Hawaii - James Michener [223]
When the news was brought to Noelani, her impulse was to send Kelolo instead, for he was the friend of Pele. Furthermore, her discussions with Dr. Whipple had satisfied her that volcanoes were the result of natural forces whose eruption could almost be predicted scientifically, and she realized that the island stories of Pele were nonsense, but before she could discuss these conclusions with the messengers from Hilo, Kelolo hurried up and said, "You must go, Noelani. If Pele is destroying Hilo, it must be in punishment, and you should go where the lava is white-hot and remind her that Hilo loves her."
“You are the friend of Pele," Noelani replied. "You must go."
"But I am not the Alii Nui," Kelolo said gravely. "Here is a chance for you to win the people to you forever."
"I cannot believe that Pele has anything to do Noelani objected.
"I saw her last night," Kelolo said simply. "I talked with her."
Noelani looked at her father in amazement. "You saw Pele?" she demanded.
"I walked with her for two miles," Kelolo replied.
"Did she give you any message?" Noelani asked incredulously.
No, Kelolo lied. "But of course she warned me of the volcano on Hawaii. Yes, she pointed toward Hawaii." But he knew that she had not done this; she had pointed in quite a different direction.
^And you wish me to go to Hilo?" Noelani asked.
"Yes, and I will entrust to your care a stone that will enable you to halt the lava," Kelolo assured her.
And it was in this way, in the year 1832, that the Alii Nui Noelani Kanakoa left Lahaina with the curse of Abner Hale in her ears-- "This is madness, an abomination"--carrying a sacred stone and traveling by ship to the port town of Hilo, where from the bay she could see the overpowering advance of glowing lava, rolling slowly upon itself and crushing in fiery embrace all it encountered. The town was obviously doomed; by the next night the lava must encompass it, and from shipboard there seemed no use for a young woman to try to stop it.
But the local kahunas breathed with relief when they saw Noelani alight, laden with the mana that heals, and start her painful climb to the lava face. Behind her streamed the entire population of the town, save only the local missionaries who were outraged by this heathenish performance. Up through the palm trees at the edge of town, through the hau bushes, and on into the scrubby brush marched the solemn, hushed procession. Now only a few yards ahead lay the crawling, crackling snout of lava: as each new flow cascaded down the mountainside it sped over former flows that in the meantime had cooled, using them as a passageway to lower ground, and as the living white-hot flow came to the dead tip of old lava, it poised a moment in the air, then rushed out in many new directions, consuming here a tree, there a house and beyond a pigpen. There would be a hissing and crackling of fire, and the doomed object would burn away in a sudden, fatal gasp. Then, as the ugly snout cooled, it formed a channel for the next burning flow.
It was to this creeping, crawling, devouring face that the young woman Noelani journeyed, and as she approached the living fire she underwent a transformation, for what she had been summoned to do was no less than to confront the fire goddess herself and to challenge her in a work that had been carried on by volcanoes since long before the coming of the Polynesians, and in the mystery of these last moments, in the awful inner fires that were burning away at her reason, Noelani lost all sense of ever having been a Christian. She was a daughter of Pele,