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Kokomolana was a cursed island when Holamaka Kahuna and I steered to the shore one morning, and waved away our shark escorts who'd pushed our canoe through the easy waves that followed the rainy season. Holamaka's face was set and stern, ready for war. Two young women of this island, cousins of the chief, were so fearful of the strange silent man their mother had just married that they sent a parrot to our own island, Peke, with their request that the famed shaman come to their aid.
By sundown the next day Kokomolana was a free island. Holamaka's face had shown only battle-rage when the man, Loiloka, revealed his true vile nature. We'd come only in time, for we sprang upon the man just as he changed into a giant serpent and swallowed one of his stepdaughters. Holamaka conjured lashing bamboo to drive the beast's poisonous head back, and I dashed in with my shark-toothed club to slit open Loiloka's bulging belly; I pulled the girl out and herded both frightened daughters and their blank-eyed mother to safety while the roaring shaman battled the wounded demon. In the end Holamaka Kahuna let the monster slay himself – he struck the beast's tail and the rage-maddened snake coiled round and bit his own back. At the moment that the monster died of his own poison, the girls' mother started as if awakening from sleep, and cried out at the thought that she had endangered her own children when the handsome stranger had bewitched her.
Holamaka's face was still and his voice silent at the celebratory feast the next evening. Magical work against demons always exhausted him and he sometimes stayed silent for days after a battle. He ate well of the delicious roast pork, grilled fish and banana beer, and I praised the food enough for both of us. The shaman also stayed silent and calm-faced when the two young women and their mother stood to retell the story of the battle to everyone else with the sacred dance-moves of the hula.
But when the chief stood, removed her beautiful feathered kahu huruhuru cloak, and wrapped it around Holamaka's shoulders, I shouted and cheered with everyone else at this well-deserved honor given only to those of highest rank and nobility.
Holamaka Kahuna did not speak even then, arrayed in his gorgeous new patterned cloak. But tears rolled down his eyes unchecked.