“Not me, of course. I was only eight years old. But during those days I noticed that the Elder Malakai was not celebrating with everyone else. He alone was solemn and grim. I don’t know why it bothered me so, but it did. I took him a glass of wine to drink, but he said, ‘I will not partake.’ I said, ‘You do not drink to my grandfather?’ He replied, ‘I do not celebrate.’ His words angered me. ‘Then you do not accept my grandfather as our new leader?’ ‘That is not why I do not celebrate,’ he said. ‘Your grandfather is a great man. And I mourn for him.’ ‘Mourn?’ I said. ‘Why would you mourn?’ He looked at me and said, ‘There is evil to come in this world. Evil without a name. Evil that will, in time, reach even our small islands. It is that I mourn. For what begins with a crown will end with a cage.’ ”