by Dan Simmons
“I guess we don’t drive across that,” said Eleanor.
Paul stepped back and covered his mouth and nose with a red bandana. His eyes were watering. “The gentlemen you wanted to see live about a quarter of a mile beyond here.”
Eleanor squinted at him. “And you think they’re still here? With all this going on?”
Paul shrugged. “They’re stubborn.”
“So am I,” said Eleanor. She walked up and down the edge of the flow, trying to find a section where the orange glow and heat were less noticeable. Finally she stepped close, shielded her face from the heat, and lifted her foot to a low bubble of gray rock. Chips flaked off the cooling lava and fluttered by her even as she set her foot down.
It was very hot. Eleanor wished she’d worn something other than her sneakers. But the soles did not melt and the crust of lava did not crack as she set her weight on the molded terrace of new stone. She stepped up. “I’m going to try to cross,” she said, taking care to step on a firm ridge two feet higher.
Paul Kukali made a noise, but followed in her footsteps.
Eleanor crossed the lava flow slowly, stepping as carefully as if she were crossing a rushing stream on slippery rocks. Everywhere around her there were fissures through which the true heat of the still-molten rock below blasted at her. Smoke, steam, and sulfurous gases billowed from cracks and crevices, mixing with the general pall of smoke which had now obliterated the sun. She could feel the soles and sides of her sneakers softening, so she moved as quickly as she could, never resting on a hot spot longer than she had to. Eleanor tried not to think of what would happen if she broke through.
“Somewhere under here,” said Paul Kukali about midway across the two hundred feet or so of lava, “the real lava is flowing like a river. The crust is thinnest above that flow.”
“Thanks,” said Eleanor, pausing to cough. “I was trying not to think of that.” She took another step. To their right, the hissing and popping and sizzling of the lava meeting the cold ocean was like a radio picking up nothing but static turned to full volume.
Once the terrace did crack underfoot like rotten ice, and Eleanor had to not only draw her foot back in a flash but actually leap to a higher fold of gray rock five feet away to escape the blast of heat and lava that extruded. She stood shaking for a moment before going on. She had always appreciated Aunt Kidder and her adventures in wild parts of the world 130 years earlier, but now she had a visceral sense of the woman’s courage in crossing the crust of Kilauea when the volcano was in eruption. Perhaps, she thought, it is more than spinsterhood that is handed down to each generation of those of us following Aunt Kidder. Perhaps it’s a gene for insanity. She took another step.
The fires on the north side of the flow made getting off more difficult, but eventually she found a place where she could jump from a terrace three feet above the smoldering grass. Eleanor moved away from the heat and stood on solid rock for a moment, feeling the slight shaking in her legs but also feeling the sense of near levitation that adrenaline sometimes brings.
Paul came up to her. His face was streaked with soot from the smoke—as Eleanor realized her own must be—and he was frowning. “Gosh,” he said, “and we get to go back across it. I hope it doesn’t flow over your Jeep while we’re visiting.”
Eleanor took a breath. She probably should have parked farther from the flow. She was not yet volcano-savvy. But I’m learning, she thought. They walked on through the wilderness of smoke and a’a, following the tire ruts that had resumed on this side of the flow.
The two old kahuna were standing outside their ancient Airstream trailer. They were both men, both Hawaiian, both in their seventies…at least…and both wore jeans, faded western shirts with snap pockets, and battered cowboy boots. The similarities in their looks, expressions, and stances made Eleanor think that they were twins.
“Aloha,” said the one who was smoking a cigarette—an incongruous sight in the midst of all the billowing smoke that still concealed the sky, the ocean, and everything beyond a fifty-foot radius from the trailer. “We have been waiting for you,” he said, tossing the cigarette down and grinding it under his boot. “Come inside out of the bad air.”
The trailer was not large and it smelled of bacon and grease. The four squeezed into a breakfast booth, Eleanor and Paul on one side, the two kahuna on the other. An old woman with a placid gaze and white hair sat in the shadows on a sprung sofa at the other end of the trailer. Eleanor nodded in the woman’s direction, but the men—including Paul—ignored her.
Paul made introductions. “Eleanor, these are my great-uncles, Leonard and Leopold Kamakaiwi. Kapuna, this is Dr. Eleanor Perry. She wishes to speak to you.”
Leopold, the one sitting on the outside of the booth, folded his hands on the Formica table between them and grinned at her. A few teeth were missing, but the rest were very white. “A doctor,” he said, nodding as if pleased. “It is good that you have come. I have a pain in my shoulder that I would like to have you make go away.”
“I’m not that kind of…” began Eleanor, and stopped, realizing that he was putting her on. She returned his smile. “You’ll have to take your shirt off.”
The old man held up two hands as if shocked by her suggestion. “No, no! Mahalo nui, but I never take my shirt off in front of a beautiful wahine until after a few drinks.” He reached up to a nearby shelf and pulled down a bottle and four dusty glasses.
Leonard Kamakaiwi did not grin as he said dourly, “Paul, is this your new ipo? Have you been wela kahao?”
Paul Kukali sighed. “No, Kapuna. Dr. Perry is a guest at the resort.” To Eleanor he said, “Kapuna means ‘grandparent’ or ‘old one,’ but it also means ‘those with wisdom.’ Sometimes it is used loosely.”
Leopold cackled. “Let me pour some wisdom,” he said, and filled their glasses with a dark liquid.
They clicked glasses and drank. The fumes hit Eleanor at about the same time that the alcohol burned a path down her esophagus and set fire to her belly. She thought that it tasted like raw kerosene. “What is it?” she asked when she could speak again.
“Okolehau,” chuckled Leopold. “It means ‘iron bottom.’ It is made from the ti root. We used to brew it in the iron blubber pots. That is where the hau—‘iron’—part of the name comes from.”
“Well, it certainly knocked me on my okole,” said Eleanor, taking another drink.
Even dour Leonard joined in the laughter.
Leopold poured more in her glass and said, “What do you want, Dr. Eleanor Perry?”
Eleanor took a breath and decided to play all of her cards. “Paul tells me that you are kahuna.”
The two old men looked at her without expression. Eleanor took their silence as assent. “In which case,” she went on, “I am curious whether you are kahuna ana’ana or kahuna lapa’au.” The former was a sorcerer who could command the powers of black magic. The latter was a priest who could heal people both physically and spiritually.
“Why?” said Leopold, showing his white teeth again. “Do you want someone prayed to death?”
Leonard made a hand motion dismissing his twin. “There are kahuna who share both powers,” he said softly.
Eleanor nodded slowly. “Or twins who share them?” she asked.
The old men said nothing.
“It is none of my business…” she began.
“True, true,” said Leopold Kamakaiwi with a smile. He sipped okolehau.
“It is none of my business,” she went on, “but I think that you are trying to pray the Mauna Pele resort to death. I think that you opened up the Underworld of Milu and allowed the old demons to escape. I think that you have brought forth Pana-ewa and Nanaue and Ku and others. I think that people are dying and you need to stop it.” Eleanor stopped, feeling her heart pounding. She was very aware at that moment that she was miles from anywhere, alone with three men—all three of whom she suspected of being kahuna—and in the midst of raging lava flows. It was one of the reasons she
had left word at the desk for Cordie about where she was going and with whom.
In the long silence that followed her speech, the hiss and crackle of the lava flow striking the ocean a quarter of a mile away was easily heard. Eleanor glanced at the grimy window above the table and saw smoke drifting by. The illusion was that they were flying through clouds. For all she knew, they might be flying through clouds at that moment, the kahuna taking her somewhere high on the volcano for sacrifice. Steady, Eleanor, she thought to herself. Get a grip.
Finally Leonard said, “We did not mean for people to die. You must believe that.”
Leopold shrugged and poured more iron bottom. “To tell the truth, we did not think that the old magic would work.”
Paul Kukali touched her arm. “It was not just Uncle Leonard and Uncle Leopold,” he said. “Kahuna from all over the islands made the old chants on the same day. It was my fault. I told them that there was no recourse after the courts refused to save the fish ponds and the petroglyph fields. My uncles showed me that there was a recourse.”
Leonard shook his head. “It was wrong. I said it was wrong. The mokos were better left buried. The gods were better left unsummoned.” He took a long drink.
Leonard is the kahuna lapa’au, she realized with a shock. The medical sorcerer. It is happy Leopold who commands the dark forces.
As if reading her mind, Leopold grinned at her.
“Can’t you stop it?” she said.
“No,” both men said at once. Leonard went on. “All of the kahuna have tried for months. None wanted people to die. But the old chants worked to free the Underworld beings. We do not know enough to close the opening, to send them back to the darkness.”
“Pele…” began Eleanor.
Leopold made a sweeping motion with his hand. “Pele is angry at us…” He gestured again, this time toward the smoke at the window. “But she does not listen.”
“She has not listened for generations,” Leonard said morosely. “We have lost the old ways. We have lost our pride. We do not deserve to have her listen to us.”
Eleanor leaned forward. “Aren’t there Pele kahuna? A secret order of women priests who intercede with Pele for you?”
Leopold squinted at her. “How do you know all these things, haole?”
“She reads,” said Paul Kukali with a hint of irony.
Eleanor glanced at the curator and then looked back to the twins. “Am I wrong?”
“You are wrong,” Leonard said flatly. “A hundred years ago there were Pele kahuna. Fifty years ago there were Pele kahuna. But they are all gone now. The women all died without passing on their secrets. There is no one.”
“No one?” echoed Eleanor, feeling something like nausea rising in her. All her clever plan had just wilted away. She looked at the old woman on the sofa as if seeking help, but the woman’s gaze remained so flat and inexpressive that Eleanor thought she might be blind.
“No one but Molly Kewalu,” said Paul.
Leopold snorted. “Molly Kewalu is pupule,” he said. “Crazy. Nuts.”
“And she speaks to no one,” said Leonard.
Leopold made the sweeping gesture again. “She lives high on the volcano where there is no road. It would take days to hike to her. The lava has probably claimed her already.”
“How does she live up there?” asked Eleanor. “You can’t grow anything. What does she eat?”
“The women keep her alive,” said Leopold, and snorted again. “The women in the villages still think that she has mana and they have brought her food manauahi—for free—for fifty, sixty years. But she is just a crazy old woman. Pupule.”
Eleanor looked at Paul but the curator shook his head. “Molly Kewalu claims she talks to Pele,” he said, “but so do half the old Hawaiian women in the Alzheimer’s wing of the hospital in Hilo.”
“Still…” began Eleanor.
Paul made the same dismissive motion his uncle had used. “Eleanor, do you know the myth about not taking any rocks from the volcano so as not to offend Madame Pele?”
“Of course,” said Eleanor. “It’s the one thing about Madame Pele that every tourist knows. The goddess doesn’t like her lava stolen. It’s bad luck to take a stone, right?”
“Right,” said Paul. “Every year the rangers at Volcanoes National Park receive hundreds of rocks in the mail. Most are from the mainland, but they come from all over the world…especially from Japan these days. Tourists pilfered them and now they’re sending them back, complete with notes telling of the bad luck they’ve had since the theft. Four times a year the rangers have to take the rocks back to the volcano and leave them with offerings…usually a bottle of gin…to placate Pele. Eleanor, they get thousands of these guiltily returned lava rocks. Four times a year it’s a procession of dump trucks filled with lava rocks.”
“So?” said Eleanor.
“So there was no such myth, no such taboo,” said Paul.
“No kapu,” said Leopold.
“I traced the so-called legend back in one of my articles,” continued Paul Kukali. “This ‘ancient taboo’ of not stealing volcanic rocks actually began in the 1950s…it was started by the driver of a tour bus who got tired of cleaning the lava dust out of his vehicle each time the tourists got off with their damned rocks.”
Eleanor laughed easily, feeling the okolehau burn in her. “Is that true?”
“Yes,” said Paul Kukali.
Eleanor made the same dismissive gesture that the men had been using. “So what does it have to do with Molly Kewalu?”
“Same bogus legend,” he said. “She used to rave about being on a first-name basis with Pele, but she’s just a crazy old lady hiding up there where no one can catch her and put her away.”
“Hiding where?” asked Eleanor.
“In the empty region,” said Leonard. “Ka’u. In a cave somewhere in the area of the ridge that the old people used to call Ka-hau-komo because there used to be two hau trees growing there where no trees can grow.”
“Hau,” said Eleanor. “Iron. As in ironwood.”
Leonard grunted. “Molly Kewalu’s cave is somewhere near the big stone called Hopoe by the old ones,” he said. “For hundreds of years the stone was so perfectly balanced that the wind would move it. Our ancestors named it after Hopoe, the famed dancer from Puna who taught Hi’iaka, Pele’s youngest sister, how to dance.” He grunted again. “The stone fell over when Pele awoke and showed her wrath in 1866.”
Eleanor touched the old men’s hands, each in turn. They looked up from their drinks. “You released these spirits with your chants,” she said. “Is there no way you can send them back to the Underworld?”
The hopeless look in the old men’s eyes was an eloquent answer. The old woman said nothing.
Paul looked at his watch. “We should be getting back.” He finished his drink. “If the Jeep hasn’t been incinerated or buried.”
Eleanor shrugged. “It’s a rental.” She nodded to the silent old woman as she left, irked that Paul and the other two men continued to treat her as if she did not exist.
Outside, the landscape was as surreal as before. The smoke was thicker and it blew past them more quickly as the wind came up from the south. The noise of the lava boiling away ocean was quite clear.
“Kapuna” said Paul to his grand-uncles, “the lava flows are moving quickly. They have evacuated all of the villages between here and the Mauna Pele. Will you not come back with us?”
Leonard Kamakaiwi glowered. Leopold Kamakaiwi laughed. The two old men went back into their trailer.
The lava field seemed hotter and even more treacherous on the return trip. Eleanor wondered if she would have heat blisters on her feet. A tree near the Jeep had begun to smoke in the heat from several new lava tributaries, but the vehicle itself was safe.
“We need to talk,” said Paul as they reached Highway 11 and turned north. The afternoon light threw their shadow on the black rock to their right as they drove slowly on. The smoke was still thick here
, the sulfur stench harsh.
“All right,” said Eleanor.
“Mark Twain never wrote about the time in the 1860s when the Marchers of the Night built a heiau near where the Mauna Pele now stands,” he said. “We…the kahuna…know of it only through chants and oral tradition. You found that out elsewhere.”
Eleanor tried to change the subject. “Are you a full-fledged kahuna, Paul?”
The curator’s laugh was cynical and dismissive. It reminded Eleanor of Leonard. “I will never be a true kahuna,” he said, his gaze lost in the smoke that billowed ahead of them. “My Western education has robbed me of the level of belief necessary to learn. My rationalist haole eyes cannot see clearly.”
“Yet you believe in what your uncles and the others have done at the Mauna Pele?” she said.
Paul looked at her. “I saw the dog… Ku…carrying the hand of its victim. I have seen other things at night there.”
Eleanor did not ask about the other things. Not yet. Instead, she said, “Do I still get that helicopter ride?”
He laughed. “Do you still want it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s yours. My friend will be landing at the Mauna Pele in a few hours…about dusk. That is, unless the resort’s forcibly evacuated by the authorities or buried in lava by then. Any other favors?”
“Just tell me who that old woman was,” she said as they approached the entrance to the Mauna Pele. The smoke was lighter here, but still noticeable. The wind from the south was warm and sticky.