She keeps remembering the other trips that she's taken,
of course.
"She looked into the fire until Anne was wondering whether she
had forgotten where she was.
But then, at last, she said, 'They are telling me again.
Three times now, someone has said to me
that he has been found, that the grave has been discovered.
And they have dug him up and have taken his bones and his
gun.'
'Who told you that?'
Anne asked.
Kekaha people,' Pi'ilani said.
'One of them whispered to my mother but said not to tell me.'
'Where did they hear it?'
Anne asked.
'One said he heard it in town from somebody he had not seen
there for a long time.'
'What kind of person?'
'He told me it was nobody from here,
but they know all about how to sell things like that,
and who will give money for them.'
'Did he tell you any names?'
Anne asked.
'No names,' Pi'ilani said. 'Nobody's names ever,
but they talked about his gun, how his gun had been found.
Somebody had dug it up, and his bones.'
'Did you talk about this with anyone else?'
'No, Pi'ilani said.
'I never said anything, only that nobody knows the place
where I left him.'
Anne watched Pi'ilani looking into the flames.
'What will you do?' she asked.
'Go there,' Pi'ilani said.
'Alone?' Anne asked.
'Yes, alone,' she answered, 'by myself.'
'I am sure that somebody up here with me could go with you,
at least for the most dangerous part.'
'I have been back there several times.
Once Kua went with me into the valley and came out with me,
and I have gone in with others at different times.
But I'm going by myself this time.'
'I will say prayers for you," Anne said.
'I was alone,' Pi'ilani said, 'when I came out the first
time.'
'How long will you stay there in Kalalau?'
Anne asked.
'I will wait to see what I find there,' Pi'ilani answered.
'When they told you the same thing as other times and you
went back, were there signs that someone had been there?'
'All my life, Pi'ilani said, 'I have known about it.
I heard about them trying to find
where the chiefs were buried, or where any of us had been hidden.
I heard about what had been found with the bones
and taken away, gold and canoes and carvings and spears.
Thieves have been taking them for a long time.
And there were many burials in those valleys
and in the cliffs going up, and many are still hidden there.
And after the soldiers took everybody out of Kalalau
and burned down the houses, nobody was left to see who might
crawl in over the rocks like crabs to steal the dead.'
She remembers the trip the first time
as they're going up, and going into Kalalau
Valley, on horseback that time.
And she's telling Anne Sinclair Knudsen about it.
"All the way going up from here to Kilohana,
I think he was talking to Kaleimanu in front
of him on the horse, and still asleep.
I heard Ko'olau at the turns of the trail
telling stories in his night voice, floating over the rocks.
And he stopped when we rode close to the spring, when
the wai maka comes out of the ground, that low cave that you
could pass without seeing it there,
and the clear pool that keeps moving into the brook of tears.
He told Kaleimanu, asleep in his arm, about the spring.
And the child asked, 'Is this where Lahi waits
for the soldiers?'
And Ko'olau said, 'No, we are not there yet.'
And we rode on up the trail.
And all at once, I heard a roar, a voice above me, 'uwa'u,
'uwa'u, like one bird crying, like one seabird, 'uwa'u,
the petrel.
Then I heard Kaleimanu laughing, and he
said, 'I know it is no 'uwa'u.
It is you.' Then I heard it again farther up, and again,
Kaleimanu laughing.
And he said, 'I know it is you, Kua.
You are not 'uwa'u.'
But the sound came again, and Kaleimanu said, 'It is you, Kua.
It is at night the 'uwa'u calls.'
And still, Kua and Ko'olau kept making that sound,
and Kaleimanu laughed.
But he said, 'Lahi will eat you.'
And he told us he was awake now and kept
asking what bird he was hearing because birds
were all around us.
He sat up watching them until we came
to the high edge at Kilohana where the trail climbs
on but the whole world falls away
in front through the clouds.
And the Valley of Kalalau appears
to be as deep as the sky."