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This story takes place in the old days when the chiefs of the islands went out to make war on each other for land with good fishing and rich soil blessed by Pele, for adornments, and for glory. Many warrior men came home with shell necklaces and boar’s teeth, but many others were killed in battle, or fell overboard and were devoured by the sea god Moana, or died of thirst or hunger during the long voyages, or were wounded in battle and came home too damaged to go to war again. Such wounded men were turned loose to beg their neighbors for a few fish, a taro root, or a dried-up coconut with which to feed their family. Many of them deliberately drowned, or threw themselves from clifftops, so that their gaunt wives could freely remarry a hale man who could support their children.
One unmarried warrior, whose name was Wakakana, was wounded by a spear-thrust to his shoulder that made his arm limp as seaweed; he could not lift oar, spear nor club with that hand again. His chief, Maiwa, gave him a small boat with one oar, a dried fish and a gourd of water, and sent him away to make his way home as best he could. The seas are rough and hard to travel when one can work an oar with both hands, and nearly impossible for a man with but one. But Wakakana vowed to die steering that tiny craft rather than dive in and let Moana take his life for him.
For days Wakakana paddled that little boat, up waves and down swells, on a voyage that a hale man could make with his fellows in a mere quarter-moon. The sun beat down on his head during the day and the night enveloped him in sorrow. When his little bit of food was gone and he barely had any water left he prayed to Maui, patron of all who travel the sea, for protection and strength. “Send someone to help paddle my little boat, Oh Maui,” Wakakana begged, his tongue thick in his mouth with thirst, “and I will serve that man for the rest of my days.”
That night, while he tried to sleep under the bright full moon, Wakakana heard a cry for help far out across the dark sea. Even exhausted and near death as he was, Wakakana responded as a true son of the islands; he took up his one oar and paddled his boat toward the sound. Friend or foe, someone in trouble at sea was to be helped. To his astonishment there was a man floundering in the water, all by himself, away from any land, with no kind of a boat or raft nearby. Wakakana extended the oar so that the man could take hold of it and pull himself aboard – but the man pulled so hard that even though he got into the boat, the oar was lost overboard, floating away from the drifting craft.
The man lay curled up in Wakakana’s tiny boat like a landed eel. “Water,” he gasped. “Give me a little water.”
Wakakana laughed. “A little water is what I have.” He handed the man his gourd, and watched as the stranger tipped it back to drink the last of his meager supply.
The stranger sat up straight. He was a very tall man, with a nose like a parrot’s beak and black hair that ran down his back like a waterfall. Tattoos covered his face in dark spirals. “Ah! Now I have my magic back!” the man said, and laughed.
Wakakana was awed and frightened by his strange visitor. He knew what those tattoos meant. “You are a kahuna – a shaman.”
“And you are one of Chief Maiwa’s warriors, who has been sent off to his death after being wounded in battle, but you are still a warrior in your heart and no pitiable man,” replied the shaman, and laughed at the surprise on Wakakana’s face. “I know the mark of every chief, and that tattoo under your lip tells me who you were, as does your shark-toothed club. You rescued and gave your last water to someone who frightens you, so your heart is bigger than your fear.”
Wakakana looked around the bobbing silver sea under the bright moon. “I see no boat anywhere, no log or raft. What are you doing in the water?”
“Maui told me to come here,” said the shaman; he said it as if recalling a conversation with a member of his village. “I was dreaming, and Maui came to me. I told him I was afraid, because I am waging a war and need a man to help me. Maui told me to go to the shore and swim straight out as far as I could go, following his hook.”
Wakakana looked up, where the stars that formed Maui’s fish-hook twinkled faintly just above him. “There is no island nearby!”
“No, I’ve been swimming for two days now,” the tall man said. “I haven’t eaten or had sweet water. The sharks left me alone, but that was all i could do. Tonight, I was so tired I began to drown, and that was when I called out. And there you were.”
“And here I am,” the warrior said, and laughed. “I am Wakakana, dead-armed and sent home. I asked Maui to send a man to help paddle my boat.”
“Wakakana Koa. I am Holamaka, afraid and sent out,” said the shaman. “I asked Maui to give me a warrior for the battle I mean to wage.”
Wakakana laughed at the wonder and foolishness of it all. “My arm is ruined, Holamaka Kahuna; I am only half a warrior now. My oar is gone, and now we are adrift. I have no food and no water. But Maui sent you to find me, and Maui is wise. Tell me of this battle you mean to wage.”
“We’ll eat first. I’m hungry.” Holamaka clapped his hands twice, and two bonitos leaped into the boat, flopping between the two men and making Wakakana shout in surprise at the sorcery. The shaman clubbed both fish and gutted them deftly with his knife before handing one to the warrior. Wakakana was afraid, but his hunger was bigger than his fear; he reached for his own knife and soon was feasting on the moist fresh fish, food and drink both for a parched man.
Only after they had eaten and thrown the bones overboard did the shaman speak again. “I do not need many men for this battle, Wakakana Koa. I do not even need one man with two good arms! I need one man with a strong heart, because I am fighting demons. All the warriors on my island were too afraid to join me, and I was afraid to go into battle alone. I did not even have a boat for my voyage.”
“You have a boat now,” said Wakakana. His fear was gone, and a strange wild joy had taken hold of him. “And you have your man for your war. I have one hand to lift my club. I have promised Maui to serve the man who paddles this boat with me.”
Holamaka Kahuna smiled and leaned forward. “Wakakana Koa.”
Wakakana leaned forward as well, and the two men shared greetings: foreheads and noses pressed, inhaling together to share their breath and their spirits. Maui had just bound them together with his strongest fishline, the same one he’d used to tie the sun to the earth.
“Let us go!” Wakakana said when they parted. “I have eaten, and we will paddle with our hands if that is the only way we can row.”
“That is too much work.” Holomaka made a strange cry, and something bumped the boat from behind. Wakakana turned to see two big sharks pushing the boat with their snouts. “We will go back to my village. A demon prowls there, leaving dead men and terrible messages written in their blood. Now I can confront him.”
The little boat moved forward, faster than if ten men paddled it. Wakakana gripped his shark-tooth club with his good hand, and looked forward with his new chief.
***
And that is how the two men began their war on many demons – the dog-monster that hunted the chiefs of Pakavila, the white-face demon Kukulakana who slew his prey by throwing fruit at them, the man that turned into a snake and ate his own daughters, and many more. The shaman and the warrior faced each one; Holomaka peered into their foul cold hearts and spoke what was true, and when the demons raged and attacked him Wakakana struck them with his club, shouting a war-cry to fill them with fear. Demons who attacked the warrior were ensnared in windstorms or screeching assaults from gulls summoned by the shaman.
Then one terrible day they battled Moliaki the spider-demon to the very top of Mehetia, the mountain that spits Pele’s fire... But that is another story, to be told another time.