Then he lifted up the sky to where it is now. This was the second of
Ma-ui’s great deeds.
When he was growing up in his mother’s house the sky was so low that
the trees touched it and had their leaves flattened out. Men and women
burned with the heat because the sky was so near to them. The clouds
were so close that there was much darkness on the earth. Something had
to be done about it, and Ma-ui made up his mind that he would lift up
the sky.
Somewhere he got a mark tattooed on his arm that was a magic mark and
that gave him great strength. Then he went to lift up the sky. And from
some woman he got a drink that made his strength greater. “Give me to
drink out of your gourd,” he said, “and I will push up the sky.” The
woman gave him her gourd to drink from. Then Ma-ui pushed at the sky.
He lifted it high, to where the trees have their tops now. He pushed at
it again, and he put it where the mountains have their tops now. And
then he pushed it to where it rests, on the tops of the highest
mountains.
Then the men and women were able to walk about all over the earth, and
they had light now and clear air. The trees grew higher and higher, and
they grew more and more fruit. But even to this day their leaves are
flattened out: it is from the time when their leaves were flattened
against the sky.
When the sky was lifted up Ma-ui went and made a kite for himself. From
his mother he got the largest and strongest piece of tapa-cloth she had
ever made, and he formed it into a kite with a frame and cross-sticks
of hau wood. The tail of the kite was fifteen fathoms long, and he got
a line of olona vine for it that was twenty times forty fathoms in
length. He started the kite. But it rose very slowly; the wind barely
held it up.
Then the people said: “Look at Ma-ui! He lifted the sky up, and now he
can’t fly a kite.” Ma-ui was made angry when he heard them say this: he
drew the kite this way and that way, but still he was not able to make
it rise up. He cried out his incantation—
“Strong wind, come;
Soft wind, come”—
but still the kite would not rise.
Then he remembered that in the Valley of Wai-pio there was a wizard who
had control of the winds. Over the mountains and down into the valley
Ma-ui went. He saw the calabash that the wizard kept the winds in, and
he asked him to loose them and direct them to blow along the river to
the place where he was going to fly his kite. Then Ma-ui went back. He
stood with his feet upon the rocks along the bank of the Wai-lu-ku
River; he stood there braced to hold his kite, and where he stood are
the marks of his feet to this day. He called out:
“O winds, winds of Wai-pio,
Come from the calabash—‘the Calabash of perpetual winds.’
O wind, O wind of Hilo,
Come quickly; come with power.”
The call that Ma-ui gave went across the mountains and down into the
valley of Wai-pio. No sooner did he hear it than the wizard opened his
calabash. The winds rushed out. They went into the bay of Hilo, and
they dashed themselves against the water. The call of Ma-ui came to
them:
“O winds, winds of Hilo,
Hurry, hurry and come to me.”
The winds turned from the sea. They rushed along the river. They came
to where Ma-ui stood, and then they saw the great, strange bird that he
held.
They wanted to fall upon that bird and dash it up against the sky. But
the great kite was strong. The winds flung it up and flung it this way
and that way. But they could not carry it off or dash it against the
sky as they wanted to.
Ma-ui rejoiced. How grand it was to hold a kite that the winds strove
to tear away! He called out again:
“O winds, O winds of Hilo,
Come to the mountains, come.”
Then came the west wind that had been dashing up waves in the bay of
Hilo. It joined itself with the north wind and the east wind, the two
winds that had been tearing and pushing at Ma-ui’s kite. Now, although
the kite was made of the strongest tapa, and although it had been
strengthened in every cunning way that Ma-ui knew, it was flung here
and flung there. Ma-ui let his line out; the kite was borne up and up
and above the mountains. And now he cried out to the kite that he had
made:
“Climb up, climb up
To the highest level of the heavens,
To all the sides of the heavens.
Climb thou to thy ancestor,
To the sacred bird in the heavens.”
The three winds joined together, and now they made a fiercer attack
upon Ma-ui’s kite. The winds tore and tossed it. Then the line broke in
Ma-ui’s hands.
The winds flung the kite across the mountains. And then, to punish it
for having dared to face the heavens, they rammed it down into the
volcano, and stirred up the fires against it.
Then Ma-ui made for himself another kite. He flew it, and rejoiced in
the flying of it, and all who saw him wondered at how high his kite
went and how gracefully it bore itself in the heavens. But never again
did he call upon the great winds to help him in his sport. Sometimes he
would fasten his line to the black stones in the bed of the Wai-lu-ku
River, and he would let the kite soar upward and range here and there.
He knew by watching his soaring kite whether it would be dry and
pleasant weather, and he showed his neighbors how they might know it.
“Eh, neighbor,” one would say to another, “it is going to be dry
weather; look how Ma-ui’s kite keeps in the sky.” They knew that they
could go to the fields to work and spread out their tapa to dry, for as
long as the kite soared the rain would not fall.
Ma-ui learned what a strong pull the fierce winds had. He used to bring
his kite with him when he went out on the ocean in his canoe. He would
let it free; then, fastening his line to the canoe, he would let the
wind that pulled the kite pull him along. By flying his kite he learned
how to go more swiftly over the ocean in his canoe, and how to make
further voyages than ever a man made before.
Nevertheless, his kite-flying is not counted amongst the great deeds of
Ma-ui.