Sky Dancer, page 8
“Ka tangi te titi! Ka tangi te kaka! Ka tangi hoki ahau —”
Immediately, there was an uproar from the male chieftains.
“Your neck should be wrung,” Chieftain Kakapo screamed, jumping up and down on the ground. “It is only the cock who crows.”
Kotuku looked down at him with scorn. “Get some class, Kakapo,” she said. “Whiti koreke ka kitea koe. Find yourself some wings and transform yourself into a real bird.”
But Chieftain Kakapo had support from Kawau. “You have no right to the paepae!” he cried. “Leave it immediately.”
Kotuku regurgitated a seed and spat it at Kawau with derision. “You, of all people tell me to mind my place? It is you who caused the seabirds’ hunger.”
Yes,” Te Arikinui Huia asked. “How did Karuhiruhi know about the lagoon?”
“I-I-I —”
“Ko au! Ko au! Ko au!” Te Arikinui Korimako mimicked.
“Because you showed him, didn’t you?” Kotuku intervened. “You couldn’t stop yourself, could you? You had to show you were better than he was, that yours was bigger than his and, because you did —”
Kotuku realised that this was the moment to drive home her point. She spread her wings, executed some movements of intimidation, lifted her beautiful throat and let everyone hear her warrior woman karanga.
Kra-aak. Kra-aak.
Even Ruru shuddered and closed his hooded eyes.
Kotuku began her korero of warning. “Listen! All of you! Ka maro te kaki o te karuhiruhi! The seashag’s neck is already stretched out.” The assembly gasped at her words. They knew very well their import.
“That’s telling them,” Huia muttered to herself as she saw the male chieftains lose colour.
“It is too late to negotiate,” Kotuku continued. “It is ridiculous for Titi and Kaka to promote the idea of a treaty. A treaty is tantamount to giving in. It is a position of weakness, not a position of strength. It indicates that we are prepared to accommodate. Both Titi and Kaka have forgotten that things of value must be fought for or defended, not negotiated. Stop sitting on your mana. Have you all grown too smug and fat for war?”
Kotuku showed her scorn for the idea by attacking the perch with her beak and tearing strips off it.
Titi made a plea to Chieftain Tui to intervene. “Point of order, my lord, point of order —”
Like all women, Kotuku carried on regardless. “And why is the idea of a treaty stupid?” she asked, strutting her stuff. “Because there is already a treaty! Don’t you remember? The Lord Tane made it when he gave us the land and his Great Forest. We are the Lord Tane’s ordained children. The seabirds intend to break this contract. Are you all blind as a bat?”
There was an outraged splutter from the branch where Chieftain Pekapeka was hanging upside down.
“No offence intended,” Kotuku apologised. “But don’t any of you trust the evidence of your eyes? You have all seen the seabird squadrons leaving their nesting places and assembling at the offshore islands. What else are they doing if they are not plotting war?”
The sound level of the gathered birds increased, evidencing their nervousness at Kotuku’s words. When the chieftains were like this, not knowing what to say or what to do next, their natural inclination was to pass the buck to their leader. Hadn’t he been appointed to sort out such problems as this?
Tui found himself in the hot seat.
“What do you say, Prime Minister?” Kahu asked.
“I must admit,” Tui began, “on second thoughts, with the benefit of hindsight, bearing in mind all the angles, having the best interests of all uppermost, given the circumstances —”
“Yes? Yes?”
Tui coughed, having run out of his usual stonewalling phrases. But he was not a supreme politician for nothing. “Kotuku has reminded me of two crucial points.”
“What points are those?” The male chieftains hung on Tui’s words.
“The first has to do with the magnitude of the seabird threat. Not only do we have to worry about Karuhiruhi. We also have to consider Karoro, Toroa, Taranui and Parara. Collectively, they are a formidable foe. Why would they all band together if they were not thinking on the big scale? And then there is the second point —”
Tui knew how to keep the chieftains in suspense. He paced his branch. Back and forth. Back and forth. “Kotuku is correct,” he concluded. “It is too late for a treaty.”
Everybody gasped. Tui spoke as the Supreme Commander. His sanction of Kotuku meant that he agreed with her assessment.
Kaka and Titi tried to object, but Tui waved them to be silent.
“Why is Kotuku correct?” Tui asked. “I will tell you why. She quoted a proverb about the outstretched neck of the seashag. But she quoted only the first part of it. The second part warns us that once his neck is stretched out, he cannot be stopped. He is already primed for battle and —”
“Ka tika,” the chieftains murmured. “Yes —”
“No fish has any hope when the seashag has seized it. Nor bird.”
At that, the noise of the landbirds grew into a loud hubbub. The divine Te Arikinui Kotuku launched herself into the air and returned to the women’s branch of the sacred tree. She affected a simple, glorious, bow.
“Why didn’t you stay up there!” Huia scolded.
“And make the decision?” Kotuku asked, fluttering her eyelids and preening her long filamentous plumes. “Oh no, let one of the men do that!”
Tui had already reclaimed the perch of chiefs. “The seabirds are hungry,” he warbled. “The seabirds are voracious. The seabirds are power hungry. They have already committed the Ultimate Heresy. They have already broken the treaty —”
Birds were hopping up and down and scratching marks into the branches in their frenzy.
“If we don’t stop them now they will overturn the Great Division. Today Aotearoa, tomorrow the rest of the world. Do you want this to happen?”
“No!” the landbirds screamed.
“Then is it agreed? Is it to be war?” Tui asked. “Kei te tautoko?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
– 5 –
“So there was a war?” Skylark asked.
She was sitting with Hoki beneath the sacred tree, looking across the Manu Valley to the sea.
“Yes,” Hoki nodded, “and the seabirds were the aggressors. They should have remembered the dictum ‘Ko Tane mata nui’, Tane sees everything, but they were so arrogant. They flew even in Tane’s face when they decided to overturn his Great Division. They thought they could get away with it. More seriously they had caught the landbirds hopping. They were way ahead in terms of preparations for war —”
It was Te Arikinui Kotuku who realised that the odds were favouring the seabirds.
“Aue,” Kotuku said to Tui, “what a big job you have now. How, my Lord, can you possibly bring our troops up to speed? The only iwi that is battle ready is Kahu’s. It is hopeless —”
Kotuku let out a theatrical sigh but, under cover of her gorgeous plumes, winked at her sister leaders. They knew very well what she was doing: appealing to Tui’s vanity by implying, in ever such an indirect way, that his chieftains just weren’t up to the job.
“Don’t worry, Kotuku,” Tui answered, puffing out his breast feathers in a show of manliness. “I will order Kahu to begin compulsory military training, and to put our young warriors through a strict physical fitness regimen. Look at them! They’ve all grown so weak and plump from living the good life for so long. A war will do them good.”
“He should talk!” Huia said to Te Arikinui Korimako. “Has he looked in the river lately? Even his puku drags along the ground when he walks. It’s no wonder that he has trouble getting it up — I mean, getting his weight up into the sky —”
“Sly one,” Te Arikinui Karuwai. “Sly one.”
“Be reasonable,” Chieftain Kaka interjected. “When was the last time any of us led a raiding party on an enemy? We’ve lived peacefully all these years and we’ve lost our skills.”
“That may be true, but the seabirds won’t be as reasonable as us,” Kotuku said. “As far as I’m concerned, a long peace in our landbird history is not an acceptable excuse.”
She turned to Tui, flirting with him again.
“Kotuku is right,” Tui intoned. He lifted his voice to the assembled birds. “Let all landbird chieftains of all bird iwi and clans assign taiaha tutors to teach the ancient arts of warfare! All young men who have achieved mature feathers are to be called up. It is time for them to sharpen their beaks and claws! Time to get fit, start some serious wing ups, weight training, claw boxing, route flights and battle drills! Timata! Begin!”
Over the following week even Te Arikinui Kotuku was impressed at how quickly the chieftains achieved a level of battle readiness. But did she ever let up? She sidled up to Tui again, and honeyed words dripped from her beak. “Your leadership is of the highest quality,” she said, stroking his feathers. “You have managed to get our warriors to an acceptable military standard. But, e rangatira, you need a battle plan to go with it.”
“Who are you to tell us what we should be doing?” Chieftain Kawau interjected. “Let the men do what men do and let women do what women do.”
“Don’t be so complacent, you teke,” Te Arikinui Korimako said. “Are you so ready that you are prepared to be in the front rank? After all, it will be your lagoon over which the war will be fought.”
“I-I-I —” Kawau quailed.
“What’s your battle plan, Tui?” Te Arikinui Kotuku repeated. “What sophisticated military techniques and stratagems are you going to deploy?”
Tui saw her point. He turned to his other chieftains, Titi and Kaka in particular, and gave them a withering look. “Hoi! Do you fellas think we can just turn up at the battlefield and expect our superiority to win the day? And what is that superiority anyhow? If any of you think that the seabirds will recognise our divinity, our mana and our chiefly status and retreat, think again. They won’t, and we all know it.” Tui puffed out his lacy collar and the double tuft of curled white feathers at his throat. “Kotuku is right,” he said. “We need a plan.”
There was a rustle in the trees and Chieftain Ruru came flying into the discussion. You think his going to sleep during the day was a natural inclination? Get a grip. It was all because of boredom. Ruru relished the idea of a battle. “Did somebody mention my name?” he asked.
“So it was,” Hoki said, “that guided by Te Arikinui Kotuku’s cool and measured hints the landbirds were able to set up their defensive system — and they had a battle plan to go with it.”
Worked out by Ruru, the plan called for the strongest landbirds to lead a defensive war party. Chieftain Kahu, of course, was Chieftain Tui’s left hand man and Second in Command. Among the other leaders were Chieftain Kuku of the pigeon clan, Chieftain Kaka of the parrots and Chieftain Kokako of the crows. Chieftain Pitoitoi was assigned to forward sentry duty. Straws were drawn for the great honour of sending out the three challengers in the first battle against the seabirds. The honours went to Chieftain Koekoea of long-tailed cuckoos, Chieftain Piwakawaka of fantails and, joy of joys, Kahu himself.
“A strong team,” Tui approved. “Solid. Ace.”
With increasing confidence, the landbirds practised their drills. All the while, far off, they could see the seabird ranks circling above the offshore islands and hear the savage chants and haka coming across the sea.
One afternoon, the chanting of the seabirds stopped.
An uneasy silence fell across the Great Forest.
“Well, boys,” Tui said. “I think the time’s come, ready or not. We should expect a dawn attack. Let everyone be in their positions. Is everybody clear on the battle plan? The war party will be at the forefront of the defence against the seabird army. They will engage the seabirds and then —”
At that moment, Hoki’s lesson was interrupted by a flash of sunlight. She shaded her eyes and looked down from the clifftop to Manu Valley below. A car was coming up the valley road. Cora, returning home after her rehearsal.
“And then?” Skylark asked. She didn’t want Hoki to stop telling the story of the war. But the mood was broken.
“We’d better get back home,” Hoki answered. “Your mother will worry about where you are. We’ll resume the story later. And by the way —”
“Yes?”
Hoki looked at the sacred tree. Rebellious, Skylark followed her gaze — and took a step back. For the first time she felt the mana and power of the tree. She saw it with new eyes, glowing, utterly commanding, and she felt she should kneel before it.
“You should never have followed me up here,” Hoki said. “Only a few people know of the tree’s existence. We who have guarded it all these years have a commitment to defend it unto the death. On no account must you come up here without my and Bella’s express permission.”
“You still haven’t told me about the heliacal rising of the planet Venus,” Skylark called as Hoki started her walk back down the track. Did Hoki really think she would let her get away so easily? No way.
Hoki stopped. “I was afraid you would ask me that,” she said. “It’s a special conjunction of the rising of the sun with the appearance of the planet Venus. Only at such conjunctions can extraordinary events beyond human understanding occur. All ancient cultures who watch the skies for new stars, comets and any astronomical disturbances to time and space know this.”
“When is it supposed to happen?” Skylark asked.
“Actually, Skylark, in two days’ time.”
Skylark became very cross. “Well don’t look at me,” she said. “I’m just here with my mother on holiday.”
That night, Skylark dreamt of the tree. It looked like the claw of a bird. When she looked again, the tree turned into Hoki’s withered left foot. Then the tree caught fire, and Hoki’s claw curled into itself, grabbing at the sky.
Chapter Five
– 1 –
With a start, Skylark awoke to a red sky.
The manu whenua were rising to the penultimate dawn. Their song was a brilliant, shining cantilena, soaring across Manu Valley. This morning, however, the song was sharp, uneasy, shrill, like stones being scraped together.
Skylark’s memory immediately turned to Hoki’s words. One day to go to the heliacal rising of Venus. She flung the blankets off her bed and stepped to the window. “Read my lips,” she shouted to nobody in particular. “Not my problem, okay?”
“Oh why did I ever agree to go back to show business?” Cora asked.
The landbirds weren’t the only ones feeling fractious that morning. So was Cora, having second thoughts about Bye Bye Birdie opening that very evening. She sat on a lounger in the sun drinking cup after cup of coffee, trying to learn her lines. She’d die of lung cancer or drowning one way or another.
“I’m never going to be ready in time. Really, Skylark honey, it’s all your fault. You should have stopped me from saying yes.”
“Can’t you just relax and enjoy the view?” Skylark said between gritted teeth. “Can’t you forget the show for a moment?” Skylark had decided that today she was going to be just a tourist.
But somebody had snapped Cora’s elastic. She reached for her sunglasses, though even they could not diminish the glare from her eyes, and had a hissy fit. “If I wanted to enjoy the view I’d watch television,” she answered. “At least I’d have a remote and a choice of channels. What have I got here? Just one view over a forest to a sea. And it’s not even framed.”
“What about all this fresh air —”
“Honey, you can buy fresh air in a can from the supermarket. ‘Country Glade’, ‘Meadow Fresh’ or ‘Spring Flowers’. It might be full of fluorocarbons but at least it doesn’t come mixed up with manure smells and bird dung.”
Skylark picked up one of her mother’s magazines and tried to bury her nose in it. “Oh no you don’t, Skylark,” Cora said, taking the magazine. “I’m not going to let a perfectly good tantrum go to waste. I need an audience and you’re it!”
In fact, if Cora had bothered to look around her, she would have noticed that her outburst had attracted a bevy of curious multi-coloured parrots. They sat on the terrace, watching Cora carefully, and then began to imitate everything she did. When she paced to the left, they paced to the left. When she muttered, they muttered.
Kita-kita-kita. Nag nag nag. Boring boring boring. Yeah yeah yeah.
Cora was deeply offended. “I may have had one or two bad notices,” she spluttered, “and some people might have switched channels to watch the other weather girl, but I have never been upstaged by birds of any colour or persuasion whatsoever. Go away, you awful things, go away.”
Instead, one of the parrots flew at Cora as if she was the interloper. “Save me!” Cora wailed, as she fended the parrot away. “And don’t you dare laugh, Skylark, don’t you dare —”
It was too late. Skylark began to snort — huge trumpeting sounds of hilarity.
“Oh no more, Skylark honey,” Cora said, seeing the funny side at last, “otherwise I’ll wet my knickers.”
That only set Skylark off on another round of laughter, and she collapsed into her mother’s arms. Surprised, momentarily, by how big Skylark was, Cora’s first reaction was to push her off. Then something was triggered in her memory — and she pulled her daughter closer to her instead.
“You’ve always been there for me, haven’t you Skylark?” Cora began. “You save me from parrots, from trouble, from all the men who come into my life. Who’s there to pick me up when they leave? You.” Skylark tried to move away but Cora only tightened her embrace. “You’re the only good thing to have come out of my marriage to Brad. How could I ever have fallen for him?”
“He’s been a good dad,” Skylark said, “and you’ve been a good mum. The best mother in the world.”
“Have I really been that good?” Cora asked. She took off her sunglasses. “I mean, look at you —”
“No, Mum,” Skylark answered. “Let’s not go there.” She hated Cora’s self-pitying moods.
