Fires of Change (The Fire Blossom Saga)

by Sarah Lark

  “There will be plenty of men returning with the sheep,” Te Haitara said.

  The trip would have been good for Jane. That’s what Makuto had said when she joined the group headed for the mountains.

  Patrick Colderell uttered a few profanities when he saw all the warriors, women, children, and tribal elders that he was supposed to lead to the mountains for the sheep drive. “These people will only slow us down!”

  Jane shook her head. “They walk faster than you do,” she said. “And even if you need a day longer than usual to reach the highlands, it won’t matter. Just keep an eye on my son.”

  At Jane’s order, Eru mounted a horse. It was the same gentle black pony he’d ridden to accompany Mara. The animal reminded him of her, which made it a little easier to have to ride with the pakeha instead of walking with his taua.

  But Eru’s honorable plan had been made known to the young warriors. Even among the Ngai Tahu, there was talk about Te Ua Haumene and the men fighting for freedom on the North Island. They were all tattooed. Now the rest of Eru’s tuau was eager for that test of courage.

  First, though, the young warriors would help with the sheep drive, which was easy for them. They’d grown up with shepherding duties and were quite good at working with the animals. For that reason, the pakeha foreman didn’t even notice when Te Ropata and Eru disappeared on the first day of the drive. Jane may have instructed him to keep an eye on her son, but to Colderell, all the Maori looked the same. He had plenty of help and didn’t really care what “Eric Fenroy” was doing.

  Eru could have waited until the drive was over to have his moko ceremony with the other young warriors. But Eru had a much more ambitious plan than his friends, who only wanted small tattoos. He wanted to prove to his rangatira and his father that he was as strong and worthy as the best of his people.

  That’s what he told the tohunga-ta-oko, a small, plump man whose own body had few tattoos on it. The artist had brought Eru and Te Ropata to his favorite place, set slightly apart from the village at the edge of Lake Whakamatua. There was black gravel at the water’s edge. The lake was an iridescent blue and smooth as a mirror, ringed by mountains with snowcapped peaks. The men breathed in the clear, ice-cold air. The winter came earlier here than it did in the plains.

  “You want everything in one day?” the tohunga asked in disbelief.

  Since Eru had approached him, he’d observed the young man’s face with the concentrated attention of an artist. Eru was careful to hold his gaze, looking into his clear, dark eyes. The man was known as a craftsman far beyond the borders of his tribal lands. The warriors of his iwi all had extremely intricate, expertly made moko in unusual designs.

  “Your entire face? That’s impossible, boy. No one can stand that.”

  “I can!” Eru said proudly. “I can withstand any pain.”

  The tohunga regarded him skeptically. “It takes me several years to tattoo an entire face,” he said. “And not just because of the pain. It’s also because the warrior changes as he gets older. I carve an image of your life and soul into your face.”

  Eru nodded. “But I don’t have that much time. I’ve been told you can look into the soul of a man when you tattoo him. My soul won’t change over the years, and I can stand the pain. Please try, at least.”

  The tohunga pressed his lips together. “I can try to do it over a few days,” he suggested. “Three or four days . . .”

  Eru nodded. “As long as it’s finished when the others from our tribe arrive. I want to surprise them all.”

  The master nodded. “You’re at a crossroads. When I looked into your face for the first time, I saw crossed lines on your forehead. Now it looks as though they’ve opened up, like koru ferns.”

  The fern leaf was a symbol of hope and renewal.

  “I want to show the world that I am a man and a warrior!” Eru announced.

  The artist laughed. “I also see toki and mere. We’ll see which ones you keep. First the eyes and nose, the uirere. I will begin with the symbols of your rank, the taitoto. You are highborn.”

  The tohunga took a piece of charcoal and began to draw lines on Eru’s face.

  “I don’t care about my birth rank,” Eru said, protesting. “I want an original, very special moko.”

  “I will design the area under your nose to be just as headstrong as your entire face. You will be unmistakable.”

  Te Ropata nodded as the tohunga began to work on Eru’s chin. “A young warrior with much mana,” he said, looking at the symbol that the master had drawn.

  Eru suppressed a smile of pride, and when the master fetched a hollowed-out half pumpkin filled with lake water and told him to look at his reflection, he didn’t recognize himself.

  “Is that what you imagined?” the tohunga asked.

  Eru nodded ecstatically. “It’s beautiful! Can you start now?”

  The artist shook his head. “You must be prepared. You must meditate and commune with the spirits. Let the symbols work on your soul for a time. Perhaps you will want to change something after all. We will start tomorrow.”

  As the tohunga had advised, Eru spent the night praying and singing. He didn’t eat or drink, and the moko master fasted as well. In the morning, Eru followed the man to the lake again. Te Ropata accompanied them, along with three of the tohunga’s apprentices. One lit a fire at the edge of the lake and burned shells and the sap of kauri trees in it. The sharp odor penetrated Eru’s nose and throat, and almost made him cough. But he was determined to show no weakness.

  “Light and power are strong in this place,” the tohunga-ta-oko explained.

  When the fire had burned down, the master mixed the ashes with oil to form a paste. Eru swallowed. That was the ink.

  “Are you ready?” the tohunga asked. He reached for a very fine, sharp chisel made of whalebone. In his other hand, he held a small hammer. Eru nodded.

  Nothing and no one could have prepared Eru for the pain that tore through him as the tohunga applied the chisel beneath his right eye. Moko should be not only visible but also tangible, such that a blind person could trace it. As the master cut the skin off his face, Eru wanted to howl with pain. Before he could open his mouth to do so, Te Ropata and the tohunga’s apprentices started singing. Their song called on the young warrior’s courage and asked the spirits to help him. Eru bit his tongue and controlled himself. He wouldn’t make a single sound.

  After a short time, his face was dripping with blood. It ran down his neck and dripped onto the ground. In some corner of his pain-filled mind, he thought how fortunate it was that he was naked. As soon as the tohunga had cut a line, he wiped away the blood, dipped the chisel in the ink paste, and filled the wound with it. A new sensation seared through Eru’s body. Then the artist began again, around the eyes where the skin was particularly sensitive. Eru clung to consciousness. He mustn’t pass out. He was a warrior. He was strong!

  The men’s songs bolstered his strength. The tohunga himself sang a karakia of power. Eru felt nauseated, and suddenly his fast made sense. There was nothing for him to throw up. His mouth was dry, and he longed for water. Again and again, the hammer struck the sharp chisel, and the master carved his face. Eru felt as though there wasn’t one whole piece of skin left around his eyes. His flesh was beginning to swell.

  “I can’t see anything,” he said with a gasp.

  “That’s the way of it. You will be blind for a few days,” the tohunga said calmly. “The uirere is finished. Do you really want me to go on?”

  Eru nodded, although his head felt like it was already swollen to twice its size, and everything inside of him screamed.

  “You are strong,” the master said, and put the chisel to Eru’s chin. The pain flared, and the men sang. Eru clenched his teeth.

  “Is it finished?” he asked when the tohunga stopped after what felt like an eternity.

  “For today.” The master tilted Eru’s head to inspect his work. “Tomorrow I will do the cheeks and forehead. I’m going to
reconsider the pattern, if that’s all right with you. You are stronger and more courageous than I believed.”

  In spite of the praise, Eru didn’t smile as Te Ropata and the master’s apprentices led him away. He couldn’t move a single muscle in his swollen face. The thought of continuing the next day was unbearable.

  “Can I drink?” he asked.

  The noise told him that they had reached the village again. Eru heard men’s and women’s voices, and admiring words. Most people here were tattooed. They understood what the young man had suffered that day. Te Ropata brought him into one of the houses and advised him to lie down on a mat.

  “Water is allowed,” Te Ropata said, and turned to one of the master’s apprentices. “Only from the horn,” he said.

  Eru felt something hard being held to his lips. The wooden or bone vessel was traditionally used only for an ariki, who was considered to be on equal standing with a god. It was tapu for the chieftain to touch food with his hands, so the vessel was used as a kind of aid. Its smaller opening was placed in the chieftain’s mouth, and the food or drink was placed in the larger end. Eru knew about the tradition, even though it had not been practiced for generations on the South Island. The horn was still occasionally used in ceremonies—or at least it had been until Jane had banned it. It was unthinkable to her that one of their pakeha business partners might watch while she fed her husband like a baby.

  Now water flowed through the horn into Eru’s dry mouth. Until the wounds healed, he was tapu, just like a North Island ariki. And until the tattooing was finished, Eru would have to continue fasting. So far, he didn’t mind that at all. Nothing seemed less desirable at the moment than food.

  When the men left, he tried to relax. He clung to the hope that he would feel better the next day, and finally fell into a restless sleep.

  The next day, his wounds pulsed with pain, and his face was even more swollen. When the master resumed his work, Eru no longer wanted to scream, but to whimper and cry. At one point he passed out, but Eru survived the second and third days of his self-imposed torture without once losing control of his voice.

  At last, the moko master chiseled the last line in the sensitive area beneath Eru’s nose. It was the raurau, the signature. The filigree spirals were the final step in making something extremely special. When it was complete, the man bowed to Eru. Te Ropata had to tell him about the tohunga’s magnanimous gesture. His eyes were still swollen shut.

  “The moko is healing quickly,” Te Ropata said as he helped Eru back to his bed. “You’ll soon be able to see again. And the next time you see your reflection, you will see a man!”

  Eru had hoped for so much more. When he was finally able to look into the water-filled pumpkin that Te Ropata brought to his bedside, he didn’t see a courageous warrior, but gazed instead into a face that was completely misshapen from swelling. The young man had been burning with fever for several days, and was barely able to stand up. The village healer sang karakias day and night in front of the hut, but the tohunga-ta-oko wouldn’t allow her to go to him.

  “If she uses her salves on you, they will ease the pain and lower the fever,” he said, “but they will also erase the lines. They will make the designs fade and smooth the uhi that were cut into your face.”

  Eru nodded and endured the pain stoically. The master only allowed him to have a tea made from manuka leaves against the fever.

  “It won’t stay like this, will it?” he asked.

  The moko master shook his head. “Of course not. It’s a terrible sight right now, but it’s healing well. It will look very beautiful.”

  Eru attempted a dark smile. “I’m afraid my mother won’t share that opinion.”

  He had been at Lake Whakamatua for almost ten days. The sheep drive must be over by now, and Eru waited for the other young men from his taua. He had imagined greeting them triumphantly with his new face, but now it was unthinkable. When they arrived, he actually didn’t show himself at all, but watched the powhiri, the ceremony for greeting guests, from the hut where he’d been recovering. It had been built especially for him. As long as he was tapu, he would not be tolerated in any of the communal buildings.

  On the next day, he had some company. All of the other men from his taua had also tried their courage under the tohunga-ta-oko’s chisel, but they had only gotten small mokos. After they had passed their own tests, they regarded Eru with awe.

  “You will be their new chieftain,” Te Ropata prophesied when they had finally bid farewell to the tribe and the moko master. “When it’s time to choose, they will remember this time. They will remember your courage and your words. And your spirit, too, is strong.”

  The words he was referring to weren’t just Eru’s, but Te Ua Haumene’s. The young man had passed the time during recovery by reading aloud from the prophet’s gospel, Ua Rongo Pai. Additionally, Eru had told his taua about his time in the missionary school in Tuahiwi, and about the boy from the North Island who had heard the prophet speak. The young warriors and their teacher had listened enthusiastically. Te Ropata found many of his own convictions reflected in Haumene’s words, even though he couldn’t follow the allusions to archangels and Israelites. But he shared the opinion that the pakeha should be banished from Aotearoa—as quickly as possible!

  Eru glowed with pride. Before now, he had never been able to imagine that he could be his father’s successor. He’d thought his pakeha ancestry and Jane’s disapproval meant the tribe would never choose him. Te Haitara had cousins and nephews who could take the chieftain’s place when it was time. But now his own son had proven that he had mana. From the rangatira’s point of view, Te Eriatara had also proven that he had the right kind of soul. From now on, he would be one of the most revered men of the tribe.

  And yet, there was angst in the young warrior’s heart when he thought about the confrontation with his mother. His wounds were healed now, and the symbols shone in a clean, deep blue. In a ceremony of purification, the tapu was lifted from him and the other freshly tattooed warriors, and the tribe celebrated with a great feast in their honor.

  But the healing process had taken three weeks. He knew his mother would be seething with anger.

  Chapter 31

  “This is about a girl! Admit it!”

  Jane had turned on her husband in annoyance again. It had been two weeks since the shepherds had returned from the highlands with the sheep, and a week later, the first women and children had arrived from the village on Lake Whakamatua. But so far, there was no trace of Eru and his taua. The only possible reason Jane could imagine was that he’d met a girl in the highlands.

  “I don’t know,” Te Haitara answered patiently. “Ask Makuto. I wasn’t there, as you know.”

  The old tohunga sat at her weaving while Jane studied the ledgers from Rata Station and argued with the chieftain. Makuto looked up when she heard her name but didn’t say anything.

  “She won’t tell me anything!” Jane said, complaining loudly in Maori so that the tohunga would hear her. “But I saw you two talking. You were conjuring some kind of spirits. Stop lying to me!”

  Jane’s eyes flickered between her husband and the tribal elder. Of course she had asked her pakeha foreman all the same questions, and Colderell had assured her several times that there had been no accidents or fights. He only knew that Eru had gone somewhere with some other Maori, and nothing more.

  “Makuto told me the same thing she told you,” the chieftain said calmly. “She said Eru is on his way to becoming a man, and there is a tapu on him at the moment. He will return as soon as it is lifted. You’ll have to content yourself with that, Jane, as will I.”

  “But you must suspect something!” Jane said triumphantly, switching back to English. “You can’t tell me that you have no idea. After all, you went through those strange rites.”

  The concept of initiation rituals was new to Jane. Ever since she’d begun to have serious worries that Eru could break away from her, she had secretly been reading bo
oks from Chris’s house about the customs of indigenous tribes all over the world. They sent shivers down her spine.

  Te Haitara shrugged. “Those were different times. These days, many traditions are being broken. I don’t know how important they are to Te Ropata, but he is a good rangatira. He wouldn’t do anything that would hurt the young warriors, and Eru isn’t the only one who hasn’t returned. Te Ropata will bring them all back safely. Try not to worry so much.”

  “I still think it’s a girl!” Jane said stubbornly. “That could be a huge risk for him. If he gets one of those crafty little things pregnant—”

  “Then we would welcome our grandchild with joy,” Te Haitara said, cutting her off. “Calm down, Jane. That isn’t part of a warrior’s testing. Lying with a woman doesn’t make a boy into a man.”

  “On the contrary, it can make a man into a slave,” Makuto remarked.

  Jane gave her a withering look, and then she looked up in alarm. From the village square, she could hear shouts as someone blew a conch horn. The call of the conch. It was traditionally a signal for attack, but the Ngai Tahu had no enemies. These days, Te Ropata used it to call his students, and to announce their coming and going from the village.

  Now the conch’s rich tones were mixed with the voices of singers:

  “Thank the spirits, thank the ancestors! Our warriors have returned, victorious. The women’s fires are no longer abandoned, and no one must fear approaching enemies anymore. Our tribe is strong! Joy fills hearts and homes.”

  Te Haitara straightened his shoulders. “There you have it, Jane,” he said. “Our son has returned.”

  Jane followed her husband to welcome Te Ropata and his taua. She walked with deliberate steps, determined to keep control of herself. It would be an affront to Te Haitara if she pounced on Eru during the welcoming ceremony. If the tribe was going to celebrate her son’s return, she would have to wait and confront him later.