Child of the Dawn

by Coleman, Clare;

  "Aue! Then it is me she wants to destroy."

  "I do not know for sure if it is you or the child. I cannot see what dark thoughts she holds in her bowels. In either case, how can I protect you? There is no one to keep watch day and night. You have to get away from her. Go inland and hide until the child is born."

  Tepua tightened her fist. "Who will help you speak up against Land-crab if I am gone?"

  "It does not matter now," said Aitofa. "The season is almost over. When the harvest festival is done, the troupe will disperse."

  "But our lodge—"

  "It will not die. When the next season turns, we will assemble again to prepare for the Ripening Festival. By then your belly will be flat. You will rejoin us, and Pehu-pehu will have no more excuses to harm you."

  "My belly..." Tepua fell silent. Aitofa's unspoken assumption was clear. She expected Tepua to do away with the child at the moment of birth; that was how Arioi fulfilled their vows. Otherwise she could not return to the troupe.

  "Go at once," said Aitofa. "Do not give Pehu-pehu another chance at you. She is occupied now. Take your cousin and slip away quietly."

  Tepua's eyes began to sting. She embraced the chiefess.

  "Do not disgrace yourself," said Aitofa. "We need you with the troupe. Next season, everything may change for the better. Carry out your duty and come back to us."

  Matopahu sat in the cool shade of coconut palms and watched two girls dancing. One was plump and had a pleasantly languid way of moving—she reminded him of Fleeting-star. The other was thinner, an atoll girl, almost pretty. The more he looked at her, the more she made him think of Tepua.

  'They both like you," said Stingray, the fisherman beside him. "That one is from my home island." He pointed to the slender girl. "What a nice morsel. Too bad she is my cousin, or I would have her myself."

  Matopahu complimented the girl's dancing. He glanced sideways and saw other fishermen eyeing her performance with great interest. When the dancing is over, she won't lack company, he thought.

  The drummers quickened their beat. From all sides, he heard cries of encouragement as a third dancer joined the pair. This girl he had not seen before. Her skin glistened with oil and her face was radiant. Her small, firm breasts were draped with a garland of tiny white flowers. Matopahu felt an unexpected stirring....

  "Aue!" said Stingray. "My home atoll is too small. That girl is also my cousin!"

  The motu where Matopahu sat among his friends was one of Tetiaroa's smallest. Here the fishermen lived in simple palm-leaf shelters, eating coconuts, local bananas, clams, and fish. Many of these people had come from the swarm of atolls to the east. Drawn by the lure of Tahiti, they had left home, but had found no welcome on the high island.

  Matopahu understood why Tetiaroa attracted them. Here the surroundings were familiar, and they could continue to live in the manner of their ancestors. But they also had ready access to high-island goods from Tahiti—bark-cloth, sharp stone implements, as well as breadfruit and other desirable foods. Best of all, life was peaceful here, free of the pressures that often erupted into war on the main island....

  Cries and shouts broke Matopahu's reverie. He saw the new dancer wildly undulating her hips. Sweat streaked the drummers' chests as they strove to keep up with her. The dancer gave a final flourish. She staggered, paused to catch her breath. Then she shook her hips once more, evoking a final round of cheering.

  Later, as the shadows were lengthening, Matopahu found the girl beside him as he walked along the shore. This girl did not remind him of Tepua at all, except in her manner of speaking. Perhaps she even came from the same atoll.

  "Everyone can see," the girl said boldly, looking up at him through glistening, dark lashes, "that you were not born to be a fisherman."

  "Then what was I born to do?" he asked, smiling with pleasure at the sound of her voice. He paused to gaze out at the water, then once again faced his companion.

  "You must be a nobleman in exile," she said. "Where is your marae? Where is your family's sacred point of land?"

  "You ask too much," he said. Her soft hands rested against her arms. He leaned down and pressed his nose against her cheek. She had a warm scent, fragrant from the tiny blossoms in her wreath.

  "How long will you stay here?" she persisted. "When all the fine people go back to Tahiti, will you go with them?"

  "I...have no home there."

  'Then you will stay with us when the weather changes," she said happily. "Don't worry. You will be safe here. If a bad storm comes, I'll show you how to tie yourself into a tamanu tree."

  "Then I look forward to the storm season—just so I can have my lesson."

  She put her arms around him and began gently stroking his back. "There are other things I can show you." Coquettishly, she pressed against him and rolled her hips once. "I can do that even lying down."

  Only the thin material of his maro and that of her waistcloth separated them. He felt a throbbing of desire. "I heard a song once," he said, "about a lover bending like a fragrant fern. An atoll song. Do you know it?"

  She took his hand, and began to lead him deeper into the privacy of the forest. "I do," she said softly.

  "Then I will close my eyes and listen."

  FIFTEEN

  Tepua and Maukiri set out for the Tahitian highlands with no clear sense of where they were headed. Each carried a palm-leaf basket, the first filled with provisions that Aitofa had hastily gathered, the other holding extra clothing as well as a few tools and utensils. In addition, Tepua carried an ironwood spear with a long, serrated tip. If Pehu-pehu came after her, Tepua was ready to defend herself.

  But she did not expect the Blackleg to pursue. Getting rid of Tepua had been her purpose and now she had achieved it. Tepua angrily imagined Pehu-pehu's smile of triumph as she bullied Aitofa's remaining supporters. There would be a score to settle when Tepua came back...if she came back. But, of course, she must do what Aitofa had ordered. She could not abandon her friends and her lodge leader.

  Tepua sighed, and trudged on, up a little-used path that wound inland over red clay soil, slowly ascending through grass and low bushes. Here and there a hibiscus tree or a coconut palm shaded the trail. "Aue!" said Maukiri, pausing to catch her breath. "I—forgot. I was supposed to meet someone this afternoon."

  "Be glad you missed him," said Tepua sourly. "It may save you some pains in your belly."

  "Your trouble, cousin, is that you stuck with one man." Maukiri wiped her hand against her damp brow and squinted toward the high hills ahead. Resolutely she started walking again. "If you had listened to me and changed partners every night—"

  "That old tale again!"

  "How do you know that it doesn't work?" Maukiri retorted. "You never tried. And now what will I do for company in this wilderness? Swim in the river and hope for a friendly eel?"

  "It will not hurt you to give up men for a few months," Tepua retorted.

  "Men, yes," Maukiri grumbled. "And not only men. A dry mat, decent food—"

  "Cousin, do you already want to go back?"

  "I will stay with you," Maukiri answered in a subdued voice.

  "Good. Then stop arguing and help me find a place to live." Aitofa had told her about hidden valleys where people dwelled long ago. One needed only to keep walking to locate them.

  The two women continued awhile in silence, climbing ever higher. At last, stopping to catch her breath, Tepua looked back. She was still wary of pursuers, but saw none. The coastal plain lay far below, its dense stands of trees stretching toward the lagoon. Beyond the shore, the azure lagoon ended in a milky band of breakers.

  Farther out, waves tossed on the dark surface of the Sea of the Moon. Tepua glimpsed a few distant sails of fishermen and imagined the cool wind at their backs. Here there was no breeze, only hot, humid air.

  "I'm hungry already," said Maukiri. "Did you see the piles of food they were preparing for the festival? Because of you, I am missing the biggest feast of the season!"
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  "You'll eat when we stop."

  "And when this basket is empty? I can fend for myself by the sea, but I know nothing of mountains."

  'There will be plenty to eat. I'll show you how to live on wild foods."

  Maukiri grimaced as she shifted the basket to her other hand. "When this is over, I'll be as thin as a motu woman again."

  'Then think how much you'll like fattening yourself!"

  Tepua glared at her cousin, who had never been slender. Then, tired of arguing, Tepua took the lead at a brisk pace. The trail ran over a crest, began to descend. In the distance she heard running water.

  Here the forest canopy was so dense that only a muted green light reached the ground. The air grew dense, humid, and full of heavy fragrance. Ferns and other clinging plants dangled from branches or curled out of crevices in the bark of trees. The welcome sound of water became louder.

  Soon the women approached a cataract that leaped and foamed over black boulders in its bed. From downstream, Tepua heard the roar of a waterfall. After pausing to drink at the bank and splash herself with cool water, she led her cousin upstream.

  Here wild taro grew, spreading huge, glossy leaves that hung from slender stalks. The trail wound through a grove of rata, the Tahitian chestnut. The rata trunks looked as though smaller trees had been twisted and melded together, creating strange ridges and hollows where malevolent spirits might hide. The weird forms and the weathered bone-gray color of their bark gave the trees an unsettling skeletal appearance, even in daylight. Both Maukiri and Tepua kept well away from them.

  The deep shade under the chestnut trees kept the ground damp. Tangles of surface roots crossed the muddy path, making the footing slippery. A dark red-and-brown carpet of decaying leaves was dotted with the yellow green of fallen chestnut pods. Tepua picked up a kidney-shaped pod. "You can roast and eat these," she said, stripping off the fleshy husk to show the nut inside. Maukiri glanced at it with only mild interest.

  The trail continued along the river, skirted a pile of rock. A toppled hibiscus blocked the way; the women had to walk to the edge of the stream to get by it. Others trees had fallen, and each required a special effort to climb over or under it. At last, in disgust, Maukiri put down her basket and sat in a clump of ferns. 'This is where I am spending the night," she proclaimed.

  Knowing from experience that nothing would move her, Tepua agreed.

  By the time the sun was falling toward the valley wall, the two wayfarers had erected a crude shelter of branches covered with pandanus-leaf matting. Tepua speared two fish in a pool of the stream. She asked Maukiri to pick wild plantains while she got out the fire-making tools.

  When Maukiri returned, Tepua was working with the fire plow and bed stick she had brought. The bed stick, held under her heel, had a narrow trough down its length. As she rubbed the pointed plow stick down the trough, she recited a traditional atoll chant.

  Tukakahe, tukakahe!

  Tupepere, tupepere!

  Maukiri laughed and began a different version of the chant.

  The big stick rubs

  Vigorously, strenuously

  Back and forth it strokes.

  The smell of hot wood dust tingled in Tepua's nostrils. She blew the sparks to a flame that caught on dry coconut husk, then spread to kindling. Finally she got a good blaze going, burning dry branches snapped from the upper sides of fallen trees.

  "I'll teach you how people cook in the mountains," she told her cousin, pointing to green lengths of giant bamboo that she had cut with a shell knife. Tepua put pieces of fish into some bamboo sections, chunks of a breadfruit from her basket into others. After sealing the ends of each section with fresh leaves, she dropped it into the open fire. By the time the outside of the moist bamboo blackened, the food was cooked.

  As darkness fell, she and Maukiri recalled the life they had abandoned. They sat under the shelter singing old songs of their distant atoll. What a pleasure, Tepua thought, to speak in the familiar way again, sounding the hard "k" and the nasal "ng" that Tahitians omitted. She remembered the people left behind, especially Ehi, Maukiri's mother. Tepua had grown up in Ehi's household, and Ehi's ample arms had always been there to comfort her.

  Many nights, after dark, the family had sat together inside their snug house singing just these songs.

  Here I go, riding the waves.

  Here I go, blown by the wind....

  In the highlands, the night air quickly grew cool. The women wrapped themselves in the extra bark-cloth cloaks they had brought. After the long walk and the heavy work of setting up camp, Tepua felt pleasantly weary. She barely noticed how hard and lumpy the ground was beneath her bed of ferns. Her eyes closed and she began to drift off....

  Until Tepua felt her cousin's hand clutch her arm.

  "What was that?" whispered Maukiri.

  Tepua sat up, trying to shake off the frantic grip so that she could reach for her spear. From outside the shelter she heard soft rustling. "Ghosts!" Maukiri hissed. "With long teeth!"

  Tepua's pulse raced as she listened. A twig snapped and then another. Pehu-pehu and her nasty friends? She found the weapon's shaft and held it tightly while she whispered a prayer.

  Then came a soft grunt. "Yes, they have teeth," she cried with relief. "And four legs."

  "Ghost pigs!"

  From outside came more sounds of grunting and pawing. The breeze shifted; a strong swine odor drifted through the shelter. "No," Tepua answered. "These are the meaty kind. Wild ones."

  "That is just as bad." Maukiri's arms were about Tepua and her body was trembling.

  "They smell the cooked food," said Tepua, trying not to think of long tusks, or of the legendary Man-slaying Pig. "After they root around awhile, they'll leave." She had buried the fish bones and other remains of the meal, but perhaps she had not made the hole deep enough.

  Maukiri stirred. "If the pigs are still hungry..."

  "Aue! They will not eat you. But if you let go of me, maybe I can use this spear. How would you like baked pork tomorrow? There are no men around to say it is tapu."

  "I can't...think of food. Cousin, why did we come to this terrible place? Why don't we go home?"

  "Home?" Tepua paused, and was relieved to hear the sound of the pigs departing. "Do you know what you are saying, Maukiri?"

  "Yes. My mother would be glad to have us. And to raise your child."

  Tepua sighed in dismay. She had entertained such thoughts, and knew where they led. "Ehi would be the only one to welcome me. Have you forgotten all the trouble I caused when I went back the last time? Remember that I am my father's firstborn, even though my brother rules."

  Tepua was descended from a long line of chiefs, each the firstborn of his or her family, each inheriting more mana from the parents than did later children. Accordingly, the firstborn was always the preferred choice for succession to the chiefhood. If she produced a child, it would have precedence over everyone now alive.

  Imagining the strife that a child of hers would cause brought tears to Tepua's eyes. How could she disturb the peaceful reign of her younger brother, who had already shown such promise as a chief? "No. Everything is settled," she said. "I cannot go back in this condition. You know that, Maukiri. We are high islanders now." She put her arms around her cousin and tried to ease Maukiri's trembling.

  "Then tomorrow...tomorrow we need to find a better place. Where pigs can't get to us."

  "Yes. Tomorrow." Tepua lay down again on the mat. Outside now, all remained silent. She closed her eyes and envisioned the delicate blue waters of her home lagoon. She and Maukiri were paddling a small outrigger canoe, heading into shore, approaching a dazzling white beach....

  In the morning the pair set out early, following the river upstream as soon as they could see their way. At times, rock walls forced the trail to the bank and then to the stream's other side. At each crossing, the women disrobed, holding their bark-cloth wraps and baskets high as they waded through the chilly flow that sometimes rose above th
eir waists. At last, the trail ran straight for a time.

  "This might be a good site," said Maukiri, as they approached a grotto hollowed from the fern-covered stone of the valley wall. Grass and young bushes sprouted near the cave's mouth. 'The sides and roof look solid. I think we would be safe in there."

  Tepua put down her burdens and studied the small cave. A thick carpet of old banana leaves inside suggested that other people had taken shelter there. What kind of people? she wondered, frowning. She hoped that Maukiri had never heard tales of Lizard People, reputed to still live in remote high valleys of Tahiti.

  "If we stay here," said Tepua cautiously, "we will need to put up a fence. That will keep out the pigs." She refrained from mentioning other dangers.

  "Good," said Maukiri, opening her basket. "I'll take the knife and go cut bamboo canes."

  As the sun rose higher, Tepua squatted on her heels and dug holes in the hard-packed soil before the cave. She had crudely fashioned a digging stick by snapping off a twig and rubbing its end to a point. The valley kept growing warmer. The air was alive with twittering birds and whirring insects.

  When Maukiri brought the bamboo canes, she and Tepua pushed them into the ground as deep as they would go, spacing them closely. The women left no opening, but instead made the fence so low in one place that they could step over it.

  "I will sleep better tonight," said Maukiri when they were done.

  "Not if your belly is empty," Tepua retorted, insisting that they dig a pit-oven and line it with heavy, black stones. She sent Maukiri to dig up wild taro, which required lengthy baking, and went off on her own to look for bananas. There were no coconut trees growing this far inland. Wild tubers, freshwater fish, and crayfish would be the main sources of food during her exile.

  Carrying her spear, Tepua continued up the twisting gorge, rounded a jagged outcrop, and suddenly found herself in a different setting. The valley was broader here, the forest open. Several trees bore upland bananas, their purplish stalks raised high as if to show pride in their crop. Her mouth watered as she ran to the nearest tree.