Passing up
free drinks

Kaneloa's head went giddy as he was swept along with the adoring throng leaving the Tuber Bowl, where he'd just dazzled the post-game crowd, including the lovely Princess Tuberosa La'a, with this drumming, chanting, dancing and nose-fluting. She'd then tossed tuberose petals toward him, a sign that he was hand-picked to become her husband.

What would his parents back in Oahu say? Or his friend Puka, who'd given up the journey at Bellows, calling him a doofus for following the call of the Great King's bones?

"Our future king!" people called as he passed.

Watching from the edge of the crowd, Prince To'o the seer whispered to one of the Kane priests, "I must join the royal family in confirming Kaneloa's selection. It is not, I'm afraid, the slam dunk everyone assumes. Meanwhile, follow him. Let's see if this goes to the young man's head."

The priest was pleased to see Kaneloa ignore calls from the surging revelers for him to join them at the kava bar -- drinks were on them! Kaneloa brushed past, saying thank you, but he had something he needed do.

Following from a distance as Kaneloa walked alone to the far end of the Royal Rotunda, the priest smiled as he paused at the Chapel of the Iwi, the resting place of the bones of Kamehameha the Great since that moonless November night in 1819.

Entering, Kaneloa marveled at the Great King's foresight, how he could see the old ways in which he believed about to be washed away by endless waves of Western influence. And so, after his "chance" encounter as a young man with the Tuber Border Patrol, and a meeting first with the king and later with his daughter, producing a child, Kamehameha made an agreement with the Tubers to offer his mana for the continued protection of the Hawaiian culture that was thriving underground, and to all who perpetuated the old ways. Kaneloa prostrated himself before the ka'ai resting on the Rock of Ages altar, offering thanks to the king for allowing him to be of service. Watching from the doorway, the Kane priest was even more pleased. How could such a man not make a great king for the sacred La'a princess?

The priest heard Kaneloa speaking, leaned in to better hear, but it was a jumble of echo mumbles in the chamber.

Kaneloa stood, whirled to go, quickly recovered from the shock of the snooping priest's presence. "Priest, hurry to the royal chambers, tell them the mo'o is returning, and an even greater danger."

At that moment the princess was in tears. If she knew of the danger into which her beloved was putting himself, she'd have cried for that. Instead, she wept bitterly because her mother the queen was saying the wedding was off, that Kaneloa was unworthy. And because she was contemplating the unthinkable -- abdicating the throne.