Moloka'i (46 page)

A girl looked skeptical. “Why didn’t the ropes burn?”

“The greener a plant, the harder it is to burn.” The girl seemed placated by this cunning use of science.

“Did M
ui ever fight anybody like Hitler?” Freddie asked, impatient to get to the action. “Or the Red Skull?”

“Oh, he had many great battles,” Rachel assured him. “For instance against Pe'ape'a, the Eight-Eyed Bat.” This quickly captured their attention. “M
ui had been fishing along the shore of O'ahu when he looked up and saw his wife Kumulama in the grip of a horrible creature—a huge bat with eight terrible eyes, which had seized his wife in teeth like razors and carried her aloft. M
ui dove into the sea after it, but the creature was too fast and M
ui had to turn back, weeping, as the eight-eyed bat carried Kumulama to a distant island.

“Heartsick, M
ui went to a wise old
kahuna,
who told him to gather tree limbs, thick vines, and the feathers of many birds. M
ui did this, and from the tree limbs the
kahuna
fashioned the hollow skeleton of a giant bird, then covered it in feathers. The vines were attached to the bird’s wings, and when M
ui climbed inside and pulled on the vines, the wings flapped—and with M
ui’s great strength as a motor, the bird took flight!

“M
ui piloted the flying machine—the first in the whole world!—to the island of the bat. It was a beautiful island, but Pe'ape'a was its ruler—its dictator, like Hirohito—” The
keiki
booed and hissed. “—and when M
ui landed he was captured by the bat’s people. They imprisoned him in a cage and took him to their ruler, who rejoiced that he had captured such a mighty warrior.

“M
ui waited until the bat became drowsy, watching as first one eye, then another, and another, closed in sleep. When the eighth eye drooped shut, M
ui quietly freed himself from the box and, wielding a huge blade, he cut off the bat’s head with one swipe!” Rachel swung her hand in a wide arc and made a whooshing sound. Her listeners cheered, but the best was yet to come.

“Now very angry at what was done to his wife, M
ui gouged out the bat’s eight eyes and had its people make them into
'awa
—a kind of bathtub gin usually made from kava root. And do you know how
'awa
used to be made?” They all shook their heads. “People used to chew the kava root, then spit it out and strain it. So the Pe'ape'a’s people
chewed his eyes and spit them out,
and then M
ui
drank
the
'awa
made from the bat’s eight eyes!”