The Whale Rider

by Witi Ihimaera

  The Whale Rider

  Witi Ihimaera

  A RAUPO BOOK

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Penguin Group (NZ), 1987

  Copyright © Witi Ihimaera 1987

  The right of Witi Ihimaera to be identified as the author of this work in terms of section 96 of the Copyright Act 1994 is hereby asserted.

  Digital conversion by Pindar NZ

  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.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.

  www.penguin.co.nz

  ISBN 978-1-74228-708-9

  For Jessica Kiri and Olivia Ata, the best girls in the whole wide world

  This story is set in Whangara, on the East Coast of New Zealand, where Paikea is the tipuna ancestor. However, the story, people and events described are entirely fictional and have not been based on any people in Whangara.

  He tohu aroha ki a Whangara me nga uri o Paikea.

  Thanks also to Julia Keelan, Caroline Haapu and Hekia Parata for their advice and assistance.

  Contents

  prologue

  the coming of kahutia te rangi

  spring

  the force of destiny

  summer

  halcyon’s flight

  autumn

  season of the sounding whale

  winter

  whale song, whale rider

  epilogue

  the girl from the sea

  author notes

  glossary

  prologue

  the coming of kahutia te rangi

  one

  In the old days, in the years that have gone before us, the land and sea felt a great emptiness, a yearning. The mountains were like a stairway to heaven, and the lush green rainforest was a rippling cloak of many colours. The sky was iridescent, swirling with the patterns of wind and clouds; sometimes it reflected the prisms of rainbow or southern aurora. The sea was ever-changing, shimmering and seamless to the sky. This was the well at the bottom of the world and when you looked into it you felt you could see to the end of forever.

  This is not to say that the land and sea were without life, without vivacity. The tuatara, the ancient lizard with its third eye, was sentinel here, unblinking in the hot sun, watching and waiting to the east. The moa browsed in giant wingless herds across the southern island. Within the warm stomach of the rainforests, kiwi, weka and the other birds foraged for huhu and similar succulent insects. The forests were loud with the clatter of tree bark, chatter of cicada and murmur of fish-laden streams. Sometimes the forest grew suddenly quiet and in wet bush could be heard the filigree of fairy laughter like a sparkling glissando.

  The sea, too, teemed with fish but they also seemed to be waiting. They swam in brilliant shoals, like rains of glittering dust, throughout the greenstone depths — hapuku, manga, kahawai, tamure, moki and warehou — herded by shark or mango ururoa. Sometimes from far off a white shape would be seen flying through the sea but it would only be the serene flight of the tarawhai, the stingray with the spike on its tail.

  Waiting. Waiting for the seeding. Waiting for the gifting. Waiting for the blessing to come.

  Suddenly, looking up at the surface, the fish began to see the dark bellies of the canoes from the east. The first of the Ancients were coming, journeying from their island kingdom beyond the horizon. Then, after a period, canoes were seen to be returning to the east, making long cracks on the surface sheen. The land and the sea sighed with gladness:

  We have been found.

  The news is being taken back to the place of the Ancients.

  Our blessing will come soon.

  In that waiting time, earth and sea began to feel the sharp pangs of need, for an end to the yearning. The forests sent sweet perfumes upon the eastern winds and garlands of pohutukawa upon the eastern tides. The sea flashed continuously with flying fish, leaping high to look beyond the horizon and to be the first to announce the coming; in the shallows, the chameleon seahorses pranced at attention. The only reluctant ones were the fairy people who retreated with their silver laughter to caves in glistening waterfalls.

  The sun rose and set, rose and set. Then one day, at its noon apex, the first sighting was made. A spume on the horizon. A dark shape rising from the greenstone depths of the ocean, awesome, leviathan, breaching through the surface and hurling itself skyward before falling seaward again. Under water the muted thunder boomed like a great door opening far away, and both sea and land trembled from the impact of that downward plunging.

  Suddenly the sea was filled with awesome singing, a song with eternity in it, a song to the land:

  You have called and I have come,

  bearing the gift of the Gods.

  The dark shape rising, rising again. A whale, gigantic. A sea monster. Just as it burst through the sea, a flying fish leaping high in its ecstasy saw water and air streaming like thunderous foam from that noble beast and knew, ah yes, that the time had come. For the sacred sign was on the monster, a swirling moko pattern imprinted on the forehead.

  Then the flying fish saw that astride the head, as it broke skyward, was a man. He was wondrous to look upon, the whale rider. The water streamed away from him and he opened his mouth to gasp in the cold air. His eyes were shining with splendour. His body dazzled with diamond spray. Upon that beast he looked like a small tattooed figurine, dark brown, glistening and erect. He seemed, with all his strength, to be pulling the whale into the sky.

  Rising, rising. And the man felt the power of the whale as it propelled itself from the sea. He saw far off the land long sought and now found, and he began to fling small spears seaward and landward on his magnificent journey toward the land.

  Some of the spears in mid flight turned into pigeons which flew into the forests. Others on landing in the sea changed into eels. And the song in the sea drenched the air with ageless music and land and sea opened themselves to him, the gift long waited for: tangata, man. With great gladness and thanksgiving he, the man, cried out to the land.

  Karanga mai, karanga mai, karanga mai.

  But there was one spear, so it is told, the last, which, when the whale rider tried to throw it, refused to leave his hand. Try as he might, the spear would not fly.

  So the whale rider uttered a prayer over the wooden spear, saying, ‘Let this spear be planted in the years to come, for there are sufficient spear alre
ady implanted. Let this be the one to flower when the people are troubled and it is most needed.’

  And the spear then leapt from his hands with gladness and soared through the sky. It flew across a thousand years. When it hit the earth it did not change but waited for another hundred and fifty years to pass until it was needed.

  The flukes of the whale stroked majestically at the sky.

  Hui e, haumi e, taiki e.

  Let it be done.

  spring

  the force of destiny

  two

  The Valdes Peninsula, Patagonia. Te Whiti Te Ra. The nursery, the cetacean crib. The giant whales had migrated four months earlier from their Antarctic feeding range to mate, calve and rear their young in two large, calm bays. Their leader, the ancient bull whale, together with the elderly female whales, fluted whalesongs of benign magnificence as they watched over the rest of the herd. In that glassy sea known as the Pathway of the Sun, and under the turning splendour of the stars, they waited until the newly born were strong enough for the long voyages ahead.

  Watching, the ancient bull whale was swept up in memories of his own birthing. His mother had been savaged by sharks three months later; crying over her in the shallows of Hawaiki, he had been succoured by the golden human who became his master. The human had heard the young whale’s distress and had come into the sea, playing a flute. The sound was plangent and sad as he tried to communicate his oneness with the young whale’s mourning. Quite without the musician knowing it, the melodic patterns of the flute’s phrases imitated the whalesong of comfort. The young whale drew nearer to the human, who cradled him and pressed noses with the orphan in greeting. When the herd travelled onward, the young whale remained and grew under the tutelage of his master.

  The bull whale had become handsome and virile, and he had loved his master. In the early days his master would play the flute and the whale would come to the call. Even in his lumbering years of age the whale would remember his adolescence and his master; at such moments he would send long, undulating songs of mourning through the lambent water. The elderly females would swim to him hastily, for they loved him, and gently in the dappled warmth they would minister to him.

  In a welter of sonics, the ancient bull whale would communicate his nostalgia. And then, in the echoing water, he would hear his master’s flute. Straight away the whale would cease his feeding and try to leap out of the sea, as he used to when he was younger and able to speed toward his master.

  As the years had burgeoned the happiness of those days was like a siren call to the ancient bull whale. But his elderly females were fearful; for them, that rhapsody of adolescence, that song of the flute, seemed only to signify that their leader was turning his thoughts to the dangerous islands to the south-west.

  three

  I suppose that if this story has a beginning it is with Kahu. After all, it was Kahu who was there at the end, and it was Kahu’s intervention which perhaps saved us all. We always knew there would be such a child, but when Kahu was born, well, we were looking the other way, really. We were over at our Koro’s place, me and the boys, having a few drinks and a party, when the phone rang.

  ‘A girl,’ Koro Apirana said, disgusted. ‘I will have nothing to do with her. She has broken the male line of descent in our tribe.’ He shoved the telephone at our grandmother, Nanny Flowers, saying, ‘Here. It’s your fault. Your female side was too strong.’ Then he pulled on his gumboots and stomped out of the house.

  The phone call was from the eldest grandson, my brother Porourangi, who was living in the South Island. His wife, Rehua, had just given birth to the first great-grandchild of our extended family.

  ‘Hello, dear,’ Nanny Flowers said into the phone. Nanny Flowers was used to Koro Apirana’s growly ways, although she threatened to divorce him every second day, and I could tell that it didn’t bother her if the baby was a girl or a boy. Her lips were quivering with emotion because she had been waiting for the call from Porourangi all month. Her eyes went sort of cross-eyed, as they always did whenever she was overcome with love. ‘What’s that? What did you say?’

  We began to laugh, me and the boys, and we yelled to Nanny, ‘Hey! Old lady! You’re supposed to put the phone to your ear so you can hear!’ Nanny disliked telephones; most times she was so shaken to hear a voice come out of little holes in the headpiece that she would hold the phone at arm’s length. So I went up to her and put the phone against her head.

  Next minute, the tears started rolling down the old lady’s face. ‘What’s that, dear? Oh, the poor thing. Oh the poor thing. Oh the poor thing. Oh. Oh. Oh. Well you tell Rehua that the first is the worst. The others come easier because by then she’ll have the hang of it. Yes, dear. I’ll tell him. Yes, don’t you worry. Yes. All right. Yes, and we love you too.’

  She put down the phone. ‘Well, Rawiri,’ she said to me, ‘you and the boys have got a beautiful niece. She must be, because Porourangi said she looks just like me.’ We tried not to laugh, because Nanny was no film star. Then, all of a sudden, she put her hands on her hips and made her face grim and went to the front verandah. Far away, down on the beach, old Koro Apirana was putting his rowboat onto the afternoon sea. Whenever he felt angry he would always get on his rowboat and row out into the middle of the ocean to sulk.

  ‘Hey,’ Nanny Flowers boomed, ‘you old paka,’ which was the affectionate name she always called our Koro when she wanted him to know she loved him, ‘Hey!’ But he pretended he didn’t hear her, jumped into the rowboat and made out to sea.

  Well, that did it. Nanny Flowers got her wild up. ‘Think he can get away from me, does he?’ she muttered. ‘Well he can’t.’

  By that time, me and the boys were having hysterics. We crowded onto the verandah and watched as Nanny rushed down the beach, yelling her endearments at Koro Apirana. ‘You come back here, you old paka.’ Well of course he wouldn’t, so next thing, the old lady scooted over to my dinghy. Before I could protest she gunned the outboard motor and roared off after him. All that afternoon they were yelling at each other. Koro Apirana would row to one location after another in the bay, and Nanny Flowers would start the motor and roar after him to growl at him. You have to hand it to the old lady, she had brains all right, picking a rowboat with a motor in it. In the end, old Koro Apirana just gave up. He had no chance, really, because Nanny Flowers simply tied his boat to hers and pulled him back to the beach, whether he liked it or not.

  That was eight years ago, when Kahu was born, but I remember it as if it was yesterday, especially the wrangling that went on between our Koro and Nanny Flowers. The trouble was that Koro Apirana could not reconcile his traditional beliefs about Maori leadership and rights with Kahu’s birth. By Maori custom, leadership was hereditary and normally the mantle of mana fell from the eldest son to the eldest son. Except that in this case, there was an eldest daughter.

  ‘She won’t be any good to me,’ he would mutter. ‘No good. I won’t have anything to do with her. That Porourangi better have a son next time.’

  In the end, whenever Nanny Flowers brought the subject up, Koro Apirana would compress his lips, cross his arms, turn his back on her and look elsewhere and not at her.

  I was in the kitchen once when this happened. Nanny Flowers was making oven bread on the big table, and Koro Apirana was pretending not to hear her, so she addressed herself to me.

  ‘Thinks he knows everything,’ she muttered, tossing her head in Koro Apirana’s direction. Bang, went her fists into the dough. ‘The old paka. Thinks he knows all about being a chief.’ Slap, went the bread as she threw it on the table. ‘He isn’t any chief. I’m his chief,’ she emphasised to me and, then, over her shoulder to Koro Apirana, ‘and don’t you forget it either.’ Squelch, went her fingers as she dug them into the dough.

  ‘Te mea te mea,’ Koro Apirana said. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’

  ‘Don’t you mock me,’ Nanny Flowers responded. Ouch, went the bread as she flattened it with her arms. She looked at me grimly and
said, ‘He knows I’m right. He knows I’m a descendant of old Muriwai, and she was the greatest chief of my tribe. Yeah,’ and, Help, said the dough as she pummelled it and prodded it and stretched it and strangled it, ‘and I should have listened to Mum when she told me not to marry him, the old paka,’ she said, revving up to her usual climactic pronouncement.

  From the corner of my eye I could see Koro Apirana mouthing the words sarcastically to himself.

  ‘But this time,’ said Nanny Flowers, as she throttled the bread with both hands, ‘I’m really going to divorce him.’

  Koro Apirana raised his eyebrows, pretending to be unconcerned.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ he said. ‘Te mea —’

  It was then that Nanny Flowers added with a gleam in her eyes, ‘And then I’ll go to live with old Waari over the hill.’

  I thought to myself, Uh oh, I better get out of here, because Koro Apirana had been jealous of old Waari, who had been Nanny Flowers’ first boyfriend, for years. No sooner was I out the door when the battle began. You coward, said the dough as I ducked.

  four

  But that was nothing compared to the fight that they had when Porourangi rang to say he would like to name the baby Kahu.

  ‘What’s wrong with Kahu?’ Nanny Flowers asked.

  ‘I know your tricks,’ Koro Apirana said. ‘You’ve been talking to Porourangi behind my back, egging him on.’

  This was true, but Nanny Flowers said, ‘Who, me?’ She fluttered her eyelids at the old man.

  ‘You think you’re smart,’ Koro Apirana said, ‘but don’t think it’ll work.’

  This time when he went out to the sea to sulk he took my dinghy, the one with the motor in it.

  ‘See if I care,’ Nanny Flowers said. She had been mean enough, earlier in the day, to siphon out half the petrol so that he couldn’t get back. All that afternoon he shouted and waved but she just pretended not to hear. Then Nanny Flowers rowed out to him and said that, really, there was nothing he could do. She had telephoned Porourangi and said that the baby could be named Kahu, after Kahutia Te Rangi.