The story begins with the King of Sharks seeing a girl swimming at a bay. He fell in love with her at first sight and turned himself into human form as a good looking man resembling a village chief. He then followed her to her village. The villagers, upon the visit of this "chief", decided to celebrate the occasion with food and games. The King of Sharks, being a god, won all the games. He then asked the girl for marriage, and she happily obliged.
The couple enjoyed life, in their house beside a waterfall. The King of Sharks would swim underwater daily, sometimes for long periods, and this would worry his wife. But he would tell her not to worry as he is in the midst of making a safe place for their son underwater, should there be times of trouble.
The King of Sharks decided to return to the oceans just before the birth of their child, and his wife promised to always keep a feathered cape upon the shoulders of their son. The bride finally learned the true identity of her husband when she gave birth to the child and saw the jaws of a shark imprinted on his back.
She named the child Nanave. As Nanave grew older, he'd occasionally dive into the nearby pool and sometimes when his mother looked into the pool, she would catch sight of a shark swimming in it.
Nanave was getting hungry more often, and he would ask the local fishermen about the location of their fishing spots every morning while wearing the feathered cape. The fisherman would always tell him where they were going as the boy seemed friendly. Nanave would then dissappear into the waters for several hours.
The fishermen started catching fewer and fewer fish, and their fellow villagers were starving. The village chief called for a meeting at the temple, and claimed that there was a bad god among them before saying that he will uncover the god through his magic. He laid out a bed of leaves on the ground and asked the men and boys to walk across it, the rationale being that a human foot would damage the leaves, while the foot of a god would leave no mark.
The mother was afraid because Nanave was the son of a god, and would be killed if the villagers discovered his true identity. As the youths were getting ready to walk across the leaves, Nanave made a run for it, but slipped. A villager managed to get hold of the feathered cape attached to the boy's back. The cape then detached from Nanave's shoulders, exposing the shark's jaws for all to see. He was now free to run.
Nanave was chased out of the village and he dived into the familiar pool before the villagers could get to him. The men threw huge rocks into the waters, and thought they had killed Nanave. But his mother recalled how her husband made a safe place underneath the pool for their son, and it turns out to be a safe passage to the ocean. Nanave turns into a shark and is reunited with his father, the King of Sharks, in the sea.
After this incident, fishermen vowed never to tell anyone about their fishing spots, for fear of the fishes disappearing.
Links of My Research
www.americanfolklore.net/folktales/ha.html
Picture taken from en.dcdatabaseproject.com
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