Lohiau

“ On the hill where they stood were some of the lehua trees with their brilliant red blossoms. She plucked the flowers, made wreaths, and going close to Lohiau hung them around his neck.
All through the long journey to the crater Lohiau had been gaining a full appreciation of the bravery, the unselfishness, and the wholly lovable character of Hiiaka. He had proposed [136] frequently that they be husband and wife. Now, as they stood on the brink of the crater with all the proof of Pele’s oath-breaking around them Hiiaka gave way entirely. ”

“ The “child in the heart that has grown to be a man” is Lohiau’s old love for Pele-ula, which now wakes up into new life at the sight of his old flame. The old love has, however, in a sense become a burden. It stands in the way of the new-born affection that has sprung up in his heart for Hiiaka.
It was after the chanting of this mele that Lohiau threw his kilu. ”

“ He is all for pleasure. Honor, constancy, ordinary prudence, are not in his purview. Hiiaka’s immediate presence suffices to restrain and guide him; in her absence, his passion, a rudderless bark, is the sport of every wind that blows.
Hiiaka, on arriving at the halau, sat by herself. Lohiau, as she observed, was sitting with Wahine-oma’o and Waikiki. Pele-ula, who was sitting alone on her side of the hall, now showed her hand by sending one of her men, named A’ala, to invite Lohiau to come over and sit with her. At this Hiiaka spoke up: “I will sit by you.” ”

“ Under the lead of his spiritual guide, Paoa arrived that day at Kilauea and, standing at the brink of the great caldera, he saw the figure of Lohiau beckoning to him as it stood on a heap of volcanic debris. The wraith dissolved into nothingness as he approached the spot; but there lay a figure in stone having the semblance of a man. ”

“ Shall we move in that direction?” Her glance was first at Hiiaka as the leader of the party; her gaze rested on Lohiau.
“Let the resident guests be the first. When they are settled in their places it will be time enough for us to come in,” was the reply of Hiiaka.
“As you please,” nodded Pele-ula.
Wahine-oma’o rose to her feet as Pele-ula was departing. ”

“ The gods well knew on what perilous ground they stood, with whom they had to deal, the fierceness of Pele’s wrath when it was stirred; yet, in their hatred of a great wrong, they moved with one purpose to push back the fires that were threatening Lohiau. With their immortal hands they flung away the embers and masses of flame until the heavens were filled with meteor-fragments. ”

“ The tender vines of the deep woods veiled this queen of the crater. In glorious young womanhood she went to the halau. The dark body of a great mist enveloped her.
The drum and the voice had led her to Haena, Kauai, to the house of Lohiau, the high-born chief of that island. The house for dancing was long and was beautifully draped with mats of all kinds. It was full of chiefs engaged in the sports of that time. The common people were gathered outside the house of the chief.
The multitude saw a glorious young woman step out of the mist. ”

“ With gods, as with men, who would speed his affairs must keep them in his own hands. Pele, the volcano goddess, fell in love with Lohiau, a Kauaian prince, and in human guise remained with him so long that her sisters were afraid the Kilauea fires would go out. ”

“ Lohiau had broken with Pele-ula; his last hope and appeal was [184] to Hiiaka. He stood before her waiting her fateful decision. Will she consent to turn the canoe-prow and fly back to Kaua’i with him? He had won the woman’s heart in her, but not the deity that controlled her nature. The chain that bound her to the Woman of the Pit was too strong to be broken by any mere human appeal. Lohiau had failed in his play with the kilu; he now saw that he had also failed in his attempt to play with this human heart. ”

“ I’d wreath my life with human love,
Plant once again the tender flower
That blooms in the kingdom of dreams.
That is my dream, and here am I.
The audience, moved by Lohiau’s ardor, went into riotous applause. Hiiaka could not but admire the pathetic artistry of Lohiau, yet she remained the mistress of her emotions. Pele-ula, in contrast, became visibly more excited at Lohiau’s close approach. Turning to the younger woman, she said, “do you respond to this man’s appeals?” ”

“ And, on the third night, as it came towards morning, Pele said to Lohiau, “I am about to return to my place, to Puna, the land of the sunrise. You shall stay here. I will prepare a habitation for us, and, when all is ready I will send and fetch you to myself. If it is a man who comes, you must not go with him; but, if a woman, you are to go with the woman. ”

“ To return now to Hiiaka, who, after a hot climb, is standing on the summit of Poha-kea; she is gazing with rapt and clear vision far away in the direction of her own home-land, her moku lehua, in Puna. Her eyes, under the inspiration of the moment, disregard the ocean foreground, on whose gently heaving bosom might be seen the canoe that holds Lohiau and Wahine-oma’o snailing along to its appointed rendezvous. Her mind is busy interpreting the unusual signs written in the heavens: a swelling mountainous mass of flame-shot clouds, boiling up from some hidden source. ”

“ Hiiaka by her magic power quickly passed from the seashore to the volcano. Some of the native legends say that Pele had slept near the seashore where she had commenced to build a volcanic home for herself and her sisters, and that while longing for the coming of her lover Lohiau she had dug feverishly, throwing up hills and digging some of the many pit craters which are famous in the district of Puna. ”

“ If the prayer is broken four times, life will not return.”
The servants of Pau-o-palae, the goddess of ferns, brought all manner of sweet-scented ferns, flowers, and leaves to make a bed for the body of Lohiau, and to place around the inside of the house as fragrant paths by which [133] the gods could come to aid the restoration to life. ”

“ Hawaiian mythology figured Pele, the goddess of the volcano, as a creature of passion, capable of many metamorphoses; now a wrinkled hag, asleep in a cave on a rough lava bed, with banked fires and only an occasional blue flame playing about her as symbols of her power; now a creature of terror, riding on a chariot of flame and carrying destruction; and now as a young woman of seductive beauty, as when she sought passionate relations with the handsome prince, Lohiau; but in disposition always jealous, fickle, vengeful. ”

“ Lohiau and Hiika had, indeed, learned to esteem each other, but they had not violated the trust imposed in them by the goddess.
Pele was madly jealous, however. She turned the prince to stone on the crater brink,—the poor fellow was growing used to dying now,—and, dismayed [239] by this act of cruelty, Hiika descended through the five spheres to the dark underworld where the spirits lived. She hoped that the young man’s ghost would follow her, for pity in his sufferings had fast increased to love. ”

“ At the proper psychological moment, with the wreath of victory crowning her brow, while Pele-ula was vainly intent on an effort to turn the tide of her own defeat and gain the shadow of a recognition as mistress of the game of Kilu, Hiiaka, with a significant gesture to her companions, spat upon the ground and, her example having been imitated by Wahine-oma’o and Lohiau, their physical bodies were at once transported to a distance while their places continued to be occupied by unsubstantial forms that had all the semblance of reality. ”

“ The strange death of the prince occasioned much comment, for he was naturally [486] strong and without disease. Some said he had been prayed to death by his enemies, and others that he had been poisoned; but an old kaula, who had seen Pele at Kaena and noted her actions, advised against further inquiry concerning the cause of Lohiau’s death, offering as a reason the opinion that the strangely beautiful and unknown woman he had taken as a wife was an immortal, who had become attached to her earthly husband and called his spirit to her. ”

“ The prince has returned to life, and may recover if properly cared for. His body is weak and wasted. Let him be secretly and at once removed to the sea-shore. The night is dark, and it may be done without observation.”
Not doubting that these instructions were from the gods, the guards obeyed them with so much prudence and alacrity that Lohiau was soon comfortably resting in a hut by the sea-shore, with Hiiaka and her companions ministering to his wants. ”

“ This was accomplished the reunion of Hiiaka and Lohiau, and thus it came to pass that these two human streams of characters so different, in defiance of powerful influences that had long held them apart, were, at length, turned into one channel—that of the man, not wholly earthly, but leavened with the possibility of vast spiritual attainment under the tonic discipline of affliction; that of the woman, self-reliant, resourceful, yet acutely in need of affection; human and practical, yet feeling after the divine, conscious of daily commerce with the skies ”

“ To explain the motive of this song, Hiiaka perceives that Pele-ula and Lohiau, who had once upon a time been lovers, are mutually drawn to each other by a rekindling of the old flame. In the case of Pele-ula the motive of ambition to match her own spiritual power as a makaula—seer—with that of the young woman who comes to her as the plenipotential ambassador of Pele is even stronger than the physical passion. In the kilu now to be performed she sees her opportunity. ”

“ Stopping to brave the devils and giant lizards of the woods, turning the boards of surf-riders to stone for a prank, and scaring a fisherman by causing him to pull a human head out of the sea, the sister next found a half-released spirit hovering near a dying chief. She tied it in a corner of her skirt and slapped the skirt against a rock, so the chief finished his dying promptly. In Kauai, at last, her search was rewarded. She saw the ghost of Lohiau beckoning from a cave, in which it had been imprisoned by demons, who fled, hissing, on her approach. ”

“ As the story goes, when Kua and Kahole had become aware that Hiiaka’s going was for the purpose of bringing Lohiau to the bed of Pele, they were moved to great disapproval of her enterprise: “A mere man,” said they. “The idea of mating him with Pele is atrocious: and he is a dead man at that.”
After taking counsel with the sea-goddess Moana-nui-ka-lehua, who had her boudoir in the deep waters of Iëië-waena, with her aid they raised a commotion in the sea and Hiiaka barely escaped being swamped by a mighty water-spout. ”

“ She took the bundle of the body of Lohiau and said: “We have the body and the spirit, we are ready now to go down to our house.”
Then she called the spirits of the many kinds of ferns of Pau-o-palae to take the body down. The fern servants of Pau-o-palae carried the bundle of the body down to the house.
Hiiaka said to her friend: “You ask how the spirit can be restored into the body. It is hard and mysterious and a work of the gods. We must gather all kinds of ferns and maile and lehua and flowers from the mountains. ”

“ Now it happened that at the very time when these events were taking place Kane-milo-hai, an elder brother of Pele, was voyaging from Kahiki to Hawaii. His canoe was of that mystical pattern, the leho (cowry) in which Mawi had sailed. While in the middle of the Iëië-waho channel he caught sight of the distracted spirit of Lohiau fluttering like a Mother Carey’s chicken over the expanse of waters. The poor ghost, as if desirous of companionship, drew nigh and presently came so near that Kane-milo-hai captured it and, having ensconced it in his ipu-holoho-lona,1 he sailed on his way. ”

“ Thoughts of her brother floated through her mind, and the booming of the surf now seemed to assume a more intimate tone and by some witchery of the imagination led her out under the winking stars, closer to old Ocean’s moan, and made her think: how Lohiau did delight in the surf; what pleasure he took in riding the billows! Thus she murmured to herself. At that moment her straining vision detected an object moving with the waves. “Some man surfing in our tabu waters—yet how can that be? ”

“ Silent are the voices on the plain.
No medley of the birds is in the forest;
There is quiet, resting in peace.”
Pele entered the long house, passed by the place of the drums, and seated herself on a resting-place of soft royal mats.
The chiefs were astonished, and after a long time asked her if she came from the far-off sunrise of foreign lands.
Pele replied, smiling, “Ka! I belong to Kauai.”
Lohiau, the high chief, said: “O stranger, child of a journey, you speak in riddles. I know Kauai from harbor to clustered hills, and my eyes have never seen any woman like you.” ”

“ That job completed, he went away with all the men of the place to bewail him. We two women alone remain to keep watch over him. There he lies and we stand guard over his sepulcher.”
Then Hiiaka, girding herself with her divine attributes as a goddess of Kilauea—the power which, on occasion, availed to flood the plains of Puna with sounding plates of pahoehoe, or to heap up the rugged aä at Maukele—reached into the sepulcher in search of Lohiau’s body. ”

“ At the utterance of this name Pele brightened and called to Hiiaka, “Yes, that is the name of our man. I purposely kept it back until you should have reached the water-shed (kaupaku2 o ka hale o kaua, literally the ridgepole) of our house, intending then to reveal it to you; but you have divined the man’s name. Go on your journey. Nothing shall avail to block your road. Yours is the power of woman; the power of man is nothing to that.”
On reaching the plateau of Wahine-kapu Hiiaka received a spiritual message telling her that Lohiau—the object of her errand—was dead. ”