by Joanna Orwin
All Taka’s attention was focused on the young woman gazing steadily back at him.
Chapter 15
You do realize she’s their headman’s daughter?’ Kai looked quizzically at his cousin.
Taka stared back, pretending not to Understand. ‘Your point?’
‘Come on,’ said Kai. ‘You know exactly what I’m saying. Our situation’s difficult enough without you lusting after Mister Goddard’s daughter.’
‘Who says I’m lusting after her?’ Taka was indignant. ‘Our eyes met, that’s all.’
Unconvinced, Kai persisted. ‘So why’ve you been mooning about the place?’
Taka stopped pretending. ‘You can’t blame me for dreaming — you have to admit, she’s stunning. But give me some credit. I wouldn’t dare go anywhere near her. I’m not that stupid.’ Behind his back, he made the demon-averting gesture, knowing that if the opportunity arose he wouldn’t hesitate.
Kai raised his eyebrows, clearly not believing him, then punched him on the arm. ‘Mind you don’t.’
Although the Mister had applauded Taka’s performance, he seemed in no hurry to make up his mind about their fate. Several days drifted by, and they saw nothing more of him or his retinue. At home their headmen lived among the people and worked with them like ordinary men, but the Mister and his family were closeted away in a compound of grand buildings and had little to do with anyone else. Nothing about this island was like home. Against all the Travellers’ expectations, only a few people went up to the cultivations each day. Most of the men hung around the store houses or lounged in the shade of the palm trees, so the Travellers soon learnt to stay away from the settlement where they risked the hostile stares and ribald comments of idlers. Only the younger men ventured out fishing, and even then for only a few hours on the days when the harbour was calm. The women seemed to spend much of their time gossiping on doorsteps, their work nothing more than childcare, light domestic duties and tending their small ornamental gardens. Most days, the sun shone warmly, but it was cool enough at night to make sleeping easy. If it rained, it was in short bursts that soaked everyone to the skin, but nobody took any notice: wet clothing dried as soon as the sun reappeared. To Taka, living here seemed like paradise, but his cousin pointed out there had to be more to it.
Kai thought that one of the older spear carriers, a grizzled heavyweight whose muscle-bound body was beginning to run to fat, might be willing to answer their many questions. ‘I’ve noticed this Harris must be at the bottom of the spear carriers’ pecking order. He’s like Kawau, always has a lot to say for himself, but the others pay him little heed.’
So Taka approached Harris, flattering him by saying the spear carriers must find guarding them irksome, that they must have much more important duties. ‘What would you be doing normally?’
Harris looked him up and down, clearly debating whether to deign to answer, but in the end couldn’t resist Taka’s carefully innocent, enquiring face. ‘What would we be doing? Why, guarding the Mister and his family, of course.’
‘Why would they need guarding? What threats do they face?’ Taka was puzzled. The place seemed peaceful enough to him.
‘You kidding me?’ Harris stared at him as though he was retarded. ‘Plenty of others want to take their place, for one. Then there’s strangers like you—’
‘Us — we’re hardly a threat!’ said Taka.
Harris grunted. ‘Well, maybe not you lot. See that ridge?’ He gestured towards the west, and Taka’s gaze fell on the very dip in the skyline that had revealed the passage through the cliffs to them. ‘Them over there — those Choi people — they’d be across here in a flash, cut all our throats if they could.’
‘Choi people?’
‘Them — that bunch of yellow-bellied metal workers.’ Harris showed impatience that Taka didn’t recognize the name. He separated his words as though he was addressing a child. ‘Surely you know we’re not the only ones on this island, though we were already here well before the Battle of the Gods?’
He must be referring to the onset of the Dark. Taka was intrigued. ‘Tell us more.’
At first, Harris hesitated, but when Taka kept the questioning look on his face, he succumbed to the rare pleasure of a receptive audience. Once he got into his stride, he wasn’t averse to spinning yarns, and all five Travellers settled down in the shade of a palm tree to listen, their ears already attuned to the island’s different speech rhythm that had initially made their shared language sound so foreign. The spear carrier told them that when the first giant wave hit their island, a few people survived by fleeing up the slopes of the mountain, even though the summit was erupting. ‘They had the sense to follow the locals, didn’t they? Knew they’d probably seen such waves before. Whatever, they followed them to some caves up there, where they could shelter from Pere’s fire and escape the surge.’
Harris had none of old Huaho’s storytelling ability, and he continued to assume much they couldn’t possibly know, so Taka couldn’t help interjecting. ‘Wait a minute. I thought you were the locals?’
‘No, no — our ancestors were traders, medicine men, churchers and the like. Notables.’ The spear carrier waved him down impatiently. ‘The locals were just them brown-skins who’ve always lived here. Simple folk.’ He looked at the Travellers, his gaze disparaging. ‘Look a lot like you.’
‘So, who are these metal workers you mentioned?’ Kai ignored the man’s bigotry. ‘Choi people, you called them.’
‘Them yellow-bellies? I was getting to that, wasn’t I?’ Put out, Harris lumbered to his feet and made to move away. ‘All these questions. Should let a man tell his story without interrupting all the time.’
Taka apologized hastily. ‘Please, carry on — you were talking about sheltering in some caves.’ He assumed Pere was the local name for the fire-goddess they knew as Mahui, but had the sense not to ask.
After grumbling to himself and rasping his thumb across the ginger bristles sprouting in the creases of his jowls, Harris pretended reluctance to continue. He made them wait while he plumped around on his buttocks, making himself comfortable. ‘It was much later, wasn’t it, after everything had settled down — people getting around a bit, like. Someone went exploring over that ridge, wanting to see what had happened to the forest. Well, he got a shock. The surges had tossed this great big ship right up into the trees, some distance from the shore.’
‘A metal ship?’ This time it was Matu who couldn’t help himself.
‘What else?’ Harris shook his head at such stupidity. ‘Don’t you lot know anything? All steel and iron, a mother ship they called it. Anyway, the crew, them Choi people, had already settled in over there, built houses and all, and were busy setting up a forge. It seems they had some expert with them, one of the ship’s Misters, who knew how to rework all that metal from their ship.’
He went on to explain that the Choi crew had resisted any proposal to join forces with the survivors on the harbour side. ‘Stood to reason, didn’t it? Our lot couldn’t Understand a word of their jabber, or them us. A bunch of crooks besides, ignorant fisherfolk mainly, wanting to extort what they could from us in return for any metal. And that hasn’t changed.’
The harbour and the valleys over the western ridge of the mountain had been the only parts of the island to escape the devastation caused by the fire-goddess’s discharges of flowing, red-hot rock. ‘We don’t really know why Pere would spare yellow-bellies,’ said Harris as an aside, rasping his thumb over his jaw thoughtfully before he continued his story, telling them that after several decades of skirmishes and tentative bouts of trading, the two settlements had reached an uneasy truce. ‘Early on, our Misters had the sense to arrange brown-skin marriages for their leaders — the yellow-bellies had no women with them, of course — so that meant they developed ties with the brown-skins over here. Less likely to attack us, see?’
Despite such ties, Harris’s attitude and the maintenance of an armed guard made it clear that most contact with t
he Choi people was restricted. He talked of an annual exchange of goods, bartering for metal items. Then he frowned. ‘Things have shifted a bit lately. Their current leader, a chap called Choi Yu, he’s got a bit thick with Mister Goddard. Been coming over here for visits, like.’ Harris shrugged. ‘Can’t see myself that any good can come of it. They’re best avoided, if you ask me. They’re not like us.’
Although Taka’s exhausted body was responding to the wholesome food, warm leisurely days and bathing in the therapeutic mineral waters, like the other Travellers he was still prone to sleeping deeply for many hours. It wasn’t long before they weren’t thought to be much of a risk and were left in the care of Harris, while the other spear carriers returned to their normal duties. Harris huffed and grumbled, complaining whenever anyone came within earshot, until Piko placated him by saying that the order probably came direct from the Mister himself in recognition that he was the right man for the job. Taka found it hard to hide his grin as the dull-witted Harris preened himself. Although the spear carrier continued to lord it over them when anyone else from the settlement was around, he now took to treating the five young men as his personal pets — ignorant, but harmless. Even Matu conceded there might be an advantage to having Harris on their side and managed to swallow his chagrin.
Taka was still thinking of their reluctant hosts as Mahui people, but the spear carrier made it clear they gave themselves no name, seeing little need — everyone knew who they were, after all; the yellow-bellies kept to themselves and the brown-skins knew their place. But when the survivors rebuilt their settlement on the higher terraces above the reach of any giant waves, they had given it the name Sanctuary. Kai said ruefully that it had yet to prove itself so for them.
Taka’s curiosity about the brown-skinned people was growing. Who were these people who apparently looked like them and had always lived on the island? Were they the descendants of Kahu and their own ancestors who had crossed the Great Ocean? All an uninterested Harris would tell them was that these brown-skins lived in their own small villages at the heads of the other bays in the harbour, and provided labour as well as barter-women for the exchanges with the Choi people.
Piko didn’t like the sound of any of this. When the spear carrier was safely out of earshot, he said, ‘Labour? Barter-women? If these brown-skins have the status of slaves, that has to be bad news for us. Mister Goddard might be less inclined to assist our quest if he thinks we’re kin to slaves.’
Kota advised him not to make any assumptions. ‘Who knows what this Mister is likely to do? We just have to wait and see.’
‘He’ll be working out how to get maximum advantage from the situation,’ said Kai soberly.
Taka’s thoughts were running along other lines. It was clear the Sanctuary people paid homage to the fire-goddess, but surely Mahui — or Pere — would have been one of the deities worshipped by the original inhabitants of the island? A puzzled frown on his face, he asked, ‘Why would the Misters take up beliefs held by a slave people? It makes no sense.’
‘Think about it,’ said Kai patiently. ‘It makes complete sense. Presumably the first Misters exploited those beliefs so they could lord it over the local people. That’s how I see it anyway.’ He elaborated in response to Taka’s doubting face. ‘If you took control of any local rituals and ceremonies, you’d also gain control of the people. From what Harris says, this was the only part of the island not destroyed. Taking over would be dead easy since any survivors would already want to give thanks to the fire-goddess.’
He waved at the smoking mountain above them, the mineral stream nearby and the wisps of steam rising above the buildings of the settlement. ‘Not to mention all these signs of fire activity. A clever move, building Sanctuary right in the middle of such constant reminders of the goddess’s power.’
Taka could just make out the eerie wailing of those steam columns, so faint that the mournful sound might be a memory, an echo of the first time he’d heard them. He couldn’t help an involuntary shudder. There was no point trying to debate with Kai — his quick way with words meant he could counter any argument — but even if Kai was right and the Misters had cynically manipulated people’s beliefs all those years ago, he couldn’t deny that the spear carriers and probably most people living in Sanctuary now paid homage to the fire-goddess. So who had the true power — the Mister or the fire-goddess?
As the days continued to drift by and still no word came from the Mister, an increasingly restless Taka persuaded Harris to let them visit the landing place where the settlement kept their fishing canoes. The spear carrier was inclined to be suspicious of their motives until Piko said they wanted only to admire such excellent workmanship at close quarters, having no experience of solid wood vessels. Once reassured, Harris retired to the shade of a nearby palm tree. Taking care to maintain an air of casual curiosity, the Travellers examined the fleet of canoes more closely. Matu rapped the solid side of the biggest canoe, then strolled alongside it as he calculated its length under his breath. ‘I reckon we could replicate Kua-the-Seeker by linking two of these with a platform.’
Taka sighed. ‘It’d be asking a lot, a gift of two canoes.’
‘Who said anything about asking?’ Matu’s old belligerence surfaced. ‘We need an escape plan in case things go wrong. I don’t trust that Mister.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ Kota urged as they cast anxious glances at the spear carrier, but Harris was now asleep, slumped like a sack against the tree trunk.
Piko was looking thoughtful. ‘I agree with Matu — we need a plan of some sort.’
‘In the meantime, Kota’s right — to the extent that we should act innocent and trusting.’ Kai suggested they move on to another canoe. ‘We don’t know who else might be watching, so we shouldn’t show too much interest in any one craft.’
As they pottered among the drawn-up canoes, taking note of what equipment was left with them and debating in low voices what else they might need, Piko returned to Kai’s comments about the Mister and his tactics. ‘He has to be playing some sort of power game. Making us wait like this. It’s blindingly obvious no one can do anything without his permission.’
‘Exactly my point — he’s taken on the mantle of the goddess.’ Kai’s tone was dry.
Piko’s thoughts had run on. ‘How about a bit of power play of our own?’ His long face lit up.
When the others looked questioning, he went on, ‘Why don’t we send Mister Goddard a message with Harris? Maybe now would be a good time to ask him to let us burn the moki as an expression of our respect for the fire-goddess — like Kota suggested?’
Kai was quick to agree. ‘Good thinking — that might spur him on a bit.’
So they prodded Harris awake, then trailed back along the beach to where the forlorn moki had been heaved above the high-tide line to dry out. They’d not been there long when a group of youths from the settlement beached their canoe and joined them, strings of freshly caught fish slung over their shoulders. A tall, robust redhead with pale skin like the Mister nudged Kua-the-Seeker’s flank with a disparaging toe. ‘Not up to much, is it?’
One of the others chipped in. ‘I heard you tell the Mister you’d been at sea more than three weeks on this thing. Three weeks! Bit much, expecting us to believe that. I reckon you’re nothing but a bunch of local brown-skins, setting up some sort of scam.’
While Taka restrained a bristling Matu, Piko asked, ‘How do you make that out? Surely you must know everyone living in this harbour, at least by sight.’
Before the youth could answer, Kai intervened. He kept his tone even and unprovocative. ‘We know it’s hard to believe our story from what’s left of Kua-the-Seeker, but it’s true, nevertheless.’
‘I don’t see how you could paddle such a clumsy structure, let alone sail it.’ The redhead gave the nearest prow a hefty kick. ‘If your story’s true, you must’ve drifted here by chance.’
This was too much for Matu. He shook himself free from Taka’s grasp and
shoved his truculently jutting jaw into the youth’s face. ‘So that’s what you think, eh? How about putting your muscle where your mouth is — I reckon we’d out-paddle you lot any day.’
‘I’d like to see you try.’ The redhead didn’t flinch. ‘I heard the Mister. You’re nothing but pathetic cast-offs.’
At that point, Harris belatedly pushed in among the gathered youths. ‘Cool down, Dyer. No need for insults.’
Taka thought that was a bit rich, coming from the spear carrier.
Dyer ignored Harris. He continued to glower at Matu. ‘How about it?’
‘You’re on,’ said Matu.
When the confused Harris asked what was going on, Dyer shrugged him off impatiently. ‘They’ve challenged us, haven’t they?’
Before the spear carrier could stop them, the Sanctuary youths thrust their strings of fish at him, then set off along the beach at a fast pace. Sparing their guard only a quick glance, the Travellers followed close behind. As soon as they reached the landing place, the fish-laden Harris puffing in their rear, the tall redhead waved at the fleet drawn up on the beach. ‘Choose your canoe.’
Without hesitation, Matu pointed at the longest canoe, the one he’d paced out earlier.
Dyer nodded. ‘Not bad, not bad. Paddling it might be a different matter.’ He turned and conferred with his companions, keeping his voice low so the Travellers couldn’t hear. When he faced them again, he said, his face carefully blank, ‘We’ll just set it up for you.’
Although Taka watched closely, he couldn’t detect anything suspicious as Dyer and the others checked paddles and the fastenings of the outriggers, then helped them to slide the heavy canoe out into the water.