Michael Puleloa
Flight: 1880 AD
On the highest point of the little dome-like island a mile from the Waikolu shoreline, Kauaua takes a knee on the soft, damp ground before closing his eyes. Mahealani, the full moon, is directly above him, and he imagines the parting clouds and the hazy moonlight spilling outward in the wind across the nighttime sky. He rests his left forearm on his thigh and lowers his head.
The other men work under the canopy of the loulu grove—they lash palm fronds to bamboo poles they’ve carried from Waikolu—and every now and then Kauaua hears surf crashing against the steep shoreline far below in front of him and amid the rustling fronds collected on the ground or hanging in the fiercely swaying trees that cover the island. He prays to the akua, the aumakua, the kupuna—every one he knows—but when the sudden image of his inevitable jump from the cliff (and the violent surf surrounding the island) enters his mind, he finds himself silently calling for his grandmother, Waiohuli, before he is grounded again. The violent surf is replaced by her image—she is standing over his sleeping body in the dimly lit hale of his childhood and breathing into him his future dreams.
The clouds have parted, and now the moon is fully exposed—there is a radiant night sky and the surface of the ocean between the small, grassy plateau on Mokapu, where he is kneeling, and Kalawao, his next destination, is a glistening path from one dark body of land to another. He crouches in prayer as Waiohuli tells him now that his is his own fate, there is no turning back. The sharp edges of loulu fronds scratch the skin under his arms and against his ribs, his stomach and his back. He is cold, but feels a warm, sticky sensation beginning to form in his palms, so he tightens his grip on the bamboo in his hands.
Let the wind carry me into the sky. Let me be the one to bring honor back to his name.
* * *
The others will fly to Kalawao on Molokai from Mokapu for Makahiki like they have whenever the ocean is too rough for canoes. They will fasten loulu to bamboo frames with wingspans three times the length of their bodies. They will gather on a plateau—the largest stretch of level ground on the little island—as they are now and run into the oncoming wind until there is lift and they are caught in an updraft that will carry them far above Mokapu before their westward decent toward Kalawao.
He opens his eyes and finds the men making their way toward him through long, slanted shadows cast by the palms. There are seven of them, and although they emerge under the dense night sky, he can see from a distance they are in fine physical shape. Bodies like warriors. Tall, muscular. The flaps of their malo slap against their thighs in the wind as they step from under the canopy and make their way to the flat. He has seen this moment before in his dreams—he is comforted by this—the men are guarding themselves and the gliders against the wind. They lean into the current to keep themselves standing there in front of him.
He is Kauaua. Eldest of Awalii, daughter of Hoolehua and Waiohuli. He was born and raised in the fertile northern valley of Waikolu, the land of three waters, where his grandfather retreated with their family in the wet season of 1822. Now, he is the legacy to that name, Hoolehua, and the completion of this journey from Waikolu to Naiwa and then beyond will mark the first time a descendant has returned to the site of his grandfather’s birth. He will return honor to the name of the one they call the runaway chief. His demonstration of strength and might and speed in Naiwa will bring a new dawn to the plains.
Kauaua looks at the shadowy ground around him, then at the grassy field leading to the edge of the cliff. There’s enough of a drop there, he knows. Once he has jumped off the cliff and over the rocky shoreline and the crashing surf, there will be time for the wind to find its place under his body. He will dive into the wind, spread his arms, and fly—he will not be carried on a glider like the others. He will fly just as he’s seen it in dreams, at first by the updraft rushing against the sharp Mokapu shoreline, then by the wind of his birthplace, Kilioopu. It will carry him across the channel separating Mokapu and Kalawao.
He will be carried by the ancestors, and by his own skill and determination. He is moho, after all. There will be flight, and when he finally lands in Kalawao, he will be in Makalii. He has dreamed this, too.
The dream of his journey through Makalii was the fourth after a series of three confirmed dreams. For four nights during his fifteenth year, Kauaua dreamt first of a child’s birth, and he woke mornings after these dreams still with the crisp image of the child in his hands. He didn’t know for certain how the little child came to be there, or whose the child was, only that the child would live to see a world far away from the one he knew in Waikolu. After the fourth night, when Kauaua told Awalii and she began to cry, he was certain the child was hers. The baby was his unborn brother, Keonehanau, and when Kauaua learned this, his attention was soon consumed by thoughts of his grandfather, Hoolehua.
Hoolehua. The swift. The expert. The warrior. And now the runaway chief.
Kauaua stood there and listened to Awalii tell him of Keonehanau. He heard in her voice the voice of his grandmother.
Waiohuli. Waters of change. The dreamer. The giver-of-dreams. She speaks to him from beyond.
Now it is her voice Kauaua hears:
Let the wind carry you into the sky. May you be the one to bring honor to his name.
* * *
Waiohuli was there in his second dream, at Leina o Papio, the night he was tossed over a cliff on the western edge of Waikolu with nothing more than a loulu mat. He twisted and turned in the dream until he was lying prone with the mat spread beneath him, until the mat was suddenly caught in an updraft and for a moment, he felt completely weightless. He hung in the air looking back into the valley—until the image of Waiohuli pointing toward Naiwa appeared to him in the clouds—when the mat began to ride the wind toward the shore and then finally out beyond the breaking waves.
There were four nights before he was there again, at Leina o Papio, just as he had been in the dream, lying prone on a mat and floating out toward the sea. It was the middle of the day and the first time he felt what it was like to fly, to rise and fall in the wind, and he was surprised when he eventually landed in the water just beyond the breakers of the bay by the ease at which he had controlled the mat.
It is one thing to have her blood, but quite another to have her breath: He thinks of this as he watches the men form two lines facing the northern cliff of Mokapu. They are warriors—this is clear. Even at night. Even in this time of peace. The moonlight paints their faces and bodies with shadows that remind him of blades. They plant themselves on the grassy plateau and stand like stones in the violent wind.
He is the youngest of them. There are five who have made the trip before to compete in Naiwa, but only two who have traveled there through Mokapu. Only two who have braved both the turbulent sea and sky to reach a point on Molokai where walking up the northern cliffs to Naiwa becomes an option. He is the first, however, the first ever, to fly from Mokapu to Kalawao without the long, thin bamboo crossbar the others will use as the leading edges of their gliders.
He will be the crossbar that cuts through the wind and the air. His arms will be his wings and the pieces of bamboo he holds in both hands will extend his reach and allow him enough fronds to rise in the turbulent night sky. The fronds are bound to his arms and fixed at the sides of his torso. They are lashed to his back and the back of his legs. The others do not question his method. By now, they know of the dreams.
Everyone in Waikolu knows his journey. And they know to deviate in any way from the dreams risks not only his fate, but everything thereafter. Everything that matters to them, in fact.
He is simply the strongest and fastest man in Waikolu.
He takes his place at the back of one of the lines, next to his most trusted companion. They are like brothers, the two of them. Without a word, they begin to make the final modifications to the loulu stitched to his body in preparation for flight.
* * *
Kauaua had saved his most trusted companion because of the third dream: The capsized canoe and the hand reaching up beneath the surface of the ocean.
After his dream at Leina o Papio became reality, Kauaua began clearing his mind before he slept each night so by the morning after the third dream, when he described the overturned canoe to the people of Waikolu with such fluidity and conviction, the two eldest moho now with him immediately told the people that they would need bamboo. The dream, they knew, confirmed their own predictions about the journey to Naiwa. In the year of their own first flights, they had seen the same signs in the sky in the days leading to their departure.
The people in Waikolu meticulously prepared for weeks before the journey. The eight who had earned kuleana to compete during Makahiki were their moho, the strongest and fastest, the embodiment of their land, and of them. The people did all they could—gathering food and supplies, keeping them healthy and content—before it was time for the eight men to leave Waikolu.
When the day came for the men to leave, the people gathered on the rocky shoreline of the valley at the mouth of the river. They circled the men in prayer before the men made their way through the crowd hugging and kissing their wives or their mothers, their brothers and sisters, their children. The moho listened to the people praise their strength as they turned from the crowd and carried the canoes into the oncoming surf. And some of the men, like Kauaua, felt the ancestors fill them with mana.
The wind will carry you into the sky. You will be the one to bring honor to our name.
There was no time to wait for the weather to calm. They were due in Naiwa before the arrival of Lonomakua, the akua loa, whose procession was now making its way around Molokai. The echo of his pu had already filled the back of the valley, so after fourteen straight days of hammering winds and waves along the northern coast of the island, the eight moho packed two canoes with enough kalo and water for one meal. Then they embarked from the easternmost point of land in Waikolu, where they had the greatest chance of reaching Mokapu.
It was afternoon, halfway to the dome-like island, when the ama of his canoe rose out of the water and Kauaua saw the third dream. He remembered the image of a white seabird skimming alongside a rolling swell under the hovering outrigger float just before the swell flipped the canoe. He jumped from the hull to anchor down the ama with his weight, and when he turned back and saw the others do the same, he knew in that moment the hand rising from the black depths in his dream had been the hand he would soon see reaching up between the wide crests of waves and whitewater. He reached for the white palm of the hand and when he had a firm grasp of it, he pulled it toward him.
He remembers his shock when the hand did not pull back.
* * *
Now, the canoes are upside down just above the high-water mark on the southern shoreline of Mokapu. His most trusted companion has recovered and is at his side. They watch the two eldest men begin to lift the gliders above their heads, and when the first of them begins running across the flat toward the northern cliff, Kauaua sees the scene he most vividly remembers from his fourth and final dream. A man leaning into the wind. Running. The full moon. Flight.
The first man is airborne before he reaches the edge of the cliff. He’s a full body length from the ground. He rises in the wind until he’s no longer above the island—it appears as if he is flying away into the night—the glider climbs in the ridge lift before it finds an easterly windshear and the left side of the wing dips toward Kalawao. Then the second man begins running across the flat.
Soon, the first four men are gliding westward, one after the other. They have risen in the winds moving up and over Mokapu and are already descending toward Kalawao. The fifth man lifts off and the sixth one begins his sprint toward the cliff. Kauaua steps back, and as in the dream, his most trusted companion steadies his glider above his head as he waits for the sixth man to lift off the ground.
The people of Waikolu have waited many months for Makahiki, and when it was deemed necessary to reach Naiwa through Mokapu, they began to ready themselves for this night. Some of the young ones have made their way to Leina o Papio, the cliff with the best chance of watching the men soar in the night sky toward Kalawao. They have made a fire on the point, and when the men begin to land, they will pull sticks from the fire and throw them out toward the sea as a signal to the others in the valley that the men have made it safely to Kalawao. They huddle around the fire in the turbulent wind watching the gliders like a thin stream of shadows in their westward descent across the purple sky.
Kauaua sees the glider of his most trusted companion begin to lift off Mokapu. He hears the distinct booming sound of wind catching the wing of the glider and filling its sail, and suddenly he is running with all his might across the grassy plateau toward the cliff. There is no certainty as to what will happen when he dives from the edge of the island, but he is absolutely fearless as his feet dig into the turf and he hears the sound of a wave explode against the momentarily indiscernible shoreline. His legs burn, his arms and hands rise and fall at his sides, his chest and gut fill with adrenaline.
Then there is silence. The grass once beneath his feet becomes a steep, black wall leading down to foamy whitewater and a churning black ocean surface. He is over three hundred feet above sea level, falling, the wind pressing up against his chest and face, his eyes. He tightens his grip on the bamboo rods and spreads his arms and he immediately soars in the updraft rising against the northern face of Mokapu. He is weightless, ascending until the wind has carried him above the island and he tilts his shoulder and begins on a slight roll toward Kalawao. Then he hears the loulu fronds shuddering in the speed of his descent.
Along the northern coast of Molokai, at Leina o Papio, he sees a fire and then two tiny flames falling toward the sea. The eldest moho have reached Kalawao. And although he can’t hear them through the wind funneling across the loulu and over his face and ears, he knows, too, that the people of Waikolu are calling to them and cheering from the shoreline. His eyes begin to tear because of the air rushing over his face. He tries to listen for the people in the valley, but there is only wind. Then the voice of Waiohuli tells him to close his eyes. He sees two more flames fall from Leina o Papio before they are caught for a moment, just as he was, in the wind near the cliff, and when he closes his eyes, he imagines the flames floating out toward the sea.
He is Kauaua. The swift. The expert. The warrior. The dreamcatcher. His eyes are closed, but he fears nothing as he descends from the sky. Makalii, the Pleiades, has risen above Makalii, the place where he will land on the Kalawao shoreline. The Kilioopu wind has left its place in Waikolu to cradle him there.
Waiohuli was half correct when she told him his was his own fate. He knows this when he opens his eyes to find himself heading toward the moho. The wind will carry him. He will bring honor to their names. His is also the fate of the people. And it appears, by the way the men stand and wait for him on the Kalawao shoreline, that they know this, too.
He pushes out his chest and tilts back his head just enough so that his body pitches upward and the wind of his homeland spills out from under his wings. An easterly wind pushes him from behind. And soon he is lowering his arms and running across the rocky ground.
It is a feat confirming the first half of the fourth and final dream.
The men gather around him to place their hands upon his broad shoulders. They inspect the fronds covering his back. They tell him there is no other like him on Molokai.
After the young ones extinguish the fire on Leina o Papio, the men stash the gliders in a cave at Makalii and walk north along the coastline of Kalawao until they reach the point, Laehoolehua. They find boulders to sit and lean against, to protect themselves from the wind. Kauaua turns toward the raging surf and leaves them, but the men say nothing. They turn to each other and begin talking about Mokapu, the wind, and their landings at Makalii. They tell each other of the way it felt to fly.
When he reaches the jagged lava shoreline, Kauaua raises a loulu frond into the air. He lets it go and watches it circle above him before it heads out toward the sea in the driving wind and then into the night, high above the rolling swells on the surface of the ocean. It wasn’t always like this. He was not always so respected by the others. He was born in Waikolu, yes, Waikolu is his birthplace, but he had to earn his rank with the men of the valley. They frequently reminded him his family was a family of the plains, a Kona family, that he lived in the valley now because of the kindness of the Koolau people.
Kauaua knows this last part, like Waiohuli’s claim about his fate, is only partly true. Hoolehua had been more than just a runaway chief. He was a man with an insatiable desire to protect his family—especially his children—and to provide for his people. He proved himself worthy of a place in Waikolu when, in protest to the chiefs, he torched the iliahi in Kamiloloa after he and his men had been left and forgotten on the mountainside well into the wet season. He proved his courage when he returned to the desolate plains to gather his young family and retreat into Waikolu, and again when the chiefs sent men from the plains and he met them by himself in Kahanui.
Now, his spirit rests here, in Laehoolehua. The place where his own son, Hoolehua, after carrying his body from Waialeia, deposited it into the sea. These facts were the backbone of Kauaua’s defense against the men of Waikolu. He knew these things, and he used them as his inspiration until they gave him their utmost respect.
Kauaua looks for the loulu frond in the dark sky, and when he cannot find it, he reaches into the waist strap of his malo and pulls out a soft piece of a finely woven mat. He finds the biggest boulder he can tilt, and he tucks the piece of the mat beneath it before he lets the boulder down. The wind will carry me. I will bring honor to your name.
He turns back to the men sitting on the ground behind the boulders and begins to walk toward them. When he is near, his most trusted companion rises to his feet and waits for him to pass before following him toward Naiwa. They will not complete the journey this night, but they will cross the peninsula until they reach Kalaupapa and a beach the eldest moho has told them is protected by a reef named Papaloa.
The eight men walk for nearly two hours under the full moon and a sky riddled with stars. They are cold and tired but maintain a steady pace across Makanalua. They stay together, in rows just like the ones they used to depart from Mokapu. They do not stop to rest until one of them says he needs to relieve himself behind a bush.
On this night, they will make it to Papaloa, where Kauaua will walk through a shallow pond until he is standing on the small barrier reef. He will gather aama for himself and for the men. He will look west to Nihoa and the ili of Kipu. Then he will imagine the rolling plains of Naiwa, and Waiohuli will tell him he must sleep if he intends to meet Lonomakua at dawn. When he returns to the beach and has eaten with the men, he will lie down to sleep on the sand. He will dream of a time long after Makahiki. He will see the travels of Keonehanau. And he will wake when he learns that his brother will travel far from Molokai—to a land far beyond where any chief has gone—before he finds his way back with children of his own.
Michael Puleloa, PhD, was born on Majuro in the Marshall Islands and raised on Molokaʻi and O‘ahu in Hawaiʻi. He has taught composition at Kapiʻolani Community College, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and Kamehameha Schools, Kapālama. His most recent publications appear in the anthologies, Bamboo Ridge (no. 118) and Indigenous Pacific Islander Eco-Literatures. His forthcoming story, “Uncle Louie and Me,” will appear in the anthology, No Talk Li’ Dat. His story here, “Flight,” is for Shannon.
Photos by staff