Child of the Dawn

by Coleman, Clare;

  Then a sound made her freeze. From nearby came voices. She felt sweat bead on her brow and trickle down, stinging her eyes.

  The voices were getting closer. She thought she might pull down some broad leaves and hide underneath. As she reached for one, she heard a shout and then another. Men's voices. Footsteps. Before she could run, they surrounded her.

  Lizard People! The six men were darker and shorter than most Tahitians. Their beards were not neatly shaped and plucked, but grew in tangles under their chins. Their hair was long, tied back in the fashion of atoll warriors. They wore loincloths ornamented with designs of crude human figures. Each man carried a heavy club, and these too were carved with human images.

  Tepua stifled her cry of fear. She did not want to bring Maukiri into the trap after her. She clutched her weapon, wondering if her cousin would sense the danger and flee. Her initial instinct was to fight, but six men circled her, and they all looked strong. One began to speak.

  At first she could not understand him. Then she realized that his language was not so different from that of coastal Tahiti. It was spoken with an odd intonation, and contained a few words whose meaning she had to guess. "Who are you? Why do you steal our bananas?" he asked harshly.

  "I—" Her mouth felt dry. Suddenly she drew herself to her full height. "I am Tepua-mua-ariki," she said, "daughter of Kohekapu," and proceeded to recite part of her lineage.

  "Ari'i?" The squat men looked up at her and then at each other. They pointed at her rudely, discussing her appearance. Then the one who seemed to be their leader took a step forward and addressed her.

  "You have no claim on this land. This is ours, from before the time of the ari'i. Do not think you can come and seize it. We will defend this land." He raised his club and shook it at her.

  She faced him squarely. "I wish only to dwell...in that other valley." She gestured toward where she had been.

  "There?" The men's scowls vanished. From all sides came high-pitched peals of laughter.

  "What is wrong with that place?" Tepua demanded.

  Again, the men laughed, and Tepua saw no way to get an answer from them. But now that the tension was broken, she thought that a peace offering might serve her. If only she had a gift...

  Her hands went to her neck, fingering her necklace of polished shells. "Take this," she said to the leader. "We will be friends."

  He grasped the necklace in his stubby fingers and turned it over, his eyes wide with delight. He dangled it before his friends, but when they showed too much interest, he pulled it over his head, glancing down with pleasure at the way it hung across his brown, muscular chest. "All right, vahine ari'i" he said cheerfully. "We will be friends. And I will tell you why you do not want to live in that other valley." His companions crowded closer, all seemingly eager to see Tepua's reaction to his news.

  "It is because the evil spirits live there," the man with the necklace said. "You will recognize them. They look just like us, but they float this high above the ground." He put his palm at the level of his knee.

  "But...I do not know where else to live. Last night I heard only wild pigs."

  Once more the men dissolved in laughter, turning around and doing little dances of mirth. "Do you think the savage ones make noises? No. They slip up on you quietly. When they finish, there is nothing left but your bones."

  Tepua bit her lip. She did not know what to make of this warning. She recalled the old bedding in the cave. Other people had stayed there. She saw no signs that harm had come to them.

  "So," said the leader. "You will go? If you change your mind, come ask for me—Pig-bone. I am headman. I will welcome you to my house."

  Tepua glanced back longingly at the bananas. "Yes. Take some, " said Pig-bone, reaching up to break off a stalk. "Put a few out as an offering to the evil ones. Maybe they will leave you alone."

  When Tepua returned to the cave, she found Maukiri in front, plucking feathers from a brightly covered jungle fowl. "How...how did you catch that, cousin?" she asked.

  "Have you forgotten how good I am at throwing stones?"

  Tepua raised her eyebrows. At home, Maukiri had often been sent out to bring back a few chickens. The birds roosted in trees and seemed to know when anyone was eyeing them for a meal. It took sharp aim to bring one down. "Then we will have a good dinner," Tepua said, adding nothing about her encounter. She hoped that Maukiri's prize did not belong to Pig-bone's people.

  After darkness fell, and the women had entered the cave, Tepua tossed three of the remaining bananas outside the fence. She whispered a short prayer to keep out intruders. "What are you doing?" asked Maukiri, but Tepua did not answer. She slipped back inside, wrapped herself in bark-cloth, and placed her spear close at hand.

  "I hear something," said Maukiri. "From inside."

  Tepua sat up and listened, turning her head. "It sounds like water seeping through the rocks."

  "That's what it must be." Maukiri pressed herself closer to Tepua. "But what's that?"

  Tepua had heard it also—a soft rustling just over her head. "Maybe an insect...or a gecko." She wished her blood would stop pounding in her ears so that she could listen. The talk of evil spirits was only meant to frighten her, she told herself.

  "We are safe in here," said Maukiri. "Geckos don't bother me." She yawned. Shortly, her breathing slowed and deepened.

  Tepua lay wide-awake, thinking about the men she had seen today. Lizard People were supposed to be able to scale sheer walls of rock; that was the reason for their name. But perhaps Pig-bone's men were nothing more than they seemed—people left over from the old times, the first manahune, whose ancestors had been conquered by the arriving warriors of legend. As for the warning, these men were just having fun with her. Perhaps.

  Tepua found herself wishing that she had taken the headman up on his offer. No matter how coarse the hospitality he offered, it would be better than staying in the isolation of this cave. Even if no hungry spirits haunted the place, she did not think that she could sleep here.

  SIXTEEN

  When the morning shadows were still long, Tepua and Maukiri, carrying all they possessed, entered the valley of the upland manahune. Maukiri was still complaining, "After all that work of making the fence—"

  "Then live in the cave by yourself," Tepua snapped.

  "All right, cousin. I will visit these wild people, but I cannot promise that I will stay with them."

  The banana groves were silent, their leaves scarcely astir in the morning breeze. Behind them Tepua saw breadfruit trees, most bare of fruit, a few holding a small crop. The season for breadfruit appeared to be over.

  She looked around cautiously, hoping to avoid another surprise. Where were Pig-bone's people? To keep from alarming them, she held her spear low.

  Suddenly a chorus of whoops and cries rang out. From all sides, men and women emerged from behind trees. Many carried clubs or short spears.

  The men were as fierce looking as those who had surrounded her on the previous day, their ornaments of bone and tusk giving off a menacing sheen. The women looked just as wild. Their black hair was short, frizzy or curly, adorned with tufts of chicken feathers and wreaths of jungle vines.

  "Cannibals!" Maukiri shouted in alarm and turned on Tepua. "What have you done to us?" She wrenched the weapon from Tepua's hand and swung it around to defend herself.

  "No. They are our friends," Tepua answered. She gazed in dismay at the sea of approaching faces, frantically seeking one she knew. Where was the headman? Where were the others from yesterday?

  As she watched the strangers advance, she shouted, "Pig-bone has invited us to stay with him." She plucked a young banana shoot, a symbol of peaceful intentions that everyone should understand. "Maukiri, lower that spear," she hissed as she held the shoot high.

  "Pig-bone?" said one man, who strode cockily to the fore. "Pig-bone is your friend?" He turned to confer with a knot of men behind him. Others began gesturing wildly, with their hands or with their weapons.
/>   One who was slightly taller and pudgier than the others approached Tepua. "I will escort you to the headman," he said roughly. With a swift motion, he plucked the spear from Maukiri's grasp. "You will not need this pig-sticker," he added with a harsh laugh.

  The manahune closed ranks behind the two lowlanders. Tepua glanced back nervously, noting that all the weapons were held ready. With Maukiri pressing close to her, she marched along the path, until they reached a cluster of thatched houses.

  Tepua felt goose bumps as she studied the unfamiliar scene. Unlike the houses she knew, these dwellings were raised above the sloping ground, built on platforms faced with stones. For walls, the houses had only dangling mats. Children peered from behind the mats, and a few brave little ones ventured out to stare at her.

  The neatly kept yards of the lowlands were not in evidence here. Trees and underbrush grew densely around the houses. As she watched, a few chickens darted from cover, then quickly vanished in the greenery. The sunlight filtering through dense forest overhead bathed the whole scene in an eerie light.

  "Here is the headman's house," said the escort, halting before the largest platform.

  Tepua glanced up and saw a round-faced woman looking back at her. The woman, who wore earrings of bone that resembled fishhooks, emerged from behind her mat curtain. "My husband is gone," she said loudly. "Who are these strangers?"

  The people all spoke at once. She silenced them with a gesture. Tepua noticed then how heavily tattooed her hands were; from a distance they appeared solidly black.

  "Ah," said the headman's wife, looking directly at Tepua with new interest. "You must be the one who gave my husband that necklace of shells. A fine gift! What have you brought for me?"

  After Tepua took from her basket one of her precious wraps of bleached bark-cloth, the headman's wife became more amicable. She beckoned the visitors up her rough stone stairway, accepted the gift, then ushered them into her house. "I am called Stay-long," she said. "I do not know your names."

  Aside from her intricately woven headpiece of vines and flowers, the chief's wife was plainly dressed, with only a rough tapa cloth about her middle. She draped Tepua's garment over this and seemed delighted with the gift. Certainly it was made of far finer cloth than any Tepua had seen here. At last Stay-long put the new wrap away.

  "My house is big," the headman's wife said proudly. "We have plenty of room for you both."

  "You are kind," said Tepua, ignoring her cousin's disapproving look. The thatched-roof house was not very different within from those of coastal Tahiti. Plaited mats, cushioned by a layer of cut grass, covered a floor of hard-packed earth.

  The furnishings were sparse, the utensils somewhat exotic in appearance. The wooden bowls bore tiny carved figures. A hollowed log with a broad slit along its length served to hold small belongings.

  "Come," said Stay-long, "I will show you all the rest." Two open-walled cooking sheds lay behind the house, each merely a thatched canopy that sheltered a pit-oven—one shed for men, another for women. At the far end of the platform stood another small house. The chief's wife led them to it, pulled aside a hanging mat, and invited Tepua to put her head inside.

  The strong odor of herbs made her wrinkle her nose and pull back. With a start, she realized that this woman was some kind of practitioner. Tepua's hands went protectively to her stomach as she remembered her earlier ordeal with a tahu'a.

  "This is your first?" asked Stay-long, who had somehow sensed Tepua's condition. "Do not worry. I will help you when the time comes."

  Tepua did not wish to ask what sort of aid the woman would offer. She turned away, but Stay-long took her hand and led her down an irregular ramp from the rear of the platform. Maukiri trailed along with obvious displeasure.

  "Now I will show you my little helpers," Stay-long said brightly. In the grove ahead, Tepua glimpsed a low stone wall enclosing a rectangle of stony ground—a simple marae. Just outside this sacred site stood a tiny house raised on poles. At Stay-long's insistence, Tepua peered inside.

  In the dim light she could barely see anything. She caught a harsh, musty smell that repulsed her. Then she began to make out the shapes of tiny human figures garbed in cloth tied on with cord.

  Maukiri grabbed Tepua's arm and dragged her back. "Do you want to die?" her cousin whispered hoarsely. "Stay-long is a witch-woman, a vahine tahutahu Those are her pet imps!"

  Uneasily, Tepua glanced from her cousin to Stay-long to the house of images, then again to Stay-long.

  "Do not be afraid," said the tahutahu, cheerfully. "You are my guests. Nothing here will harm you."

  Soon afterward, Pig-bone and his two young brothers showed up at the house. Pig-bone's brothers, bushy-haired twins, were greatly preoccupied with a centipede they had caught. They vanished back into the woods almost at once. The headman lingered, pleased by his new visitors. "You will stay with us until the child is born," he insisted.

  Tepua did not need to look at her cousin to know her reaction. Maukiri would already be back in the cave if her cousin had agreed to go with her. But Tepua tried to put aside her concerns about the headman's wife, who seemed to have little in common with the cold-fingered Nimble. In any case, she knew that it was better to have such people as friends than as enemies. Tepua might someday need aid from Stay-long's unpleasant little helpers.

  At last, after telling of the wild pigs he had pursued that morning, the headman left to confer with his hunters. The women went out to gather vegetables. Now Tepua saw how these people managed to reap harvests from the difficult mountain terrain. Using stone retaining walls to hold back the soil, they had built broad, level terraces for growing taro and yams. They diverted river water to irrigate the terrace fields, and used layers of thatch as mulch and to discourage weeds.

  By early afternoon the women had cut and wrapped tubers, bananas, and a few small river fish in hibiscus leaves. These now lay baking in the heated stones of the covered pit-oven. Six other women, relatives of Stay-long or Pig-bone, had come to join the meal. Two of these, Pig-bone's mother and aunt, were part of the headman's household. The others lived in a smaller house on a nearby platform.

  Curiosity about the new guests kept the conversation animated. Tepua did not want to reveal too much about herself, but she found the company pleasant, and soon was answering the questions put to her. Manahune women, she discovered, knew little of the sea. Her atoll background seemed to mean nothing to them. When she spoke of the Arioi, they looked bewildered.

  It was only when Tepua talked of her dancing that the women grew excited. "We will have a little gathering," Stay-long cried, and the others shouted agreement. "You will teach us the lowland way, and then we will show you ours."

  Gradually the two visitors settled in, growing accustomed to a different way of life. In the days that followed, Tepua and her cousin were often called on to entertain, and did so with relish. They also began sharing the work of the women in Stay-long's household.

  Days passed and the season changed, bringing cooler, drier weather. Tepua and Maukiri accompanied the highland women on long expeditions through the wilderness, gathering fern roots and other wild foods to supplement the dwindling crops from the terrace gardens.

  The many new activities kept Tepua occupied, yet she found Matopahu constantly in her thoughts. As months passed, the changes in her body reminded her that she carried a part of him. Did he know about the coming child? she wondered. If he did, wouldn't he have tried to find her?

  Her womb was starting to swell, rounding out her belly. She could feel herself loosening within, preparing to accommodate the growing child. Sometimes she caught herself trying to imagine the baby's face, and its tiny fingers....

  As Tepua was gathering herbs one morning with Stay-long, she halted, troubled by an unsettling feeling in her stomach.

  "What is it?" asked the manahune woman, eyeing her keenly.

  "I think I ate too many bananas last night."

  Stay-long put down her basket, a knowi
ng expression on her face. "Let me feel," she said. Tepua hesitated. She had already endured too many meddling hands. But Stay-long conveyed a motherly feeling that Tepua needed.

  "It must be too early for the child to be moving," Tepua protested as she opened her wrap. Stay-long just smiled and laid her palms against the swelling abdomen. Her touch was warm and comforting.

  The tahutahu cocked her head and gave a delighted chuckle. 'Too many bananas, hah! I have seen many girls with their first baby, and they all blame something they ate. Come back to the house and I will teach you how to feel what is happening inside."

  When they were under the roof, Tepua stretched out on a mat while Stay-long crouched beside her, placing the edge of her hand against Tepua's belly just above the curls of her nest. "Do you notice a little tickle right there?"

  "You mean—" Tepua broke off, falling silent in order to concentrate on the sensation. There it was, a tiny flutter low down in her abdomen.

  "Now you know," said Stay-long solemnly. "The child is stirring."

  Tepua kept her fingertips on her stomach to mark the place. She could feel no movement from the outside, but inside...yes. She breathed out slowly, trying not to be overwhelmed by the emotions sweeping through her. She almost resented the tiny seed for reminding her that it was still alive, growing and moving. So long as it stayed still, she could almost persuade herself that she wasn't pregnant; she could ignore the problems that lay ahead.

  Yet, at the same time, she felt a rush of joy and awe. Suddenly the child within felt real.

  "Wait until he is beating around in there like a little typhoon," said Stay-long, cheerily. "Then you will really start to know him."

  The headman's wife brought a stoppered gourd and poured a few drops of the contents into her palm. "This is rubbing oil," she explained. "I will show you how to keep your skin soft so that it stretches easily as the baby grows."