"E Hiku, beloved, return to Kewalu."
Then the young chief threw the long flexible vines of the ieie down into the path. They twined around her feet and made her stumble as she tried to follow him. The rain was falling all around her, and the way was very rough and hard. She slipped and fell again and again.
The ancient chant connected with the legend says:
"Hiku is climbing up the hill.
Branches and vines are in the way,
And Kewalu is begging him to stop.
Rain-drops are walking on the leaves.
The flowers are beaten to the ground.
Hopeless the quest, but Kewalu is calling:
'E Hiku, beloved! Let us go back together.'"
THE HOME OF KEWALU
Her tears, mingled with the rain, streamed down her cheeks. The storm wet and destroyed the kapa mantle which she had thrown around her as she hurried from her home after Hiku. In rags she tried to force her way through the tangled undergrowth of the uplands, but as she crept forward step by step she stumbled and fell again into the cold wet arms of the ferns and grasses. Then the vines crept up around her legs and her arms and held her, but she tore them loose and forced her way upward, still calling. She was bleeding where the rough hands of the forest had torn her delicate flesh. She was so bruised and sore from the blows which the branches had showered upon her that she could scarcely creep under them.
At last she could no longer hear the retreating footsteps of Hiku. Then, chilled and desolate and deserted, she gave up in despair and crept back to the village. There she crawled into the grass house where she had been so happy with her brother Hiku, intending to put an end to her life.
The ieie vines held her arms and legs, but she partially disentangled herself and wound them around her head and neck. Soon the tendrils grew tight and slowly but surely choked the beautiful chiefess to death. This was the first suicide in the records of Hawaiian mythology. As the body gradually became lifeless the spirit crept upward to the lua-uhane, the door by which it passed out of the body into the spirit world. This "spirit-door" is the little hole in the corner of the eye. Out of it the spirit is thought to creep slowly as the body becomes cold in death. The spirit left the cold body a prisoner to the tangled vines, and slowly and sadly journeyed to Milu, the Under-world home of the ghosts of the departed.
The lust of the forest had taken possession of Hiku. He felt the freedom of the swift birds who had been his companions in many an excursion into the heavily shaded depths of the forest jungles. He plunged with abandon into the whirl and rush of the storm winds which he had called to his aid to check Kewalu. He was drunken with the atmosphere which he had breathed throughout his childhood and young manhood. When he thought of Kewalu he was sure that he had driven her back to her home by the temple, where he could find her when once more he should seek the seashore.