Kahonua Island Read online

KAHONUA ISLAND

  by

  Todd Kelsey

  *******

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Kahonua Island

  Copyright © 2010 by Todd Kelsey

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  *******

  Social Responsibility: All proceeds are going to CFTW, a nonprofit organization, whose mission is to develop free learning material in different languages.

  Credits: a special thanks to Chuck Isdale for some of the pictures; to Alexandra Constantin for all the wonderful 3D art; and to Ken Bado at Autodesk for donating some software. Many thanks to all the people who have influenced this book. You can find the story of how this book came about as well as further acknowledgements, at: https://www.kahonua.com

  * * * * *

  KAHONUA ISLAND

  * * * * *

  - Act One: The Fish -

  Rachael was feeling sleepy, and she decided to go to bed. Before she went to bed, she made sure to feed her fish.

  But after Rachael went to bed, a fish woke her up, by saying:

  “Pssssst! Hey! Rachael, Rachael, wake up! You’re late!”

  And Rachael jumped out of bed, and hit her head, and said:

  “I’m late for what? I must be asleep, I’m talking to a fish.”

  But the fish said, “Hurry! I have a magic code that will only last for a little while longer. You need to enter it into your phone!”

  And Rachael’s eyes opened wider, as she was very attached to her phone.

  “My phone?” she asked.

  “Yes your phone. This code will make it a magic phone,” said the fish.

  So Rachael grabbed her phone, and asked “Ok, what’s the code?”

  And the fish said, “The code is 02550”.

  “That’s it?” asked Rachael. “That’s it!” said the fish.

  And Rachael didn’t think to ask the fish what would happen when she did enter the code. But she had a hungry mind, hungry for adventure that is. So she entered the code, and . . .

  Rachael disappeared from the room.

  - Act Two: Mr. Green -

  Suddenly Rachael found herself dizzy, out of breath, and lying on the ground somewhere, in a not altogether uncomfortable place. There was soft green grass, and a distant familiar scent wafting through the air.

  But most importantly, she immediately realized that this magic code had used up all the remaining electricity in her cell phone. And much worse, there was no cell phone coverage in the area!

  But she noticed the sound of humming coming her way, and she looked up and saw something coming down from the sky, and it looked like a giant gerbil was driving.

  And awhile later, after the flying gerbil landed, along it came, which nearly made Rachael laugh out loud, just from the sight of its green pin-striped hat, and its shabby little coat, and its respectable looking cane.

  The gerbil bowed, and started to talk.

  But she didn’t understand, and asked, “What did you say?”

  And the gerbil snapped its fingers, and handed her a little book, and motioned to its mouth, as if to suggest the absurd idea that she should eat the book.

  Rachael looked at the book.

  Rachael looked back at the giant gerbil, who proceeded to nod its head vigorously, and motioned to its mouth and then began moving its paw around its tummy in a circular motion, and began to make a loud sound that sounded something like “Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.”

  So Rachael tasted the book, found that it was sweet, and she slowly ate the book. When she was finished, she felt different.

  “Ah!” said the Gerbil. “You can now speak Gerban, my language. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Mr. Green!”

  And Rachael then began to cry, because she was tired, and sad that her cell phone didn’t have any charge, and sad that she was far outside the coverage area for her cell phone plan. When she returned, she was determined to find a better phone company.

  “Oh! Don’t cry, don’t cry,” the gerbil said. “Just tell me. What’s the matter?”

  “I’m lost and my cell phone has no electricity left,” Rachael said, and sniffed, and began to smile in spite of herself, because she was talking to a giant gerbil.

  “Are you hungry?” asked Mr. Green, with a thoughtful look on his face, as he began to ruffle around in his pockets, and scattered what seemed like seeds or husks of some kind in every direction.

  “Well, come to think of it” said Rachael, with a thoughtful look on her face, “I seem to feel a significant hunger, but I think it is my mind that is actually hungry. How can that be?” she asked, for this was an unusual thing. She had been curious before, but her mind had never quite been hungry.

  “Ah!” said Mr. Green, and stopped ruffling around in his pockets. Some seeds fell out on the ground, and some flower petals, and a few pine cones.

  “Ok, so maybe we can feed your mind with fun!” said Mr. Green, and began to quiver with excitement, standing on one foot, and then the next.

  “Let’s play some word games!” he said, and clapped his hands.

  And Rachael decided that she wanted to leave.

  “Yuck! I dislike word games in the extreme,” she said, with her nose held a bit up, folding her arms. “I got enough of those at school from Ms. Rote.” And she sniffed. Mr. Green’s face was downcast for a moment, and then changed into a huge grin, which stretched from ear to ear, just like . . . just like . . . well it was a huge grin.

  “Ah! Ok, I see what we need. Well, with Ms. Rote, maybe it wasn’t fun because it wasn’t right words. So we need to play Acronymic! Just one round, and then there’s another friend to be found.”

  And Rachael raised an eyebrow, because she’d never heard the word acronymic before, but she decided she might as well be polite.

  “Ok.”

  Mr. Green clapped his hands and said, “Ok, round 1. What is red, and green and blue, and it’s three letters, and it’s not a shoe!”

  Rachael thought that she may have fallen into some kind of riddle world, and since she was not very good at riddles, she was on the point of giving up, but she gave just one guess.

  “A bug?” she said, and raised one of her eyebrows artfully.

  “Good guess!” said Mr. Green, and clapped his hands. “But an acronym is a string of abbreviated letters, and in this case, the acronym is RGB, which stands for Red, Green and Blue. Woohoo!” And Rachael imagined the letters in her mind, and she understood.

  Rachael smiled, not because she was pleased at having been shown a thing or two by a giant gerbil, but because of his sheer enthusiasm. It was a bit hard to imagine that any game involving words could be fun, however.

  “Ok, ok!” said Mr. Green. “The next game will be . . . . daisychaining!” and he began to quiver again with excitement.

  Rachael was about to roll her eyes, because she had tied daisies together when she was younger, but then she was curious, because this was, after all, a word game.

  “How do you play?”she asked.

  “Just pick a word!” said Mr. Green.

  She thought for a moment about her poor cell phone.

  “Electricity, I guess,” she said.

  “Ah! Electricity!” said Mr. Green, and then looked thoughtful for a moment, quivering his whiskers, and holding his chin, and tapping his green striped hat.

  “Ok! The answer is . . . electricitywide!” and he grinned. And then he proceeded to write down the word on a scrap of paper.

/>   ELECTRICITYWIDE

  “To play the game, you add a word, and overlap the letters.” He explained, whilst sketching busily on the piece of paper. Rachael found his enthusiasm infectious, if somewhat silly.

  “You said ELECTRICITY, and I added WIDE. So how many words does that represent? How many words did we make?” he asked, and it seemed to Rachael like he was implying that they were working together, and this felt a bit unusual, since usually you play against each other in games.

  And then she understood. The phrase CITYWIDE jumped out at her, when Mr. Green wrote it like this:

  electriCITYWIDE

  electricitywide

  “And so I should add a word?” she asked, and the gerbil nodded, and she thought, and then added a word, and took the pencil, and wrote it down:

  Electricitywidepart

  “Ah! Depart!” said Mr. Green, and gathered up the papers, and began to hum a song.

  I love I love I love my sunflower seeds

  Oh yeah, sunflower seeds

  I love I love I love my sunflower seeds

  Oh yeah, sunflower seeds

  And suddenly Rachael realized that Mr. Green was not altogether unrelated to the regular sized gerbils that she had once seen in a science class.

  And she remembered how they seemed to go crazy for sunflower seeds, with a delight that surpassed anything she had seen before.

  And before she knew it, Mr. Green was headed off.

  “Wait!” she said, and hurried after him.

  And the day was pleasant, the breeze was still blowing lightly, and the scents were wafting through the air, seemingly from different flowers, and possibly a taste of salt, as if the ocean were somewhere in the area.

  And when they came to stop at a river, she asked him “Mr. Green, I nearly forgot to ask. Just where in the world are we?”

  And Mr. Green thought to himself, “Well I suppose this has been a surprise to her, so I won’t ask what I was about to ask, which is what world are you referring to.” But instead, he said:

  “Ah! I’m forgetting myself.” And he bowed, and took her hand.

  “Welcome, you have arrived at Kahonua Island!” he exclaimed, and got out a map.

  At first the map seemed empty.

  But then a faint image faded into view, and hovered there for a moment.

  And then it faded away again.

  Mr. Green then turned to the river.

  “So Rachael, we will be crossing over into another part of the island, where we need to speak Solaran.” And he ruffled around in his pockets, and took out another magic book.

  And Rachael thought about it carefully, and ate the book. It had a banana flavor, with a touch of butter, and something that might be a sunflower taste.

  - Act Three: Grondlet, a Sunflower -

  After the book was eaten, they crossed over the river, on a bridge that had been inspected recently by the appropriate authorities. And the bridge was not too unstable, but it did sway back and forth just enough to provide a sense of adventure.

  And the green fields around them began to change a bit, and things got a bit more hilly, and Mr. Green continued to sing about sunflower seeds. And at last, as they rounded a curve on what Rachael realized must be a grass-covered road of some kind, the came up to a giant sunflower. And Rachael blinked.

  “Hail and well met Mr. Green!” said the sunflower, and bowed, and asked, “And what is your name, Fairest Lady of the Island? My name is Grondlet.”

  And in spite of herself, Rachael curtsied, even though she’d never curtsied before, and barely knew what it meant, but had spent enough time reading old tales of adventure to have some idea of what was going on. She remembered a diagram in a book, and this reminded her how hungry her mind was.

  “Pleased to meet you, Grondlet, my name is Rachael.” And she curtsied, and felt amazed that she had just done this.

  And Mr. Green bowed, and began to say some words, and it sounded like a sentence, but it also sounded like a poem; something formal, yet playful. And it seemed to Rachael like this must be the way that important things were communicated, for the sake not only of getting your point across, but also for fun. And the fact that words could be fun was something new.

  Grondlet

  we’ve come seeking your advice

  because of Rachael’s device

  which had been working nice

  but now dear flower

  it is out of power

  And Grondlet thought for a moment, and replied:

  Mr. Green

  Your thoughts are keen

  We shall speak of the sun

  And how to have fun

  When the power is gone

  and the phone is not on

  And Grondlet seemed to Rachael like more of a scientist of some kind, for they spent the better part of the morning talking about the sun. Grondlet liked to collect pictures, and showed several pictures of sunflowers, naturally, and described how they grew from little seeds. This reminded Rachael of some very tall sunflowers she’d seen one time, and she tried to picture them in her mind.

  As Grondlet talked about sunflowers, and how they follow the sun, Mr. Green nodded enthusiastically, and at various times, seemed like he was about to break into song. But he seemed to be intent on being polite, which was all the more impressive, because he was quivering.

  Rachael smiled when Grondlet got to the point of talking about sunflowers seeds, because she could see that Mr. Green had to sit on his hands to keep from jumping up from sheer excitement. She remembered seeing some sunflower seeds drying, and she remembered the spiral pattern.

  And the most interesting part to Rachael was when Grondlet described the bees.

  Bees do as they please

  And search for sweet nectar on the breeze

  And little do they know

  When they go to and fro

  That they also take pollen

  Unless it has fallen

  “What’s pollen?” Rachael asked, and could tell that Grondlet was pleased that she had asked the question.

  “Pollen helps flowers to flower, and when the bees fly back and forth, they carry little bits of it with them, and it is like a magic dust,” said Grondlet.

  “Like magic fairy dust?” asked Rachael.

  “Like magic fairy dust,” said Grondlet, with a thoughtful look, and Grondlet then seemed to drift away into a sort of trance, with a faraway look.

  Each pollen grain is a haploid

  unicellular mass of protoplast

  with a single nucleus

  surrounded by a thick wall

  differentiated into two layers

  the outer thick exine

  and the inner thin intine

  And Mr. Green leaned over and whispered in Rachael’s ear, “Don’t mind it; Grondlet sometimes lapses into scientific language,” and then he gave Grondlet a little nudge, who shivered, blinked, and continued the discussion. One thing led to another, and Grondlet helped Rachael to charge her phone with solar power from the sun. She began to realize that because she liked Mr. Green and Grondlet, she started feeling like it might be polite to try a rhyme.

  My phone was done

  But now has power from the sun

  This was fun

  And it feels like the day has just begun

  And she was pleased to see how much pleasure these words seemed to give the two creatures that she had been spending time with.

  And then she realized that she was still lost. Or that she felt at home, but still had another home to get back to. Or something.

  “Mr. Green, Grondlet, the fact that we charged the phone is great,” she said, and had to stop her self from continuing:

  And now I don’t feel irate

  But it’s not as if they would have cared. At any rate, she continued, “but I’m not sure how to get home, or what to do about this code?”

  “Ah!” said Mr. Green, and shot up with his finger in the air. “Now we must away, and in order to solve this code, we m
ust go to see Mr. Mantis!”

  And as if there was nothing at all unusual about going to search for a praying mantis, they found themselves as a group of three, trundling off towards another part of the island.

  And in this part of the island, it seemed to have a bit more shade, with trees that swayed slightly back and forth in the breeze. And the sun was still out, and Rachael thought she might just be able to hear the bees buzzing, and it was glorious.

  And when they came across another river, and Mr. Green started ruffling in his pockets, Rachael said: