Little Lili and the Lava Flow

Right after the big accident people like my grandpa had to work hard to find enough food, water, and medicine. It was tough, but they made it. By working together people survived by getting the generators working again, fixing some of the machines, and making guns to protect themselves. But machines breakdown and guns need new parts. At first it was easy to find parts or find things to recycle to fix the generators, but eventually all the good parts got used. Even the Kanaka were running short on batteries. It was then that people started digging for metals and minerals to make parts and fix things. One of the best places to look was also one of the most dangerous, the active lava flows. This is the story of one of the best mineral collectors ever, a Kanka boy named Little Lili. It shows that everyone can contribute, and that sometimes the things you think are bad about yourself can actually be really good.

Little Lili grew up with his mom in a village near Black Rock Beach. Lili’s dad was killed by a green lady before he was born, and his mom worried all the time because he was always sick. They didn’t have much because the medicine he needed was expensive. Lili felt bad because his mom worked so hard, and almost everything she made, traded, or found went to take care of him but she always smiled and said, “there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my little Lili!”

When he got older he decided it was time to go out and pull his own weight, so his mom wouldn’t have to struggle. But Lili was barely bigger than a child, and Kanaka work is hard. First he tried fishing but he could barely lift the nets. It took all of his strength just to push them out of the boat. When a big wave came Lili fell in the water and got tangled. The fishermen laughed and brought him home caught up in the net. As his mom cut him out, he apologized, but his mom just said, “there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my little Lili!”

Next he tried hunting, but he was too little for that too. The bow was bigger than he was, and he could only throw a spear a few feet. When he was checking one of the pit traps he fell in and was too short to reach the safety rope. The other hunters laughed, and left him there. It was hours before his mom showed up. He said he was sorry that she had to walk all the way out to help him but she just said, “there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my little Lili!”

When he walked to the Kapu Kuialua Dojo, and told them that he wanted to be one of the elite Koa warriors they just laughed. But one of the masters was kind, and offered him a job cleaning up around The Mission. It barely paid enough for dried fish and clean water, but it was a start. It was there, surrounded by the old books, and listening to the old stories, that Lili came up with a plan that would change his life.

Lili learned that the Earth produces minerals just like plants produce fruit. One of the best places to find metal and mineral deposits was where the ground is the newest, the lava fields. But there was a reason not many ventured out near the active flows. Not only did you have to worry about the heat, but it was filled with fissures, and hills with thin crusts leading into deep lava tubes. It was dangerous but it was filled with nickel, zinc, copper, and other metals that were very valuable.

While his size kept him from being a good hunter or fisherman, it was perfect for getting around near the flow. He was light enough not to fall through the thin crust around the magma bubbles, and small enough to slip into fissures and climb into tubes where nobody else could reach. Before long he was one of the most successful mineral hunters on the island. What he couldn’t trade to the Kanaka, he would sell to the people of Pu’u, and he became very wealthy.

Months later, his mother received a message that Lili needed her. Figuring that he was in trouble again, she hurried to The Mission. When she arrived she was met by finely dressed Kanaka who took her to a large house. It was beautiful, with intricate wood carvings, roasting pits filled with boar, and bowls of fresh fruit. As she looked around Lili came up beside her. She asked who could afford such a lavish house. Lili just smiled and said, “We can.” She could hardly believe her eyes, or her ears, when he explained what he was doing. Her eyes filled with tears of gratitude for her son, but said she could not allow him to keep doing something so dangerous for her. Before she could protest anymore Lili hugged her tight and said, “there’s nothing your little Lili wouldn’t do for you.”

Akamai Mahelona
4th Grade
Pu`u School Lahaina

The Story of the Veil Stop Farmers

Everyone makes mistakes, and my grandpa says it’s ok to make mistakes as long as you learn from them. One of my favorite stories about learning from your mistakes is the story of the Veil Stop Farmers. It teaches kids and adults that you always have to be cautious, even if you think everything is ok, and that you should to listen to legends even if you don’t think they are completely true.

Frank and Dawn Aikola worked with my grandpa and many of the other Pu’u founders before the big accident. Dawn was one of Veilcorp’s best engineers. My grandpa says she was one of the smartest people he ever knew, but that didn’t matter when the fracture happened, nobody was smart enough to stop it.

Dawn was outside in the garden when the ground started shaking and the explosions started. Frank ran out to get her and said they had to go to the emergency shelter. They ran out to the road and saw lots of other people running to where the shelter was. Then Dawn stopped and said she forgot her ring and ran back to the house. Frank tried to stop her but she ran fast. It’s a good thing she went back. When they came back outside they saw that the road had split apart and the people fell into a deep crevice. After that they called it her lucky ring, and Dawn never took it off.

The Aikola’s where one of the founding families of Pu’u. Along with my grandpa and others, they got the power working, fixed the water purifiers, and built the walls. There weren’t many machines that Dawn couldn’t fix, but after a while the macadamia trees stopped making nuts, and the taro started to die. Nobody knew how to fix them, not even Dawn. The Kanaka gave us different kinds of taro plants and medicine for the trees but the people of Pu’u couldn’t wait, they needed food now.

Then one day Dawn was looking at an old Veil Stop station near the school and had an idea. Before the accident people used the veil station to travel across the world, but soon they got really lazy and decided they wanted to travel all over the island without walking too. There were only a few Veil Stops at first, but eventually they made a whole bunch of them because people wanted them everywhere. Dawn remembered that one of them was just North of the Hana taro farm.

Even though the farm is only a little over a mile away, nobody had tried to start another community there. It’s dangerous to go outside of the walls, even a little. The Kanaka have lots of legends about dangerous places, but they consider Hana farm one of the worst and warn everyone not to go there. But the people were desperate and needed food. Dawn’s plan was to see if she could get the Veil Stop near the farm working again, so they could use the farm to grow food and not have to walk through the dangerous forest.

Dawn’s team made it to the farm and found the Veil Stop. It wasn’t too damaged and in a couple hours Dawn had it almost fixed but they needed a little piece of wire. Instead of trying to walk back, she had an idea. She slipped off her ring and wedged it where she needed the wire. Back in Pu’u the Veil Stop sprang to life. Dawn and her group appeared; her lucky ring worked again! She grabbed the wire she needed and some seeds and they all went back.

Over the next few months, the people of Pu’u got Hana Farm running again. Eventually people started staying out there everyday and just sending the vegetables in big baskets through the Veil Stop. Dawn was out there a lot fixing things and working on an irrigation system, but she came back every night because Frank was worried that something would happen.

After a while there was a rumor that a big boat had beached on the other side of the island, so Frank had to leave with some other scouts to check it out. He told Dawn that he’d be back in a week or two and told her to be careful. The next few days Dawn spent almost all her time at the farm, and by the end of the week she was staying out there overnight. It was the peak of the harvest so all the farmers were staying at the farm until all the crops were picked. It seemed like the baskets got bigger everyday. Eventually one of the baskets came with a note that they needed more help, so three more volunteers went through the Veil Stop to the farm.

The next day the same thing happened, and a few more people went to work. Nobody who had left came back, but the baskets were so big that nobody thought anything was wrong. Then Frank came back one evening and found that Dawn was gone. He got worried when the people told him that she’d been working at the farm for days without coming home. Before he could walk through the Veil Stop another big bunch of baskets came through. Again there was a note that the farmers needed more help, but this time Frank noticed something, one of the baskets had a spot of dried blood.

When Frank and the other scouts finally got to the farm the sun was coming up. They didn’t see anyone in the fields or hear anyone or anything. All the birds were quiet and the fields were covered in fog. They searched the big house and found clothes but no people. They looked in the barn but that was empty too. Finally, when they walked out to the Veil Stop they found something. It was Dawn’s lucky ring, lying in the dirt.

The scouts spread out and hid all day waiting to see who was sending the vegetables but nobody showed up. They were just about to leave when they saw someone pushing a cart through the field. For a minute Frank thought it was Dawn, but as the woman got closer he saw that she was covered in leaves and vines. Just as she was getting close she stopped and began to look around. Frank stood up and yelled at her to stop. The woman let out a loud hiss and the plants around her began to move. It was a green lady. She ran at one of the scouts while everyone screamed and shots rang out. She reached the scout before he could escape, and the others watched as she fled into the forest dragging the screaming scout behind.

They never found her, the scout, or any of the others, including Dawn, and when they searched the cart they found another note. My grandpa says the green lady had been ordering up people like pizza, but he says lots of weird things. Even though they missed Dawn and all the others, what happened to the Veil Stop Farmers taught the people some important lessons: Our scouts now make face-to-face contact with outposts every few days. Everyone who goes outside the wall gets a password you have to remember and include in anything you write, and we’re careful of places that scare the Kanaka. One day I want to get rid of all the green ladies. I won’t end up like the Veil Stop Farmers because I learned from their mistakes.

Akamai Mahelona
4th Grade
Pu`u School Lahaina

The Legend of Floppy Finn and the Bone Garden

The people who first came to the island brought a lot of things with them like food and tools, but they also brought the idea of sacred places. Long ago there were all kinds of springs, creeks, and mountains that were supposed to hold powers or let you talk to spirits. The big accident destroyed a lot of things from the past like the roads and buildings, but the idea of sacred places survived. Today lots of people hold places like Black Rock Beach or the Augustinian Cliffs sacred. They are places that teach us about the people who came before us and life lessons. This is a story about one of the scariest, the Bone Garden, and a carver who broke the rules of this scary sacred place.

There was no doubt about it, Finn was born to be a carver. Before the fracture, Finn’s tutu was a famous artist and people came from all around to buy her carvings. She passed this talent down to Finn’s father and eventually to him. They say Finn made his first machete handle before he could even walk. But he wasn’t just good at making weapon grips and before long people started to notice.

Finn started out working with wood but eventually, he learned that he was meant to work with bone. He could carve a totem as big as one of the Kanaka warriors out of a whale rib in an afternoon. He could make a fishing arrow out of a deer leg in minutes and his bear bone carvings looked so realistic people said you could hear them roar. Everyone wanted Finn to carve them something and the orders started to pile up. That’s when the trouble began.

Finn was really good at carving but he was also very lazy. Bones are hard to get. Deer are fast and wary. Wolves and bears have good senses and are dangerous to hunt, and the only way to get whale bones is to wait for one to beach itself. It wasn’t long before Finn had used up all the bones he could find on this part of the island but he still had lots of things to make. That’s when he got the idea about looking for bones in the Bone Garden.

Every group of people has their own way of saying goodbye to a loved one after they die. The Kanaka believe that dead people should be returned to the water and bury each other at sea. We Thrivers recycle the dead in machines, but a long time ago they used to bury people in the ground or burn them up to ashes. One of the biggest problems for people who lived through the big accident was what to do with all the dead people. There wasn’t enough room or time to bury them all, and there weren’t enough trees to burn them all up. It wasn’t healthy to have dead people everywhere so everyone decided to put them in a nearby valley.

The people put their loved ones and neighbors there and anything else that reminded them of the way the world used to be. It wasn’t long before the plants and vines started to grow around the bodies. They say that first spring the most beautiful flowers the island has ever seen grew amongst the memories and the lost. They named the valley the Bone Garden. People said you could hear the spirits there if you listened closely and that the Night Marchers tended the flowers at night. It became one of the most sacred places on the island and everyone treated it with respect, everybody that is but Finn.

With all the bones piled up there, Finn figured that he’d be able to find all the knife handles and materials he needed. He thought a few femurs would work great to fill orders and he could probably even use a humerus or two. His friends were horrified when he told them his plan and they tried to warn him, but Finn wouldn’t listen. He headed out to the Bone Garden the next morning and came back before noon with a bag of bones to carve.

That night his neighbors heard drums and shouting from the jungle. When they looked out they saw lights moving in the Bone Garden and they knew the Night Marchers would discover that Finn had disturbed the sacred place. As the drums got louder and the lights got closer they all ran inside hoping the marchers would leave them alone. It wasn’t long until they could hear footsteps outside and then Finn. His screams lasted all night.

Finn was still alive when they found him in the morning. The garden’s protectors had taken his carving knives and removed all the bones in his arms and legs to replace the ones he took. When he died a few minutes later the people laid his remains and all of his tools in the Bone Garden to make sure the spirits didn’t return.

After that day, parents would tell their children the story of Floppy Finn to make sure they knew to respect the island’s sacred places, and never take anything from the Bone Garden. I’d never get in trouble like Finn because I know that polycarbonate is stronger and makes better handles than bone. I also think touching an old person’s bones is gross.

Akamai Mahelona
4th Grade
Pu`u School Lahaina

How Tiki Idols Helped Everyone Work Together

In the past, before my grandpa and his friends made everything safe on the hill, people would carve tiki idols to help them remember people or stories. Some of the idols were even gods. Nobody in Pu`u think the idols are gods anymore, but they still help us deal with the people down below and remember the way things used to be.

A long, long, time ago people on the islands didn’t have cameras or books so when they wanted to remember something they’d carve an idol. The idols would be a way for the people to remember all of their grandparents or explain how something happened, like how people were made. For a long time people would learn about their history or religion with the help of the idols.

Some of the idols were made of stone but most were carved out of wood. The idols could be bigger than a person sometimes, but most weren’t. Some of the idols had lots of patterns carved into them or even bright colors. Even though some of the idols were supposed to be people they didn’t look very realistic, but they would usually have something special carved into them so you could tell who or what it was supposed to be.

When people got smarter and stopped believing that birds could talk, or that people were made of dirt, they stopped praying to them. They still carved the idols because they were cool to look at but people could look at pictures of old people to remember them. They had science to answer questions about where people came from so they didn’t need the idols anymore.

When the veils broke everyone was really scared. Only smart people like my grandpa had things that worked because they were prepared. The people got together in groups to help each other and protect themselves from Night Marchers and Green Ladies. The people on the hill all worked together but the people below fought a lot and would try to steal if you didn’t watch them. The worst were the people who got sick and ugly. They would usually fight and they would always try and steal things, especially guns.

Rai stones helped all the people get along better and some of the fighting stopped but things were still bad. Everyone on the hill wished that the people below would be better and act right but they didn’t know what to do. Then someone thought about how tiki idols helped people remember rules and learn about things.

The people on the hill talked to the people down below including the ugly people about what rules would be best for everyone. They made idols that had little bits of everyone, even sharp teeth for the ones who got sick. They agreed that the idols would be a symbol of getting along. The people on the hill told the dumber people that the idols were watching everyone and would punish anybody not following the rules. After that, things were much better.

Tiki idols help us keep the people down below from being bad and help us remember how hard working together used to be. Even though we lied about the idols watching over everyone, it was a good lie like when you tell your mom that your room is clean so you can practice shooting. I’m glad that someone remembered tiki idols and that all the people down below believe in them.

Akamai Mahelona
Pu`u School Lahaina

4th Grade

Why We Use Rai For Money

A long time ago there were no Tourist camps to trade with or Night Marchers, Menehune or even Green Ladies in the jungle. Everything worked everywhere not just up here on the hill. Everyone used money that was paper or on little plastic cards, but a long time before that people used things called Rai stones.

The Rai stones were carved out of limestone and they looked like wheels. Sometimes they were bigger than people but sometimes they were small enough to carry. Big ones or ones that looked good were worth more than others. There were even ones that were so big that they were really hard to move so people just had to remember who they belonged to.

When the Veil fractured lots of things changed. There were smart people like my grandpa who worked hard and knew that they couldn’t count on anyone to help them. They had lots of batteries and good strong fences. When things stopped working people like him kept things running up here so their families could have good lives but it wasn’t easy.

Some people down below weren’t careful so lots of them died. Some people were traveling and they got really sick and ugly but they could still speak if you talked to them. Some of them turned into monsters and started living in the jungle. That’s why it’s important to never go outside the fence unless you’re with an adult.

Everything went fine on the hill for a while but soon they started running out of food and they needed stuff to recycle to fix things or make new guns to kill the monsters. My grandpa and his friends knew where to find things down below but the Kanaka were always fighting with them or asking for guns that they couldn’t be trusted with. Nobody knew what to do.

Some people still used the paper money on the hill but lots of people just used it for starting fires outside the fence. The plastic cards didn’t work because everyone had to agree what they were worth and nobody could agree. Then someone remembered Rai stones. It was easy for people to agree on what the stones were worth and they were hard to lose and wouldn’t get wet in the rain. Even the Kanaka agreed.

Now when we clean the Kanaka’s water or give them things they want but can’t get into trouble with, we subtract it from the big stone next to their camp and when they give us food we add it. Everyone here on the hill uses little Rai stones when we buy things and so does everyone on the island. Rai stones helped people not fight and agree on things. Rai stones are an important part of our history. When I’m older I want a lot of Rai stones.

Akamai Mahelona
4th Grade
Pu`u School Lahaina

The Legend of Mark, the Last Hailoha Driver

A long time ago when everything still worked and my grandpa was young, there were roads paved with something called asphalt everywhere and most people had cars. If you wanted to go somewhere nearby, you’d get into your car by yourself or with a bunch of people and just drive there. That worked good most of the time but sometimes people drank too much or they were really tired and driving was dangerous. People were getting hurt a lot so they decided it would be better to have drivers take you where you needed to go. Back then you could use phones to talk to other people and make the drivers come to where you were. There were lots of drivers on the island but the best one was Mark.

Like a lot of the old things the drivers went away when the veils fractured, but some people say that Mark and his car survived. Nobody knows how he made it, since he wasn’t on the hill with the rest of the smart people. Some say he was a scientist and knew how to protect himself. Others say he made a deal with the spirits on the island. According to the stories if you’re on Front street during a new moon you might see Mark driving his car. Some people say that you need to have a working phone to make him stop but others say you just truly need to get somewhere to catch his attention.

Mark’s car is black so it’s hard to see and it doesn’t make any noise. It is made out of a special metal that can’t be dented and nothing happens if you shoot it. The tires never go flat too. He has been up and down Front street so many times that he doesn’t need to use the lights on his car. Mark just knows where the bad spots are and drives around them. It’s easy for him to drive right past someone without them noticing so you have to pay real close attention if you go and look for him. He knows what’s in each building he drives past, so you can’t surprise him.

They say that Mark can tell if someone is good or bad and bad people who try to get Mark to take them somewhere never arrive. If you’re good, Mark will protect you and bring you where you need to go. You never have to tell Mark where you want to go he just knows somehow. All the monsters who live in the jungle are scared of Mark especially the Menehune. According to the stories, any Menehune who see Mark turn into wood, but that seems like a lie to me, so it’s probably not true.

If Mark stops to give you a ride you have to pay him and he doesn’t accept rai stones. The stories say that Mark’s favorite things are cigarettes and Manimal drinks. He will take you anywhere you want if you have enough of those, but he’ll accept other things too. Some of the other things that Mark will take for payment include: canned food, old books, honey, alcohol, or even jokes and good stories.

Even though Mark is mostly good in the stories (unless you’re a bad person) he has some rules that you have to follow. If Mark stops to pick you up, you have to give him his payment right away. He doesn’t like to ask for payment. He likes listening to old music in his car. If you try and talk over the old music or ask him to turn it down he’ll stop the car and make you get out. If you complain, he’ll honk the horn to let all the monsters and bandits know where you are. Mark has a bowl filled with peppermint candies in his car that he shares with anyone that he takes for a ride. You can take one of the candies but only one. If you take more, he’ll take you where he takes bad people and you’ll never be seen again.

Mark The Hailoha Driver is a good story but the only person I know who says he’s real is my Grandpa and sometimes he lies to me so I’m not sure. There might have been a guy named Mark who did all that stuff after everything broke, but my dad says Front street is really dangerous so Mark would have to be really tough, tougher than my dad. I think it would be awesome if there really was a Mark. When I get older I want to go down to Front street on a new moon and look for him, but probably with some other people.

Akamai Mahelona
4th Grade
Pu`u School Lahaina