“I am only Hiwa’s spirit,” she said. “You cannot touch me. Do not try. Yet I love you with all my being, as I loved you when I was flesh and blood. I am permitted to come to you this once from the other world to bless you. May Ku’s eternal blessings rest upon you, my own, my only love!”
Then she vanished into the darkness.
The next morning Aelani awoke in his mother’s arms, and his little body was wet with her tears.
CHAPTER VII
HIWA’S TEACHINGS
FEW queens on thrones or in exile—indeed, few merely rich women can command such leisure as Hiwa might have had. She had no social functions, no social duties. Even the question of dress scarcely presented itself. Occasionally, on wet days, she put on a pau of tapa, and Aelani, when he grew to be a large boy, often wore a malo, or girdle, around his loins, and sometimes a kihei, or mantle, over his shoulders. Frequently, however, mother and child were arrayed more sumptuously than Solomon in all his glory, for, after the charming custom of their race, they made wreaths of fragrant dark-green maile and many-colored wild flowers, and decked each other from head to foot. But this was recreation, not work. The physical comforts of existence were at hand for the taking, and Hiwa might have spent her days, as many of her people do, lazily floating in the water or lounging in the shade.
On the contrary, she was never idle. She felt that the few years given her to prepare her son for his future work and station should be improved to the utmost, for, as soon as he were grown, she could be no more with him, but must pass from the altar of Ku to the gods from whom she came. She believed that a great moi should be a god among men by his attainments and qualities of mind, as well as by birth, and she was well qualified to instruct Aelani in all the learning and accomplishments of her age and nation, for there was no seclusion of women among Hawaiians, and she had seen and heard much both at court and in camp.
She taught him the national dances, hula-hula. They were extremely graceful, expressing all emotions and passions. Some were noble; some, according to our standards, were vile. She taught him the sports and the games of chance and skill, at which it was customary to play for high stakes. She taught him to sing and to play the ukeke, a rude guitar, which she made from bamboo and olona.
She spent much time in teaching him the ancient meles, the unwritten literature of the nation, its epic and romantic poems and love songs, perpetuated from generation to generation by men set apart for that purpose, for in her father’s reign—before a drunkard came to the throne—they were always chanted at feasts and at human sacrifices, and when the bones of great chiefs were hidden in caves, and she had learned them by heart.