She's walking up the mountain, you remember?
And she's remembering other times coming up in the mountain.
And she comes up this one piece of valley
toward this house, Halemanu.
which is the house, the summer house of his employer,
Valdemar Knudsen.
And Knudsen's widow is in the house.
So these two women who've lost their husbands very recently.
A Hawaiian woman, and a holy woman meet in the midwinter
on up in this house on the mountain.
The first shadow was beginning to surface in the darkness
through a net of trees when she came
to the swollen stream of Halemanu, the House of Birds,
where in earlier dawns the birds had the forest to themselves
waking there into plumage and colors never seen anywhere.
Crests and feathers, heads and motions
never before entered upon.
Voices never heard before singing out
of a source in the yolk of their unmeasured morning.
Inexhaustibly beginning and beginning
as the undisturbed trees and flowers
kept beginning around them finding in each place
the morning as it was then in an age without numbers.
Changing too slowly for a single life to see it moving,
unperceived like the voyage of the mountain
itself into the northwest.
The eon of the birds seemed perpetual like the mountain,
long before another side of the night gave birth to humans.
And for an age after that, there was
no sign of them growing closer around the unbroken horizon.
The streams went on overflowing seaward taking with them
the mountain the grain at a time.
And small fish and crayfish brought their salt
in from the sea and swam up the falling water
to live in the falling before time
until the first canoe appeared in the west.
And only the birds saw it.
A light rain reached down to her face.
The fringe of a mist.
There was no color yet in the ghost town.
But around her through the full consonants of the stream
came here and there clear voices opening
as she passed close to them.
Trills telling of water.
Questions not continued.
Some of the voices were lights flying beside her.
The amakihi, a yellow brilliance.
The okolele a flicker of scarlet.
But the light was the complete gray before daybreak
with the black bands of the trees floating through it.
Then before a condensation of green
seeped into the tall reaches of the valley opening ahead of her,
the house appeared hollow at the end of a long rise
with a lifted shell of high trees raised above it.
The mountain palm towering behind.
And as her feet brushed the wet grass,
she saw the four pale long uprights of the veranda.
The new wide steps leading up to it.
And the dark arms of the house reaching forward toward her.
Someone was there.
The smell of wood smoke floated in the mist.
And as she stepped forward, a small light
passed at the window.
She stopped and watched.
And the woman came out with no light
and stood at the top of the steps.
A tall figure in the long gown.
The hair built high on her head, the same color as the hour.
They both stood listening and they heard this small stream
nearest to the house.
The brook of tears, Nawaimaka, high with the rains
at that time of year.
The tall woman outside the door was looking into the trees
and had not seen Pi'ilani.
She came down the steps slowly watching the trees.
And Pi'ilani walked toward her up the slope.
And without raising her voice said Makuahine.
And the woman turned, not sure whether she had heard anything.
Pi'ilani went closer and said again, Makuahine.
And the woman said, who is it?
And then saw her but could not make out who it was.
And Pi'ilani pronounced her own name
in a voice so low she hardly heard it herself.
Can it be you, Pi'ilani?
And Pi'ilani stepped toward her and for the third time called
the white woman Mother--
Makuahine.
And the woman said Pi'ilani and came to embrace her.
But Pi'ilani said, I will make you wet.
And the woman laughed and embraced her and then said,
you are completely soaked.
Who is with you?
Nobody else, Pi'ilani said.
And the woman said, come in, come in at once.
There is a fire.
Are you really up here alone?
And as they turned, the rain began again.
As they went up the steps, the white woman
called Maka'e, Maka'e, calling again at the door.
And to Pi'ilani, she said, come in, come in,
drawing her by the arm toward the fire
as a Hawaiian woman appeared in the far doorway.
Maka'e, I know you remember our friend Pi'ilani.
We have been out in the rain and are cold and hungry
this morning.
Maka'e ran to Pi'ilani and embraced her.
How are you? she asked.
Well.
Who is with you?
Nobody.
Maka'e shook her head and, without a word,
unwound the sodden shawl and hung it by the fire.
And the other woman picked up a blanket from a chair
and put it around Pi'ilani and brought
her to sit in the glow of the fire
while Maka'e piled on more logs and then was gone.
I did not know you were here, Pi'ilani said.
The woman nodded.
We almost never come up here in the winter anymore.
It is so long since I was here at this time of year,
in the rain, with the streams roaring.
Hard for the horses to cross.
How did you ever cross?
Pi'ilani said, yes, the water is high now.
And she held out her dripping skirt in front of the fire.
The first time I came, she said, it was this time of year.
It was the same night, and there was nobody here then.
And the children were half asleep.
We tied the horses out of the rain,
and we ate something out there on the steps
and rested there for a while.
If we had been here, the older woman said,
we could have given you something to eat that time.
Maybe, Pi'ilani said.
But that time was different.