’t giving out enough light to navigate all the rocks. By the time she got to the cliff the group had already broken off into couples. From what they could see the water was calm. It was a freak wave. Came out of nowhere. There was a scream that sounded like it was coming from really far away. Iwa didn’t think the scream and the wave were connected until they all found each other again and realized someone was missing. The guys dove in, managed to pull her out. Iwa couldn’t say for sure how long she’d been in the water. The only thing she knew for certain was that it was an accident.”
Oh Mo`opuna, what he said gutted me. That wave that swept you away. We’ve gotten so disconnected from the `āina. Of course you kids don’t know how to read the ocean. Nobody grows their own food anymore, people want to dig into Pele’s home on the Big Island to make a geothermal plant, pollution and garbage everywhere, hotels in Maui and O`ahu diverting all the water and drying up the islands, acid rain, pesticides . . . so much imbalance. Yes, you were stupid and when you wake up I’m going to kill you. But it’s also not your fault. Something, well, something happened. Many, many years before you were born. So long ago that I thought it didn’t matter anymore. But obviously it caused a disconnect that has only gotten more dangerous and deadly. For a long time I thought everything could heal itself, regenerate. Now I don’t know. But that wave wasn’t a wave. It was the truth that I tried to ignore. I can’t ignore it anymore. There’s only one thing that can save you. I know what I need to do. I think I’ve always known, though the duties we inherit don’t always come with the courage they require, yeah? I’ve prayed and prayed and it keeps leading me back to the same answer, so I’m taking that to mean God is giving me the go-ahead. I will look to Him to guide both of us through this.
On second thought, maybe I should leave Him out of this.
Maybe this doesn’t have anything to do with Him at all. Oh Mo`opuna, the pain it causes me to say that. It’s been a long time since your tutu left God out of anything.
Here’s the thing. The doctors and nurses think they know what’s wrong with you, but they say only time will tell. They tell me all they can do is help your body by keeping your parts going until your body can do that on its own again. They have no idea how wrong they are. No idea how little they know about what is really going on here. But I know. I knew before the phone rang; the truth had been dripping into the bottom of my stomach for some time, turning it sour.
Have you ever heard your tutu apologize for anything, admit she makes mistakes? Now I am, okay? It’s not too late. I was a coward and we all paid, all continue to pay, for it. Just stay alive long enough for me to make it right. I promise I will.
Mo`opuna, your tutu has been keeping a secret for a very long time. The Empty, that feeling deep inside you, that thing that’s been eating away at you for so long, was born in the vacuum of that secret. This is not an excuse, but if you lock something away long enough there’s a chance you forget where you put the key. I was supposed to tell it all to your mama but I never got the chance. Or maybe I stopped believing any of it meant anything. Maybe I thought it best to leave the past in the past. Just goes to show how wrong an old lady can be. Wake up and be mad at me, okay? The nurses say your ears still work and that I should talk to you. Aiyah, if that’s not the universe right there giving me my marching orders then I don’t know what would be!
What I have to tell you will take some time, so you’re going to have to stick around, you hear me? I’ll tell you everything, but you have to promise me that you will listen. That you will stay alive and fight and let your tutu give you the medicine.
*
It took from March 17, 1768, to sometime in 1777 for the princess Ka`ahumanu to be born. Nine years.
Dates. They like to think they’re important.
Whatever the day and year, the date was not significant, in spite of it being what would change the world forever.
In the time before the islands were united into a kingdom—you knew this right, the islands weren’t always united, your teachers taught you at least that much in school? Auwe, the fact that I don’t even know the answer to that question fills me with shame—there was much fighting between them. Each island was ruled by local chiefs and its own king. Territory was defended, protected, and fought over. In this time there was a hill in the district of Hana on Maui called Pu`u Ka`uiki. This hill was part of the territory controlled by a Hawai`i Island chief who was a supporter of the efforts to conquer the island and make it part of a united Hawaiian Kingdom. This position had made enemies out of the other chiefs who wanted to maintain their independence, so when this chief ’s wife went into labor, he needed to keep their location a secret to ensure their safety. To the hill of Pu`u Ka`uiki they went. Within the hill was a series of lava tubes. The chief ’s wife ordered her husband’s guards to remain outside, allowing only her female attendants to go with her to Ka`uiki Cave, deep into the heart of the hill.
*
Aiyah. Mo`opuna, you’re going to have to kala mai your tutu—I was so gung ho to get started and so upset about you and the wave and the thought of losing you that I jumped the gun. I started the story wrong. It’s been so long time since I thought about any of it that it’s gotten jumbled in my head.
At church, Pastor says that before God made the world there was only darkness. I won’t disagree, but I will add this: Just because someplace is dark, don’t mean it’s empty. Darkness holds all kinds of things. My point is that sometimes it’s hard to say when or where something started. From that darkness did the chicken come, or was it the egg? The prophecy of the pōhaku was like that. It rose from the lava core of Middle Earth, its mana so deep and powerful that it was as if the knowledge of it had no beginning, no origin. But just like a game of Telephone, the truth behind the prophecy got so warped over time that eventually there was very little, if any, truth still in it at all.
In the schoolbooks everything always begins when the men of Europe enter the picture, so we gotta start there too. (Told you this was going to take a while! But stay with me. Please stay with me.) They say Captain Cook was searching for a northern passage between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and that’s how he came to our homeland. This is true, but the sort of true that says Hawai`i is the fiftieth state of America.
*
At the heart of the real story of Captain Cook is the prophecy of the pōhaku and the story of a man named John Montague. You’re not going to find this story in any history book. You stopped trusting me a long time ago, but for this you are going to have to give me another chance.
__________________________________
From The Pohaku by Jasmin ‘Iolani Hakes. Copyright © 2026 by Jasmin ‘Iolani Hakes. Published on Feb. 3, 2026, by HarperVia, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Excerpted by permission.
