Thereupon one of the old women said: “Here is a roadway; it is this bamboo stalk. Climb to the top of it, and when it leans over it will reach into Ku-ai-he-lani.” Lau-kia-manu went to the top of the bamboo stalk and sat there. It began to shoot up. When it reached a great height it leaned over; the end of it reached Ku-ai-he-lani, the Country that Supports the Heavens.
Lau-kia-manu then went along until she came to a garden that was filled with lovely flowers. She went into it. There grew the ilima and the me-le ku-le and the mai-le vine. She gathered the vines and the flowers, and she twined them into wreaths for herself. And she went from that garden into another garden. There all kinds of pleasant fruits were growing. She plucked and she ate of them. She saw beyond that garden the clear, cool surface of a pool. She went there; she undressed herself, and she bathed in that pool. And when she was in the water there, a turtle came and rubbed her back.
She dressed, and she sat on the edge of the pool. And then the guards who had been placed over the flower garden and the fruit garden and the bathing pool came to where she was. “You are indeed a [[121]]strange girl,” they said to her, “for you have plucked the flowers and the fruit in the gardens that are forbidden to all except the King’s daughter, and you have bathed in the pool that is for her alone. You will certainly die for doing these things,”
The guards went to Maki-i: they told him about the strange girl and what she had done. The King ordered that they should tie her hands and stand guard over her all night, and that when the dawn came they should take her to the sea-shore and slay her there.
The guards took Lau-kia-manu; they tied her hands, they flung her into a pig-pen, and they remained on watch over her all night. At midnight an owl came and perched over where the girl lay. Then the owl called out to her:
“Say, Lau-kia-manu,
Daughter of Maki-i!
Do you know what will befall you?
Die you will, die you must!”
To that the girl made answer: