Daughter of the Reef

by Clare Coleman

  At last the other women relented, allowing her to climb back onto the bank. While everyone was drying off in the sun, Tepua noticed something out of the corner of her eye. She turned, saw only a few leaves trembling. “I think we had an audience,” she said with a laugh.

  “If so, they are being quiet about it,” said someone else.

  “After last night,” said another, “I think the men will be happy to stay away from us this morning.”

  Tepua understood. Following the Arioi performance, men and women had gone off together to share the excitement the evening’s performance had inspired. After so much lovemaking, the men were probably sprawled, exhausted, under the trees. Yet someone had been watching from behind the bushes.

  “We are going down to the beach to say farewell to the guests,” said Curling-leaf.

  Tepua stiffened. “I have already said my parting words to my brother.”

  “But it will be fun,” coaxed Curling-leaf. “Seeing all those boats in the water.”

  “Maybe Aitofa needs me to grate coconuts.” When Tepua saw the look of disappointment on her friend’s face, she followed the group down to the shore. There, to her relief, she found no sign of the huge double canoe that an atoll chiefess traveled in. Evidently Hoatu and Rongonui had left early.

  Now other craft of all sizes were setting forth, bright pennants fluttering, paddles glistening, prows arching gracefully over the waves. To accompany the visitors on the first part of their journey, the Arioi had launched several of their own festive canoes. Aboard them stood men and women decked out in fresh garlands and glistening leaves.

  Tepua watched the spectacle awhile, but could not lose herself in the gaiety. She could only envy the people returning to their homes and their families. The Arioi and a few friends were all she had.

  Matopahu. Even if she knew what to say to him, she could not go looking for him now. Eye-to-heaven had insisted that she wait. And what about Feet-out-of-water, whose recurring bouts of illness had kept her from him for so long? She knew that his family had called a disenchanter, a priest who specialized in undoing the work of sorcerers. If sorcery had not caused his illness, then the disenchanter would fail. Tepua despaired now of seeing that kindly nobleman again...

  With a sigh, she glanced at the novices around her. They were so caught up in the spectacle that they would not notice if she slipped away. Quietly she turned toward the path that led back to Aitofa’s compound... What was that? Someone had just ducked out of sight.

  Tepua felt a sharp apprehension. She took a few steps into the deeper shade beneath the coconut palms. She peered around but saw no one.

  Her heartbeat quickened. What if her brother had decided to take her home by force? He might have pretended to depart while sending men to watch for her. She asked herself if Rongonui could do such a thing in defiance of Hoatu.

  She did not leave the shore at once, but waited until she saw a noisy group coming down through the grove. Then she hurried by them, raced through Aitofa’s gate and into the novices’ house. The spears that were used in exercises stood against one wall. Tepua took one out to the side yard and practiced skewering a straw “victim.”

  She had been working at this for some time when a wavering voice interrupted her. She turned to see a solemn-faced young man. “My master, Feet-out-of-water, is ill again,” he said. “This time he is worse than before. If you do not hurry, it may be too late.”

  Tepua scowled. A trick? She realized that she had seen this servant at the nobleman’s compound. For days, she had been expecting news from Feet-out-of-water, hoping for his recovery. “Have you come by boat?” she asked anxiously.

  “There were none to spare. All the outlying kin are being summoned.”

  She did not look forward to walking the long, wooded path. Hefting the spear, she decided to take it with her. As they left the compound the youth eyed her with surprise when he saw her still carrying the weapon. “No one at my master’s house will harm you,” he said.

  “I have other enemies,” she answered, explaining nothing more.

  They quickly reached the path through the trees. The messenger, clearly in a hurry, did not seem to care that she was falling behind. Tepua called to him, but he merely beckoned for her to follow.

  As she went she stayed alert to every sound and movement. An uncanny silence reigned. The insects had fallen still. The birds did not call to each other. The leaves hung motionless in the moist, heavy air.

  Instead of fearing for her own safety, she chided herself, she should be thinking about Feet-out-of-water. He had always been pleasant to her, asking so little in return. He had never laughed at her ignorance of Maohi ways...

  Nearby, a stick snapped, and she jumped in sudden fright. Before she could call again to the messenger, she heard a hiss followed by the soft sound of her name.

  When she glimpsed the figure that came toward her from the underbrush, she forgot both Rongonui and Feet-out-of-water. For a moment she could not breathe. She tried to level her spear, but her arms felt like stone. Ghosts do not walk in the daytime, she kept telling herself.

  “Rima—poa,” she whispered. What little flesh he had once possessed had melted away. Now she saw a skeletal figure, the shapes of ribs and shoulder bones showing through sun-blackened skin. His face was drawn, his eyes fevered.

  “I escaped, tiare,” he answered in a dry voice. “Ask no more.”

  “But you—”

  “I cannot stay here,” he said, hanging back in the shadows. “If I am caught, the high chief will feed me to the eels. Let us meet later, after dark, and I will tell you all that has happened.”

  “Later. Yes.” Her mouth hung open. Seeing him in this pitiful state, she felt willing to forgive him for whatever he had done to her. Clearly he had suffered enough. “You must leave Tahiti,” she insisted. “Take refuge with some other chief.”

  “I will go away,” he promised. “But first, I beg you to meet me tonight. Come at moonrise. Behind Aitofa’s compound.”

  She could not linger now—not while Feet-out-of-water was dying. Hastily, she whispered her assent and hurried off, hoping she could catch up with the nobleman’s messenger. Rimapoa was alive! But he looked so weak. If the high chief’s guards saw him, he could not hope to outrun them.

  She arrived, out of breath, at the compound of Feet-out-of-water. Never before had she dared to enter the main house, but now the messenger beckoned her inside. She shivered as she heard the chanting of a priest within and cries of the women.

  She stepped inside. The nobleman’s sister gave her a single, piercing glance before continuing her wails. All the women held shark’s-tooth flails, and blood trickled down their foreheads.

  Tepua approached Feet-out-of-water, who lay stretched out rigidly on his back, his face pale, his eyes shut. The thought that she had come too late made her own tears start. At once she took a flail that someone handed her and gashed her own forehead, but she barely noticed the pain. She hit herself again, this time feeling blood drip down to mix with her tears.

  The priest continued to wave his hands and pray, trying to entice the soul back into the body. As she stared at Feet-out-of-water she thought the appearance of life remained.

  On the nobleman’s fingers were tied red feathers, to protect his departing soul from evil spirits. Had it left him? She thought she saw his chest rising and falling slightly. He was not gone yet! The priest must have also noticed this, for he intensified his frenzied efforts.

  Feet-out-of-water opened his eyes. In an instant the wailing ceased and the mourners crowded about him. The priest warned them back.

  The sick man raised his head slightly, searching the crowd around him. “Te—Tepua,” he whispered. The others glanced at each other in dismay, but stood aside to let her through. “Tepua. I—I have missed you.” He drew in a ragged breath, then tried to reach toward her with his hand.

  “Do no touch him,” said the priest in a low, harsh voice. “For your own sake.”

&nbs
p; She understood. The contamination from the dead and dying. The substance of whatever evil was destroying him could move from his body to hers. Yet how could she refuse him this last small embrace? In defiance, she clutched his hand, felt the cool skin that seemed to grow colder as she knelt there. Once more the priest began to chant...

  So the rites continued, through the afternoon and well into the night. The priest was relieved by another, more vigorous man, whose efforts brought Feet-out-of-water’s soul once more back into his body. Again the spirit slipped away and again it was called back. Tepua had no idea how long she had sat there, her head spinning from the incessant chanting and wailing.

  At last the priest gave up his attempts to revive the nobleman and turned his energy to easing the spirit on its journey. He also dispatched a diviner, whose job was to paddle out in a canoe and watch the house from the water, until a vision showed him the reason for the poor man’s demise.

  While the priest inside chanted, the mourners waited anxiously for the diviner to return. If the death had been caused by sorcery, the culprit would be found and the attack avenged. If the death had been sent by the gods as punishment for some offense, then offerings would be made to keep the relatives from also being harmed.

  Tepua remembered Eye-to-heaven’s warning that she might bring woe to Matopahu because of her own transgression. Her hara might affect anyone she touched. Of course, Feet-out-of-water had known of this risk, but he had scoffed at it. It could not be true, she told herself now. She refused to believe that the gods would punish a man for caressing her. But what did the women of the household believe?

  She searched their weary, grief-stained faces and saw only contempt for her in their eyes. It did not matter to them that she was now acknowledged as a high chief’s daughter. “A motu princess is still a savage,” she imagined them muttering among themselves. If her hara had contaminated Feet-out-of-water, then what might it do to the rest of the household?

  These thoughts plagued Tepua while she waited for the diviner to return. She knew the night was waning. The time for her meeting with Rimapoa had passed, and she did not know if she would find him.

  Suddenly she could no longer stand the hostile glances of the women. She stood up and walked to the center of the room. “I gave him joy in his last days,” she said loudly. “I helped him laugh. Do not hate me for that.” The women stared at her with widened eyes and said nothing. The men merely looked away.

  Not caring now what the diviner would report, she went out through the doorway into the gloomy yard. The night sky was just beginning to show hints of dawn, and she had a long walk ahead of her.

  Where was her spear? She remembered leaving it propped up against the outside wall of the house, but it was gone, and she could not face going back inside to ask after it. Now she had no need of a weapon. Her fear that Rongonui was trying to capture her had proved false. Rimapoa was the one who had spied on her at the stream and by the beach.

  Empty-handed, she hurried from the compound. In the dim light she could make out the path, but every shadow seemed to hide a frightening shape. This was the wrong night for ghosts to be walking, yet malevolent spirits always congregated around the house of a dead man. Some descended from the sky. Others emerged from hiding places beneath the trees.

  She tried her chant again, hoping it could ward off even these powerful influences. The air remained still as she followed the trail, the smell of decaying leaves rising all about her.

  A bird cried in the distance. She chanted louder. A rat scurried across her path, startling her, making her stumble into a clump of saplings. As she clawed herself free of them she heard more scuttling in the underbrush, but the noise seemed too loud for vermin.

  She began to run, trying all the while not to hear the strange sounds about her. A huge rata tree, surrounded by twisting buttresses, loomed ahead, its bark gleaming faintly.

  She paused, clutching one of the buttresses as she called on her guardian spirit for aid. Then she raced on, hearing the rustling grow closer. Aitofa’s compound was not far. Two more bends in the path and a long, straight run.

  Suddenly she saw a demonic figure rear up ahead of her in the middle of the trail. It held a club in one outstretched hand. She dodged around the apparition, crashing through the brush and heading toward the beach...

  “Tiare, do not run from me,” came the ghostly voice.

  “Rimapoa!”

  She dropped to her knees and tried to catch her breath.

  He brandished the crude weapon and spoke in a voice that chilled her. “I waited for you. Then I remembered you had gone this way, and wondered if you had come back.”

  Something in the way he spoke gave her fresh alarm. She blamed his ordeal. “Tell me how you escaped.”

  He interrupted. “First, you must not worry, tiare. I never told the priests that you came with me to Fenua Ura.” His voice carried an undercurrent of deceit. “For my exile, they sent me to a little motu. Even you would not have found that place agreeable. I prayed to my god, and one day he let a fallen palm tree wash up on my shore. I made a crude raft.”

  “And paddled back to Tahiti on it? I heard that story in a chant. And I did not believe it then either.”

  He sighed, moving closer. She looked up, tensing, not certain what to expect. “Ah, tiare, it does not matter how I escaped. Another month on that island and the birds would have feasted on my eyes. I saved my life, but the cost is very great. Let me see the light of dawn on your face.” He reached down toward her, but she drew back.

  “Still afraid of me?” he asked. “But why do I see bloodstains on your brow?”

  “I am mourning for Feet-out-of-water,” she answered bitterly. “He was going to help me. Without him I will not make Pointed-thorn after all. First the feathers, now this.” She felt so miserable at that moment that she almost did not care what the fisherman planned to do to her. She watched his hands tightening on the heavy stick. A voice within tried to make her flee, but her muscles did not respond.

  “What are you saying?” he asked angrily. “Your feast is taken care of.”

  “My patron is dead. My only hope now is Hoatu, my brother’s wife.”

  He pounded the end of the stick against the ground. “No, I do not understand. You and that strutting Matopahu plotted against me. That is why the high chief stole my feathers and sent me to exile. Then he gave them back to you. With that treasure, you can go as high as you want in the Arioi.”

  “You are mistaken, my fisherman,” she answered softly. “The feathers are gone. And Matopahu had nothing to do with them.”

  He pounded with his stick again. “Then tell me why Ihetoa saw you two together by the marae. And why he is so eager to be rid of you both.”

  “Ihetoa!” The name jolted her from the trancelike state she had fallen into. She stood up and faced Rimapoa, putting her hand on his where he held the club. “Did Ihetoa put you up to this?”

  The fisherman pulled back and grimly held on to the weapon. His gaze bore into her, but he did not answer.

  “The high chief took away Ihetoa’s office,” she shouted, “because we exposed his lies!”

  “That is not how Ihetoa tells the story.”

  “Did he confess what his own priest saw? Your friend Ihetoa is guilty of hara! The gods spurned his offerings. His victims died for no purpose.”

  Rimapoa tightened his fist. She saw the muscles twitch at the back of his jaw.

  “Have you forgotten how you almost joined the sacrifices on the altar?”

  “I remember how you saved me, tiare,” he answered hoarsely, still clutching the weapon. “But you still have not explained why you and Matopahu were together.”

  “Because Aitofa sent me to him—in the mountains. With a message for his taio. Then the three of us came back together.”

  “That was all? Just a message? No hanihani!”

  She was breathing quickly and her pulse was racing. The ground was covered by a tangle of slippery roots, making the
footing treacherous. If she tried to flee, she would surely stumble.

  “You do not answer, tiare.”

  “Hanihani, yes,” she answered bitterly. “In the mountains, where none of his highborn friends could see us. But it is finished now. The new high priest told me I must not touch Matopahu. Ask Ihetoa if you do not believe that.”

  “Scorpion of a nobleman! Scorpion of a priest!” Rimapoa smashed the club against the side of a heavy tree. He swung it repeatedly until the wood splintered in his hand. Finally he slumped to the ground. “Ihetoa would have put me on the altar if I had not explained my scars. And now you tell me that he mocked the gods.”

  Tepua was still trembling. She came forward slowly, finally crouching beside him and putting her arm about his shoulder, soothing the weathered skin. “Look at what has happened here,” she said. “With Ihetoa gone from the marae, the trees are heavy with fruit. That is the final proof of his wrongdoings.”

  “Yes, I have seen that.” He reached over and gently took her hand. “Tiare, I do not think I could have done what that tainted priest asked of me. Even if all those lies I believed were true. But I will not ask forgiveness of you again. I will only give you this warning. Ihetoa wants to rid himself of his enemies, and you are one. Guard yourself. Never go anywhere without an escort. Never leave your compound at night.”

  “And what will you do?”

  “Tell him you failed to meet me, and pretend I will try again. But now I must go.” He embraced her for a long moment, pressed his nose to hers once more. Then, with a sigh, he stood up and vanished into the shadows.

  Out of breath and exhausted from running, Tepua entered Aitofa’s compound. Glancing up, she noticed how bright the sky had become. Soon everyone would be awake. She knew she had to spread the warning. If Ihetoa meant to destroy his enemies, he would be looking for Eye-to-heaven as well as Matopahu. Perhaps he was already setting his traps.

  She went back to the gate and glanced at the sleepy warrior standing guard. “There may be trouble,” she told him.