Read Online Queen Liliuokalani: Royal Prisoner by Ann Hood - Free Book Online

swallow and leaned back. Maybe this wouldn’t be too terrible, he thought. He only hoped he wouldn’t get seasick, the way he usually did.
    As the canoe glided across the waves, Lydia and Emma started to weave flowers into Maisie’s and each other’s hair. The sky quickly grew dark, and Lydia sang a Hawaiian song in the sweetest voice Maisie had ever heard. With the fragrant flowers in her hair, and her stomach full of the snacks that got passed around, Maisie stared up at the starry sky above them.
    “What a pretty song, Lydia,” Maisie said. “What does it mean?”
    Instead of answering, Lydia began to sing again, this time in English.
    “Profuse bloom glowing as a delight, and lei for Kamakaeha,” she sang.
    “It’s her song,” Emma whispered to Maisie.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Konia, her
hanai
mother, wrote it for her. It’s her name song,” Emma explained.
    Maisie knew she had heard the word
hanai
before, but she couldn’t remember what it meant.
    “Hanai?”
she asked Emma.
    “The people her parents gave her to,” Emma said simply.
    That’s right,
Maisie thought. On that day at the seaport, the conch blower had announced that the royal baby had been given to parents of a higher royal stature. And Lydia was that royal baby.
    “Listen,” Emma whispered to Maisie as Lydia sang, “Ka‘ala wears a lei of rain and flowers…”
    When Lydia finished her song, Emma moved closer to Maisie and whispered into her ear.
    “You see, in the song Konia gave Lydia her legacy: the flowers, the rain, the mountains and valleys.” Emma leaned back and sighed her dreamy sigh. “There could be no richer legacy than this.”
    Soon, Emma fell asleep, her head bobbing against Maisie’s shoulder. All around Maisie, the sounds of sleeping children mingled with the lapping of the oars in the water. Finally, she closed her eyes, too, her mind filled with images of flowers and mountaintops, and Lydia’s sweet song.

    The canoe was met the next morning by people offering fruit and alohas. As each person stepped onto the beach, someone put a lei around his or herneck. Felix rubbed the sleep from his eyes. In the distance, gray smoke rose from an enormous mountain. Lot noticed him staring at it.
    “Kīlauea,” Lot said.
    “What?”
    “The volcano,” Lot said, pointing to the mountain.
    “Is it…erupting?” Felix asked. From the looks of it, that was exactly what was happening.
    Lot nodded. “That’s where we’re going. To give offerings to Pele.”
    He started to walk off, but Felix asked him to wait.
    “You mean, we’re going into an active volcano?” Felix said.
    He had not wanted to come on this trip in the first place, and now he was going to have to go to a volcano while it was erupting. He thought of the way he’d seen volcanoes erupt on TV, the tops of the mountains blowing off and molten lava spilling down their sides. Terrified people trying to outrun it. And not always succeeding.
    But Lot laughed. “Not in it, exactly,” he said. “We’ll just hike to it and throw our offerings into the crater.”
    Felix swallowed hard. “But it’s okay if we stay behind, right?”
    “That would anger Pele,” Lot said seriously. “She is the goddess of the volcano. You don’t want to upset her, do you?”
    He didn’t wait for an answer. As Felix watched Lot walk away, he wondered what would happen if you upset the goddess of the volcano. Whatever it was, he felt certain it would not be good.
    Glancing at Kīlauea again, Felix shivered. He decided not to look in that direction again for the rest of the day. Maybe, he thought, he would even be able to figure out a way to stay behind and not anger Pele.

    During dinner later that day, two men, naked except for bark loincloths, sat before them and began to play the drums, banging with their palms and chanting.
    From behind the palm trees, a girl appeared. Her dark hair, woven with flowers, hung down to the small of her back. Her white blouse was loose, and