Hi-ku lived on a peak of the mountain, and Ka-we-lu lived in the
lowlands. Ka-we-lu was a princess, but at the time when she was in the
lowlands she had no state nor greatness; she was alone except for some
women who attended her. Hi-ku was a boy; he had a wonderful arrow that
was named Pua-ne.
One day Hi-ku took his arrow and he went down towards the lowlands. He
met some boys who were casting their arrows, and he offered to cast his
against theirs. He cast his arrow; it went over the heads of a
bald-headed man and a sightless man; it went over the heads of a lame
man and a large-headed man; it went across the fields of many men, and
it fell at last before the door of the girl Ka-we-lu.
Her women attendants brought the arrow to her. Ka-we-lu took it and hid
it. Then Hi-ku came along. “Have any of you seen my arrow?” he said to
the women attendants. “We have not seen it,” they said. “The arrow fell
here,” said Hi-ku, “for I watched it fall.” “Would you know your arrow
from another arrow?” asked the Princess from her house. “Know it! Why,
my arrow would answer if I called it,” answered Hi-ku. “Call it, then,”
said the Princess. “Pua-ne, Pua-ne,” Hi-ku called. “Here,” said Pua-ne
the arrow. “I knew you had hidden my arrow,” said Hi-ku. “Come and find
it,” said the Princess.
He went into her house to search for the arrow, and the Princess closed
the door behind him. He found the arrow. He held the arrow in his hand,
and he did not go, for when he looked around he saw so many beautiful
things that he forgot what he had come for.
He saw beautiful wreaths of flowers and beautiful capes of feathers; he
saw mats of many beautiful colors, and he saw shells and beautiful
pieces of coral. And he saw one thing that was more beautiful than all
these. He saw Ka-we-lu the Princess. In the middle of her dwelling she
stood, and her beauty was so bright that it seemed as if many ku-kui
were blazing up with all their light. Hi-ku forgot his home on the
mountain peak. He looked on the Princess, and he loved her. She had
loved him when she saw him coming towards her house; but she loved him
more when she saw him standing within it, his magic arrow in his hand.
He stayed in her house for five days. Every day Ka-we-lu would go into
one of the houses outside and eat with her attendants. But neither on
the first day nor the second day, neither on the third day nor the
fourth day, nor yet on the fifth day, did she offer food to Hi-ku, nor
did she tell him where he might go to get it.
He was hungry on the second day, and he became hungrier and hungrier
and hungrier. He was angry on the third day, and he became angrier and
angrier. And why did the Princess not offer him any food? I do not
know. Some say that it was because her attendants made little of him,
saying that the food they had was all for people of high rank, and that
it might not be given to Hi-ku, whose rank, they said, was a low one.
Perhaps her attendants prevented her giving food to him, saying such
things about him.
On the fifth day, when Ka-we-lu was eating with her attendants in a
house outside, Hi-ku took up his arrow and went angrily out of the
house. He went towards the mountain. Then Ka-we-lu, coming out of the
house where her attendants were, saw him going. She ran up the side of
the mountain after him. But he went angrily on, and he never looked
backward towards the Princess or towards the lowlands that she lived
in.
She went swiftly after him, calling to him as the plover calls, flying
here and there. She called to him, for she deeply loved him, and she
looked upon him as her husband. But he, knowing that she was gaining on
him, made an incantation to hold her back. He called upon the mai-le
vines and the i-e vines; he called upon the ohia trees and the other
branching trees to close up the path against her. But still Ka-we-lu
went on, struggling against the tangle that grew across her path. Her
garments were torn, and her body became covered with tears and
scratches. Still she went on. But now Hi-ku was going farther and
farther from her. Then she sang to him aloud, so that he could not but
hear:
“My flowers are fallen from me,
And Hi-ku goes on and on:
The flowers that we twined for my wreath.
If Hi-ku would fling back to me
A flower, since all mine are gone!”
He did not throw back a flower, nor did he call out a word to her as
she followed him up the mountain ways. The vines and the branches held
her, and she was not able to get through them. Then she raised her
voice, and she sang to him again:
“Do you hear, my companion, my friend!
Ka-we-lu will live there below:
My flowers are lost to me now:
Down, down, far down, I will go.”
Hi-ku heard what she sang. But he did not look back or make any answer.
He kept on his way up the mountain-side. Ka-we-lu was left behind,
entangled in the vines and the branches. Afterwards he was lost to her
sight, and her voice could not reach him.
He went up to the peak of the mountain, and he entered his parents’
house. And still he was angry. But after a night his anger went from
him. And then he thought of the young Princess of Kona, with her deep
eyes and her youth that was like the gush of a spring. More and more
her image came before him, and he looked upon it with love.
Now one day, when he was again making his way up the mountain-side, a
song about himself and Ka-we-lu came into his mind. It was a song that
was for Lo-lu-pe, the god who brings together friends who have been
lost to each other.
“Hi-ku is climbing the mountain-ridge,
Climbing the mountain-ridge.
The branch hangs straggling down;
Its blossoms, flung off by Lo-lu-pe, lie on the ground.
Give me, too, a flower, O Lo-lu-pe,
That I may restore my wreath!”
And singing this song he went up to his parents’ house.
Strangers were in the house. “Who are they, and what have they come
for?” Hi-ku asked. “Ka-we-lu, the young Princess of Kona, is dead,” his
parents told him, “and these people have come for timbers to build a
house around her dead body.”
When Hi-ku heard this, he wept for his great loss. And then he left his
parents and went seeking the god Lo-lu-pe, for whom he had made a song
on his way up the mountain.
Now Lo-lu-pe was in the form of a kite, because he went through the air
searching for things that people needed and prayed to him to find for
them. And outside a wizard’s house Hi-ku saw the image of Lo-lu-pe, a
kite that was like a fish, and with tail and wings. Hi-ku went and said
his prayer to Lo-lu-pe, and then he let the kite go in the winds.
That night Lo-lu-pe came to him in his dream, and showed him where
Ka-we-lu was; she had gone down into the world that Mi-lu rules
over—the world of the dead that is below the ocean. And Lo-lu-pe, in
his dream, told him how he might come to her, and how he might bring
Ka-we-lu’s spirit back to the world of the living.
He was to take the morning-glory vines, and he was to make out of them
the longest ropes that had ever been made. And to each of the long
ropes he was to fix the cross-piece of a swing. Then he was to let two
swings go down into the ocean’s depths, and he was to lower himself by
one of them. And what he was to do after that was twice told to him by
Lo-lu-pe.
Hi-ku went where the morning-glory vines grew; he got the longest of
the vines and, with the friends who went with him, made the longest of
ropes. Then, with his friends, he went out over the ocean; he lowered
the two longest ropes that were ever made, each with the cross-piece of
a swing fixed to it. Down by one of the ropes Hi-ku went. And so he
came to the place of the spirits, to the place at the bottom of the sea
that Mi-lu rules over.
And when he came down to that place he began to swing himself on one of
the swings. The spirits all saw him, and they all wanted to swing. But
Hi-ku kept the swing to himself; he swung himself, and as he swung, he
sang:
“I have a swing, a swing,
And the rest of you children have none:
Whom will I let on my swing?
Not one of this crowd, not one.”
The spirit of Ka-we-lu was standing there beside Mi-lu, the King. Hi-ku
saw her amongst the crowd of spirits. But Ka-we-lu did not know Hi-ku.
Mi-lu came to where Hi-ku was swinging. He wanted to go on the swing.
Hi-ku gave him the seat. Then the spirits began to swing him, and Mi-lu
was so delighted with the swinging that he had all the spirits pull on
the ropes to swing him—the ropes that were on the cross-piece and that
were for pulling.
Then Hi-ku went to Ka-we-lu. “Here is our swing,” he said, and he
brought her where the second vine-rope was hanging. He put her on the
seat, and he began to swing her. And as he swung her he chanted as they
chant in the upper world, the world of the living, when one is being
swung:
“Wounded is Wai-mea by the piercing wind;
The bud of the purple ohai is drooping;
Jealous and grieved is the flower of the ko-aie;
Pained is the wood of Wai-ka;
O Love! Wai-ka loves me as a lover;
Like unto a lover is the flower of Koo-lau;
It is the flower in the woods of Ma-he-le.
The wood is a place for journeying,
The wild pili grass has its place in the forests,
Life is but a simple round at Ka-hua.
O Love! Love it was which came to me;
Whither has it vanished?
O Love! Farewell.”
He chanted this, thinking that Ka-we-lu would remember her days in the
upper world when she heard what was chanted at the swinging-games. But
Ka-we-lu did not remember.
Then Hi-ku went on the swing. “Come and swing with me,” he said, when
he got on the seat. “Sit upon my knees,” he said, “and I will cover
myself with my mantle.”
Ka-we-lu jumped up, and she sat upon Hi-ku’s knees. They began to swing
backward and forward, backward and forward, while Mi-lu, the King of
the Dead, was being swung by the spirits. Then Hi-ku pulled on the
morning-glory vine. This was a signal; his friends did as he had told
them to do; they began to pull up the swing. Up, up, came Hi-ku, and up
came Ka-we-lu, held in Hi-ku’s arms.
But Ka-we-lu shrank and shrank as she came up near the sunlight; she
shrank until she was smaller than a girl, smaller than a child; until
she was smaller than a bird, even. Hi-ku and she came to the surface of
the ocean. Then he, holding her, went back in his canoe and came to
where, the timbers built around it, her body was laid. He brought the
spirit to the body, the spirit that had shrunken, and he held the
spirit to the soles of the body’s feet. The spirit went in at the soles
of the feet; it passed up; it came to the breast; it came to the
throat. Having reached the throat, the spirit stayed in the body. Then
the body was taken up by Hi-ku; it was warmed, and afterwards Ka-we-lu
was as she had been before. Then these two, Ka-we-lu and Hi-ku, lived
long together in a place between the mountain and the lowlands, and
they wove many wreaths for each other, and they sang many songs to each
other, and they left offerings for Lo-lu-pe often—for Lo-lu-pe, who
brings to the people knowledge of where their lost things are.