Child of the Dawn

by Coleman, Clare;

"He says nothing one way or the other."

  "I saw Tutaha's canoe sheds," Tepua said bitterly. "And many war canoes. If this chief took up our cause, he could destroy Land-crab in a day."

  "If he had enough encouragement, he might."

  "Then we must encourage him!"

  "Do not be too eager, Tepua. Tutaha is ambitious—for himself and for his son. He has all this land and wants more. His family could take our district for themselves, and then we would be no better off than now."

  "Then we should not look to him for help?"

  "We should hope that he stays out of the conflict. For now, we must try to keep Tutaha's friendship and make no requests he cannot meet."

  Tepua sighed. "And what of Matopahu? Why is he not also a guest of Tutaha?"

  Aitofa's expression froze. Tepua felt that she had something more to say but was holding it back.

  "You have heard something?" Tepua pressed.

  "He is safe from his enemies in Eimeo. You may not see him for a while."

  Tepua felt her throat tighten. Matopahu had been foremost in her thoughts throughout the journey. Now that she was back here, how could she bear the separation?

  Aitofa pressed her hand, trying to offer some comfort. "Tepua, there is something you can do for both of us. You have a gift. Pray to the gods. Perhaps they will show you an answer to our predicament. And to Matopahu's as well."

  Tepua tried to gather her thoughts. She looked out at the bay, where two large sailing canoes appeared to be having a race. One was pulling up rapidly from behind.

  "Ask the gods...."

  She knew what Aitofa wanted. Tepua had a prophetic gift, but one she had long tried to keep secret. In Tahiti, she had told only Matopahu about it. She wondered what had made him reveal it to Aitofa.

  Once more she looked at the pair of canoes far below. She had been mistaken, she realized. One was not in pursuit of the other; they were sailing off in different directions. One carries my hopes, and the other, my life. Perhaps it was too late to change course.

  She balled her fist. "I will...try," she answered hoarsely. "But I need a quiet place. No one must disturb me."

  "Good. I will arrange for whatever you need. You will not return to the troupe tonight."

  Aitofa led Tepua on a different route down, coming to a settlement at the base of the hill. The Arioi chiefess had family ties here; and she and Tepua were made welcome by a local underchief. After a pleasant meal with the women of the household, the Blackleg showed Tepua to the small guest house that she was to occupy alone.

  "Meet me in early morning," said Aitofa as they were about to part. "Behind the compound is a bathing pool in the brook. Go upstream until you see three large rocks in a row."

  Aitofa hurried off so that she could return to the troupe before dark. Tepua was left alone under a thatched roof—to deal with the troubling request that her leader had made. Plaited mats covered the floor, cushioned by a layer of freshly cut grass. The slanting sunlight of late afternoon filtered through openings between the canes that walled the little house.

  In Tepua's lap lay a long loop of cord, the kind used by children for making string figures. She stared at the cord, hesitating to take it between her fingers. The art of fai, string figures, was popular on Tahiti as well as the atolls. To most people it was only a game. But when Tepua worked with string she sometimes entered a trance, seeing in the patterns the answer to a difficult question.

  Of course, there were others with prophetic gifts, men who fell into fits and spoke in distorted voices. Long ago, Matopahu had been such an oracle, seized sometimes by a god whose voice was high-pitched and difficult to comprehend. But such oracles were not always trustworthy. Tepua understood why Aitofa was relying on her for this delicate task.

  Tepua had always been cautious with her gift, asking the gods for a vision only in times of need. Now, with all the difficulties surrounding her, the need appeared sufficiently great. In a soft voice, she began to chant, calling on the spirit of her ancestress, Tapahi-roro-ariki, who had helped her through so many trials. When the initial chanting was done, Tepua wrapped the cord once around each hand.

  Her start was the classic one; she slipped her left middle finger beneath the string crossing her right palm, then picked up the string on the left palm in the opposite way. Trying a variation of the usual opening, she lifted a loop from the back of one hand, slipped it over her fingers, and dropped it across the strings that stretched between her hands. Repeating with the other side, she went on to pick up strings from her little fingers and pull them across her palms.

  Then her inspiration failed, and she sat staring at the cord. The pattern suggested the beginning of a figure called Running Away. Who was fleeing? she wondered. Was it the usurper Land-crab or her own Arioi troupe?

  She tried picking up the cross-palm string of each hand with the middle finger of the other, a classic move. This merely threw the whole into a tangle. Disconsolately, she let her hands fall into her lap.

  Several more attempts brought her only half-seen suggestions in incomplete figures. The daylight filtering through the cane walls faded until she could no longer see the strings. With a sigh, she accepted the fact that the gods had ignored her pleas. Or perhaps she was just too weary to grasp what they had shown her. The morning of dancing and the climb up the hill had exhausted her.

  She unsnarled the cord, hung it carefully on the center-post of the guest house, and went to sleep.

  Tepua came violently awake as if she had been shaken. A sound echoed in her head although everything outside was quiet. The noise was the bone-jarring crunch of wood against coral.

  She shivered against the night's chill, huddling with her tapa cape drawn closely around her. What had she heard?

  "A dream," she muttered to herself, but this one had been too strange to dismiss. It had carried no images, only sounds. She remembered more. The crash of waves, whipped by a landward-blowing wind. The hoarse cries of men.

  Had some great canoe met its end on the barrier reef during the night? She was too distant from the lagoon for the sounds of shipwreck to reach her. Had her guardian spirit somehow brought the sound into her dreams?

  Hastily she dressed herself in the wrap and bark-cloth cape that Aitofa had provided. The best vantage point would be the top of Taharaa Hill. If there was truly a wreck on the reef, she could see it in the moonlight and run for help.

  She hesitated. Thoughts of spirits and demons chilled her more than the night wind. She stared up at the waxing moon and tried to put her fears aside. This was not a night when ghosts walked.

  Yet, as she started out of the guest house, she wondered what she was doing. Why, of all the sleepers, had she been summoned for this task? She could not answer, yet she felt the spirit of her ancestress guiding her as she turned back to snatch the looped cord from its hook.

  Outside, the cool air chilled her beneath the cape. She began chanting a prayer of protection, just in case some rogue spirit had chosen the wrong night for wandering. The trail to Taharaa Hill was no easier to climb than in daylight, but the exertion soon warmed her.

  At last she stood atop the sheer cliff that plunged into Matavai Bay. The water below lay calm, rippling with moonlight. The line of surf marking the outer reef shone in ghostly green and white. No wrecked craft struggled in the breakers. She listened, trying to catch any sound besides the muted thunder of the ocean against the reef. There was nothing.

  Puzzled, she retreated from the precipice and took a seat near the tallest of several coral-flower trees that stood at the brow of the hill. Looking up, she saw tufted branches, black against the sky.

  Then her thoughts returned to the sennit cord about her arm. Perhaps now the strings were ready to yield answers. She unwound the loop, draped it across her hands.

  Her fingers gleamed faintly in the silvery light as she began. Her palms moved together and apart in rhythm to the chants that accompanied each finger. She went from simple figures into more difficult ones. Ca
noes, houses, mountains, men. All formed between her fingers, yet none drew her into a vision as they had so many times before.

  The moon was starting to set. Soon she would have no light. She had failed once at this, and now she thought she would fail again....

  Without knowing why, she suddenly found herself making the first in a series of figures about the demigod Hiro, famed as a great navigator as well as a trickster. What had this legendary canoe-builder to do with her situation? Only her fingers knew.

  A simple but elegant triangular pattern called the Reclining Seat of Hiro grew between her fingertips. It transformed itself quickly into the House of Hiro. More of Hiro's possessions followed in quick succession. The Marae Stones, the Swing, the Mountain, and the Canoe Cabin.

  The strings merged, separated, interwove. She released her thumbs from the loops and spread the four running diamonds of Hiro's Net between the index and little finger of both hands.

  This was the last figure of the series, yet she could not let it slide from her hands and begin anew. She held up Hiro's Net to the moonlight. The strings glinted in silver and gray, like the weave of a spiderweb. Hiro used his net to catch spirits. What would she catch?

  Her thumbs began to move, crossing her palms, hooking into the triangles around each little finger. Entranced, she watched her hands. This was not a figure she had ever made before. Her thumbs returned, bringing the little finger strings.

  There were no figures beyond Hiro's Net, yet she was making one. Without knowing why, she released the strings from her index fingers, then inserted them into the thumb loops from above, pulled the strings taut.

  She half expected a confusing tangle, but the pattern lay before her, as clear as any she had yet formed. She stared at it. Three long strings ran parallel between her hands. Woven across the three was a pattern that suggested an underwater coral head with a spiked point.

  "Hiro's Rock," she murmured, naming her figure after a well-known submerged reef in the waters that lay close by. And as she gazed at it, the strings became the jagged gray-and-white surface of coral, looming up from the dim greenness of the ocean.

  The vision drew her in until she was no longer sitting on Taharaa Hill, gazing at images in the strings. Now the vision surrounded her, plunging her into the sea beside the infamous underwater reef.

  This has never happened before, she thought in amazement. Before her lay Hiro's Rock, a massive, jagged, welling up of coral from the barrier reef. Its spike did not break the ocean's surface, but lay waiting just beneath the long ocean swells. The coral shelf from which it grew lay deep enough so that the waves passed over without breaking. No pounding surf would warn away a canoe whose master mistakenly took the stretch of open water for a pass into the lagoon.

  Suddenly Tepua saw the underside of a huge shadowy hull plowing through the sea. It struck the great bank, breaking off chunks of coral and shedding splinters. The entire reef and the sea itself seemed to shudder. A terrifyingly familiar sound came again, louder than ever, the agonized grating of planking against stone.

  Now totally immersed in the vision, Tepua felt herself rising to the surface. She heard not the muffled undersea roar, but the cries of seabirds overhead, the splash of canoe paddles, the voices of men. A bright blur grew, resolving itself into a scene of water and sky.

  Yes, she discovered. A vessel had struck the reef. Now she was looking at the craft from above the waterline. A strange tickle of awe and fear began. What filled her vision looked at first like the base of a painted cliff rising from the water. Whitecaps broke against a towering mass, but one that rose and fell on the long ocean swells.

  She stared harder and realized that the great side was made not of rock but of wood—planks painted black at the waterline, then the yellow of parakeet feathers, then bright red toward the top. And high up, far higher than any deck should be, stood masts that were taller than trees. The sails that flew from these reached toward the sky like billowing wings.

  A floating island with white wings...Tepua had heard of such vessels, but had never seen one. Neither Tahiti nor any other island she knew could have produced this wooden beast. It must have come from beyond, from strange lands far over the horizon.

  A few sailors from distant lands had visited her atoll in a much smaller craft. She knew little more than what those men had told her. Yet she had often heard a prophecy that one day a monstrous vessel such as this, floating upright with no need of an outrigger, would come to Tahiti and cause great upheavals.

  Now the impossible wings hovered over her, filling the air with their sound. She listened with dread to the drawn-out creaking and groaning of timbers mixed with the clank and rattle of strange ropes made from links of stone. She could not doubt that this was the ship of the prophecy. Somehow it had come to grief on Hiro's Rock.

  Glancing around her quickly, she saw the familiar landmarks of Matavai Bay. And she saw, too, that the arrival of the ship had not gone unnoticed. Approaching from several directions were double-hull war canoes, their upturned prows bearing likenesses of gods. Feather pennants flew from the carved posts that stood high above each upward-curving stern. Painted banners of tapa billowed between each pair of sternposts.

  On the raised deck of the grandest canoe of all rode a war chief wrapped in a long feathered cape. His wicker headpiece, covered with feathers and shells, almost brushed the roof of the canopy that shaded him. Both cape and headpiece were decorated in brilliant feathers of scarlet and yellow gold, the colors flickering and shifting, as if made of flame.

  Other vessels carried grim-faced warriors—common men dressed simply in turbans and loincloths, or men of high rank wearing feather headdresses and stiff half-circle gorgets. She saw that the bilges of these canoes were filled with round, water-smoothed stones used for slinging.

  Once more Tepua was startled by the sound of wood grinding against coral. She also heard the anguished cries of the men aboard the stranded vessel, sensing their fear that they would die in the thundering water if the onshore wind did not break. Perhaps this would be for the best, she thought. If the ship broke up on the reef and the crew drowned, there would be no need for a battle.

  Tepua knew, from experience on her home island, about the terrible weapons that these winged ships carried. She could not bear the thought of what might happen if the Tahitians provoked a fight. As she hung above the vessel, she looked away from the faces of the threatened crew, wishing to forget that they were people, and not just invaders.

  A sudden cry rang out from one of the war canoes. "The wind is turning!" Even as she heard these words, the strong onshore wind was faltering. Gradually it died and a breeze from the land sprang up.

  Shouts of jubilation came from the stranded ship as its crew sensed the possibility of salvation. Hearing the outcry, Tepua felt a mixture of relief and despair. Had the gods chosen to save these strangers after all?

  The seaward breeze filled the huge sails and the ship's bow swung free of the reef. Afloat in deep water, the vessel slowly turned. As the ship gathered speed, a cheer went up from the warriors aboard the canoes. The gods had defended the land. The intruders were leaving without a fight.

  Tepua was less sure of the victory as she watched the course of the ship. It was not heading out to sea, but working its way along the seaward side of the reef, apparently searching for a pass. At last it found a way through the coral.

  The excited chatter of warriors faded to silence as they watched the form of the vessel grow once again, finally coming to rest near the mouth of a freshwater river. The canoe fleet gathered around, still keeping a cautious distance.

  For the first time, Tepua looked closely at the men aboard the great ship. They seemed dwarfed between the towering white of their sails and the massive bulk of the hull. She remembered the dress of foreigners from her earlier experience, and was only briefly taken aback by the strange coverings over their arms and the odd flaps and ruffles that distorted their figures.

  Her attention went to th
eir faces, some bearded, some not. Some were pale, others swarthy, still others pink and ruddy-cheeked. The crew was lined up along the ship's railing, staring at the warriors in canoes, who stared back at them in equal bewilderment.

  One figure stood apart from the rest, on a raised portion of the deck. Although not tall, he carried himself with dignity, and wore a headpiece that was grander than the others—blue, three-cornered, and decorated with glitter. She guessed that he was the master of the ship.

  How she wished that the gods might grant her some way to speak with him! She knew that these men from afar could be kind or cruel, just like her own people. They might be persuaded to go away.

  She saw a canoe arrowing in under the great ship's stern, people aboard holding aloft fowls, fruit, and trussed pigs. Perhaps the Tahitian war chief had decided to be sensible, and was seeking peace. Or perhaps he merely hoped to distract the enemy so that the war canoes could attack.

  Other laden craft followed, and soon a lively commerce began. Tepua caught glimpses of reflections from shiny trinkets and strings of beads. More canoes approached, bringing pigs and other foodstuffs in exchange. Yet she sensed the mood in other canoes was less than friendly.

  Slowly the commanding pahi drifted closer to the ship. The war canoes closed in, their bilges heavy with sling stones. Yet the foreigners seemed not to notice, distracted as they were by the trading and by naked young woman who swam around the ship, holding their tapa garments in bundles above the water.

  Then came another large double-hull bearing a man cloaked in black and white, and wearing the tall headdress of a priest of Oro. As this pahi approached the ship, the trading canoes withdrew.

  Tepua wondered what the priest intended, and a small hope grew. Perhaps he would offer hospitality to the foreigners. Allowing the ship's crew ashore might be risky, but better than the alternative of battle. The slender hulls of the pahi drifted alongside the foreign vessel. The priest of Oro came forward. Reaching up, he gave something to one of the men on the ship.