The Sacrifice

by Joanna Orwin

  The flattened sea formed a glazed surface that reflected the sun until Taka’s eyes ached with the glare. Without the cooling wind, the heat started to build. And with the rising heat, an ominous smell they could no longer ignore. A musty sourness hovered over the moki. The stench was worse inside the shelter, where it clung to the walls and the thatched roof. The stink of decay. Not the decay of spoilt food, for they had long since discarded any tainted containers. The reeds had become soft and soggy under their feet. Kua-the-Seeker was rotting beneath them.

  Matu brought the paddles out from the shelter. ‘We can’t just sit here, drifting like this. We need to keep the moki moving westwards.’

  All afternoon, they struggled to paddle the sluggish moki. Both the increased weight of the sodden reeds and their own failing strength worked against them. They hardly seemed to move across the surface. Although Kota wove them hats from the last of the stored flax blades, by evening they were all sunburnt, their lips cracked and bleeding. Taka itched unbearably with the combined irritation of sweat and sun, and he couldn’t stop himself scratching until his skin was raw. The hard labour of paddling increased their thirst, but their remaining water was now a thickened, foul-tasting soup. What rau cakes were left began to ferment in the growing heat, and they had to abandon the last of the dried fish. Piko trailed fishing lines from the hulls, using the rotten food as bait. He caught nothing.

  As the sun at last went down, Taka saw a dark cloud mounded on the horizon. He caught his breath, hoping it was land. But even as he strained his eyes in that direction, the cloud changed shape and dispersed.

  Another windless day crawled by. They forced themselves to keep paddling, to ignore their growing weakness. They were all suffering from saltwater boils now, and the paddles rubbed weeping sores into the softened skin of their hands. Kota applied the last of the flax gel, but it provided only temporary relief. There was still no sign of land.

  It was to be one disappointment after another. Seabirds appeared that afternoon, diving all around them to feed, but their fishing lines stayed inert. Piko kept going to check until an exasperated Matu shouted at him. ‘Stop wasting your energy! Can’t you see those birds are catching useless tiny shoal fish?’

  ‘Surely the birds will fly homewards at dusk?’ Piko voiced what they were all hoping. The presence of flocks of seabirds should be a signal that land was not far away. But when dusk came, the birds settled in rafts to roost on the waves. Taka sensed he was not the only one losing hope.

  Dawn brought wind at last, a steady wind from the south-east. Under sail again, they made slow but definite progress. The day wore on and still there was no sign of land. That night, to add to their misery, rain set in. Low cloud encased them, obscuring their vision and hiding the stars.

  On deck with Kai for the late-night shift, Taka stood on the stern platform and gazed into the rain-pitted, black water, now barely a hand’s breadth below them. It was the end of their third week at sea. The rain was driving even more moisture into the already saturated reeds. Kua-the Seeker couldn’t last much longer. He tried to ignore the nagging voice in his head that agreed with his cousin when he said the water-god was toying with them.

  Then, even as Taka struggled with dark thoughts, he saw, deep in the water, flashes of white light that came towards them in darting streaks from the north-west. He watched, mesmerized, as the streaks continued, always from the same direction.

  At last he found his voice. ‘Look!’

  Kai turned to stare where Taka pointed. Sounding bored, he said, ‘We’ve seen such sea-lights before.’

  ‘But this is coming from so deep and from one direction.’ Taka’s toes curled tightly as he continued to watch. The hairs rose on the back of his neck.

  The intermittent flashes of light continued.

  ‘It is unusual,’ Kai admitted at last. ‘That lot went the other way, towards the north-west.’

  He was right. The streaks of light were now going both ways. Each flash lit the water at depth for a brief moment before fading.

  Taka felt faint stirrings of hope. ‘It has to be a sign from Tanga. He’s showing us the direction we should take.’ He took hold of the steering oar and turned Kua-the-Seeker until she was aligned with the darting lights. ‘Adjust the sail.’

  Without a word, Kai loosened off the ropes and reset the sail. As the moki responded and their wake curved behind them, Taka saw it become illuminated by the eerie glow of surface sea-light. When the wake straightened out again as the moki headed in her new direction, he watched the sea-light fade until it became an afterglow imprinted on his mind.

  At the same time, the frequency of the deep flashes diminished, the time interval between them steadily lengthening. The rain stopped. When the water had stayed black and impenetrable for some time, Taka let out his breath as his tension ebbed, then became aware of his painfully cramped toes.

  Beside him, Kai stirred. ‘There’s a lone bright star rising in clear sky above the left-hand prow. I’m going to mark it on the hull.’

  They’d not bothered trying to track stars since the first week at sea, once they accepted they were unable to follow their passage across a sky filled with stars. Ahead of them, Taka could see other stars appearing through breaks in the lifting cloud, but the star on the horizon above the prow stood alone. He watched Kai’s dark shape move forward and stoop to fasten the mark on the hull. How could anyone doubt now that they were in the hands of the water-god? Even his sceptical cousin recognized this sign being sent them by Tanga.

  Late the next morning, when Taka went back on deck, he saw white cloud building in the north-west. Directly in line with their prows, layer piled on billowing layer until a column of cloud reached high into the sky. All day, the brilliant-white tower stayed in the same position, its underbelly near sea level shaded olive-green. They steered towards it. Seabirds joined them again, their raucous cries filling the air as they wheeled and swooped over the surface, then dived to feed on schools of fish. The fishing lines trailing from the sterns started jerking, and an elated Piko pulled in first one fish, then another, large enough to feed them all. That evening, they sat on deck and ate satisfying fillets of succulent raw fish, then washed them down with fresh water collected from the previous night’s rain. Their bellies comfortably full for the first time in days, they watched as the seabirds took off and flew towards the north-west, towards the stacked cloud, now back-lit by the setting sun.

  It was Matu who put into words what no one had dared express all day. ‘The direction of the swell has definitely changed. It’s coming from two directions now, criss-crossing from the north-west. It has to be coming from land.’

  This time they had all felt the subtle shift in movement in the hulls beneath their feet. Tanga had given them not just one sign. Everything pointed in the same direction: the birds, the swell change, the cloud mass. Land lay not far ahead. Then, as Taka watched, the bright star Kai had marked the night before rose above the horizon, beside the darkening cloud, in direct line with the marker on the prow. The star that would at last guide them through the night to land.

  Chapter 13

  It was another full day before the cloud was near enough to reveal the high island hidden beneath. A mountainous island. Taka didn’t care that it was dark and forbidding under its towering cloud shadow. All that mattered was that they had land in sight. They had made it across the Great Ocean against all odds, and in the nick of time. Kua-the-Seeker was gradually but inexorably sinking lower in the water, now less than a hand’s breadth beneath them. The weather was being kind to them, a gentle breeze that barely ruffled the surface as it nudged the labouring moki steadily on before it, the only cloud in the sky the solitary mass that built its daily beacon over the island. The seabirds floating nearby had flown from the island at dawn, as though tracing a path across the sky for them to follow. The birds weren’t feeding and Piko’s lines hadn’t caught any more fish. But Taka didn’t care that his stomach was growling with hunger once more.
Land was in sight.

  As they sailed closer, the sea colour began to change: turquoise and streaks of pale green swirled among the darker hues of deep ocean. Every now and then, clumps of kelp and driftwood bumped against the hulls. Matu steered them along the edge of the meeting place of the criss-crossing, long swells, their intermingling indicated by a disturbed jopple on the surface which became stronger as the moki sailed nearer to the island.

  At dawn the next day, before the cloud mass had time to build, Taka stared as the rising sun outlined folded, green hill slopes falling away below twin summits, black and craggy. His heart lurched as he spotted a white plume of vapour streaming from the higher of the two summits. This island belonged to Mahui the fire-goddess, and her demons were keeping her fire signs alive. He swallowed hard and made the demon-averting sign. Far from leaving the fire-goddess and her territory behind them as they sailed across the Great Ocean, as he’d assumed, they would be as close to her warrior mountains as if they’d gone south to Aotea like the other Travellers.

  All day, they sailed closer and closer, more detail being revealed as they approached. By late afternoon, whenever the moki lifted sluggishly on the swell, Taka could make out a fringe of white surf skirting the island below a rampart of cliffs that rose vertically out of the sea. The cliffs were made up of slabs and columns of rock in Mahui’s colours — black, streaked with bands of crimson and ochre — eroded at the sea edge into caves and sea-stacks. There was no sign of a break in the rampart. No sign of a beach or an inlet where they could land the moki. The Travellers gathered on deck and stared towards the island. The frowning face of its cliffs stared back implacably. Counter-waves repelled by the rock were already strong enough to reach them, the rebound slewing the battered moki sideways before the next set of waves threatened to suck her shorewards. Making a landfall would prove harder than they’d expected. Their ordeal was not yet over.

  ‘We’ll have to sail on round the coastline.’ Piko made it sound feasible.

  That was a big assumption. Taka knew the disintegrating moki couldn’t sail much further. He’d stopped looking over the side when he realized that, each time he checked, Kua-the-Seeker had sunk lower still. The last time he looked, the small wavelets were already lapping perilously close to platform level.

  ‘Listen to that surf.’ Matu’s voice was sober. ‘We’re in danger this close. We need to stand well off.’

  Taka listened to the ominous booming of the surf as the next wave renewed the sea’s onslaught on the land. He remembered the legends that told of battles between the water-god and the fire-goddess, Tanga’s waves constantly attacking the rock created by Mahui’s fires wherever land and sea came together. The moki and her crew were poised on an unknown, dangerous threshold between the territories of two warring gods. None of them had any idea which god prevailed here. Taka ran apprehensive fingers over the amulets his grandmother had sewn into his waist pouch, but their familiar bumps and knobs were little comfort. Even the wrapped god stick was inert once more.

  Matu was already turning the moki away from the cliffs. Taka’s feelings were in turmoil. They were heading back out to sea and all his instincts cried out that they were doing the wrong thing. They couldn’t last much longer out here. What if the wind changed and drove them away from the island, beyond the point of return? What if the moki sank before they found a landing place? What if there was no landing place to find? He longed to be safe ashore. The island was so tantalizingly close, yet they might as well still be far out at sea if they couldn’t find somewhere to beach the moki. And they needed to find somewhere soon. The added turbulence of the waves rebounding from the cliffs was revealing how unresponsive Kua-the-Seeker had become. It was some time before Matu was able to force her onto a course that took them back out to sea.

  The other Travellers’ glum faces reflected Taka’s uneasy thoughts. Then Piko said, his voice bracing, ‘There’s bound to be a bay somewhere where we can beach the moki.’

  Taka stared back as the dense, unfamiliar forest of tall trees that overhung the cliffs began to recede. Shadow was beginning to leach and blur the colours as the descending sun disappeared behind the western flank of the smoking mountain. His nostrils filled with the enticing mixture of land smells that every now and then overwhelmed the salt tang of the sea: rich damp earth, decaying vegetation, interlaced with intoxicating perfume from some tropical flower. Then his head reared as he smelt Something else: wafts of unwelcome demon breath. He wondered for the first time whether this island was even inhabited. He’d taken it for granted that this was the island of Kahu’s legend, for why else would the water-god guide them here? But had people been able to make their peace with the fire-goddess so they could live in her domain?

  As they angled further away from the shadowed cliffs, a last shaft of sunlight shone through a low spot in the ridge beyond. Taka watched the blade of golden light angle across the cliff face. Its right-hand edge was interrupted by a clean, vertical line of rock. Now, as they slowly drew away from the land, he could see a wedge of calm water opening out at the foot of the cliff, between the sun-hazed backdrop and the solid, dark line of rock. His heart started to thump.

  ‘Look — a gap in the cliffs.’ His voice cracked.

  Even as the others turned to look, the light was already fading as the sun’s rim passed beyond the dip in the ridge, and the sharp edge of outlined rock blurred back into shadow. But not before they had all seen the briefly lit wedge at its base where the sea swirled against an inner cliff face, without a threatening fringe of white surf.

  Taka felt the god stick in his waist pouch press against his stomach. ‘Matu?’

  Matu stared at the cliff rampart, once more a seemingly solid barrier. ‘We might squeeze through there. We couldn’t see how big that gap is.’

  ‘If it is a gap.’ Kai sounded doubtful. ‘It might just be an indentation in the cliff, a shallow cove.’

  Taka said firmly, ‘We were shown it. It has to be a passage.’

  ‘No guarantees we’ll find a landing place further on.’ Piko’s words revealed that he’d actually been no more convinced than Taka and Kai about finding somewhere. ‘I think we should go for it.’

  ‘Easier said than done.’ Kai was frowning as he looked at the wallowing hulls, their surface now only a finger length above the water. ‘The moki won’t take much more.’

  Kota spoke up. ‘We did see smooth water. It has to be a god-given sign.’

  Matu was checking the sea surge. He wet his finger and held it up to the wind, now deflecting in random gusts off the cliff face. ‘We’ll have to circle back round, come in on an angle.’

  ‘Under sail?’ Kai asked.

  Matu shook his head. ‘We’ve not got that sort of control. That wind is all over the place and the moki’s too slow to respond. We’ll have to paddle.’ His voice was calm and confident. ‘All four of you.’

  As he spoke, he was already leaning hard on the steering oar. Slowly, ponderously, Kua-the-Seeker turned back in a wide curve towards the cliffs. As Taka handed out the paddles, he felt his heart thump again. He knew — they all knew — that they would get only one chance at this.

  The surging swell threatened to dash Kua-the-Seeker against the spray-soaked fringe of rocks at the base of the cliffs, now dangerously close. The paddlers struggled to keep the almost-submerged moki moving forward. Taka could see caverns gaping where the rock face met the sea. Their hungry black mouths were lined with licking tongues of kelp, ready to swallow them. It was taking all of Matu’s skill to keep the cumbersome moki on line. The roar of surf filled Taka’s ears as they crabbed their agonizingly slow way along the towering cliffs that now leant out over them, blotting out the sky. They were deep in shadow here, but the harsh breath of the downdraft off the rock face was tainted by Mahui and hot against his sweating skin. He felt dwarfed. They were nothing but a tiny speck, lost amid this seething suck of turbulent water that besieged the resisting rock. As he struggled to paddle strongly to keep a
ny sort of rhythm going, his muscles started to burn. He tried to console himself that they were now so low in the water they couldn’t be harmed by the wayward wind blasting down at them. It wasn’t much help. Not only were they beyond the point of return, they couldn’t expect any help from the water-god here. They were on their own.

  Just as Taka thought they would become entangled in the writhing kelp, be drawn under the bulging rock, overwhelmed by the final surge of a triumphant wave, the cliff face ahead of them opened. A narrow stretch of calmer water beckoned. Taka couldn’t see whether they were entering a passage or a treacherous cul-de-sac. They had no choice. There was no turning back. The moki rose reluctantly with the next swell. He could feel the remorseless drag on the hulls. They were being drawn sideways towards the cliff base.

  Matu shouted over the din of the breaking surf, ‘Give it everything you’ve got!’

  With a responding shout of his own, Taka dug his paddle deep into the water. He stroked as hard as he could, and felt the others follow suit behind him. His back was aching, his braced legs cramping, his arms weakening, before Kua-the-Seeker began to respond. Slowly, slowly, the clutching pull of the swell loosened its grip. He sucked in huge gulps of air, then gritted his teeth and forced himself to keep the momentum of the stroke going. At last, the moki slid beyond the swell and through the narrow gap in the rock face. The brawling boom of surf and wind immediately faded behind them, cut off by the curve in the rock wall. Taka lifted his paddle and let the moki glide on, carried on a series of diminishing ripples until she emerged into calm water.