The Great Taboo, page 179 by Grant Allen
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of all dead parrots bit me. A vicious bird! What did he mean by his bite?" He lowered his voice and looked at her fixedly. "Did not his spilling my blood portend," he asked, with a shudder of fear, "that through that ill-omened bird I, who was once Lavita, should cease to be Tu-Kila-Kila?"
Ula smiled contentedly again. To say the truth, that was precisely the interpretation she herself had put on that terrific omen. The parrot had spilled Tu-Kila-Kila's sacred blood upon the soil of earth. According to her simple natural philosophy, that was a certain sign that through the parrot's instrumentality Tu-Kila-Kila's life would be forfeited to the great eternal earth-spirit. Or, rather, the earth-spirit would claim the blood of the man Lavita, in whose body it dwelt, and would itself migrate to some new earthly tabernacle.
But for all that, she dissembled. "Great god," she cried, smiling, a benign smile, "you are tired! You are thirsty! Care for heaven and earth has wearied you out. You feel the fatigue of upholding the sun in heaven. Your arms must ache. Your thews must give under you. Drink of the soul-inspiring juice of the kava! My hands have prepared the divine cup. For Tu-Kila-Kila did I make it--fresh, pure, invigorating!"
She held the bowl to his lips with an enticing smile. Tu-Kila-Kila hesitated and glanced around him suspiciously. "What if the white-faced stranger should come to-night?" he whispered, hoarsely. "He may have discovered the Great Taboo, after all. Who can tell the ways of the world, how they come about? My people are so treacherous. Some traitor may have betrayed it to him."
"Impossible," the beautiful, snake-like woman answered, with a strong gesture of natural dissent. "And even if he came, would not kava, the divine, inspiriting drink of the gods, in which dwell the embodied souls of our fathers--would not kava make you more vigorous, strong for the fight? Would it not course through your limbs like fire? Would it not pour into your soul the divine, abidi