This kupua was called Akua-pehu-ale (god-of-the-swollen-billows). He devoured his enemies, and was greatly feared and hated even by his own tribe. He attacked Keahua, destroyed his people and drove him into the forests far up the mountain-sides, where, at a place called Kawaikini (The-many-waters), where fresh spring water abounded, the chief gathered his followers together and built a new home.
One day Kapalama, who was living in her group of houses in the part of Honolulu which now bears her name, said to her husband: “O Honouliuli, our daughter on Kauai will have a child of magic power and of kupua character. Perhaps we should go thither, adopt it, and bring it up; there is life in the bones.”
They crossed the channel, carrying offerings with them to their gods. Concealing their canoes, they went up into the forest. Their daughter’s child was already born, and behold, it was only an egg! The chief had given an order to carry it out into the deep sea and throw it away as an offering to the sea-monsters; but the mother and her soothsayers thought it should be kept and brought to life.
Kapalama, coming at this time, took the egg, wrapped it carefully in soft kapas, bade farewell [[206]]to her daughter, and returned to Oahu. Here she had her husband build a fine thatched house of the best grass he could gather. The kapas put inside for beds and clothing were perfumed by fragrant ginger flowers, hala blossoms, and the delicate bloom of the niu (coconut) while festoons of the sweet-scented maile graced its walls. For a long time that egg lay wrapped in its coverings of soft kapas.
One day Kapalama told her husband to prepare an imu (oven) for their grandchild. He gathered stones, dug a hole, and took his fire-sticks and rubbed until fire came; then he built a fire in the hole and placed the wood and put on the stones, heating them until they were very hot. Taking some fine sweet-potatoes, he wrapped them in leaves and laid the bundles on the stones, covered all with mats, and poured on sufficient water to make steam in which to cook the potatoes.
When all was fully cooked, Kapalama went to the house of the egg and looked in. There she saw a wonderfully beautiful chicken born from that egg. The feathers were of all the colors of all kinds of birds. They named the bird-child Lepe-a-moa. They fed it fragments of the cooked sweet-potato, and it went to sleep, putting its head under its wing.
This bird-child had an ancestress who was a [[207]]bird-woman and who lived up in the air in the highest clouds. Her name was Ke-ao-lewa (The-moving-cloud). She was a sorceress of the sky, but sometimes came to earth in the form of a great bird, or of a woman, to aid her relatives in various ways. When the egg was brought from Kauai, Ke-ao-lewa told her servants to prepare a swimming-pool for the use of the child. After this bird-child had come into her new life and eaten and rested, she went to the edge of the pool, ruffled and picked her feathers and drank of sweet water, then leaped in, swimming and diving and splashing all around the pool. When tired of this play, she got out and flew up in the branches of a tree, shaking off the water and drying herself. After a little while she flew down to her sleeping-house, wrapped herself in some fine, soft kapas, and went to sleep.
Thus day by day she ate and bathed, and, when by herself she changed her bird form into that of a very beautiful girl, her body shone with beauty like the red path of the sunlight on the sea, or the rainbow bending in the sky.
One day after she had made this change she stretched herself out with her face downward and called to her grandparents: “Oh, where are you two? Perhaps you will come inside.”
They heard a weak, muffled voice, and one said: “Where is that voice calling us two? This [[208]]is a strange thing. As a tabu place, no one has been allowed to come here; it is for us and our children alone.” The woman said, “We will listen again; perhaps we can understand this voice.” Soon they heard the child call as before. Kapalama said: “That is a voice from the house of our child. We must go there.”