Daughter of the Reef

by Clare Coleman

  Inwardly Tepua smiled, though she kept her expression solemn. An arranged marriage was anything but an intrigue, but it had certainly led to her present troubles.

  “Problems at court, yes. It will be better for me if no one learns where I have gone. They think I am dead, and I wish them to go on believing that.”

  “I will not tell anyone,” he answered. Then he leaned forward and pressed his nose against hers. The warmth of his touch did things to her that even the dancing had not done. The delicious sensation of one nose sliding against another intensified all her other feelings.

  “Ha, I see you like my dancer!” Pigs-run-out said lustily to Matopahu as he plumped himself down on the stool beside his guest. “Of course, my good friend, I share everything I have with you. She is yours for the night.”

  She is yours! Suddenly all of Tepua’s warm feelings drained away. What an insult—to be offered to a guest in such a coarse way. However charming and desirable Matopahu might be, she would not be handed to him like a roll of tapa cloth. She was Kohekapu’s daughter.

  Her temper spoke for her as she turned to the headman. “I am not yours to give!” she answered angrily.

  The headman’s mouth fell open, and for a moment an ugly silence reigned. Pigs-run-out took a deep breath while the brown in his cheeks flushed to a dusky red. Tepua braced herself. chief’s in her own islands did not bother scolding or punishing servants. They simply gave an order to have the offender killed.

  Suddenly Matopahu began to laugh.

  “What amuses you so, my noble friend?” asked Pigs-run-out sullenly. “That this woman does not respect her betters?”

  “Not at all, my gracious host. You have mistaken my intentions and that is why I laugh. This dancer is not to my taste. Amusing to talk to, but no more. The woman I want is standing over there—Hard-mallet. See how she looks at me!”

  All thanks to the gods. Tepua sighed. They had saved her by making Matopahu choose the right woman after all. Yet her joy for Hard-mallet was mixed with envy and anguish.

  Tepua left her seat. She stood behind the men, uncertain of what to do next. Matopahu had rescued her from a bad situation, but his words hurt bitterly. She went hot and cold by turns as they sounded again in her memory. What a child she had been—trusting him, prattling about her dreams of becoming an Arioi.

  The headman’s expression suddenly changed to one of relief. “Hard-mallet is a good choice,” he told Matopahu with a sly grin. “She will make your mallet hard, and more than once. I am happy to share her with you.” He beckoned to the other woman, showing that she should sit where Tepua had been.

  Tepua blinked back tears as she hurried away. If her father and brothers were here ... No, she must not think of home. She did not even know who among her bridal party had survived the storm.

  She left the yard and went to the servants’ house, curled upon a mat, and covered her ears. She tried not to hear the raucous singing, tried not to weep, tried not to envy Hard-mallet.

  She knew what the rest of the evening would bring. Entertainments always aroused the passions. Soon eager couples would go off together into the shadowy sleeping houses. Even in the servants’ quarters she would hear the soft rustling of clothing, the sighs of pleasure. And she would spend the night alone, without Hard-mallet’s comforting presence beside her.

  If that ocean storm had not come, she would now be lying with her husband, a man who surely outshone Matopahu! She tossed angrily on her mat, blaming the nobleman for her unhappiness. He had charmed her, flattered her, made her desire him.

  Tepua sat up, blinking back tears. She would not stay here, enduring the misery. Better to go to the comfort of her two friends, Rimapoa and Hoihoi, even if she risked the roaming night spirits. Pigs-run-out would not need her before morning. If he did call for her, too bad. She wiped her cheeks defiantly and stood up.

  When she slipped back outside, she saw the audience watching a comical performance—a pair of clowns cavorting in painted costumes. Call one clown Pigs-run-out and the other Matopahu, she thought as she ran past the guards at the gate and out onto the moonlit path.

  9

  AT dawn Tepua returned to her sleeping place, and found no sign that anyone had noticed her absence. The other women woke, groggily, to begin their morning tasks. They glanced at her but said nothing. Perhaps none of them had overheard Matopahu and the headman. Perhaps they did not know how she had been shamed.

  But everyone knew that Hard-mallet had not slept in the women’s quarters. When the women glanced at her empty place, they raised eyebrows and smiled at each other.

  Tepua did her best to keep busy, and away from the men. When she heard a loud commotion—a chorus of sad cries as Matopahu departed—she was carrying water to the caged dogs at the side of the compound.

  “Do not be angry with me,” said Hard-mallet later as they went out to work in the yam garden.

  “Why should I care?” asked Tepua. “He is not to my taste. The man I want is Pigs-run-out!”

  Hard-mallet stared at her for a moment, and then she understood the joke. The two women laughed, and hugged each other. Tepua felt her pain easing.

  In the days following Matopahu’s visit, she was relieved to hear nothing more from the headman about the incident. He seemed preoccupied with his practical affairs, ordering the household to produce a vast quantity of bark-cloth. “He needs the tapa for gifts,” Hard-mallet explained. “He is always generous with his friends. Especially if he wants something in return.”

  Tepua made no complaint when she was ordered to join in the task. The work would be tedious, she knew, but it would help pass the time until the Arioi returned to give another performance.

  And then ... She did not know what would happen. Perhaps Oro would seize her once again, and this time the players would realize that she belonged among them. It was this hope that sustained her during the long, grueling days.

  Until now Tepua had only worked on the final stages of clothmaking. Now Hard-mallet showed her where the paper mulberry trees grew in neat plantations, their lower branches kept trimmed away so that the bark would strip off in unbroken sections. Men felled the trees using stone adzes bound by cords to stout wooden handles, then stacked the slender saplings beside a stream.

  Tepua learned how to slit the bark along the length of the tree, then use a pointed stick to pry it loose. Then she washed the sections she had stripped, laid them on a slanting board against her knees, and scraped away the coarse outer layer with a cockleshell. It was hard, repetitive labor, but it kept her mind from things she did not wish to think about.

  Despite herself, her thoughts drifted often toward Mato-pahu. His words of rejection still made her cheeks burn. Perhaps he had saved her from punishment, but she thought he could have done so more gracefully.

  It was impossible to keep him long from her mind. Sometimes another woman would speak his name, or mention something she knew about him. Matopahu was a skilled navigator, Tepua heard, a man who could steer by waves and wind and stars. And though he was neither chief nor high priest, the gods had marked him for distinction in another way. At times he fell into a trance, and a god spoke through his lips, warning the people of troubles to come.

  These revelations did little to change Tepua’s opinion of the high chief’s brother. For a time, she wished not to think about men at all. She welcomed the routine of making tapa, which occupied both her hands and her mind.

  Once she had the inner bark scraped clean, she wrapped it in plantain leaves, placed it in the stream, weighted it with rocks, and left it to steep with similar packets. While the fiber cured she stripped, cleaned, and scraped more, depositing other packages to soak in the running water.

  After two or three days, when she drew the bundle out, she found the bark had become clammy and glutinous, ready for working. Now the enjoyable part of the task began. At their usual shady place in the compound, the women spread their bark strips atop a long mat of plantain leaves, overlapping the narrow piec
es in several layers. When the bark sheet was dry enough to be handled, they spread one end over a narrow wooden beam, dampened the fibers, and began to pound them with their wooden beaters.

  Hard-mallet had two tapa beaters that she prized highly and kept apart from the communal store by hanging them in her quarters with sennit cords. These beaters were long blocks of close-grained wood, four-faced on one end and rounded into a handle on the other. Each surface was scored by grooves, whose fineness varied on different sides.

  The task progressed by striking first with the coarsest side, then slowly working toward the finest. Hard-mallet generously allowed Tepua to use one of her prized cloth beaters, and in many other ways tried to make her feel welcome. The hollow tok tok tok as the mallets struck the beam was a joyful sound and often the women’s voices rose in chants or work songs.

  These peaceful days did not last. One morning, as Tepua was kneeling at the beam, enjoying the fresh breeze and the clatter of mallets, the headman’s guards admitted an unusual visitor. She paused in her work to peer at the newcomer. Between the dust and the bodies of the men who escorted him, she could see that he did not wear Maohi dress. In truth, there was a disconcertingly familiar look about the visitor, but he disappeared so quickly into the headman’s house that she could not be sure what she had seen.

  Uneasily, she turned back to her work. It was not long before a womanservant came from the house with news. The visitor was a trader, she said. He had come to pay respects, and ask permission to remain awhile in the underchief’s district.

  When the stranger stood in the shaded doorway, still speaking to Pigs-run-out, the words of their conversation drifted to Tepua. The trader spoke slowly, evidently unused to the Tahitian dialect. He used the hard “k” sound that Tahitians always omitted.

  Her tapa beater froze in her grip. She knew the accent. And when he stepped out into daylight, she saw the finely plaited matting of his skirt and the patterns of tattoos—alternating squares of black—that swept down from each shoulder to border his chest. He must have come from an island in her own group!

  She studied the stranger more closely. He walked with a quick determined step and swung his shoulders in an arrogant way. He had a rugged dark face and hard black eyes that returned the contemptuous stares of the Tahitians around him.

  She found herself watching him with a mixture of longing and dread. Just to see a man of her own people made her heart hammer as hard as the beater she’d been using. Was he here only to trade, she wondered, or for some other purpose?

  Suddenly the trader turned his head as if he knew he was being appraised. His sharp gaze crossed the courtyard and she felt it settle on her. His forehead wrinkled, then his brows rose. She tried to duck among the other women, who were still bending to their work, but he had already seen enough.

  She heard him cross the courtyard with purposeful steps. Quickly she turned the back of her hand away from him. The tattoo of her family meant nothing to Tahitian eyes, but this man might recognize it.

  Then he crouched before her, staring intensely into her eyes. He spoke rapidly in the atoll dialect, the “k” and “g” sounding wonderful to her ears. He asked her name and how she had come there. She longed to free her own tongue to answer, and to ask what he knew of her family, but she dared not reply. Instead she made gestures with her eyebrows and head to indicate that she did not understand. When he persisted, she answered only in the soft Maohi manner she had learned.

  A hand on the visitor’s arm brought his inquisition to a halt. The hand belonged to one of the headman’s warriors, but Pigs-run-out, standing beside him, had given the order. The trader shrugged off the guard’s grasp and turned away.

  “I have given you permission to trade shell hooks for cloth, not to meddle with my women,” the headman warned. “Be gone before I revoke your privilege.”

  The stranger looked as if he were about to argue. Then, with one last glance at Tepua, he turned and strode away.

  With uncertain fingers she picked up her mallet again. The headman’s guards had gone to escort the trader from the compound, but Pigs-run-out still stood over Tepua. When she glanced up, she saw his measuring stare.

  “You have a knack for attracting attention, woman,” he said in a caustic tone. “Perhaps I should learn something more about you.”

  Tepua averted her eyes and clenched the mallet.

  “I have heard that motu women are different. Maybe you will show me.” He laughed softly. “Yes, soon, when I feel the need for a change.” Tepua stared at her work, saying nothing, until she felt his shadow slide off her and heard him amble away. Then she let out a long, low breath and hit the cloth so hard that she almost tore it.

  “Gently, gently,” said Hard-mallet, laying a cool hand on top of Tepua’s. “He is all talk and little else. I have been with him many times, so I know.” She gave Tepua a shy, yet roguish wink.

  Tepua frowned. Compared with her new problem, the headman was a minor worry. This trader was not from her own island, but she realized that he might have seen her on a visit. Even if he did not know her, he had certainly heard by now of the sea disaster and the lost bride. Such news traveled quickly through the atolls.

  He would be trading in the district, talking to all the men. What if he learned that she once had called herself a chief’s daughter? She needed to find out what he was thinking, what he might do if he discovered her identity. She knew only one person who might be able to help her now.

  Late in the day, after Hoihoi had gone off for a tryst with her Papara man, Rimapoa sat in his yard making a new albacore line from the inner bark of the roa bush. Raw fiber lay on a banana leaf before him and the growing cord he was making was tied to his big toe. Rolling fibers on his bare thigh, he formed two separate strands, then twisted the pair tightly into a two-ply cord.

  When he glanced up and saw Tepua approaching his house, he yanked the cord from his toe and jumped up to greet her. “My flower, it has been so long,” he chided, though he could not be angry with her for more than an instant. “And the headman’s guards, I am sure, never gave you my messages.” He put his hand on her shoulder and tenderly greeted her with a pressing of noses.

  He felt his desire stirring, but sensed her reluctance. He sighed, knowing that he would continue pleasing her in every way he could. It did not matter to him how long he must wait. He looked at her face, and saw worry in her eyes.

  “Rimapoa, I have been unkind to you,” she said quietly.

  “It is nothing. The headman keeps you busy. I understand why you cannot get away.”

  “Even so ...” She looked down, her voice trailing off.

  Then he noticed that the back of her hand was red and swollen, crossed by a network of newly tattooed lines that overlaid the old design. “What have you done?” he asked in alarm.

  She winced when he tried to touch her hand. “Something I delayed too long. The tatatau who did this is a master of his art. He promised it will look like a flower when it heals.”

  Seeing that she was fighting her tears, he tried to soothe her, until she finally explained about the trader’s arrival. “I do not know what this stranger wants,” she concluded. “If he learns who I am, he may go back and tell my people. That is why I must hide the mark of my family.”

  Rimapoa laid one gentle finger on her lips. “Shh. We will talk more about it later. First, I have a gift for you.”

  He got down on his knees and reached for a loosely tied bundle he had stored under a bush. Over the past days he had often prepared similar ones, but Tepua had not come to claim them.

  Hoping the shade had kept the bud fresh, he drew it out. Yes, it was still crisp, beaded with dew, and had opened into a star-shaped flower with petals whiter than the palest coral. He touched the moist waxy petals with his forefinger. With the flower cupped in his palms, he turned to Tepua. “I picked it early this morning in the hills. It is called tiare-maohi.”

  Tepua took the tiare by its stem, touched it, smelled it, all w
ith such an open look of wonder that Rimapoa sorrowed for her. What kind of life had she led, so empty of such beauty?

  “Did you have flowers on your atoll?” he asked softly.

  “None like this.”

  “Let me put it in your hair,” he said. With gentle fingers, he separated the strands of her hair and wove the flower’s stem skillfully among them. When he stepped back to admire his handiwork, he felt a rush of tenderness. Standing there, her face tilted up to him, her body bronzed by the golden light of late afternoon, the tiare shining in her hair like a star, she seemed like a goddess from the old legends.

  He was almost afraid to take her in his arms again, but when he did, he clasped her to him tightly, speaking old words that his grandfather had taught him, words that were the deepest expression of fondness for the beloved.

  “Ta ’u tiare ’apetahi ’oe,” he breathed into her hair. “The tiare itself wilts when compared with your beauty, woman of the atolls.”

  Though she clung to him for comfort, he sensed that she was still too troubled to think of pleasure. For her sake, he tried to turn his thoughts elsewhere. “Do you know that a flower like this once gave me a fright?” he asked as they sat down together beneath a breadfruit tree.

  “A flower frighten you? Now you are teasing me.”

  “When I was a stripling and as arrogant as Front-tooth, I visited the island Urietea with my father. We stayed there for several days. One morning I rose long before sunrise and walked up a great mountain called Temahani. When the sun started to rise, from all about me came sounds like darts hitting a tree.”

  “Someone attacking you!”

  “I thought so, and ducked fast. But then, just in front of me, I saw a bud pop open as the first rays of the sun struck it. The stem split and the petals flew out. And then another and another until the air was filled with the noise. Pop-pop-pop-pop, just like this.”

  “This same flower?” Tepua inhaled the fragrance of the tiare.