Mana (2 page)

“They looks like some kind of petroglyphs,” Lehua said, holding the wood so the morning sunlight heightened the contrast of the carved figures against the lighter background. Maybe there are more down there.” The tone of her voice expressed her excitement.

Carlo looked up at a massive thunderhead on the eastern horizon. “If there are, they're gonna have to wait for another day. The forecast was for squalls, and it looks like a good-sized one in the making. Time to haul ass, like now!”

The boat soon rose to planing speed and, after they had settled down into canvas chairs on the rear deck, Lehua continued to examine the strange piece of wood. “Maybe Tessa could figure out what it is.”

“Tessa Kaholakula?” Bill asked. “She's just a historian.”

Lehua laughed. “Just a historian? So you figure unless someone's a laboratory scientist, they aren't worth consulting?”

Bill protested. “That's not what I meant. It's just that historians only deal with written history. My guess is this thing goes back to pre-Captain-Cook days.”

“Tessa also specializes in Polynesian culture and mythology. If she can't figure out what this is, she probably can point me toward someone who can. It's worth a try.”

“You know Lehua, that's your favorite statement . . . ‘It's worth a try.'”

“Just think how dull it would be to be around someone who didn't have a spirit of adventure.”

“OK. You concentrate on that chunk of wood. I'm going to get back into that cave as soon as possible. Think the weather'll clear in the next two days, Carlo?”

“Why two days?”

“He's off to West Africa,” Lehua explained. “There's a group of vulcanolgists going there to pass judgment on one of those poisoned lakes that keeps erupting and killing people.”

Bill nodded. “I'll be gone for a week. Can you keep anyone else from finding out about this tube in the meantime?”

“Lotsa luck! The Park Service is warning everyone away from here because of the lava flows. But you know how that goes. There'll be boaters sneaking around to take pictures, and there are bound to be some divers along.”

“I'd sure like to take another look before anyone else goes banging around down there,” Bill said, “especially right around the entrance. I'm still stumped over what opened it up.”

Lehua smiled at Bill's expression. “You're never happy unless you have a scientific explanation for every mystery.”

Bill's frown turned into a grin. “You're never happy with any explanations. You'd much rather have mysteries.”

Lehua's reply followed a long, thoughtful pause. “Maybe some things are better left that way—just as mysteries.”

Chapter 2

Tessa Kaholakula's office was a disaster. On campus, rumor had it she could quickly locate anything in the mass of books, papers, magazines and the other debris. Tessa insisted the rumor had no basis in fact, that she was going to clean up the mess one of these days and put things in order, and that she actually spent a good share of her life looking for things she knew were there in the piles, but which she never found until later when looking for something else. She had once told Lehua her husband Chuck, owner and manager of Kailua's private trash collection company, had threatened to back one of his trucks up to her office window and to start shoveling out the room's contents.

“Put that rubbish on the floor.” A welcoming smile spread over her brown face as she indicated a laden chair to Lehua.

They chatted for a moment before Lehua got to the reason for her visit. Reaching into the oversized shoulder-purse she was carrying, she took out the piece of board and found a place for it on a stack of journals in the middle of Tessa's desk.

“Hey,” Tessa exclaimed, reaching eagerly for the board. “Where'd you get that?”

“Bill and I were exploring an old lava tube down in Puna with a friend, and we found this wrapped in three whale bladders. Do you have any idea what it is?”

“It's a talking board . . . or a damn good imitation.”

“A talking board? What's that?”

“What kind of a Hawaiian are you? You mean you never heard of a talking board?”

“Remember, I'm only a quarter Hawaiian. So if that's something out of Hawaiian legend, I should tell you my mother was reading me Mother Goose stories while yours was telling you all about Maui pulling the islands out of the Pacific, and Madame Pele making her fiery bed in each of them while running away from her angry sister.”

“Talking boards aren't legends. They're real enough, even though we still don't know what they actually are. There have been several of them found on various islands in Polynesia. I think about a dozen of them have been authenticated as dating back to before European contact.”

“Are they writing? Can they be read?”

“That's the mystery. One theory is they're actually a written form of early Polynesian, a form preserved and understood only by a few kahunas who passed the secret down from generation to generation. At the other extreme is the opinion they were just idle doodling and actually meaningless. In between, there are some scholars who say they were mnemonic devices to help recall genealogies or perhaps some kind of star map information to be used on voyages. Anyway, if this is genuine, it's quite a discovery. It will be the first one found in Hawai'i. What do you plan on doing with it?”

“Donate it to the University or to the Bishop Museum, I suppose. I can't think of any good use for it. It really isn't much of a table decoration.”

While Lehua spoke, Tessa rummaged through a bottom drawer in the large desk, came up with several sheets of paper and a piece of soft graphite. “If it's OK with you, I'll hold onto it until we can check on its authenticity. It'd be kind of embarrassing for our museum to put it on display and then find out it's some mass-produced item from Taiwan. Is Bill trying to date the tube?”

Lehua nodded, following with interest Tessa's production of a rubbing from the board. “I'm going to send a copy over to Cyrus Walton,” Tessa said. “He's the head of the Center for Hawaiian Studies on the Manoa campus. He's big on petroglyphs, so maybe he can tell us something about this.” As she spoke, she peeled back the paper, nodded in satisfaction and placed another sheet on the board. “This one is to take to Anuenue Makua.”

“You mean Auntie Annie, down at Miloli'i?”

“Right.” Tessa checked her second rubbing, crumpled the paper, tossed it in the direction of her overflowing wastebasket, selected a new sheet and tried again with long smooth strokes.

“Why her?”

“She's a kahuna, you know.”

“Uh-huh. I can remember her blessing the boats when they went out on long fishing trips, but . . .”

“Actually, she's a kahuna nui.”

Lehua was not impressed. “Sure, but what makes you think she'll know anything about this? She pointed to the talking board.

“One day I was out at an old burial site with her, and she claimed she knew what the petroglyphs on a rock near there meant. And she made sense. I can't be sure exactly how right she was, but some of what she said agrees with what little the experts know about the carvings.”

Lehua laughed. “Maybe she boned up on what's been written about them.”

Tessa smiled in agreement. “I wouldn't put it past her. She still has a healthy sense of humor, even though she's well into her nineties. The only catch is, she can't read. At least she can't read English, but she sure is knowledgeable when it comes to old Hawaiian customs. I've filled a dozen notebooks with her ramblings, and I'm amazed at how much of what she tells me checks out.”

“When are you going to go see her?”

Tessa leaned over to check her calendar after searching for it and extracting it from the rubble on her desk. “For sure, I can't this week. I'm giving some lectures over at the high school in addition to my other classes. I'm full up until the weekend.”

“Bill and I wanted to go back to that lava tube tomorrow to do some more exploring before he leaves, but from the looks of the weather, it's not too likely we'll try. So we could drive over to Miloli'i and see Annie instead.”

“That would be great. She's only too happy to talk to anyone about the old days. Here; take this rubbing along and see if she recognizes any of it. You'd better take along a magnifying glass too. Her cataracts are getting bad, and she'll need help. Get her out in the strong sunlight, and don't forget to take a tape recorder. I'd like to hear what she has to say about those symbols.”

Tessa paused for a moment, then picked up the board and handed it back to Lehua. “You know,” she said, “Auntie Annie might be able to tell us more about the genuineness of this board than anyone else. Why don't you show it to her? If her eyesight isn't good enough to read the rubbings, she might be able to feel the marks on the board and make something out of that. I'll send it over to the main campus after she's had a look at it.”

* * *

The weather was as bad as expected, and Bill moaned his disappointment as they drove south on the belt highway. “I've got to catch the first flight to Oahu in the morning, so there won't be time to even try another run tomorrow.”

“Cheer up,” Lehua said. “Instead of spending the day chipping rocks, you'll get to meet Auntie Annie. Even if she can't tell us what's on that talking board, she should be able to tell you some stories about Kilauea. She's probably seen that old mountain erupt more times than anyone else alive.”

Anuenue Makua lived near the edge of the fishing village in a metal-roofed coffee shack, moved there by her youngest son. He had long ago left for construction work on Oahu and was now retired on that island. Currently, her sole companion was a tall, rangy niece, deaf from birth. Anuenue, herself, was much thinner than Lehua remembered her. Her cheeks sagged with the excess of skin left behind when the obese lose large amounts of weight. Heavy grey hair, once blue-black, cascaded down her back, and a dark red muumuu with a black flower design hung loosely on her thin frame. Lehua identified herself and introduced Bill. Annie scarcely turned her murky eyes to him, but instead tried to place the young woman.

“Yes. Yes. Now I membuh. Your ma's one Kamai, old Wilson Kamai's granddaughter. She married one Japanese. Yes, and I membuh you now. You was no biggah den one cockaroach, and you wen' swim out to da breakuhs. I can membuh your grandmaw screamin' at you for be careful, and you no listen den no moh dan any of da keikis dese days.”

Bill sat transfixed by the flood of memories their visit evoked. Gradually, he steered Annie around to the volcanoes to hear tales of Kilauea and Mauna Loa. She even told him of Hualalai, the brooding, cloud-covered mountain hanging over Kailua-Kona that had been quiescent for almost two hundred years, but whose 1803 eruption had been described to Annie by her grandfather, who in turn had heard the story from his own grandfather. Her memory was clear. The extent of major eruptions, and the dates, as she tied them in to other events on the island, closely matched what Bill knew from historic reports and the geologic record. To have lived for almost a century on the slopes of active volcanoes was something only a dedicated vulcanologist could appreciate and actually envy. And she told them of the legends surrounding Mauna Kea; how the tallest of the island's mountains would one day awake from its long sleep, break through its high snow cover, and once more send streams of molten rock down it's steep sides.

While Bill and Annie explored the past, Lehua took out the rubbing and tape recorder, waiting for an opportune moment to break in with her own concerns. At first, Annie was puzzled by the piece of paper, and Lehua realized she could only barely see the figures. Handing her the magnifying glass, she watched as Annie scanned the markings.

“Where you get dis?” The tone was almost accusing.

Lehua reached down to the bottom of her knapsack and brought out the board. “Bill and I found this in a lava tube. Do you think it's a real talking board?” As she handed the older woman the piece of wood, Lehua depressed the record button.

Annie said nothing as she held the board with one hand and gently passed the fingers of her other hand over the carved surface. She nodded, then turned her clouded eyes in Lehua's direction. Seeming not to have heard Lehua's answer to her question, she again asked, “Where you get dis?”

Before Lehua could answer, Annie's tone shifted. A strange falsetto crept into her voice. Was she reading it? Her hand moved over the board, but somehow it seemed what was coming out was memory and not a description of what the marks might have stood for. The language was Hawaiian—and yet not Hawaiian. Lehua knew only a smattering of the native speech, but enough to be certain no Hawaiian speaker would have understood the sounds coming from the old woman's lips. The recital lasted a scant two minutes and, as it ended, Lehua could feel herself letting out her breath.

“What does it mean? What language is that? Is that what it says?” Her questions tumbled over themselves.

Annie handed back the glass, the paper and the board. “It's dah old tongue. My gran'paw teach me. I nevah know what it mean.” She turned her fog-shrouded eyes toward her interrogator.

“You must know what it means. You just read it.”

“I know da sounds.” Annie shrugged her thin shoulders. “Dat's all.”

“Could you read it again?” Lehua tried to press the board back into Annie's hands.

Something like fear flickered across the face of the old lady, and she pulled her hands back from the proffered object. “No! One time. Only one time.”

* * *

For the past six months Bill had been trying to shake Lehua loose from living in her apartment, but she had refused to budge.

“It just makes good sense,” he said, though knowing this independence, which at the moment was a source of annoyance, was also one of the qualities about her which so much attracted him.

“Uh-uh. The one thing I wanted most when I got home from college ten years ago was my own apartment. Mom wanted me to move back in with her and Sis, but I wasn't about to. Besides, it's more romantic to go to your apartment some nights and then to mine on others.”

She laughed, and Bill again marveled as he had so many times before at the deep chuckle that rose up in such a small throat and seemed to be the very essence of amusement. It was difficult to deny this lovely, fragile creature anything she wanted. A separate apartment was, after all, a small concession.

Tonight, they had gone to her place and were sitting at the kitchen table, her with the board and rubbing, and him with a series of printed articles.

Lehua finally pushed the objects aside. “You packed?”

He grinned. “Yup. All set to go come daybreak.”

“What do you have to do when you get to Lagos?”

“There are eight of us. Three Americans, a Japanese and the rest are Europeans. We're meeting some native geologists who are going to take us to two of the lakes that are the biggest problems. There are signs of increased carbon dioxide levels occurring simultaneously in them, even though they're seventy miles apart. That's what has them worried.”

“They think there's an underground connection?”

Bill nodded. “Yes, but that goes counter to the current theories on the origin of the CO2 and the plumbing under these guys.”

Lehua looked thoughtful. “The earth's such a mysterious and frightening thing. The first time I saw lava fountains coming up out of the rift on Kilauea I knew why some of my ancestors thought of hell as being down there some place. Now there are those terrible lakes. So peaceful one day, and then hundreds of villagers die from the poison they spew out on the next day. Do you ever feel you're studying some sort of black magic rather than something that can be explained scientifically?”

“Anything that exists can be explained scientifically. You've been listening to too many of Auntie Annie's incantations, Lele. Those Hawaiian genes of yours have been stirred, and the hard-headed reporter has been swamped by all that gibberish the old lady was spouting.”

“It wasn't gibberish. I'm sure it had meaning, even though she may not have had any idea what it was.”

“No way. I've heard people speaking in tongues before. That's just what it was.”

“Let's listen to the tape.”

“No. It's getting late. I have a long flight ahead of me tomorrow, and I can think of better things to do than to listen to Annie fake it. You should have recorded all that stuff she was telling about eruptions instead. Now, that had some meaning.”