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 [83]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: [84]
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 [85]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.1 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. [86]
1oloku’i, a high bluff that overlooks pele-kunu and wailau, valleys on moloka’i.
