Battle of the Birds

by Lee Murray

  Not good enough.

  ‘Did this deeper prophecy include Moa’s death?’ Annie lances.

  Kuia shakes her head. She speaks softly, ‘No, Annie. Nobody knew the outcome, not even Ruānuku.’

  Yet Annie can’t help feeling that somehow they’ve betrayed Moa, sending him to face Te Hōkioi, all the while knowing he would die. Annie hugs her arms to herself. Large tears roll down her face.

  ‘But what if Moa had won?’ she whispers. ‘As the victor, the kōpīa bread would have been his. He didn’t have a chance.’

  Kuia pulls Annie to her. Annie stiffens, still too angry to be comforted, but Kuia holds her close and strokes her hair, the way Mum used to after one of Annie’s nightmares, and soon Annie gives herself over to the gentle, soothing touch of Moana’s grandmother.

  ‘Perhaps. But I don’t think so, Annie,’ Kuia murmurs. ‘Moa was too humble to claim the kōpīa for himself. He might have offered everyone a small bite for their part in the battle. Look around you at Moa’s friends. There are hundreds of us. Shared amongst so many, the poison would not have been enough to kill. Perhaps a belly ache. No more.’

  Annie sniffs. What Kuia says makes sense. Moa was not a vain leader. He didn’t seek power for himself. He wasn’t that kind of bird. If Annie is honest she’d admit that, even knowing he was going to fail, Moa might still have fought for the flightless. She allows herself to relax into Kuia’s chest.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kuia.’

  ‘I’m sorry too, Annie.’

  ‘Chief Piri is making preparations for a party. There’s a lot to celebrate,’ Fantasia tells Rowi and Mergus sometime later. The little fantail hops up and down with excitement on Ken’s shoulder. Annie and Moana are sitting side by side on Kahurangi’s Boasting Boulder, while he paces about on the sand, throwing stones into the lake.

  ‘Chief Piri?’ Annie says.

  ‘You know, the tubby one. I believe you may have referred to him as Chief Deputy Principal,’ Ken notes wryly.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes, Chief Piri says Te Hōkioi’s supporters have all run off. They’re not so brave without their leader. Cowards!’ Fantasia chirps.

  ‘Unfortunately, I won’t be staying on for the festivities,’ Mergus announces. ‘I’d best be away. I left my wife sitting on a clutch three weeks ago and it’s more than my life’s worth to stick around partying. I really must fly north and help her. Our chicks will be hatching any day now.’ Annie translates the news for Kahurangi and Moana.

  ‘Mergus, that’s wonderful!’

  ‘Yes, well.’ He flushes a dramatic rust colour. It’s the second occasion Annie has seen a goose blush. Mergus goes on, ‘What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, so I’d better get home and help. I’m hoping my being an elected member of the Council of Birds will explain my delay, otherwise my wife is going to be mighty furious.’

  ‘You’ve been fantastic, Mergus; a hero. If you didn’t arrive when you did…’ Annie says.

  ‘Aw, it was nothing.’

  ‘It was definitely not nothing,’ Moana adds, placing her hand on Mergus’ shoulder and bringing the number of times Annie has seen a goose blush to three.

  ‘Must be off…wife…well, then…’ he blusters.

  Mergus waddles to the side of the lake, gradually building speed until he takes off in a clumsy running leap. Once in the air, his flight is punctuated with occasional vigorous flaps. They watch as he melts into the horizon.

  ‘Chief Tama says another meeting of the birds will be called,’ says Kahurangi, breaking the silence.

  Rowi agrees. ‘Yes, no doubt a new Council will be elected. We’ve lost a few members.’

  ‘Te Hōkioi for one!’ Kahurangi grins.

  ‘And Moa,’ says Fantasia sadly.

  ‘And don’t forget my uncle, Ahuru. He wasn’t on the Council, but he was still a good person, a great chief…’ Moana says, her voice becoming strangled. The group is quiet again, as they consider their lost friends. Kahurangi gives Moana a long hug. He tosses another pebble, and it hits the lake surface with a pleasing plop.

  After a while Annie says, ‘I still don’t get it, though.’ She pulls the black pendant of Tūhua from her T-shirt. The stone is warm where it has rested against her skin. It’s no longer glowing, but the words are still visible. ‘I mean, this is the prophecy, right?’ She reads the words aloud, taking care to translate for her bird friends:

  'As this dark stone reflects the light, so will rise who conquers flight.'

  ‘Yes, that’s the prophecy,’ Rowi agrees.

  ‘So who exactly is rising? Who conquered flight?’ Annie asks, puzzled. She hands the pendant to Moana, who holds it in her palm.

  Fantasia gives an unladylike snort. ‘I should’ve thought that was obvious. The people. Humans. You three, Toa and Kakama. You conquered flight with your balloon and your kite-thingy.’

  ‘Could be. Featherless flyers. I guess it could catch on.’

  Annie smiles. She has no doubt that man will eventually master the skies. After all, she’s seen the airport hub at Chicago, where there are planes everywhere. But is that really what the prophecy meant?

  Moana passes the pendant back to Annie, but Annie shakes her head. ‘You keep it.’ The pendant has always been special to Annie, a link to this country and the people she loves here. It seems right to give it to her special friend now. Moana smiles and puts the pendant around her own neck.

  ‘Anyway, the people aren’t like Te Hōkioi,’ Moana says, wrapping her fingers around the stone the way Annie used to. ‘We don’t plan to take over. Aotearoa is big enough for us all to share.’

  Annie says nothing. Moana’s sentiment is genuine. And she’s a Māori princess. Maybe things will be different this time.

  ‘I’m certain Te Hōkioi thought the prophecy meant he could overthrow the flightless,’ Rowi says thoughtfully. ‘He believed he was the darkness mentioned on the stone. So I wonder if Moa was the light.’

  ‘Who knows? The prophecy is too obscure,’ Kahurangi says.

  ‘That’s true. They’re never specific, are they? They never say on Thursday 25th May at precisely 4:30pm when the Martin family sit down to an afternoon tea of buttered date scones, the world will come to an end when a 5.2km wide meteorite hits the earth in downtown Boise, Idaho. It’s always, ‘the end is nigh,’ or something equally vague.’

  Her mind momentarily full of buttered date scone, Annie doesn’t translate.

  ‘Well, I know one prophecy that’s about to come true,’ Fantasia trills. ‘Look! The party is starting!’

  Annie leans back and watches the crowd. She smiles as she glimpses Toa and Miriama slip away together, hand in hand. She allows herself to feel a bit smug. She might have had something to do with that! She should really join in the celebrations, but for the moment she’s content to sit in the background. It’s been an eventful few days and she’s still not fully recovered from the battle. Her head hurts and she’s mildly dizzy. She’s got a bit of a fever, too. Nothing a good sleep won’t fix.

  There’s a soft tickle on her neck.

  ‘Annie!’ It’s time to go, kid.’

  ‘Go?’

  ‘Yep. Please have your boarding pass ready for our flight attendants.’

  ‘We’re going home? To Wisconsin?’

  ‘Appears so. It’s a bit odd, but my navigational system is up and operational again, which means we’re clear for take-off whenever you’re ready.’

  ‘We’ll miss the party,’ Annie says wistfully. She looks over at her friends: Moana, Kahurangi, little Kakama, and Kuia, their faces flickering in the glow of the fire. A pang of sadness seizes her. Annie will miss them all. But in Wisconsin there’s Mum and Dad, and Lauren, and even Mikey might fly over for his holidays. Wisconsin is her home too. It’s time to go.

  ‘Do you want to say goodbye?’

  Annie shakes her head. Why spoil their fun? And goodbyes are tough. It was hard enough leaving New Zealand the first time. She gives Ken a gentle nud
ge, indicating they should go. When they can’t be heard, Annie says, ‘Hey, Ken, will I get my preferred dinner selection?’

  ‘Depends. Is your preference for dried eel?’

  ‘What’s my other choice?’

  ‘Dried eel.’

  ‘Thought so.’

  Home

  There’s a feathery softness on her cheek. Dad is leaning over Annie, plumping pillows.

  ‘Annie! Oh good, you’re awake,’ says Dad. Over his shoulder, he shouts through the open doorway, ‘Nurse! She’s awake!’ Annie’s head rings. Turning back to Annie, Dad’s quieter again. ‘You’ve had a nasty bout of sunstroke love. You fell asleep in the sun in the library grounds…Mum got tied up in the library and was longer than she expected… she feels terrible…blames herself. You’ve been in hospital overnight, but don’t worry, the doctor says you’re going to be fine…’ He wipes a cool cloth over Annie’s forehead. Annie drifts off.

  The next time she wakes, fluorescent lights sting her eyes. Annie blinks a few times, remembering where she is, the sunstroke, Dad. Her arm throbs. She looks down. She’s attached to a drip, the sleek silver needle inserted in the place where Toka pierced her with his beak. Annie stares at the needle, trying to make sense of what she is seeing. Was she hallucinating, then? It didn’t feel like a dream. She feels at her throat for her stone pendant, but it’s not there. The last time she saw it seems years and years ago.

  Annie’s Mum is sitting opposite in the duck-blue hospital chair. Her bag at her feet, she’s hugging an old teddy bear of Annie’s, the one with all its fur loved off, and she’s reading.

  ‘Mum?’

  Mum leaps up, leaving her documents and the bear on the vinyl seat.

  ‘Hello there chick. You gave us such a fright,’ she says, giving Annie a kiss on the forehead.

  ‘Mum, did you put my stone pendant somewhere safe?’

  ‘The special pendant Grandma and Grandpa gave you? I haven’t seen it. Could you have dropped it in the library grounds?’

  Annie shakes her head and immediately wishes she hadn’t. It buzzes. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, perhaps the paramedics removed it while you were in the ambulance. I’ll give them a call and ask, shall I?’

  ‘That’s okay. I think I might have lent it to someone. I’ll probably remember later. What’s that you were reading anyway?’

  ‘Articles for my assignment, the one I was researching at the library. It’s not important.’

  ‘What’s the assignment about?’

  ‘Something unpleasant, actually. It’s about bullies in the workplace and how to deal with them.’

  Annie thinks of Te Hōkioi. Now there’s a bully. She thinks about Moa, too, prepared to stick up for all his flightless friends. Could it have been the sunstroke? Annie doesn’t think so.

  ‘You know what, Mum? Sometimes it just needs one person willing to stand up to them.’

  Mum gives Annie’s hand a squeeze. ‘I think you’re right, Annie. Are you hungry?’ Annie realises she’s ravenous. She nods enthusiastically, which makes her head buzz again. Mum smiles. ‘I’ll see if I can rustle something up for you, shall I?’ Bending down, she rummages in her bag and produces a jar of Marmite. ‘How does a Marmite and cheese sandwich sound?’ To Annie, it sounds marvellous. A change from the roots and grubs she’s been eating lately! She gives Mum a nod, a little one this time. ‘By the way, some mail arrived at home. I brought it in for you. It’s there on the bedside table.’ Then Mum scoots out the door, jar in hand.

  When Annie sits up her head is still fuzzy, but moments later it subsides. After patting the blanket flat, she takes a long sip of water from the glass on the nightstand, careful not to disturb the IV in her arm. Then she picks up her mail. On top there’s a postcard. The photograph is of the famous bronze statue of Walt and Mickey with Cinderella’s sparkling pink and white Fantasyland castle as the backdrop. Glittery pink lettering is scrawled across the top edge. Disneyworld, Florida. Annie flips the card over and recognises Lauren’s rounded handwriting:

  Hi, Annie,

  Did Space Mountain. Hurtling through space at top speed was the coolest adventure ever! Positively vomitous though! See you soon.

  Lauren XX

  Annie chuckles softly. Maybe not the coolest adventure.

  Underneath the postcard, facedown, is a stiff white envelope. Scrawled in familiar handwriting are the words: Senders: Al and Sarah Thomas, Tauranga, New Zealand.

  It’s from Annie’s grandparents. News from home. Annie’s about to tear the envelope open, when something makes her turn it over. On the front, Annie’s name and address is printed neatly in blue ink. On the top right-hand corner is a postage stamp. And there, emerging triumphantly from that perforated square of verdant bush is a picture of Annie’s friend, Moa.

  A week later, Annie and Mum are back at Edgewood College. In her panic to get an ambulance for Annie, Mum had lost a couple of articles, blown away in the wind. She’s come back to the library to get new copies.

  ‘Is it okay if I wait for you outside? I thought I might take a look for my pendant. See if I dropped it.’

  ‘Well, okay. It’s nearly dark, so I guess there’s not much danger of your getting sunstroke this time! Off you go, then, chick. I won’t be long, I promise.’

  Night is falling. The evening’s first fireflies dance in and out of the trees. Nearby someone’s having a cook-out. The telltale aroma of steak and barbeque sauce wafts in on the balmy night air. Annie hurries over and clambers up onto the effigy mound. She lies face down on the grass, stretching her arms wide around the eagle’s neck.

  ‘Ken! Are you there?’

  The ground is cold and still. In the distance, Annie hears footsteps. A car door closes and there’s the sound of an engine. When, at last, the engine noise has faded into nothing, she whispers again, ‘Ken, it’s me.’

  The earth rumbles gently beneath her. Against her skin, the ground warms. Suddenly, there’s a small quake and Ken’s feathered head pops through earth. He shakes like a puppy, his feathers dripping dirt and clods as Annie slips off his back.

  ‘Whoever made up the term ‘free as a bird,’ I wonder?’

  ‘Ken! I knew I wasn’t crazy!’

  ‘Well, that is arguable, Annie. That was you who flew across a stretch of ocean in a hot air balloon made out of aute cloth?’

  ‘I knew it!’

  ‘You’ll be pleased to know, I did some research and luckily you kids didn’t change the course of history. Hot air ballooning is still attributed to the two Frenchmen. It might have been different, but it turns out there was a cold snap and the aute trees became less abundant. While he was trying to grow some hardier aute trees, Kahurangi got distracted developing some radical new plant species instead.’ Annie nods. That sounds like Kahurangi. She wraps her arms around her body. It’s dark now and starting to get cold. Mum’ll be finished soon.

  ‘Can I come and see you sometimes?’

  ‘I’d like that. The thing is, I don’t know if I’ll always wake up. I’m not exactly the early bird who catches the worm. I’m not partial to worms.’

  ‘Will we go back again?’

  ‘Actually, Annie, I don’t get out much. This was my first trip away in a millennium. I don’t mind really. I like it here. Especially in the summer when the students sit outside and keep me company with their chatter about television reality shows and pop-stars. The food’s good too. No dried rats. Just burritos, bagels, tacos, hot chips…’

  ‘Ken! That’s all junk food.’

  ‘Well, I do draw the line at Kentucky Fried Chicken.’

  Annie giggles. She’ll miss Ken. Wrapping her arms around him, she nuzzles into the soft feathers of his chest, sheltered beneath the spread of his massive wings.

  Glossary of Maōri terms

  Aotearoa Māori name for New Zealand, meaning ‘land of the long white cloud’

  aute tree whose bark is used to make cloth

  haka ceremonial dance


  hāngi traditional earth oven

  hongi gesture in which two people press noses, share their breath,

  a greeting

  horopito New Zealand tree with speckled leaves of peppery flavour

  huhu larval form of huhu beetle

  huia a New Zealand wattlebird, resembling the tūī, now extinct

  kaikōmako rubbing stick, hard wood used for starting a fire

  kākahu clothing, woven cloak

  kākāpō flightless green parrot

  kapa haka dance party or group performing traditional dances

  karaka glossy-leafed tree

  karakia incantation or prayer

  kauri New Zealand giant podocarp tree, the most famous named Tanē Mahuta, or Lord of the Forest

  kea New Zealand native parrot, now endangered

  kererū New Zealand wood pigeon

  kete flaxen bag

  kia ora greetings, hello

  kiwi iconic flightless bird, emblem of New Zealand

  kōkako rare silver New Zealand wattlebird, known for its haunting song

  kōpīa fruit of the karaka tree

  kōtuku rare white heron

  kōwhai indigenous New Zealand tree with vibrant yellow flowers

  kuia old woman, grandmother

  kūmara sweet potato

  māhoe soft wood used for lighting fire

  mana respect, prestige

  mānuka New Zealand tea-tree, a plant well known for its medicinal properties

  matakite seer, clairvoyant, soothsayer

  Mauao Māori name for Mount Maunganui, meaning ‘Caught by the morning light’

  Moa sometimes known as Te Kura, a large flightless bird, now extinct

  Otukapuarangi Māori name for the Pink Terraces, destroyed in the Tarawera eruption of 1886

  pā village, often fortified

  pakiwaitara ancient legend, story, myth

  pikopiko fern shoot

  pipi a common New Zealand shellfish

  pōhutukawa coastal New Zealand Christmas tree

  ponga giant tree fern, silver fern