HIIAKA EMPLOYS THE ART OF MAGIC AS A MEANS OF DISGUISING HERSELF--SHE
VOYAGES TO MOLOKA'I--MEETS THE MO'O KIKI-PUA
"Let us make haste to leave this place," said Hiiaka. This was because
she foresaw that she would be importuned to use her power to restore
the dead king to life.
When these akuas, these spirits of necromancy, became convinced
that they had been worsted in the fight and that the king was dead
beyond all hope of recovery from them, they instructed the kahuna
Kaua-kahi-ma-hiku-lani to desist from his useless incantations and to
dispatch all his people in search of Hiiaka as the only one capable
of reviving the king's life.
While toiling up the ascent of the hill Pulehu, the two women saw in
the distance a great multitude of people pursuing them. Wahine-oma'o,
in alarm, exclaimed, "What in the world shall we do!" At once Hiiaka
by the power of enchantment changed Wahine-oma'o into the shape of
a little girl leading a dog, while she herself assumed the form of
a bent old woman hobbling along with the aid of a stick; and as the
multitude drew near they sat down by the wayside as if to rest.
The people in pursuit had seen and recognized Hiiaka and felt sure
of soon overtaking her. But, on coming to the place, they found only
a decrepit woman and a child leading a dog. They were taken aback
and asked, "Where are the two young women who were traveling this
way? Have you not seen them?"
"We have seen nothing of them," was the answer.
When the people reported to the kahuna that they had found only an old
woman and a girl with a dog in tow, he saw through the trick at once
and exclaimed, "Those are the very persons I want. Go and bring them."
The messengers of the kahuna next came up with Hiiaka and her
companion at a place called Ka-lau-la'ola'o. There they found two
girls of tender age busily employed in gathering lehua flowers and
stringing them into wreaths; and, as before, they denied all sight
and knowledge of the persons inquired for. The kahuna recognized that
his people had again been victimized and, upbraiding them for their
lack of detective insight, ordered them to renew the pursuit.
Once more, at Kapua, in Ka-ana-pali, did Hiiaka find it necessary to
resort to the arts of magic in order to escape from her pursuers. When
the scouts of the kahuna arrived at the place they found a household of
busy women--a wrinkled matronly figure was braiding a mat, while her
companion, just returned from the ocean, was laying a fire to broil
a fish for the evening meal. Not until they had gone some distance
from the place did it occur to their sharpening wits that the house
had looked spick-and-span new, and that they had seen no man about
the place. Yes--they had been fooled again by the wonderful art of
the girl Hiiaka.
Hiiaka was rejoiced to find a canoe on the point of sailing to Moloka'i
and the sailors gladly consented to give her a passage. The people
of Kapua were greatly taken with the beauty and charm of Hiiaka and
proposed, in all seriousness, that she should remain and become one of
them. When they found that she was insistent to continue her journey
at once, they one and all warned her not to attempt the windward side
of Moloka'i, declaring its coast to be precipitous and impassable,
besides being infested by a band of man-killing mo'o.
Hiiaka had no sooner set foot on Molokai's beach than her ears were
assailed with complaints against those lawless beings, the mo'o. Two
women, pallid and wasted with starvation, sat in the open field moaning
and bewailing their estate. At sight of Hiiaka, as if recognizing
their knight errant, they broke out into loud lamentations. The mo'o
had robbed them of their husbands, and with them had gone their means
of support and their very desire for food. Hiiaka, as if recognizing
their claim upon her knight-errantry, with heartfelt sympathy for
their miserable condition, opened her mouth in song:
Kui na ohi'a hele i ke kaha, e;
Lei hele i ke kaha o Ka-pala-ili-ahi--
Mau akua noho i ka la'i, e-e;
Ua hele wale a lei-ó-a ke kino, e-e!
TRANSLATION
Provide you wreaths of ohi'a
To gladden the heart of travel:
You'll bring joy to these barren wastes
Of Ka-pala-ili-ohi.--
These creatures, sublime in their misery,
Sit shelterless, wasted, forlorn.
At this the women spoke up and said: "Our bodies are wasted only from
our passionate love for our husbands. When they were taken from us
we refused food."
Hiiaka was indignant at such folly and left them to their fate. Their
way still continued for some distance through a barren region and
Hiiaka again alluded in song to the barrenness of the land and the
misery of the women who suffered their bodies to waste away:
Kui na apiki lei hele
O Ka-maló, e:
Akua heahea i ke kaha o Iloli.
He iloli aloha;
He wi ka ke kino, e-e!
TRANSLATION
Provide you a bundle of wreaths,
When the heart is ashes within.
The witches were ready with babble
In the barren land of Iloli:--
Their's merely a passion hysteric,
That shrivels the body like famine.
The good people of Halawa valley, where Hiiaka found herself
well received, made earnest protest against the madness of her
determination to make her way along the precipitous coast wall
that formed Moloka'i's windward rampart. The route, they said, was
impassable. Its overhanging cliffs, where nested the tropic-bird and
the ua'u, dropped the plummet straight into the boiling ocean. Equally
to be dreaded was a nest of demonlike creatures, mo'o, that infested
the region and had their headquarters at Kiki-pua, which gave name to
the chief mo'o. Kiki-pua, being of the female sex, generally chose
the form of a woman as a disguise to her character which combined
the fierceness and blood-thirstiness of the serpent with the shifty
resources of witchcraft, thus enabling her to assume a great variety
of physical shapes, as suited her purpose. This last fact, had it
stood by itself, would have decided Hiiaka's choice; for her journey,
considered as a pilgrimage, had as an important side-purpose the
extermination root-and-branch, of the whole cursed tribe of mo'o from
one end of the land to the other.
(This Kiki-pua band of mo'o had included Haka-a'ano, the husband of
Kiki-pua, also Papala-ua and her husband Oloku'i. [105] Kiki-pua had
stolen away and taken to herself Oloku'i, the husband of Papala-ua,
thus creating a bitter feud which broke up the solidarity of the band.)
The way chosen by Hiiaka led along the precipitous face of the mountain
by a trail that offered at the best only a precarious foothold or
clutch for the hand. At one place a clean break opened sheer and
straight into the boiling sea. As they contemplated this impasse, a
plank, narrow and tenuous, seemed to bridge the abyss. Wahine-oma'o,
rejoicing at the way thus offered, promptly essayed to set foot upon
it, thinking thus to make the passage. Hiiaka held her back, and on
the instant the bridgelike structure vanished. It was the tongue of
the mo'o thrust out in imitation of a plank, a device to lure Hiiaka
and her companion to their destruction.
Hiiaka, not to be outdone as a wonder-worker, spanned the abyss by
stretching across it her own magical pa-ú, and over this, as on a
bridge, she and Wahine-oma'o passed in security.
The mo'o, Kiki-pua, took flight and hid among the cavernous rocks. But
that did not avail for safety. Hiiaka gave chase and, having caught
her, put an end to the life of the miserable creature. Thus did Hiiaka
take another step towards ridding the land of the mo'o.