“I am a woman of half-remembered dreams,
Where forests sigh above the stealing streams,
And so I long to gaze in warm, wild eyes
Of men where Passion in her sorrow sighs.”
Like a great wind was the sigh of Ndengi as Kasawayo ceased her sweet song. Then he said: “Arise!” and the goddess rose to her feet and stumbled on her thin legs, for she had been turned into a great bird! Her eyes were still beautiful and sparkled like unto the stars. Her wings were tipped with gold and striped with deep crimson and green, her breast was as snowy white as the orange blossom. Ndengi leaned against the mountains that were pillars of his throne, and, gazing on the transformed Kasawayo, said:
“I have disguised you so that no mortal will dare to love you.”
Kasawayo, on hearing this, smiled in her heart as she stared in Ndengi’s great mirror, a lagoon that imaged him as he sat on his throne. She saw that she had a woman’s eyes, and she knew what a woman’s eyes could do. Then, down the mountain’s paths and across the valleys of Mbau, the goddesses came running, for they had heard the echoes, and would wish Kasawayo good-bye ere she left shadowland.
“Vanaka! Le tao. O Kasawayo, you look beautiful, though you are a bird.”
Kasawayo lifted her eyes in her vanity and saw her own image reflected in Ndengi’s great eyes! “He warns me!” she muttered.
Then Kasawayo spread her new wings, and without a moment’s hesitation flew off into the starlit, silent night. Often her wings brushed against the soft light of the stars as she curved in her downward flight ere she came to the Fijian Isles, which she had seen in dreams and heard about from sinful spirits. She was well pleased as she fluttered over the breadfruit trees that grow in such abundance near Nadronga on the isle of Viti Levu. Sitting on the topmost bough of a tall coco-palm, she gazed down, and stared curiously on a flock of Fijian children who were romping in the drala-weed and deep fern of the forest floor. The sight of those children awakened strange old memories in her mind. Looking down in a sidelong look, as a bird must look, she said: