Hiiaka turned from the work of destruction and, hand in hand, they made their way back into the light and wholesome air of the upper world.
The sisters—those who bore the name Hiiaka—received her cordially enough. They prattled of many things; buzzed her with questions about her travels of long ago—as it now seemed to Hiiaka. It was not in their heart to stir the embers of painful issues. No more was it in their heart to fathom the little Hiiaka of yesterday, the full-statured woman of to-day. Beyond the exchange of becoming salutations, Hiiaka’s mouth was sealed. Until Pele should see fit to lend ear and heart to her speech not a word would she utter regarding her journey.
But Pele lay on her hearth silent, sullen—no gesture, no look of recognition.
The kino wailua, or spirit from Lohiau, in the meantime, after having in vain tried to solace itself with the companionship of the forest song-birds and having found that resource empty of human comfort, fluttered across the desolate waste of ocean like a tired sea-bird back to his old home and there appeared to his aikane Paoa in a vision at night.
“Come and fetch me,” he said (meaning, of course, his body). “You will find me lying asleep at Kilauea.”
Paoa started up in a fright. “What does this mean?” he said to himself. “That Lohiau is in trouble?”
When he had lain down again the same vision repeated itself. This time the command was imperative: “Come and rescue me; here I am in the land of non-recognition.”[2]
Now Paoa roused himself, assured that Lohiau’s sleep was that of death, but not knowing that he was, for the second time, the victim of Pele’s wrath. He said nothing to anyone but made all his preparations for departure in secret, reasoning that Kahua-nui, the sister of Lohiau, would not credit his story and would consequently interfere with his plans.
He entered his canoe and, pressing the water with his paddle, his craft made a wonderful run towards Hawaii. It was necessary for him only to dip his paddle in the brine at intervals and to direct the course. The canoe seemed almost to move of itself. That same morning he arrived at Waipio. To his astonishment, there, in a boat-shed on the beach lay the canoe which he recognized as that of his friend Lohiau. The people of the district had been wondering whose it was and how it had come there.
Paoa found many things that were new and strange to him in this big raw island of Hawaii. Not the least of these was the land on which he trod, in places a rocky shell covering the earth like the plates on the back of the turtle, or, it might be, a tumble of jagged rocks—the so-called aä—a terrain quite new to his experience. It seemed as if the world-maker had not completed his work.