Hawaii - James Michener [222]
"Floods! Winds from the hills! Pestilence! Destroy this place!" But even as he begged God to inflict such punishment, the perverse lesser gods of the vicinity were preparing to launch what would be his crowning humiliation, for in the night that was to follow, the goddess Pele herself would visit once more her devotee Kelolo, and the upshot of this ghostly convocation would haunt Abner Hale for many months.
When John Whipple, rising early to sweep out the store, saw Abner staggering down from the hills back to town, he ran out and grabbed the little man, asking, "Abner, what has happened?"
Hale started to explain, but he could not pronounce the vile words. He hesitated dumbly for a moment, his eyes failing to focus properly, and then he pointed at a group of Hawaiians coming along the road from the palace. They wore maile in their hair, and a light step; they carried a drum and walked in triumph as they had a thousand years before, and Abner said weakly, "Ask them." And he stumbled off to bed.
Later that day he dispatched a letter to the missionaries in Honolulu reporting: "At four o'clock this morning, January 4, 1832, in the old palace of Malama the kahunas triumphed and the dreadful deed was done."
In daylight, when the auguries were studied and the kahunas were satisfied that a good marriage had been launched, they assured Keoki: "This night you have done a fine thing for Hawaii. The gods will not forget, and when your child is born you will be free to go back to your own church once more and become a minister." But Keoki, shivering from the burdens which the gods throw upon some shoulders, knew that this could not be.
At the following dusk Kelolo, gratified that he had protected the succession of his family in these heavenly islands, walked among the shadows and as he did so he met, for the last time on earth, the silent, delicate form of Pele, keeper of the volcanoes, dressed in silken robes, with strange glasslike hair standing out in the night breeze. She obstructed his pathway beneath the palms and waited for him to approach her, and Kelolo could see that her face was radiant with contentment, and when she took her place beside him, walking mysteriously through whatever trees came into her way along the narrow path, he felt tremendous consolation. And they continued thus for some miles, each happy in the other's company, but when the walk ended, Pele did what she had never done before. She paused dramatically, raised her left hand and pointed south, directly through the Keala-i-kahiki Channel and onto Keala-i-kahiki Point, and she stood thus for some minutes, as if commanding Kelolo with her fiery yet consoling eyes.
He spoke for the first time and asked, "What is it, Pele?" but she was content merely to point toward Keala-i-kahiki, and then, as if wishing to bid farewell to this great alii, her dear and personal friend, she brushed past him, kissing him with fiery lips and vanishing in a long silvery trail of smoke. He stood for a long time, engraving in his memory each incident of her visit, and that night when he returned to his solitary shack outside the palace grounds he took down his two most sacred treasures: the whitened skull of his wife Malama and a very old stone, about the size of a fist, curiously shaped and well marked. It had been given him more than forty years before by his father, who had averred that the occult powers of the Kanakoas derived from this stone, which one of their ancestors recovered on a return trip to Bora Bora. It was, his father had sworn, not merely sacred to the goddess Pele; it was the goddess; she was free to roam the islands and to warn her people of impending volcanic disasters; but her spirit resided in this rock, and it had done so for generations out of mind, long, long before even