The Moa Cave

by Des Hunt

  Dinner was chippies and chocolate, washed down with some water Tyler had collected from the dripping rocks in the cove. He calculated they had enough food for another couple of snacks. After that they would need to look to the sea for their meals. When the tide was out he’d seen kina and mussels in amongst the rocks.

  Hopi arrived soon after dinner and went straight to the nest where Mopsie had waited so patiently. She moved to one side to let him in. Immediately two furry balls started squawking. The eggs had hatched and the chicks were demanding their first feed.

  Hine and Tyler moved onto the ledge for a closer look. Hopi was leaning over them with his mouth so wide the chicks almost disappeared inside. Each looked like a crazy soft toy: a fluffy ball with a large mouth at the top and two stupid wings stuck on the side. They were adorable.

  It was a happy moment at the end of a horrible day, a moment that was over far too soon. After a couple of minutes the chicks stopped their noise and wriggled back into the warmth of their mother’s feathers. Hopi settled beside his mate and quickly went to sleep.

  ‘Hopi’s leg seems to be better,’ said Hine as they returned to the floor. ‘What do you think would have happened if he’d been killed?’

  ‘The chicks would have died,’ replied Tyler. ‘There’s no way she could get food and keep them warm.’

  ‘Shifty and Grunty wouldn’t have cared. Those two are evil.’

  Tyler simply nodded. Evil and dangerous, he thought.

  She continued, ‘Did you see the dolphin we played with?’

  He looked at her sharply. ‘I didn’t think you knew.’

  ‘When we got out and looked down at the beach, she was the first one I saw. That’s why I vomited. I couldn’t control myself.’

  ‘You acted weird all day.’

  She nodded. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about what they had done to her. I couldn’t get it out of my head. You see, the story I wrote for the magazine was about a dolphin just like her.’

  Tyler remained silent, hoping she would say more.

  After a while she went on. ‘It’s the story of a boy having a summer holiday with his mum at Porpoise Bay. On the first morning he gets up really early to walk along the beach.’ She looked at Tyler. ‘Just like you do. It’s a boy thing, isn’t it? Girls prefer lying in bed.’

  ‘We do it because there’s no other people around to annoy us and we can do what we like.’

  ‘You mean no girls, don’t you?’ Tyler just smiled. ‘Well, my boy is like that,’ Hine continued. ‘His name is David, and on that first morning he sees the dolphins swimming not far from shore. He climbs onto a sand hill to get a closer look. That’s when he sees one of them is in trouble. It seems to be caught in a net.

  ‘At first he looks for help, but there’s nobody around and he’s a long way from any houses. He soon realises that he must save the dolphin himself. So he takes off his clothes and runs into the water. He’s a good swimmer and it doesn’t take him long to reach the dolphins. The one in the net is almost dead. The strings have cut into her snout just below the eyes. Already there is bleeding. One of the tail flukes is also caught. The other dolphins are obviously upset. David can hear their high-pitched calling to each other. Three of them are pushing with their noses to keep her afloat.

  ‘David tries to rip the net apart, but it’s far too strong. Then he tries peeling the strings back from the snout. It’s slimy with blood and cuts into his hands, yet he begins to make progress. Eventually it comes off and he turns to the tail. Soon it is free and the group turn and swim off leaving David with the empty net and a feeling of relief that he’s saved the dolphin; yet there’s also a feeling of disappointment that they’ve gone so soon. Finally, he too turns and swims back to the beach.

  ‘Later that day, when his mother gets up, he tells her about the rescue. She plainly doesn’t believe him, though she doesn’t say so. All she says is, “David, how many times have I told you not to go swimming without supervision? Now don’t you do it again or we’ll have to go home.”

  ‘And then, that afternoon he’s playing in the sand with a bunch of other kids and he tells them about the dolphins and how he saved one from drowning. They don’t believe him either and call him a liar. So David decides never to mention it again, not to anyone. It will be his secret memory.

  ‘On the last afternoon before their holiday finishes David and his mother go to the beach for one final swim. She sits on the sand reading a book while he goes into the water.

  ‘The surf is really big that day and David has great fun. Then a huge wave catches him unawares, dumping him on the bottom. His head hits the hard sand at a crazy angle and knocks him out. He floats to the surface but his head is face down. Slowly he drifts out to sea. His mother is so involved in the book that she doesn’t see any of this.

  ‘Then an amazing thing happens. The pod of dolphins arrives. They quickly turn him so that he can breathe. Then with two on either side, they start swimming to the shore. By that time other swimmers have seen the dolphins. His mother finally realises something is happening and joins the crowd that has formed on the edge of the water.

  ‘Carefully the dolphins guide him through the surf and into shallow water where they can barely swim. Only when people have hold of him do they turn and head back to sea. But one waits behind for a moment, nuzzling the boy’s face. It has a distinctive circular scar around its nose. Eventually, it too turns and swims away.

  ‘David recovers and when he hears of his rescue, he knows that the dolphins have repaid him in the greatest way possible. However the story doesn’t end there. When newspapers and TV hear of a boy being saved by dolphins they make big news of it. The story is spread around the country and even to other parts of the world.

  ‘When he returns to school after the summer holidays, David’s class starts a petition to ban the use of nets in the area where the dolphins live. Eventually they have enough signatures to go to Parliament. The politicians decide to do more than just ban nets; they declare the whole area to be a marine reserve, so that all sea animals are protected.

  ‘The story ends with David returning to Porpoise Bay to do the official opening of the marine reserve. He unveils a plaque and there at the bottom is a bronze picture of a dolphin. It’s his dolphin, the one that he saved; the one with a circular scar on its snout.’

  Tyler sat thinking about the story. He now understood why Hine was so upset by the killing of their special dolphin. It had a scar that could have been caused by a net. Maybe someone had saved it and that was why it was so friendly. It had learned to trust humans, and that was its downfall. It didn’t know that there are some humans who should never be trusted.

  The other thing about Hine’s story was the choice of a boy as the main character. At school, all the girls wrote stories about girls, and the boys—if they wrote at all—wrote about boys. Yet Hine wrote about a boy as if she knew all about them.

  ‘How come you know so much about boys?’ he asked.

  Hine smiled. ‘Remember, I have six brothers.’

  ‘I thought they were much older.’

  ‘Auntie says that males never stop being boys, even when they grow up.’

  ‘Doesn’t she like that?’

  ‘She loves it. So do I. They’re great fun to be with.’ She paused. ‘Actually, my brother Jack’s like you.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Oh, he’s interested in rocks and things. And he used to lose his temper a lot.’

  Tyler went red. He didn’t like her talking about that.

  ‘But,’ she continued, ‘he doesn’t any more. We all helped him get over it.’

  Tyler wanted to know how, but couldn’t bring himself to ask.

  Hine must have sensed this. ‘About a year ago, he really lost his temper and bashed a guy up. He almost went to prison. He got a hundred hours’ PD and a big fine. That’s when Auntie decided to do something about it. Jack had always wanted a boat, so we all put in money and bought the Aqua-air 50. We’re all own
ers, but Jack’s in charge of it. Auntie got a local jeweller to make a small model of it for a key ring, so Jack would have it with him all the time.

  ‘Then we helped him deal with his anger. Whenever he started to get angry we would mention the boat and how great it was to be on it, diving and fishing. Each time it seemed to work and he’d calm down. When we weren’t around the key ring did the same thing. He’d fiddle with it and keep calm. Auntie says he’s a steam vent now, not a volcano. He sometimes lets off steam, but never explodes.’

  ‘He’s lucky to have a family that cares so much.’

  ‘Your family probably worry about your anger, but aren’t sure what to do.’

  ‘They’re too busy to worry about me.’

  Hine looked concerned. ‘That can’t be true.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll be worrying now?’

  Tyler hadn’t thought about it. ‘They’ll know, won’t they? Know that we’re missing?’ Hine nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually, ‘I think they’ll be worrying now.’

  ‘My family will be worried sick. It’s worse for them than for us.’

  ‘How come? We’re the ones that are trapped.’

  ‘Yeah. But we know we’re alive. They don’t. They’ll be thinking all sorts of things.’

  ‘Oh! I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here as soon as we can. I don’t want to cause them any more worry.’ Her voice showed she was close to tears.

  Tyler wanted to reassure her, but the right words wouldn’t come.

  ‘Mandy will be worried too,’ Hine added.

  ‘Mandy! She’ll only be worried about losing the dare.’

  ‘You’re wrong. She’ll be as much upset as our parents. She likes you, you know.’

  ‘Ha! She’s got a funny way of showing it.’

  ‘That’s just her way. You’re not very good at showing your feelings either, other than anger.’

  This was a direction Tyler definitely didn’t want to explore. He said nothing and Hine let it drop. A few minutes later they climbed into their sleeping bags, said their good nights and turned out the torch. Tyler lay thinking for a long time. It was still less than twenty-four hours since they had set out on the adventure, yet it seemed so much longer. He had been buried alive and saved, and then had escaped from the cave only to find the slaughtered dolphins in the cove. However, his thoughts did not dwell on these things. They lingered more on Hine and their conversations last night and again tonight. She was so easy to talk to. Never before had he talked to a girl for so long. Most of his talking with girls had been nothing more than a series of put-downs that never lasted more than a minute. Hine was different. She made him feel important and she seemed to understand how he thought. He was pleased she had come. It would have been much harder if he’d been by himself. In fact, he’d probably be dead.

  He fingered the pendant in his hand, wondering if Hine knew he was using it to control his anger. Probably—she seemed to understand things like that. She understood about Ata. To most girls the skeleton would have been a scary, ugly thing to be avoided. But Hine treated it with respect and accepted that Tyler felt the same way. He looked over to where she was lying. His mind filled with concern for her, and her wish to get out for the family’s sake. There had to be some way he could do it. In his games there was always some way out. It was just a matter of finding it. He smiled to himself in the darkness. That’s what he would do tomorrow: start thinking of their situation as a game. Then he would know how to deal with it. With that thought he drifted into a dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 18

  For the second morning in a row, Tyler was woken by a raucous noise echoing around the cavern. Again it took some time to realise where he was. He turned on the torch and reached for the clock. But it was not the alarm. It was the penguins. They were screeching like he’d never heard before.

  He swung the torch to the nest. Both birds were standing with their heads in the air, shrieking. The cause was a brown and white animal creeping towards the nest. It paused to look at the torch for a moment before returning to the hunt. As it got closer to the penguins it flattened its body to hug the ground as if it had no legs. That illusion was soon shattered when, without warning, it darted in and grabbed one of the chicks by the neck. Hopi flew at it with his beak, but the animal was too quick: in a flash it was beyond reach and a moment later it was gone, leaving behind two distraught parents and one lonely chick.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Hine.

  ‘I think it was a stoat.’ He scanned the cave with the torch. The animal had disappeared. ‘It must’ve climbed down the rocks in the cove.’

  ‘The smell of the penguins must be very strong for it to find them in here.’ The penguins were now back on the nest making small twittering noises. ‘I hope it doesn’t come back for the other chick.’

  ‘That’s more than one meal,’ Tyler said bitterly. ‘It won’t be back until it’s hungry again.’ He settled into bed. ‘We’ll have a look in the morning.’

  Tyler lay thinking about the stoat. Mandy’s poster showed stoats attacking penguin chicks. She had also shown dolphins trapped in a net. He thought about what Hine had said: maybe Mandy’s nastiness was because she couldn’t show her feelings. Yet her poster showed she cared. Maybe he and Mandy weren’t so different after all. They just didn’t know how to talk to each other. Then he chuckled quietly to himself; if he kept thinking like that he’d end up liking her, and that wouldn’t be right at all.

  ‘Are you awake?’ asked Hine.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I don’t think the stoat came from the cove at all. It didn’t head back in that direction.’

  ‘You think there could be another way out?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Let’s take a look.’

  They started the search near the nest. It was impossible to find any prints, or any sign of the stoat. Hine moved in the direction she thought it had followed.

  ‘Look here,’ she called. ‘Is that blood?’

  He held the torch close. It was red and—after testing with his finger—sticky.

  The next drop was a metre away. Again Hine spotted it. He gave her the torch and let her lead the way.

  The trail led into a fissure of rock that soon narrowed into a dead end. Hine searched around with the torch. ‘Try looking up,’ suggested Tyler. She did, and found a spot at about head height. From there the opening sloped upwards. Even though it was easily wide enough, the rocks were smooth making it difficult to get either a handhold or a foothold.

  By pushing and pulling they made it up the first bit onto a narrow shelf. From there the path was easier until it shrunk to a hole that required crawling.

  Hine was the first to break through. ‘Wow!’ she exclaimed. ‘Have a look at this.’

  After a moment Tyler scrambled through to join her. Then he couldn’t believe his eyes. It was like he had climbed into one of his games.

  They were in a cave much like the penguin one, though this was not all rock—one side was a wall of earth. Plainly it had once opened to the outside, until some ancient landslide had covered it.

  Scattered all over the dusty floor were moa remains, at least four birds judging by the four large skulls. Two of the skeletons seemed to overlap each other. But the object that grabbed their attention most was resting inside the bones of one skeleton. It was a huge egg, white and complete, as if it had just been laid.

  Neither of them spoke for some time. It was enough to simply look.

  Hine was first to break the spell. ‘It looks like she was sitting on it when she died.’

  ‘Or it hadn’t yet been laid.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I don’t think they all died at the same time,’ said Tyler. ‘See this one?’ He carefully stepped over some bones to get to the middle of the cave. ‘There’s more dust on it than the others.’

  ‘Look at this one over here,’ said Hine. ‘It’s still
got some skin on its legs.’

  Tyler moved over. The whole foot had been mummified. The claws were long curved spikes. They could have easily killed a human. Even now the foot would be a dangerous weapon.

  ‘Here’s the penguin chick,’ called Hine from near the earth wall. ‘You were right, it was too much for one meal.’

  The body was surrounded by fluff ripped from the chick to reveal the flesh beneath. About half had been chewed. It was a sickening picture of how native wildlife could so easily be destroyed. The chick had been hatched for less than a day.

  Alongside was a round hollow in the dust, a sleeping place. Tyler touched it with the back of his hand—it was still warm. The stoat had only gone because they’d arrived. But how did it get out?

  The route took only a moment to find. A well-worn track led from the hollow to the edge of the earth-fall. There was a hole, too big to be dug by a stoat. Some rabbit had burrowed too far and ended up in the cave.

  Hine held the torch while Tyler lay on the ground peering into the hole. He could see as far as a bend, about two metres into the earth. It was far enough to know that there would be no escaping by tunnelling. Yet it did give hope. The hole must lead to the area at the top of the cliffs where he and Bill had searched for Mandy. He filed it away in his mind just as he did when he discovered something in a game. More often than not the discovery would prove useful.

  Before leaving, he had to make sure the stoat couldn’t get back in. He had to block the hole. He looked around—the only things were bones.

  ‘Hand me a thigh bone, please, Hine,’ he said with a smile.

  Hine looked shocked. ‘Do you think we should?’

  ‘No. But we’ve got to block this hole somehow. Anyway, I don’t think the scientists will be too upset. They won’t know about this place until we tell them. Then they’ll be so excited they’ll excuse anything.’

  Hine lifted one of the huge thigh bones, weighing it in her hand. ‘It’s heavy. I wouldn’t want anyone to hit me with this.’