Kaulana Ing
Uli of the New Moon
Chapter 1
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It wasn’t the ornate family gods carved into the bowl’s base that gave it away, their eyes and mouths open wide and their hands upturned. It wasn’t even the intricate butterfly-shaped inlays that mended fault lines rendered by the hardwood’s expanding and contracting under the wetness of centuries of such ceremonies. No, even details like these could be forged in reclamators by Moananuiākea’s most talented matterform sculptors.
Emalani no Wairua had come to understand, through the teachings of her inheritance, that the authenticity of the heirloom before her was validated not by the age of its atomic structure, but by the affirmations shared among those who sat cross-legged in two wide circles around its perimeter.
Each participant recognized the ʻawa that pooled in the bowl's polished basin as one of many physical avatars of Tāne, a prime deity in the pantheon of natural forces. Each was taught the names of legendary kinfolk who had dipped their ovate ʻapu cups into such drink in generations prior.
It was this shared and hidden meaning, this kaona, that imbued the object at the center of her rite with its sacredness, she knew. In this new world, old world matter was a matter of agreement.
Kaona dripped from the unbroken epic the family chanter recited in the high poetic language of ceremonial oratory. Sustained for hours, the frequency of his vibrato was meant to lodge the genealogical recounting into the brain, a powerful mnemonic ear worm.
The baritone drone drew ripples across the surface of the ʻawa as it traveled over the bowl’s thin lathed walls, to where Ema sat beside her elder mentor. She watched concentric circles form and unsettle root sediment into opaque clouds in the earth-hued liquid. She listened with her whole self, perched atop the heels of lithe legs neatly folded in the form of intentional sitting known as noho hohonu, spine perpendicular to her homeland, palms on copper-skinned thighs.
Opposite the bowl, her sister, ʻIlima, sat in the common style and, after every four stanzas, dutifully strained ʻawa mash through coconut fiber mesh, intensifying the drink’s euphoric qualities. To her sister’s left her uncle chanted, and on her right, in the head seat of haku, sat Ema’s father Hākaʻi, a wide-chested man, neck bent in relaxed reverence, his elbows in the palms of massive hands.
Sitting four strides outside the five were forty more members of her kauhale, the closest among her extended family township, who loved and raised and now encircled her upon the mat of fine makaloa reeds they had woven for this day. The shawls they wore over their summer finery were pure white to represent the open mind of wisdom, clasped by a kukui candlenut above the left shoulder.
Beyond the circle of forty sat a circle of eighty-eight, also in dress whites: representatives from the various kauhale that populated the vast Iwi of Wairua. They wore their hair shaved at the temples to showcase the delicate black kikiko tattoos that adorned the skin there: geometric shapes a bit larger than freckles in single-file, centered between ear and eye. Each bore a sequence unique to the genealogical branch of their kauhale, regional variations on the standard motif borne by all four-hundred thousand members of the Iwi.
From outside and above them all, hardwood limbs of a huge milo tree arched into the room, extending offerings of yellow flowers and heart-shaped leaves to the occasion. Twenty years ago to the day, the tree was but a shoot, planted with Ema’s freshly severed umbilical cord and weaned on her afterbirth.
Father had lovingly designed the program that had re-architected the meeting house around her birth-tree for this day, the measured lines and arcs of the minimalist structure following the Principles of Harmony. Walls of jadeite metastone trimmed in fragrant ʻiliahi wood, deeds and names laser-etched into their polished faces, opened generously to invite the participation of the winds and lands that were her most ancient ancestors.
The scent of the dew-tipped hāpuʻu ferns that wafted in from the sacred grove of Temāna. The sibilant whisper of the Koʻoū winds, thick with the moist cool of the uplands. All of Wairua seemed to hunch inward in sensual anticipation, wet and glistening in the deep green glory of the rainy season.
Even as Ema absorbed all these sensory details, her intentions remained fixed on the ceremony at hand. Kilo, the constant observation. She had made the practice her nature. The partitioned mind: one part aimed backward, logging details for fidelity of recall, the other part aimed forward, on task and application. All senses opened.
It was as she had been trained by the stern man who sat in similar acuity to her left. Deep ravines, carved by decades of contemplation, converged into dark squints above his sharp mahogany cheekbones. Gray, wavy locks marbled the brilliant white top-knot that crowned his statuesque skull. The renowned stoic, Wilcox no Wairua.
A lifetime spent learning from this man, and still I’ve only just begun to know him, Ema thought to herself.
Pre-dusk sun poured in and bathed the white-clad witnesses in gold. Yet at the center of all the radiant life that rippled from their position, Ema and Wilcox were ebon stones. A rare and potent darkness in a society that sought enlightenment. Living shadows of wisdom past.
Their visage was that of Pō, of the shadow realm beyond life. Epics inked in ornate geometries blanketed their skin from cranial temples to navel. Their tattoos bled on past the kikiko on their temples, framing their jawlines, meeting at the chin, and throttling the entirety of their necks in crow black filigree before sprawling beneath the low banded collars of their onyx formal shirts. Skin that seemed to drink and tame the photonic frenzy of light. It was the distinguishing mark of their Order.
Ema’s forearms still stung from the most recently completed blackwork, the dull pain in the aftermath of tapped needles demanding her singular commitment. It was a permanent contrast that Ema wholly accepted.
Syncopated drips of another ʻawa pulp rinse and the orator's dry and sudden inhale pulled Ema’s awareness back into herself. His chant boomed on:
“Born was the weaver, Welo-a-ka-Uli-lau-lani,
Shimmer in the wake of Huna-o-ka-Uli-uli-pō.
Stripped thorns that held the hala leaves from reach,
And wove constellations across the expanse of Tanaroa.”
Stanza 209, one of her favorites. Only five generations left before history meets us in the now, she noted. Ema sent slow, purposeful pulses of conscious calm from her head to her toes, purging the anticipatory cortisol that crept into her muscles with each passing verse.
Soon, the orator intoned the concluding refrain. All clapped twice in learned unison to acknowledge the passage of protocol. Hūkaʻi lifted his bowed head and opened his eyes slowly, savoring for a moment the still of the room before addressing the collective.
“The torch of knowledge is strung with the wisdom of ancestors past. Eight-hundred sweet-scented candlenuts blaze their light each upon the path of their living descendants. The torch weighs heavy on the outstretched arm of its bearer.” Hūkaʻi placed his hand on the shoulder of his daughter’s mentor.
“For eighty years, this great man, Inscendent Arbiter Wilcox Huna-o-ka-lamakū-o-Uli,” Hūkaʻi squeezed, “has walked among us as darkness to advance his Iwi along the unbroken path of enlightenment. He is the ʻiwa bird that sees all from the zenith, the ʻulua that navigates the deepest sea. He is the ancestors living.”
Kaona. When used in conversation, entire histories could be encoded in a three-word allusion. Efficient shorthand, ad lib codex. But the kaona Father offered today was mostly ornamental.
Ema allowed herself the slightest of smirks. To Wilcox, “decorative metaphor was an affront to economy,” he had once told her, especially metaphor of the mixed variety. But she was grateful for the pageantry with which Father invoked traditional family sayings in rapid succession. It was a ray of familiarity after five hours of tense ceremony.
“To be honored to consult his depths as one seeking knowledge is to be the thirsty traveler comforted by the black of the well. Countless in-hours has this exalted man spent in the deep beneath the realm of the living, communing with the ancestors, nexus to the dual-path knowledge.”
34,680,248 in-hours, to be exact, Ema thought reflexively. Her revered mentor, source of her knowledge — her kumu — had taught her how time passed slower in the realm of ancestral memory.
On the outside, Wilcox’s unmoving posture seemed to regard the string of gratuitous honorifics with austere indifference. But fermented intensity bubbled deep beneath his dark unblinking eyes.
Hūkaʻi continued. “It is this heavy burden of Uli for which we thank our renowned kinsmen. From the akua on high, to the aumakua beyond, to the kūpuna who guide, we acknowledge the kuleana he has shouldered for our Iwi.”
All 128 attendees clapped twice at the call-and-response prompt, their collective gaze locked on Wilcox: “In the calm of night, the ancestors speak.”
“Now it is time for the burden of the palanquin to be shared. We gather here today, in the shade of the tree planted by my hand in the earth that holds her family’s bones, to witness the inscendence of Scion Emalani no Wairua, next in the Order of Uli.”
All 128 sets of eyes shifted from elder to successor, and Ema felt the weight of expectation transfer with them. Years of preparation would culminate today in one big leap from theory to praxis.
He placed both palms on the floormat to lift his crossed legs and turn himself to face his daughter.
“Wisdom of many bound to one, she is the coral reef that becomes an island.” Memory welled in Father's eyes. He cleared his throat. “Her first year, the glimmer of gifted awareness. Wilcox took her then in hanai, raised her as his own in the ways of the Order. Discipline of body. Pureness of understanding. Filial constancy. Today we recognize her as master of the common competencies, nexus of mysteries, and reliquary of wisdom — a reflection of her kumu, her kumu’s kumu, and the kumu before them.”
Wilcox craned his head back bull necked, a rare expression of pride.
“It is in our veneration for the unbroken lineage to which all who are gathered here belong that we entrust the ancestral memories of 10,000 years to the naʻau of Emalani no Wairua. She who bears the scar of the enteric plexus. Who wears the black ink of Tanaroa. Bear witness to the successful growth of our collective knowledge. We lend our mana to the Scion.”
The soft gaze he directed at his daughter, she knew, was meant to convey support and pride. But her Kilo training also revealed the fear hidden in the tension of his inner brow.
Failure would mean an end to our branch of the Order. It could mean brain-death, she thought. Ema stacked the columns of her spine. Failure is not an option.
“May the cycle of wisdom grow as it turns, forever and ever. E ulu!” In unison all responded in-kind, “E ulu!” and clapped 128 sets of cupped hands.
Father took one final, long, deep breath, recalling his baby’s features in the face of the young woman who now sat before him. Her lips were fuller. Her cheekbones, sharper. Her nose ridge, tall and flat like a rising cliff. She was beauty and strength. But the glimmer of aloha still lived in her amber eyes.
Then he bowed again, his eyes from hers and down to the mat upon which they sat, and began the chant of ʻawa service.
Sister agitated the drink with three artful stirs before filling the honored first cup. She held it above her head in two palms, her eyes downturned, and duckwalked to the revered elder in a show of ceremonial piety. She knelt before him, cup full.
Wilcox took his ʻapu, dipped a finger in the dark-polished ovoid vessel, and flicked a drop toward the ancestral deities in each of the four cardinal directions. Then he quaffed the sacred drink in one swift gulp and handed it back to the waiting attendant.
Ema was next. She remembered days spent joking and singing with the girl who now knelt solemnly before her. We both have our roles to play now, she thought. She dipped, flicked, and quaffed. The ʻawa tasted of earth. Her tongue tingled with a numbness that slowly crept into her muscles. It calmed the body but left the mind clear.
As father Hūkaʻi continued the chant, sister ʻIlima served those in the inner circle. After each imbibed, they scooted themself off the makaloa mat until all sat just beyond its perimeter, each family member feeling the same tingle of ʻawa embracing their muscles, their collective purpose having migrated from the mental to the physical.
Father drank last and then joined the outer circle to represent Ema’s family's kauhale. Uncle picked up the chant and the half-emptied ancient bowl. Sister walked with him to the edge of the woven circle mat, leaving Ema with her mentor alone in its center.
Hūkaʻi began addressing his fellow delegates in the outer circle, initiating the next phase of ceremony. ʻIlima, walking now on her knees, began rolling the makaloa mat in on itself and toward the opposite edge. Ema and Wilcox stepped over the growing trundle and sat back down upon its absence as ʻIlima reached the mat's center and passed between them. ʻIlima stowed the rolled mat and resumed the ʻawa service to the delegates of the outer circle.
Revealed in the absence of the natural mat of hand-woven flaxen reeds was a plane altogether unnatural. A dark and mysterious void.
A circular lens of abyssal black, ten wide strides in diameter, focused on the two remaining kinsmen like the dilated pupil of some ancient, giant god. Framed by two rings of witnesses clad in sclera-white, it was as if Tanaroa himself fixed his suspicion on yet another human who dared to trespass the death gates of Pō.
Salt water, alive with currents and eddies, surged up against the metaglass upon which Ema sat perched. The localized sea was only one arms-length deep, she knew. And the oily black substrate beneath the water, she knew, was solid. Still, the illusion of the bottomless ocean pulled a primitive part of her awareness into its gravity. She focused and regained her equilibrium.
Ema uncoiled her bent legs and, as a dancer executing learned choreography, laid herself onto her back at the focal center of the dark glass-capped sea. She aligned her torso's center with the circle's and assumed the Second Repose of Meditation. Her forefingers and thumbs formed an inverted diamond that framed her navel. Her head pointed north, to those before, and her feet pointed south, toward those on the path to come.
Wilcox stood up and above his pupil, and stared down into her eyes for ten intent seconds. In those ten seconds, ten years of preparation communicated in silent knowing. Then he turned, without word or gesture, and left her in his confidence, lying alone.
Ema slowed her breath and gathered her attention. Trust the practice. Clear the mind. It is time.
The metaglass responded to the precise position of her lone body, and a pixel of gold blinked into the glass one stride north of where Ema's head lay. Two thin lines of golden light shot out from the pixel in opposing directions, tracing the symmetrical vectors of a flat egg in the metaglass: narrow near the shoulders and wider near the hips. The golden vectors rejoined south of Ema's feet, and then shot back north as a single longitude, cutting through the glass just beneath her spine.
The egg shape lowered itself in relief beneath the rest of the pupillary pane. Its two hemispheres bisected along the central longitude, opening to the sea below. Salt air hissed through the crack. Ema felt the cold oceanwater soaking through her clothing.
Then, from beneath the shallow sea, the unnatural black substrate began to morph. It stretched upward, smooth and primordial, like an amoeba toward oxygen. It cupped saltwater in its depressed center as it rose toward Ema, pushing through the ovate opening like oily black dough through a cookie cutter.
Ema felt herself rise in the cradle of the black ovoid as its base tapered into the sleek, three-dimensional form of a half-egg. The metaglass sealed itself again to the sea below, and the half-egg balanced there, a single point on the glass, on an impossibly asymmetrical center of mass.
In the black ʻapu, Ema floated easily on the supersaturated salt water. As she lay swaddled in brine pulled from the deepest oceans at the foot of the Iwi of Wairua, the eighty-eight delegates of her inhabitants sipped ʻawa strained with the cool fresh water from her highest mountain peak.
Fresh water, the purview of the life-giving god Tāne.
Salt water, the domain of the ocean god Tanaroa, god of the mysterious depths, of the unknown beyond the reach of light.
Above her, she watched the violet-gold light of dusk flutter against the waxy sides of milo leaves on the bough of her birth tree. But below the horizon formed by the rim of her cradle, light did not exist. There was only black.
Still, she could make out the voices rising from the outer circle. Ema had visualized the ceremony hundreds of times in preparation for this day, and could visualize now what was taking place beyond her vessel's walls.
One-by-one, she knew, ʻIlima fed ʻawa to each delegate. After each returned their ʻapu to the kneeling attendant, they joined their voice to the chant, adding their harmony to the chorus. She could visualize their kikiko glowing gold, neural wetware activated, as each delegate focused their intentions on the rite at hand.
By the time the last set of temples glowed gold, the chant had reached a crescendo that resonated into Ema's bones.
Triggered by the sound of consensus, the black oily matter of the bowl began to morph. Ema watched her black horizon rise in on itself, slowly enveloping her into the egg. The chant of reassurance retreated in kind.
When the two walls touched, all light became shut from her experience. All sound gone. The winds, the smells of flora, absent. For any of her relatives, the complete sensory deprivation would have been disorienting. But for a practitioner of Kilo, it was terrifying.
In the nothingness of the womb, there was only herself to be found. She became hyper aware of every twitch of her muscle fibers. Her reddish hair floating atop. The sounds of water echoing in her ear canals like a child hears ocean tides in the cavity of a cowry shell. The saltiness pulling moisture from her lips. Her existence became a deafening noise.
Remember your training. You have prepared for this. She took a long slow inhale and focused her senses, pulled her awareness into the sanctity of her mind.
She imagined her orientation in the land outside the void. Head north. Feet south. In the meeting house. At the center of her kauhale. In the uplands of Tamaʻehu, the largest in the constellation of islands that comprised the Iwi of Wairua. She plotted her exact position against these coordinates, and the work of mapping gave her comfort.
Simplify! She quelled the mental labor but held onto the centering. Now she grasped for a mantra upon which to refocus, and clutched the first that came to her: The void is absence.
The void is absence. She aimed to relate to its absence, to quiet her mind. The draw of ocean upon which she floated was absent its natural rise and fall. Even the ocean, she thought, had learned to be still. Still, the moon pulled on it as surely as it did her own blood, and —
Quiet! Fruitless reverie would only distract her from her goal. It was something Wilcox might have said. She remembered her first lesson: breath. Hā. The fundamental force of life. She breathed.
A deep inhale through her nose. Her breasts crested above the water. Six seconds.
She held the air in her belly. Her abdomen filled and floated. Eight seconds.
Then she released, a measured release from a trained diaphragm, even. The air made no sound as it escaped her nose. Ten seconds.
She became the current. Her breast cresting, her abdomen filling and falling, and then rolling back to her nose.
Inhale. Hold. Exhale.
Twenty cycles. Forty. Still nothing.
Yet she resisted the urge to return to her thoughts. She focused on each breath until she was nothing but the breath. And then she released her focus. No longer was there breath and Ema. In presence, she became absence.
And then it happened: the drop.
…
Kaulana Ing is a Kanaka ʻŌiwi writer and Hawaiian national. His work is inspired by the many Pasifika leaders he has supported in his two decades as a grantmaker focused on Hawaiian and Pacific islander community-led nonprofits and grassroots movements for justice. He lives in Wahiawā, Oʻahu, where he and his ʻohana work to support reforestation, cultural wellbeing, ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, and food sovereignty.
Photo by staff