HIIAKA STARTS ON HER JOURNEY
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Emerson, Nathaniel Bright
At this moment a young woman of attractive person appeared on the scene and, prostrating herself to the earth, said, “O, Pele, behold my offering, which I bring to thee in fulfillment of the pledge made by my parents, that I should first seek thee, O Pele, before I come to my marriage bed. Accept this suckling which I offer to thee, O Pele.”
“I am not the one you are seeking: I am not Pele,” said Hiiaka. “Pele is over yonder in the Pit.”
The woman was persistent and begged that Hiiaka would not despise her offering. After undeceiving her, Hiiaka carefully instructed her, lest she make some fatal mistake in her approach to the jealous goddess: “When you come to the Pit you must be careful in your approach to Pele. The least departure from the etiquette she demands would be the cause of your death. Do not imagine that the fine large woman sitting at the door is Pele, nor that any one of the women seated within is she. You must pay no attention to these. Look for the figure of a wrinkled old woman lying bundled up on the hearth: that is Pele: make the offering to no one else but to her.”
“Alas for me,” said Wahine-oma’o. “You will be gone a long way from this place by the time I shall return to seek you. I shall not be able to find you.”
“You will find us here,” replied Hiiaka assuringly.
Hiiaka used her power to bring the woman at once to her destination. Following the instructions given her, Wahine-oma’o was quickly transported into the presence of Pele and, having made her offering in due form, was about to retire, when Pele called her back and said, “Did you not meet some women going from here as you came this way?”
“I met some women,” she answered.
“Make haste and come up with them,” said Pele. “The younger woman is very dear to me. Attach yourself to her as a friend.”
“That I will do,” said Wahine-oma’o. Then, moved by an impulse that came to her (the work, it is said, of Hiiaka), she said to Pele, “I had imagined you to be a beautiful woman, Pele. But, lo, you are old and wrinkled; and your eyes are red and watery.” Thus saying, Wahine-oma’o took her departure and almost immediately found herself again with Hiiaka.
“You have made quick time,” Hiiaka said. “How did you get on?”
“I followed your instructions and presented my offering to the woman who was lying on the hearth. She asked me if I had met you, and when I said yes, she told me to look after you as a friend.”
“Is that all?”
“She also told me to watch you, to observe how you behaved towards the man—whether you kissed him or had any dalliance with him.”
“And did you say anything to Pele?”
“U-m, I bantered her about her looks; told her she was a very ill-favored woman, while the women attending her were very handsome.”
Hiiaka laughed at this naive account.
Night shut down upon them at Kuolo, a place just on the border of Pana-ewa. Paú-o-pala’e proposed that they should seek a resting place for the night with the people of the hamlet. Hiiaka would not hear to it: “Travelers should sleep in the open, in the road; in that way they can rise and resume their journey with no delay.” (O ka po’e hele he pono ia lakou e moe i ke alanui, i ala no a hele no.)
Source notes
1 One critic says it should be po’e. ↑
2Kaupaku o ka hale o kaua. A hidden reference to sexual intercourse. ↑
3Malu-ko’i, dark and gloomy. ↑