Daughter of the Reef

by Clare Coleman

  “But your taio will learn soon enough. When he returns to the district, he will certainly hear about it. And if he becomes high priest—”

  “If so, he will be far more sympathetic than Ihetoa would have been. For now we say nothing. I am enjoying your visit too much to have it spoiled by more gloomy talk.” He continued to caress her. Her drowsiness gave way gradually to a warm feeling of arousal. The earlier urgency was gone, replaced by a gentler desire.

  “You will find the nights chilly here,” he whispered as he led her back into the cave, to his bed of sweet-smelling ferns. “But I have only this one cape to spread over us. We must lie close together.”

  “I am not cold yet,” she answered, feeling a sly grin cross her face. Then she felt the warmth of his chest against her back, like the sun’s heat baking her. She reached behind to stroke his thigh, discovering quickly that he had already shed his loincloth...

  In the early light of morning, Tepua woke to the sound of a low moan. She reached for Matopahu and realized that he was not beside her. She sat up, full of fears she could not explain.

  At the side of the cave, she saw Eye-to-heaven crouched by Matopahu’s sweat-slicked trembling body. “You must go out now,” said the priest firmly when he saw her crawling closer.

  Tepua hesitated, baffled. Matopahu had shown no sign of oncoming illness. Now, suddenly, this. She stared with alarm at his contorted face and the jerky motions of his limbs.

  Then she noticed that Matopahu’s left hand was wrapped in bark-cloth. He held it stiffly upright as if injured. Once again a strange windy moan came from his throat.

  “What has happened to his hand?” she demanded.

  “I am sorry, but you must leave,” Eye-to-heaven insisted. He reached out to block her, but she got past him and seized Matopahu’s wrapped hand. Beneath the bindings it felt twisted, deformed. Shivers crawled along her spine.

  Biting her lip in terror, she tried to unwrap the binding. Eye-to-heaven seized her wrists and pulled her away. She was almost glad to let Matopahu’s hand be torn from her grip, suddenly afraid of what she might expose beneath the cloth.

  Now she understood. She had seen other men in god-induced fits. But this time it was Matopahu who lay on the ground, foaming and flailing, waving a bound arm that no longer seemed his own.

  She felt an urgency to obey Eye-to-heaven’s command and scramble from the cave, leaving the priest to deal with this nightmare. Then she saw Matopahu’s unbound right hand moving to the floor, fingers opening and closing, as if desperately reaching for someone. Sending a defiant look at the priest, she grabbed Matopahu’s palm tightly. The skin was damp and hot, the touch filled with urgency.

  “He wants you here,” said the priest in a tone of defeat. “You can stay, but keep quiet. We must listen carefully.”

  Matopahu continued to moan in a harsh, breathy voice, but Tepua could hear no words. She prayed silently that the god would depart and cease tormenting him. Instead, he began to babble in a language she did not understand.

  “Even I cannot interpret that,” Eye-to-heaven whispered.

  Matopahu stiffened, his hand clenching Tepua’s convulsively. She fought against his strength, trying to keep him from thrashing and hurting himself. Then suddenly a new, and deeper, voice boomed through the cave. Its resonance held the awesome glory of the marae, of dark stone crypts, of images wrapped in feathers. Tepua felt her gooseflesh rising.

  The voice grated in Matopahu’s throat. “The spear of bamboo is cast at the branches made bare. The tree is of the lance, the club, it stands. The tree is bare, the man pierced to the heart ... pierced to the heart. ...”

  The words meant nothing, yet filled her with dread. Her body trembled and she scarcely dared to breathe until the voice was finally done. Then she heard a long sigh, felt Matopahu’s grip weaken, saw his body fall still.

  Eye-to-heaven continued to crouch over him, the priest’s face intent with concentration. He began to mutter, more to himself than to her. “What is it? What can it mean?”

  “Has the god departed?” she asked fretfully. “Is Matopahu all right?”

  “Yes. He will sleep now. While I am left to struggle with his words.”

  Frowning with doubt, Tepua lay down beside Matopahu and wrapped his cape around them. His skin felt cooler, no longer radiating the fierce heat of the god-touched. She pressed against him, trying to warm him with her own body.

  “The branches are bare,” murmured the priest. “That refers to the breadfruit, of course. Pierced to the heart means that some great wrong is behind this. Spear-of-bamboo, ihe-ohe. That sounds like the name of the high priest, but now I am only guessing.” He sighed, looking down at Matopahu with a mixture of affection and frustration.’ ’Yes, ihe-ohe does sound like the high priest’s name, if we say ’Ihe-toa.’”

  Tepua wished the priest would cease his muttering, at least until Matopahu recovered. Now she could find no rest for herself. Her thoughts kept spinning. Against her will, she found herself trying to interpret the message.

  She knew that the gods’ words were often cryptic, and that men sometimes spent days trying to explain them. “Why must the gods torture Matopahu so,” she complained, “only to confuse us?”

  “He did not suffer,” the priest said. “When he wakes, he will remember nothing. But what am I to make of this? Ihe-toa, spear-of-ironwood.”

  The more Tepua thought about it, the more the mystery annoyed her. So what if the priest was called spear-of-bamboo instead of ironwood? He still had a sharp point! “Tell me, Eye-to-heaven,” she asked. “How do your friends plan to force Ihetoa from his office?”

  “They will accuse him of having lost the favor of the gods. They will say that the high ones misled him, making him reject the warning about famine.”

  She was familiar with such accusations. Her father had once had troubles with a priest. “Sometimes an evil spirit influences a man,” she said. “Ihetoa may say that a demon misguided him, and that now he has driven it away.”

  “He has a clever tongue. That is why my friends needed to wait so long. Even now they may not succeed.”

  “Then perhaps these words we are puzzling over were meant to help you.”

  “You are quick-witted. Now I begin to understand why Matopahu spoke of you so often.”

  She felt her cheeks prickle at that piece of news. She was glad the dimness shadowed her face as she replied, “Up here, away from women, a man cannot help thinking about them.”

  “That is true,” Eye-to-heaven said with a sigh and fell silent.

  She cradled Matopahu awhile longer, trying to sort out her feelings. She felt an odd new tenderness toward him, as if he were an extraordinary yet fragile child. When he woke, he would be himself again, the free-living man of the mountains. But she would not forget that she had seen him shuddering on the cave floor, in the grip of something more powerful than any man.

  It was said that the gods only spoke through those they favored. Yet Tepua wondered how anyone could call this an honor—subject to the whims of some unknown spirit, forced to speak words that might be nonsense, unaware of what happened during the seizure.

  Sacred or not, she would not wish for such a thing. Her own small gifts were frightening enough. She closed her eyes, waiting for him to wake, and drifted back into sleep.

  Matopahu woke slowly, rising from slumber as if he were coming up from deep water. He felt a dryness in his mouth and a stiffness in his muscles that could only mean one thing...

  He lay on his side, staring at his left hand, feeling and seeing the wrapping of bark-cloth about his fingers and palm. Yes, he dimly remembered winding it around his hand when he felt the aura coming on.

  And—the woman. Had she been here?

  He turned to glance at Tepua, sleeping, curled up against him. Feeling his dismay grow, he pulled away from her. What had he said? What had he looked like, thrashing on the floor like a speared lizard?

  Quietly he crawled to the priest and shook him a
wake. He put a finger to his mouth, telling Eye-to-heaven to move silently, without waking Tepua. When he slipped down out of the cave, Matopahu saw that they had all slept late. He stood blinking in the bright sunlight, then walked a short distance to the stream.

  “I had hoped the god might leave me alone awhile,” Matopahu said wearily to the priest. “Tell me what the voice said this time.”

  Eye-to-heaven repeated the enigmatic words.

  “You are probably right about ihe-ohe and Ihe-toa,” said Matopahu, “but there is still a puzzle.” He rubbed behind his neck, realizing that he must have strained it when he thrust his head back. Eye-to-heaven said he often did that when the god entered him. “I hope you got Tepua away before I—”

  “I am sorry, taio. She insisted on staying. And when you reached out to her, there was nothing I could do.”

  Matopahu stopped at the stream’s bank and stared at the priest. “I—reached out to her?”

  “Or the god did.”

  Angrily Matopahu tossed aside his wrap and plunged into the cool water. He stayed down as long as he could, and when he brought his dripping head up, he did not speak at once. “Why do the sacred ones make me forget what I have done?” he complained. “One day I will wake up to learn that I have bitten a shark—or coupled with a wild boar.”

  “If that happens, the shark or boar will have my sympathy,” answered the priest cheerfully.

  “I can always depend on you for a wise answer, my taio,” Matopahu said. He paused, then approached again the question that troubled him. “So Tepua saw me. She must have been frightened. What woman would not be at such a sight?”

  Eye-to-heaven put his hand on Matopahu’s shoulder. “She insisted on remaining at your side. She was afraid, perhaps, but she wanted to help you.”

  Matopahu let his breath hiss through his teeth. He had never before cared that a woman saw him babbling nonsense and squirming like an infant. Instead of feeling honored by the god’s visit, he now felt shame. Tepua was an outsider. For all he knew, she might view what had happened to him as a sign of weakness.

  He turned to his friend, who was staring at him with a puzzled expression. No, the priest would not understand. Matopahu could not even explain these feelings to himself. “Do not discuss this in front of her,” Matopahu said quickly. If she does not see it happen again, she may forget.

  When Tepua woke, she found the men gone. Matopahu must have recovered, she thought with relief. She imagined that he was out scaling cliffs while she still rubbed sleep from her eyes.

  Hungry, she nibbled on some baked banana wrapped in a leaf. While she ate she stared at a long piece of cord that had suspended the packet of food from the ceiling. Now it hung free.

  When she finished eating, she decided to go out to wash. She was about to try the tricky descent from the cave when her gaze fell again on the hanging cord. A long time had passed since she last felt a need to make string figures. Now she had a good reason.

  She pulled the cord loose, wrapped it around her arm. Then she crawled from the cave, feetfirst, easing herself over the lip as she tried to find a purchase for her toes. Birds screeched overhead, laughing at her clumsiness, she thought. Bits of broken rock clattered below. At last she steadied herself and dared to look down.

  It was not so far to the ground, she realized. Gripping an edge of stone near her waist, she lowered one foot, then the other. She arrived at the bottom, panting, but unhurt.

  Now she would have some time to herself before the men came back. The sound of running water beyond a stand of fern trees called to her.

  Tepua did not linger at her bath. After she had dried off in the sun, she moved to the cool shade. Then she took the cord from her arm and made it into a loop.

  The string figures! How she missed them. They helped her to relax, let her mind wander onto new paths. Now she hoped they might lead her to understand Matopahu’s mysterious pronouncement. The gods had guided her before, in this way ... She started with a prayer to her guardian spirit, Tapahi-roro-ariki.

  When she was ready, Tepua began with simple figures, loosening her hands. Priests and spears. The shapes did not match her thoughts. This one resembled an ironwood tree just a little. Bamboo? Perhaps this one. She tried the more difficult forms of fai.

  After a time she groaned with frustration and put down the cord. The insight was not coming. She was trying to force the figures in one direction or another. She needed to let them flow of their own accord. Once more she called on her ancestress for aid.

  Again she began, this time barely watching what her fingers wove. The cord moved so quickly that sometimes it seemed to blur. She glimpsed tantalizing visions that were gone before she could interpret them. Then she paused for a moment to rest her tired fingers.

  Glancing down, she saw a new shape in the string—an upraised hand. And then she was looking at an image far away—at a hand of flesh, at a man in a tall feather headdress, at a high altar in a marae. The image grew startlingly clear.

  The man was smiling, his expression mocking the solemn proceedings. He was praying before the altar, yet his face wore a sly grin. And the offering, she saw with a shudder, was a man.

  Tepua fell back under the force of the vision and lay on the ground. Her eyes were shut now, and the image had vanished. But the face—she could not forget it. She had seen that face before.

  At last she got up and began to walk aimlessly along the stream’s banks. Shiny lizards, sunning themselves on the rocks, darted into crevices as she approached. She paused now and then to stare into the glistening water. Then she remembered her audience, months before, with the high chief. The man from her vision, garbed in priestly white, had been standing close to Knotted-cord that day. It was his face—Ihetoa’s mocking countenance—that she had just seen.

  “Walk quietly, or you will scare the fish,” came a whisper that startled her out of her reverie. She glanced up to see Eye-to-heaven, holding a two-pronged spear, bending over a pool at the side of the stream.

  “Where is Matopahu?” she asked.

  “Walking alone and thinking. Shh.” He shifted the spear, his eyes intent on the quarry.

  Tepua stamped impatiently. “Eye-to-heaven, I have something to ask you about that is more important than your dinner.”

  His arm came down in a sudden thrust. He gave a cry of triumph as he pulled back the spear, bringing with it a struggling perch. “I am listening now,” he said as he dropped his catch into a basket.

  “I do not know all your words. What do you call it when a priest fails to show the proper reverence?”

  Eye-to-heaven put down his spear and turned his attention fully on her. He frowned as he answered. “That is called hara, a grave sin.”

  “If a priest is irreverent, then how do the gods view his offering? Surely they turn away in anger.”

  “Certainly. But I do not see—”

  “Because,” she said excitedly. “We are puzzling over the meaning of ’spear-of-bamboo.’ You say the offense of irreverence is called hara, and I have heard of a kind of bamboo called hara-tavai.”

  Eye-to-heaven stared at her for a moment. His eyes widened and his mouth opened and then he sank to his knees. “So that is the word game the gods have played on us,” he said with awe. “Two names for bamboo. Two meanings for hara. By these rules, ihe-ohe becomes the ’spear-that-sinned.’”

  “Then—”

  “It is all clear to me now, Tepua,” he said, pounding his fist against the ground. “And you have unraveled it. ’Spear-that-sinned is cast at the bare branches.’ Ihetoa must be guilty of hara, and that is why our breadfruit still does not flower.” He glanced down into the pool, his eyes narrowed. “All this time he blamed the famine on the people’s shortcomings. No one dared suggest that Ihetoa himself was at fault.”

  “Then what can be done? Is it possible to accuse him of his crime?” Tepua’s exhilaration was already fading. She had solved one problem only to raise another.

  Eye-to-heaven sat
and put his chin in his hand. “That is what I must decide. The high priest can always cast doubt on Matopahu’s words. He has had plenty of practice at doing it. If only someone had seen his transgression—”

  Tepua almost spoke, but what point would there be in saying that she had seen the high priest’s crime in a vision? No one would take her word for it.

  “I will not wait here while my friends plot among themselves,” said Eye-to-heaven. “I must return at once and see how I can use this knowledge.”

  “But the message from Aitofa said to wait—”

  “The ones who sent it did not know about Ihetoa’s misdeeds. Come. We must find Matopahu.”

  17

  AS evening approached, Tepua sat with the two men, looking out through the cave’s mouth at the lengthening shadows below.

  “If we leave early tomorrow,” said Eye-to-heaven, “we can catch Ihetoa at his afternoon nap. I would like to confront him when the priests and attendants are all drowsy.”

  Matopahu grinned. “That will be the best time. Before he can clear his thoughts and invent new lies.” He turned to Tepua. “I do not want to leave you up here alone. You mentioned a camp of Arioi—”

  “No,” she interrupted. “I want to return with you.”

  “It will be dangerous,” said the priest.

  “Not if I keep out of sight.”

  “And if we fail?”

  “Then I will run back to the hills.” She lifted her chin and stared at Eye-to-heaven. Did the priest want to deny her a part in the plan? She hoped she would not have to remind him how she had untied the mystery of the oracle’s words.

  “Until we are close to the high priest’s marae, we must all stay hidden,” said Matopahu, breaking the impasse. Again, he turned to Tepua. “If we fail there, we will need you to carry a message to our friends. You cannot follow us where we are going—onto sacred ground. There is a boundary that no woman may cross.”