Divided We Fall

Lei started from the beginning—well, not really. She sorta skipped over her being mad at Tūtū and belligerently picking the lehua. She started at ʻIo kidnapping Kaipo. Thankfully no one questioned Pele’s motives since they all accepted the goddess had the worst temper this side of Mount Olympus. When she got to the part about Kaipo becoming un-ʻaumakua’d there were a few gasps and one kid whispered, “Halala ʻukulele!”

“Don’t worry, we fixed it. With the help of Kaukahi’s ʻaumakua, we jumped from the Leina a ka ʻuhane in Kumukahi, got pulled across the ocean by a giant shark—”

“Kamohoaliʻi,” Kaukahi supplied.

Aunties and uncles nodded, impressed.

“Yes, thanks. Then we got to the island, found Kaipo’s pendant, but in the process we ended up getting some kuewa reunited with their pendants, and now it is up to us to recapture them.”

Looking around at the little kids in the audience, Lei made the game-time decision not to go into any of the gory details about the kuewa’s goals. She thought back to the rats in Waikīkī.

“As far as we could see, they’ve all taken their ʻaumākua forms shown on their pendants, so there are a lot of different birds and sea creatures and stuff. We need to trap them and get their pendants back.” She hoped now was an okay time to ask for help. “We were hoping to come here and learn from you folks tonight. Maybe some of you might be willing to share some ʻike?”

All eyes swiveled to Aunty Kaipuala, but it was Aunty Ruby who turned in her chair to yell back down the beach, “Eh, Ipo! You owe me twenty dollars!”

“How come?” drifted the reply.

“You neva think we’d be passing this down. I told you, ke akua has one plan. These kids just asked!”

“They don’t even know what they asking for!” Aunty Ipo hollered back.

Aunty Ruby puckered her lips. “You not going let me down, uh? I can use that twenty for new slippahs. The puppy got these ones.” She stuck out a foot and showed the tooth marks that looked like a mini shark bite on the back of her slipper. “You asking about the kia manu then, yeah?”

“Uh…” Lei looked to Kaukahi and Kaipo for assistance with that one. She knew manu was “bird,” but had no clue what the kia manu was.

“That’d be perfect,” Kaukahi chimed in, loudly enough for her voice to carry down to Aunty Ipo. “A traditional bird-catcher’s knowledge would for sure help us trap many of the winged kuewa.”

“Eh, you prepped them,” Aunty Ipo protested.

“No matter! They still wanna know!” Aunty Ruby yelled back. She slapped her thigh and laughed. “I am glad you three went show up today. Come, come, our kupuna was one kia manu. Got the stuff back home. Eh, Ma. You good over here?”

“ʻAe, you go, Ru.”

After a half hour of goodbyes and kisses and hugs and making to-go plates covered in tinfoil for later, Lei, Kaukahi, and Kaipo headed across the street with Aunty Ruby. Kaukahi’s aunty was hanging out down the beach with Aunty Ipo watching some kids play. She waved them off when they asked if she wanted to join with a: “Come get me when you’re ready to go back to town.”

Aunty Ruby’s place was an old raised ranch that looked like a tired kupuna that had welcomed generations of ʻohana and loved every minute of it. It was a little saggy in its steps, blush fading from its façade, but still full of love and aloha with plumeria and crown flowers blooming in the front yard, screen doors welcoming the trade winds and new guests. A poi dog puppy with brown splotches all over his white fur emerged from under the house as they walked in the front gate. He barked and whined happily.

“Cut it out, Katsu,” Aunty Ruby said, fondly rubbing the pup behind the ears. “Follow me, gangy.”

Katsu ran circles around them as they trailed after Aunty Ruby, through the dirt yard, around the side of the house, to a small metal shed that was so rusty it was hard to tell what color it originally had been. She worked the combo lock that held the big chains on the front door, then opened it with a flourish.

“Whoa,” Lei said. Inside was immaculate. Tidy bins of various sizes lined the walls, and fake wood covered a floor that must have been swept off frequently to be so free of sand and dirt.

“Come, come. Got the stuff back here.”

They took off their slippers and wiped their feet on the mat as they entered the shed. It was bigger than it looked, and they were all able to fit and move to the rear of the room.

Aunty Ruby pulled out a pole with a short crosspiece at the top, and some books and jars. “Kupuna went write some books about what he did back in the day. If you folks wanna take pictures, I can try explain what all the stuff is. It gotta stay here, though.”

“Oh, no problem. I think we’re going to have to adapt whatever the old methods are to some pretty new times to catch these kuewa,” Lei said, pulling out her phone. She opened a voice recorder. “Do you mind if I record? It’s easiest for me to make sure I don’t mess this up.”

“No problem. You kids are lucky these days, having those gadgets. Good idea using what you’ve got.”

Lei grinned. “Awesome, then we’re ready when you are.”

“So what you wanna do is study the creatures you want to trap,” Aunty Ruby explained. “What kind of plants do they land on? Typically they going land where they eat, yeah?”

Lei, Kaukahi, and Kaipo all nodded.

Aunty Ruby continued. “So find the plants with their pua, their flowers they like, then get something sticky, like pāpala kēpau and ʻulu kēpau, and put ’um on the branches that the bird going land on.” At Lei’s blank stare she clarified, “Like a sap or gum or something. Hiki?”

“Oh! Yes, got it. Hiki nō,” Lei confirmed.

“If no get branches, get a long pole and stick the bird’s favorite food to the top. The bird gets stuck, the kia manu plucks a couple feather, un-stucks the bird, cleans off its feet, and releases the bird safely. That way they never depleted the system. Everything stayed balanced.”

“But they only took a couple feathers from each bird? I’ve seen those cloaks,” Lei said, thinking of the long feather cape she saw at the Smithsonian on her class trip to Washington, DC, and how she had pointed out every Hawaiian artifact to her classmates. “They must have hundreds of thousands of feathers!”

“ ʻAe. They could take generations of kia manu to complete a cloak. They are very precious to us.”

Kaukahi already had her phone out and was taking pictures and notes of everything. Kaipo was standing back a bit with his arms crossed, head bent to the side like he was trying to remember something. Lei made sure she understood everything that she recorded. It was full dark by the time they drove back to Aunty Lori’s house in Kaimuki that night. Kaukahi had sighed loudly when they passed the fabric store with its lights off, clearly closed. Lei, Kaukahi, and Kaipo tiredly stumbled out of Aunty Lori’s car, up her steps, through the screen door, through the small, tidy kitchen, and, at last, to her living room.

“The bathroom is down the hall,” Aunty Lori said. “Kaukahi has a futon in the back room and, Lei, I can set you up on a blow-up mattress back there. Kaipo, you good on the couch?”

“Thanks, yeah, this is great.”

“Can I borrow a towel and take a shower? Oh, and is there a spare toothbrush?” Lei hadn’t been clean since before the island, and she couldn’t wait to have her hair de-crunchified.

“Figures you’d call it first,” Kaukahi grumbled under her breath as she shouldered her way past Lei with enough oomph to make Lei double step and bump into the wall.

“Hey, what was that about?”

Kaukahi didn’t turn around as she headed for the back room.

“Do you want it? I thought you showered before your musubi and weren’t so desperate?”

Lei turned to Kaipo for help, hitching her thumb over her shoulder at Kaukahi’s back. Instead of offering a co-conspiratorial eye roll or other form of solidarity, Kaipo offered a tight smile and looked away. Oh no, what did she mess up on this time? Did he want to shower first? Or was it something bigger? This was their first time back in a house since he got his pendant back. Was he remembering his injuries?

Lei chewed on her lip. Aunty Lori was a welcome distraction when she handed Lei a towel, toiletries, and a shower scrubby. Lei looked back at Kaipo, willing to offer the shower, but he was busy making up the sheets on the couch. With feet that felt as heavy as bricks, and a naʻau that suddenly felt even heavier, Lei climbed into the shower and went through the motions, washing her hair twice, and, finally, brushing her teeth at the sink. Afterward, she got dressed in Aunty’s old Honolulu Marathon 2004 shirt and comfy knit shorts and looked in the room. Kaukahi was already clean and was on the futon asleep. So there was another shower—why was Kaukahi so upset, then?

Lei went to the living room and called Tūtū, filling her in quickly. Her grandma said she’d look for a flight to Honolulu tomorrow. They only had three days. Or, no. Now they were down to two. Lei’s brain hurt trying to compute the time it’d been since she spoke to Lopaka. Two days until the kuewa reached full strength and were ready to attack. Until kids were killed and the future of Hawaiʻi was decimated.

Later that night, as she lay on her air mattress a massive weight collected on Lei’s chest, making it hard to breathe. She clenched her teeth and forced herself to listen to Kaukahi’s deep snores. Now was not the time to freak out, even though night was when her brain tended to spiral into the biggest, darkest, what-if-iest moments. Focus on the good. What good? Rotten spirits are gonna kill kids! Lei squeezed her eyes shut and tried to find a positive. She had friends, even though they were all tired and a bit crabby right now. They just needed a solid night’s sleep on something that wasn’t sand or a conveyor-belt rainbow. She wasn’t doing this alone. Aunty Ruby had shown them the basics of being a kia manu, and tomorrow afternoon they’d head up to the forest and try their hand at catching the kuewa the way traditional bird-catchers did. There was nothing more she could do tonight. Lei loosened her jaw and took a deep breath. Her mom always said things would be better in the morning. She knew that would take a complete miracle, but maybe…just maybe…they could turn things around.