Lunch was tuatua cooked in their shells on a piece of hot iron over the outside fire. When the shells popped open, they were ready to eat. Nan told Awa how as a girl she used to string them up and smoke them, to be eaten like chewing gum. “Our old people would take them on hīkoi, the long walks over the land. They help keep hunger away,” she said, “and last for a week without going bad.”
Awa made his own fish smoker by bending some scraps of corrugated iron over a smouldering fire. He threaded a long flax strip with cooked tuatua and hung them up in his smoker. “That will do it,” said Nan. “Don’t leave them too long or they get too dry. Pāua strips are good like that too.”
Awa tied the smoked tuatua round his neck with a bow knot. He peeled a couple off to chew as he walked over to the Rumbles’, imagining he was going on a hīkoi to another gathering ground. As he walked, he studied the ground for strange tracks, and picked up some short planks that had washed up on the shore. His plan was to get Carrot and build a magpie trap up in the secret valley.
There was no sign of the red-eyed kamikaze magpie gang. Awa checked his pockets. He was ready. Taking out the shanghai, he loaded a stone and fired it high, out to sea. He waited, watching the surface of the water. There was a tiny burst of bubbles, but no splash where his stone hit the water at speed. He smiled to himself. “Duck fart, love that sound. Come on, kamikaze, it’s my turn now. That tree hut is my nest, and if you touch a feather on Carrot’s head, you will know about it!”
Carrot watched the sky on the way to the hut. “Grrrr!” he growled, but the way was clear.
Close enough to the tree hut to have a clear view of it, Awa built his box trap. He plugged the gaps between the timber with clay. The trigger holding up the lid took a while. It was made of three short sticks in the shape of a cross. The trigger switch was the horizontal part. It swept across the space inside, balanced carefully between the two shorter support sticks. There was lots of space for a magpie to hop inside. One touch of the trigger and the lid would drop down tight.
Awa had caught smaller birds in the same type of trap. He loved looking at them up close and then setting them free. A magpie might be able to push the lid off and escape. He fetched a muddy sod from the creek and carefully balanced it on top of the lid for extra weight. Then he scattered some cabin-bread crumbs around it and put more inside the trap. Thinking Red Eye would also eat meat, he softened some chunks of smoked mutton by chewing them, and dropped them into the trap.
Up at the hut, he lay on his back with one hand behind his head and sucked on the tube of sweetened condensed milk. “Ahh Carrot, this is the life,” he said. Carrot took up his post behind Awa’s head and started to preen his hair again.
Awa opened his eyes. Carrot was growling quietly. He rolled over silently to where he could see the trap. Five magpies were hopping around, picking up the crumbs. The one Awa guessed was Red Eye stretched his neck to peer into the box. He was bigger than the others, and his black and white feathers were brighter. “Wardle ardle doodle,” he squawked.
Two smaller magpies with duller plumage joined him and looked in the box. Awa guessed they were young. “Arkle ardle keeork!” one of them squawked and jumped clumsily in. Red Eye perched on the edge, and was about to jump in too, when the lid slammed down, catching his wing. He screeched, flapping furiously and spreading mud everywhere. The bird inside was bashing at the lid, which began to shift sideways. The other three magpies took to the sky.
Awa had no time to climb down. Red Eye was about to escape. He stood up, loaded his shanghai and aimed. The stone hit the side of the box loudly. Red Eye redoubled his frantic efforts to free himself and the lid fell off. A waft of feathers drifted down as Red Eye limped into the air, closely followed by his mate.
“Woo hoo! Oo e oo e oo!” Awa gave the great cry of Tarzan. “Oo e oo e oo e oo! Ardle doodle!” he added for good measure.
“Zealots!” shouted Carrot.
“That’ll slow Red Eye down, Carrot. Come on, let’s see how far he got.”
Down at the trap site, Awa gathered up a few white and black feathers. Carrot growled loudly and shouted, “GET OUT, GET OUT!” Awa put the feathers in his pocket, out of sight.
They searched in the direction the birds had flown. The farmland was bare, apart from a few wind-battered cabbage trees. They spied the five magpies perched on a rocky hilltop a hundred yards away. Carrot gripped Awa’s shoulder tightly, and Awa loaded his shanghai as he walked towards them. “Arkle ardle keeork dork!” he mimicked, feeling armed and dangerous.
The birds all turned to stare. The largest took two hops towards them and flapped his muddy wings. As Awa approached, Red Eye stared down his black-tipped beak at him. “Keeork ardle orkle!”
Carrot growled, “Grrrr, grrrr!” like a dog about to attack.
Awa pulled back his shanghai in case he attacked, but Red Eye flew away over the hill, the other magpies following behind. Red Eye then dropped out of sight while the other birds flew on.
“He must be quite sore, but so is my ear. That will teach him and his gang some rules about whose territory this is, eh Carrot?”
“Zealots,” said Carrot and “Boy!” as if to congratulate Awa.
They crossed down a steep bank to the sand hills. This was new country. “Carrot, find!” commanded Awa. “Find!” Awa was thinking about ambergris, and Carrot was the best finder around.
They searched above the high tide mark, and below, for a long time, with no luck. Awa noticed he was standing in wheel tracks in the soft sand and crouched down for a closer look. They looked like tractor tracks to him. They came down from the hills and went out towards the sea. Awa followed them back to the fence line, where the wires had been cut and roughly rejoined. He tested the wires, which were loose. “Toss won’t like this,” he said to himself. “Sheep would get through this easily.”
Carrot was nowhere in sight. Awa followed his own footprints back down to the beach. Carrot was perched on a piece of driftwood. “Boy, find, find!” he commanded. It was Awa’s turn to find something for Carrot. He began digging in the damp sand under the marram grass. He soon had a small handful of fat white grubs, like small huhu grubs.
“Here, Carrot.” Awa bounced the wriggly grubs on his hand so the sand sifted through his fingers, and then he laid them on a piece of driftwood. “Crusty!”
Carrot tipped his head to one side and looked carefully. Just to make sure, he tipped his head to the other side and looked carefully again. He nodded at Awa. “Mmmm, Boy, find, crustyyy.” He ate the grubs slowly with his eyes half closed.
Awa looked back up at the hills, searching for a track wide enough for a tractor. He would have to wait to catch up with Toss, but he could tell Pa Rumble where the tractor was getting through.
His eyes followed a lone harrier hawk gliding slowly on the uplift of the sea breeze. Out of nowhere, a small group of magpies attacked ferociously, forcing the hawk to dodge and turn before it sped off with the magpies chasing it. There were only four attackers this time. Awa, chewing on a few smoked tuatua, started to feel a bit sorry for Red Eye. If that was Red Eye’s gang, where was the kamikaze king?
Awa checked the rock pools on his way home. He picked an armful of big, floppy sea lettuce leaves, red, orange, yellow and green. Nan would dry them to a crisp in the sun. She liked to crumble them into their stews and gravy. Awa liked them buttered and toasted in the oven, like seaweed chips.