Moloka'i (Moloka'i, #1)

by Alan Brennert

Before Cook’s arrival the native population of Hawai'i was more than a quarter of a million people; a hundred years later, it had plummeted to fewer than sixty thousand.

To see the infinite pity of this place, The mangled limb, the devastated face, The innocent sufferers smiling at the rod, A fool were tempted to deny his God. He sees, and shrinks; but if he look again, Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!— He marks the sisters on the painful shores, And even a fool is silent and adores.

‘There is beauty,’ she said, ‘in the least beautiful of things.’ ”

“I’ll tell you what I believe in,” she said. “I believe in the 'āina—the land and the sea and the air around us. When our ancestors first saw the fury of the surf or the angry fire spitting from volcanoes, they saw that there was a power to these things that they could not explain. They knew they had mana—power. And they do. Can you look at the beauty around us, Aouli, and doubt that there is mana in this crater, and in the land and sea and sky that surround it?” “No,” Rachel allowed. “No land is more beautiful,” Haleola said, “and therefore more powerful. That is what I believe in, Aouli. I believe in Hawai'i. I believe in the land.”