Once There Was Fire: A Novel of Old Hawaii

by Stephen Shender

  The other warriors who had been pursuing Kameha pulled up short, frozen by this grisly spectacle. They gaped at the gore-splattered forms of Kamehameha and Kekūhaupi‘o. Kameha was in a crouch, his war club still buried in the skull of a fallen foe.

  “Aieee!” one of the Maui men cried, gesturing at Kamehameha. “Look out for that one. He is as tough as a pai‘ea!” It was the first time anyone had called him “pai‘ea”—a hard-shelled crab—since his earliest years in Waipi‘o.

  In response, Kameha rose to his full height, waved the bloody club over his head, and howled at the enemy warriors. His shout carried down the hillside to the rear-most ranks of Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s retreating fighters. A dozen Hawai‘i men turned and ran toward Kamehameha. At once, the men of Maui spun away and fled. Kamehameha reached down to retrieve a discarded spear and threw it at one of the fleeing warriors. But he was spent now; there was little force in his throw and the missile fell harmlessly to earth. He clenched his fist in frustration.

  Kekūhaupi‘o clasped Kameha’s arm. “It is enough,” he said. “You have proven yourself to be a true warrior today, and you have saved my life, Kameha.” Kamehameha nodded to Kekūhaupi‘o but said nothing. Then, stepping over the dead and the dying warriors who lay all about them, he and Kekūhaupi‘o walked slowly down the hill toward their comrades and the waiting canoes. As he walked, Kamehameha’s thoughts turned to the men he had just killed and his stomach began to churn; bile rose into his throat and he battled a sudden urge to vomit. Kekūhaupi‘o sensed his distress. Lightly brushing Kamehameha’s hand, he said, “It is the way of all of us to be troubled the first time, Kameha. Do not worry, it will get easier.”

  Later, after Kamehameha had returned to the fort at Kauwiki, my father asked him what it was like to kill a man. “It was much better than being killed myself, brother,” Kameha replied. My father pressed him for more details of the fight, but Kamehameha only shook his head, scowled at my father, and turned away.

  It was mid-afternoon when Kalani‘ōpu‘u and his surviving warriors put to sea from Kalaeokilio Point. The sun had set by the time they reached Hana Bay, some twelve miles distant. Propelled by fear for their own lives, they paddled without let-up against unfavorable winds through the gathering dusk.

  Upon reaching Hana Bay, Kamehameha picked his way in the dark up the steep, uneven path that wound through thick foliage from the beach to the fort atop Kauwiki Hill. There he collapsed onto a mat in Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s hale and fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke early the next morning, he realized that his body was still caked with dried blood from the killing of the day before. Taking a flat lava stone, Kameha descended the narrow path to the beach, where the village fishermen were already preparing their nets in the pale, pre-dawn light. Ignoring these commoners, Kamehameha untied his malo, let it fall to the sand, and waded into the surf. As he scrubbed the blood from his chest, arms, and legs with the rough stone, it etched small scratches in his skin that stung in the salt water.

  Keeping his face to the sea as he bathed, Kamehameha watched the progress of Kāne’s sun as it breached Kanaloa’s waters and ascended into Lono’s sky. He thought about the warriors he had slain the previous day, men who would never see another sunrise. Then, as quickly as this thought had come to him, he banished it from his mind. He was young. Kalani‘ōpu‘u was bent on war. Kameha had no doubt that he would deprive many more foes of future sunrises in the service of his mō‘ī. And as he alluded to my father later the same day, he could ill afford sentimentality about such things. Kamehameha sighed and turned back to shore.

  As Kameha emerged from the water, he saw a young girl, no more than eight or nine years old, sitting cross-legged on the sand. She was staring brazenly at his dripping loins. As natural as public nudity was for our people in those days, this child’s gaze suggested knowledge beyond her years and bordered on impudence. Kameha halted abruptly and stared back at her. “You!” he shouted, reflexively shielding his manhood with both hands. “What are you looking at?”

  At this, the girl giggled, and grabbing Kamehameha’s discarded malo, leaped to her feet and fled. “You! Girl! Bring that back!” Kameha shouted at her. She paid him no mind and despite his anger, and as she disappeared into the heavy undergrowth at the base of Kauwiki Hill, Kamehameha could not help admiring her lissome form, already presaging the young woman she would become. Irritated and bemused, he trudged after her, not caring now who might see him.

  When he reached Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s hale, Kamehameha was greeted by raucous laughter. He found his uncle seated in the courtyard with Puna, Kekūhaupi‘o, Ke‘eaumoku, and Mahihelelima. Kalani‘ōpu‘u pointed at Kameha and hooted. “That one, she will have that one!” He continued to point and guffaw until Kamehameha realized that his uncle, the mō‘ī all Hawai‘i, was gesturing at his own exposed penis. Again, without thinking, he covered himself. This led to a further explosion of hilarity by Kalani‘ōpu‘u and his companions.

  “Kameha, you were wrong to tempt my keiki pono‘i so,” said Ke‘eaumoku, who tried to maintain a stern countenance as he spoke. But he could not suppress his amusement and began to cackle even as the last syllable escaped his lips. This prompted still more boisterous laughter from the entire group.

  Kalani‘ōpu‘u picked up something from his mat and tossed it at his nephew. It was Kameha’s stolen malo. “You should not expose yourself thus to impressionable young women,” he snapped. More laughter erupted.

  “It transpired that the keiki pono‘i who had run off with my brother’s malo was Ke‘eaumoku’s own daughter, Ka‘ahumanu,” my father told me. “She ran straight to her parents with it, told them what she had seen and declared, ‘I will have that big kāne one day.’ Kameha was mortified when he learned this.”

  Kalani‘ōpu‘u sought to soothe him. “‘That one, that one,’” he sighed. “Well, I suppose it could not be helped. She is an impertinent child. You really must do something about her, Ke‘eaumoku.” Now the mō‘ī of the Big Island smiled benevolently at Kamehameha. “Come sit, nephew,” he said, “and join us for breakfast.”

  Ke‘eaumoku patted an empty place on his mat, and Kamehameha sat beside him. The older man gave him a mock-serious look and jabbed him lightly in the ribs and laughed again, as did the others. This time, Kameha laughed with them.

  In hopes of reinstating himself in Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s good graces, Ke‘eaumoku had volunteered to join the ill-fated expedition to Kaupō. Kalani‘ōpu‘u had accepted his offer. But perhaps because he still did not trust Ke‘eaumoku sufficiently to risk having him by his side in battle, Kalani‘ōpu‘u had ordered him to remain at Kalaeokilio Point to guard the fleet. Now in the afterglow of their shared laughter, Kalani‘ōpu‘u turned to him and said, “Brother, let us put aside the unpleasantness of Pololū and be forever reconciled.”

  “Brother,” Ke‘eaumoku replied tearfully, “there is nothing I want more.”

  With this, the two men jumped to their feet and fell into each other’s arms, wailing with joy.

  Some days after that, Kalani‘ōpu‘u returned to Hawai‘i, and my father, Kekūhaupi‘o, and Kamehameha returned with him. Ke‘eaumoku, his wife, Nāmāhana, and their daughter, Ka‘ahumanu, also made the journey back across the ‘Alenuihāhā Channel to the Big Island, settling in Honokua, below Hōnaunau in South Kona, where Kalani‘ōpu‘u installed Ke‘eaumoku as chief.

  Within days after Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s return, the story of Kamehameha’s bravery at Kaupō spread rapidly throughout the Big Island, as did the terrified Maui warrior’s comparison of the embattled Kameha to a pai‘ea. This time, among Kamehameha’s ali‘i peers, and especially among his intimates, the name adhered.

  Ka‘awaloa, 1775

  “Nephew,” Kalani‘ōpu‘u said, “it is past time for you to take a wife.” Kamehameha and his uncle were seated on mats in the courtyard of Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s hale at Ka‘awaloa, on the north side of Kealakekua Bay. The mō‘ī of Hawai‘i had relocated his court there after returni
ng from Maui.

  Despite his setbacks on Maui, Kalani‘ōpu‘u had not abandoned his territorial ambitions. His people still held the fort at Kauwiki Hill, and he was determined to expand his holdings beyond Hana. He would invade Maui again, with more canoes and more warriors than before. But this time, he would attack Kahekili directly. He was done with half measures. When he returned to Maui, he would go to conquer. While he made ready for renewed warfare, Kalani‘ōpu‘u also sought to resolve some family matters. Chief among his domestic concerns were marriage arrangements for his son, Kiwala‘ō, and his nephew, Kamehameha.

  “You would do well to marry Pele‘uli,” Kalani‘ōpu‘u advised Kameha. “She is a good match for you; her consanguinity with you is very strong.” Pele‘uli’s great-grandmother on her father’s side was also Kamehameha’s great-grandmother twice over, being the grandmother of each of his parents. “Royal blood will run pure in your children,” Kalani‘ōpu‘u continued enthusiastically. Kamehameha accepted his uncle’s logic and readily assented to the match. But of course, physical attraction had played no small part in his own decision.

  Pele‘uli was then eighteen, about nine years younger than Kamehameha. She had burst into full womanhood several years earlier. Her belly, as yet untouched by motherhood, was a tight, eye-pleasing fulcrum between her inviting hips and her swelling breasts. Kameha and my father had both noticed her for the first time as she danced a hula with other women after one of Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s nightly feasts. “She was a great beauty back then,” my father recalled. “I would have liked to have had her for myself.” But in this, as in so many other matters in his life, my father’s elder brother Kameha came first.

  As solicitous as he was of the lineage of Kamehameha’s future children, Kalani‘ōpu‘u was even more attentive to the dynastic interests of his own son, Kiwala‘ō. “You should take Keku‘iapoiwa Liliha as your wife,” he counseled. “Lili,” as she was called, was the half-sister of both Kiwala‘ō and Kamehameha—the child of a union between Kiwala‘ō’s mother, Kalola, and Kamehameha’s father, Keoua.

  While Kamehameha and his new bride Pele‘uli could trace their common ancestry back to one of Keawe the Great’s wives, Kiwala‘ō and Lili could trace theirs back to Keawe himself, through Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s and Keoua’s fathers. Because of this, and because they themselves were siblings, royal blood would run even purer in the veins of their children than in Kameha’s and Pele‘uli’s. As Kalani‘ōpu‘u summed up for his son, “Any male child that Lili bears for you would have the most sacred of kapus, and the strongest claim to the throne of our island.”

  The superior pedigrees of his and Lili’s future children were not foremost on Kiwala‘ō’s mind when he agreed to partner with her. He was thinking of Lili’s nubile body. The pesky child who had so annoyed him at Ka‘ū had matured into a willowy young woman. She was about the same age as Pele‘uli, with flashing eyes, a radiant smile, and swaying hips under a flaring pa‘u—woman’s skirt—that dared exploration.

  “That little wahine’s passion fruit will be sweet,” Kiwala‘ō told my father.

  Kamehameha was equally unconcerned about issues of lineage. “Pele‘uli will be a good wife,” he said to my father. “But I will also have other wāhine, and by them, other children. Who knows what their kapus will be?”

  Unions of royal consequence were often occasions for elaborate public ceremonies and even more elaborate feasts. The double unions of Kamehameha and his cousin Kiwala‘ō were marked by a feast so sumptuous that it would be fondly remembered many years later.

  “Kalani‘ōpu‘u ordered villages throughout the Ka‘ū, Kona, and Kohala districts to send pigs for the feast,” my father recalled. “They were baked in two score or more imus. There were heaps of roasted yams and bananas, fish of all kinds, and, of course, endless servings of poi. Ali‘i came from all over the Big Island.”

  Kalani‘ōpu‘u summoned all the chiefs to his hale and proclaimed the unions, garlanding the young couples with flower leis as they knelt before him. Amid much cheering and laughter, the men and women then departed to their respective feasts. The men’s feast lasted deep into the night. Kalani‘ōpu‘u sat between his son and his nephew. “You, Kiwala‘ō and Kamehameha, are now brothers,” he said, throwing his arms over the two young men’s shoulders. “For your own sister, Kameha, is now Kiwala‘ō’s wahine. But he is also your own sister’s brother. You are both kaikunāne pono‘ī to Keku‘iapoiwa Liliha.” Blood brothers. “And therefore…therefore…” Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s voice trailed off as his train of thought, muzzy with ‘awa, momentarily lost its way in the tangled web of blood ties. Kameha and Kiwala‘ō waited respectfully for him to finish. “Therefore,” Kalani‘ōpu‘u finally concluded, “because you are both Lili’s true brothers, you must love each other as brothers.”

  Kamehameha and Kiwala‘ō both smiled indulgently at Kalani‘ōpu‘u, but neither said anything in response. “You must love each other,” Kalani‘ōpu‘u said again, with a note of pleading in his voice. “Come now,” he urged. “Rise and embrace as true brothers.”

  Kameha and Kiwala‘ō clambered to their feet and embraced awkwardly over their mō‘ī’s head. Swiveling from side to side, Kalani‘ōpu‘u beamed broadly at them as they sat down again. “Good, good,” he said. “It is good.” Soon after this, his eyes fluttered shut, his head tilted forward and his chin fell against his chest. He dozed where he sat. No one disturbed him.

  Keōua Kū‘ahu‘ula and Keōuape‘e‘ale, Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s sons by Kaneikapolei, were among the revelers this night. At fourteen and thirteen years old, they were on the cusp of manhood. Pauli, who was then about ten, was there, too, seated near his half-brothers.

  Keōua Kū‘ahu‘ula, whose name meant Keōua Red Cloak, looked upon his cousin Kamehameha with considerable awe. He had heard the stories of Kameha’s bravery and prowess at Kaupō, and on this night, Keōua Kū‘ahu‘ula sought to impress him. But lacking true experience in battle and still a neophyte in mock combat, he had little to offer besides bravado.

  “Pai‘ea,” he loudly declared, “I will go to Maui with my father when he next returns there, and like you, I will slay many Maui warriors.”

  There was a lull in the many overlapping conversations as the revelers’ attention was drawn by this outburst from an untested youth. All eyes turned toward Kamehameha to see how he would respond. Kameha’s own eyes narrowed and his countenance, which moments before had been lively with uncharacteristic merriment, became stern. Since Kaupō, no one except warriors blooded in the same battle, his closest friends, and the chiefs of the Big Island had called him Pai‘ea, and he was offended by Keōua Kū‘ahu‘ula’s presumption.

  “Well, little cousin,” Kamehameha replied, his voice full of disdain, “I look forward to hearing the stories of your own bravery when your war club is finally the same color as your red cloak.”

  At this, the gathering exploded in raucous laughter. “Yes, Red Cloak, come back and tell us when your own name matches your true deeds,” someone cried.

  “Meanwhile, go find a wahine and show her your other club,” another man jibed. “Maybe she will be impressed.”

  Mortified and blushing, Keōua Kū‘ahu‘ula scrambled to his feet and fled the feast, with Keōuape‘e‘ale and Pauli trailing in his wake.

  Kamehameha returned to Kohala with his new wife and new resolve. Among his contemporaries, Kamehameha had always been known as the solemn one. He was invariably the last in a group to laugh at a joke, the slowest to smile. Now he laughed even more rarely and his broad features seemed set in a state of permanent gravity. Formerly, he had devoted his days to recreational pursuits such as surf riding and holua sledding; now he tended diligently to the most mundane matters of local governance. He oversaw the construction of fishponds, supervised the building of canoes, looked after taro cultivation, and encouraged production of kapa cloth. He consulted regularly with his astrologer to determine what days would be best for planting, fishing, and oth
er activities. He held court almost daily to settle disputes among the people of his district.

  Kameha also attended conscientiously to his young wife, Pele‘uli. She would eventually give him four children, one of whom died in infancy. The surviving children, two boys and a girl, would make no impression on the momentous events of the years ahead.

  As busy as he was with his domestic responsibilities, Kamehameha never failed to join Kekūhaupi‘o, my father, and Mulihele for daily combat training. They practiced with spears, daggers, and slings. They honed their lua wrestling skills. They ran foot races on coastal benches of uneven pahoehoe lava to improve their agility. Recalling that time years later, my father said, “In those days, your uncle and I were ever preparing for war, which was as certain to come as the daily rains in Hilo.”

  Wailua, Northeast Maui; November, 1778

  When the two great canoes with masts like tall trees and sails like billowing white clouds appeared off the northeast coast of Maui, where Kalani‘ōpu‘u was once again laying waste to the countryside, he was not in the least surprised. He had already heard stories of a “moving island” inhabited by strange creatures, which had visited Kaua‘i the previous Makahiki season. Now Kalani‘ōpu‘u stood with a number of his people, including Puna, Kiwala‘ō, Holo‘ae, Kamehameha, and my father at the edge of a cliff at Wailua Bay, pondering this strange sight. “So, Puna,” he said, turning to his trusted lieutenant, “it seems that the god ‘Lono’ has come to see me now.”