Eyes Looking to the Sky

To find your way in a voyaging canoe you must be able to feel the sea. That’s what Kilolani says. My mother says you need to have the magic — magic that comes from the stars above and the sea below. She says Kilolani has that magic. When I ask my father about this, he doesn’t answer. He just closes his eyes and shakes his head slowly. Father doesn’t speak of Kilolani, and he doesn’t want me to speak of him. I don’t understand why. I like Kilolani. I like the way he stands near the bow, feet planted wide apart, swaying with the up and down of the swells. The cold spray sometimes slaps him cruelly, dripping from his matted gray hair, creating little rivers on his shoulders and across the tattoos on his arms. He never flinches.

I want to talk with him. I want to ask him if it really is magic that he has. And maybe it is magic, because how else could he alone find the way to Mata ki te rangi, “Eyes Looking to the Sky” — the island that will rise alone from the deep ocean and become our new home.

Before we sailed, people talked with great certainty of this island we know only from our oldest stories. They spoke of its great volcano soaring into the sky, drawing a weary sailor’s eyes up to where it touched heaven. Ka’imi asked me if I believed in this island. I told her Kilolani says it is waiting for us, and he will find it. That is all I need to know.

What does Kilolani see and feel while he is standing there? I know I shouldn’t ask him. You never disturb the navigator. You never interrupt his concentration. If he fails, if he loses his way, then most likely we will all die. But still, I have to know. Because more than anything else, I want to be like him, like Kilolani. I want, more than I want the air that I breathe, to be the navigator of a voyaging canoe.

“Makani, go and help your mother with the fish,” my father says from behind me.

He must have watched me as I watched Kilolani. “Yes, father,” I reply, avoiding eye contact. Walking back to the stern, my feet matching the rhythm of the swells, I see the canoe of my cousins, its twin kino, or hulls, slicing through the deep blue water. I look for Ka’imi among the people on that side of the deck, but she is not there. My heart falls. Just seeing her across the swath of ocean that separates us is a daily joy.

I take a spot beside my mother, keeping well clear of the long oar that steers our vessel on the navigator’s commands. We kneel upon the rough matting beneath us and prepare to clean the fish.

My hands trace the movement of my mother’s as we begin our task. Her hands are sun browned, with smooth backs and wrinkled palms. Along the left index finger runs a jagged scar earned early in her marriage as she used the spiny tip of a stingray’s tail to pierce a knot of fibrous palm. The sharp spike slipped through bark and into flesh more easily than she had calculated. Her long black hair takes flight in the breeze and tickles my face. The air whispers around us, intent on dancing freely across the ocean swells, but draft after draft is trapped in the billow of our V-shaped sail. The wind, always a restless prisoner, spends some of its sun-born energy against the sail’s matting before it escapes, and in this way we move ever forward. The bow of the canoe rises, falls, and rises again. The rhythm of the sea, the faithful movement of sun and stars, define each day of our voyage. The navigator lives those rhythms.

As much as I love this canoe, I am homesick. Leaving our island was a hard thing; but harder still to remain in a place where there are too many families and too little food. Many days had passed since rain last fell on our crops of taro and breadfruit. How were we to feed so many mouths in our villages? Each night the king gathered our families for close examination of the natural signs that might recommend leavetaking. The men, with their voices low and their eyes turned to the eastern heavens, held such council until the morning of a particular day when the word went out that the wind now came from the west. I heard the king’s words of action: “Prepare the canoes. Prepare your spirit. It is time to go with this special wind.” The king chose each of us. Two canoes full of his closest family. Our leaving would ease the difficulties for those who remained.

Sometimes out here I feel separated from my body. I float just a little above the canoe and watch its activities as if it were my own dream. Perhaps this is all a dream and I will wake soon and stand on warm, firm sand beside Ka’imi. A cold spray from the sea, tossed into the air by our bow, reminds me that my fate is tied to this canoe, and my real dream lies where we are bound, and where we are bound rests with the spirit and skill of the navigator.

My mother smiles at me. She sees my mind is elsewhere.

“Your father was once a navigator, too,” she says.

I am unable to answer. Her words pierce my heart.

“You must hide your disbelief, Makani, for what I tell you is true,” she continues. “He was a fine navigator who lost course when the skies filled with clouds for days. The expedition almost perished from thirst. The king, with great sorrow, set him down from navigating the voyaging canoes. But understand my lesson: navigating alone is not the full measure of any man.”

She says nothing else and we gather our clean fish to take to the cook.

As we walk together, balancing our load against the swells, one of the sailors, high on the mast of the second canoe, calls to us in warning. Following his directions, my squinted eyes trace a low black line of storm clouds rising above the horizon, driving a feathery gray mist before them.

Mother and I hurry to secure our basket of fish and take our place near Father. Blue day turns to green-black night as the first gusts strike us. The wind flails the lines and tears at the great sail, making a noise that sounds as if a clan of spirits stands upon our vessel screaming encouragement to the chaos I cast spray stung eyes about for a thing to preserve my courage. There. On the foredeck, Kilolani bears the storm from his customary place, his legs bent at the knee, bracing for each gust and roll. Our king stands tall beside Kilolani, facing the onrushing clouds, shouting orders across to the other canoe to promote its safety. But his strong words are snatched away by the wind, heard by no one.

A wave sweeps under us from behind, and I pitch forward onto my face. My mother and father topple over me as the stern rises up and up and up. Our vessel groans and threatens to separate as the twin bows of our canoe angle sickeningly downward into the frothing green chasm beneath us. I brace now for the unnatural act of our great canoe falling onto us from above as we are upended. My mother’s arms hold tight around me. Her sea-drenched hair flows over my head and across my eyes, blinding me. For a moment I feel shielded by her and my father, cocooned as we are one around the other, until we are flung mightily rearward as the massive stern falls back into the sea. Our bow rises up again from the depths, bringing with it a freezing deluge of ocean water.

Then I hear her cry. Ka’imi! Slipping my mother’s grasp, I stand on shaky legs to answer this call. But I cannot see the second canoe. I turn in circles, thinking I am disoriented by the wind and waves. Was it swallowed by the same swirling maw that nearly gulped us down? I hear the call again, feeble and fading against the wind.

“Ka’imi!” I shout through cupped hands. “Ka’imi! Ka’imi!”

Then I see her outstretched arm, barely cresting the waves that pound at her. In a blink I am in the water, swimming hard for Ka’imi. The waves are too much for me. They batter my head beneath them. As I lose my breath, I see the arc of a man’s body leaving our canoe and knifing into the gray water. Rough, strong hands take hold of me, and of Ka’imi, too. We, all three, pull toward the rocking hull. Other hands grasp us along side and pull us from the jaws of an angry sea. The king himself draws Father upward and clasps his shoulder. My father bows his head in the presence of the king’s great favor. Kilolani stands at the rail and looks only at me, as if seeing my face for the first time.

Days pass, each one filled with our grief. We repair our canoe. Ka’imi, the second canoe’s only survivor, and I pledge to tell of this thing to every child born in our new land, to preserve the memory of this sacrifice.

During the twelfth night following the storm, I stand with Kilolani on the foredeck. The Milky Way blazes above us. Kilolani kneels beside me and says, “Makani, do you feel the hoa hua dele tai, the ocean swell, beneath your feet? That is the heartbeat of the sea.”

He then bids me look ahead, following his outstretched arm, toward a star burning clear and true before us. That is the kaveinga, our star path. Along that path lies our new island home.

“The storm is in our past, Makani,” he says. “Yon star beckons to our future. Regard the sea below and the sky above with care, for this is your first lesson.”