Keo and Paneke live in one of the old sugar cane houses on a plantation high above Pahala. The journey up through the macadamia plantation is hazardous. Large rocks from the plantation trucks stud the road and driving is slow. Cowrie’s old truck weaves drunkenly around the mounds and rattles with each change of direction. Macadamia groves turn into waving stalks of sugar cane and soon the truck is dwarfed by the massive plants.

She swerves to avoid a mound in the road ahead. A huge, beautifully sculpted rock, glistening in the sun, appears to move slightly to the left. Cowrie takes off her sunglasses for a better look. She drives to the right of the mound and it moves again. She hauls on the brakes and jumps out. The mound is a large land turtle. Its head disappears inside its shell as soon as she approaches.

What a beauty, she thinks, and places her hand on its warm back. The turtle remains stone still, but her hand is jolted off its back. It is as if an electric charge has entered her. She falls against the side of the truck, gasping, then stares at the turtle, dazed. This is not the protective creature who swims through her dreams. Her wet hand on the hot shell has acted as a shock conductor. Despite her prodding, the turtle remains inside its shell. It has no intention of moving. Cowrie climbs back into the cab and veers around the obstacle.

The road narrows at the top of the sugar cane plantation and turns left into a dirt track. Husky brown fern trunks spring from the roadside and their lush green and silver leaves fan out in a canopy above her. Suddenly, the heavens open. The leaves shiver and flicker with the weight of the water flowing down their spines. Below, ginger flowers gorge on the falling water, turning it to sweet scented honey as it runs down the shimmering leaves and trickles on to the black earth.

Drops pour on to her left arm and shoulder, tickling her breasts and shoulder blades through the lavalava and she enjoys their sensual flow. In the rain, she can just make out a building ahead to the right. It looks too large for the cottage. Closer up, she sees it is some kind of temple, painted red and yellow, with a red, yellow, green and white flag hoisted up a pole at the entrance way.

She continues until the track veers left down towards an old wooden barn decorated with washboards, rusty farm implements and a magnificent stark white goat’s head. A fresh frangipani lei hangs from the horns in welcome. Cousin Keo said to watch out for the barn with the goat’s head at the entrance. Beyond it is a charmingly dilapidated old, green cottage with wooden shutters. The truck swings in between the cottage and the barn, coming to a halt in front of a lush patch of taro. She decides to leave her kete of kalo and she’d bought to go with the meal, inside the truck. They have plenty here. But she grabs the feijoa wine and jumps down on to the rocky path.

A round-bellied Hawai’ian man emerges from the back of the cottage. Cowrie is amazed to see the likeness to her grandfather’s picture in the old Kodak box. Only here, a much softer version. Keo takes down the lei from the goat’s horns and places it around her neck.

“Aloha, hoahanau.” He touches her nose with his. She returns the greeting.

“Haele mai, meet Paneke.” Keo leads Cowrie to the back of the cottage and she drops off her jandals in the row of shoes outside the door.

Paneke greets them. “Aloha, Cowrie. Please come inside.” She wraps a huge, brown arm around Cowrie’s waist and draws her into the kitchen.

It reminds her of farm kitchens in Tai Tokerau. She feels right at home. Scrubbed wooden walls and tools hanging off nails. At the end, a large, wooden table with benches either side. In the middle of the table, a vase of fresh ginger which engulfs the room with its sweet, sickly fragrance.

After drinks of fresh pineapple and coconut over ice, and many laughs and inquisitive searchings of each other’s cultures, Keo lifts kai from the umu and they sit down to the meal. “Fresh ‘ahi caught this morning and baked in banana leaves,” explains Keo, unfolding the leaves.

Cowrie stiffens in shock. She knows that locals used to eat turtles, but dolphins?

Paneke notices her shock. “You don’t like fish?” she asks.

Cowrie takes a deep breath. “I love it. But ‘ahi, dolphin?”

Paneke and Keo burst into laughter. “Dolphin is mahimahi, not ‘ahi,” Paneke explains.

Beside the ‘ahi are kalo and uala, wrapped in kalo leaves.

“That flavours the vegetable and helps the sap to stay in,” explains Paneke.

Between each dish is a bowl of poi. It is purple with a texture like yoghurt. The flavour is delicate. She asks how it is made.

“It’s kalo beaten to a pulp,” explains Paneke.

The poi is delicious, but it is the ‘ahi soaked in banana leaves that most appeals to her. The smell is smoky and sweet. The moisture of the fresh fish is retained and the banana leaf adds a subtle taste.

Paneke asks how Cowrie found them.

Cowrie explains that when Mere adopted her from the Rawene Orphanage, all she had with her was an old Kodak box containing a cowrie shell, a turtle etched on a piece of coconut and a yellowed newspaper article recounting a tsunami in 1868. Once Cowrie had completed her studies, Mere urged her to write to the address scrawled across the back of the cutting: Kini Aloha, c/- Na‘alehu Post Office, Hawai‘i and she’d received a reply from Kini’s grand-daughter, Koana, inviting her to come and stay and explaining that one of Cowrie’s relatives, Keo, still worked on the sugar cane plantation at Pahala.

Keo wants to know what it was like growing up in Aotearoa without true knowledge of her origin.

Cowrie explains it wasn’t so bad after Mere took her from the orphanage. But she still felt like an outsider. She was lighter-skinned than Mere’s other children but darker than the Pakeha school kids. She was neither Maori nor Pakeha—an alien—and compensated for this by trying to fit in all the time. She worked twice as hard for half as much. Being called a “fat Polynesian” at school didn’t help. Even her name, after the cowrie shell in Apelahama’s box, marked her as different. Mere said she’d grow to be strong like Tane Mahuta, God of the kauri forest.

“Strong enough for my treat?” asks Keo, opening up the huge, ancient fridge that rumbles away contentedly in the corner. He takes out a large, oval watermelon which has been sliced in half. Inside is a mountain of fresh fruit: pineapple, watermelon, mango…Cowrie feels the juices rising in her.

“Hala-kahiki, ipu, manako…come, eat,” says Keo, holding out a bowl made from a coconut shell.

Cowrie takes the coconut half from his hand and is about to ladle fresh fruit into its shell when she notices a carving on the inside. A turtle with a woman on its back, coasting over the waves. She is startled. It is the turtle-woman she has been dreaming about. She holds the carved bowl out to Keo, pointing to its interior.

“Who is this, Keo?”

Keo smiles. “Ah, that is Laukiamanuikahiki. She was brought up on Kauai without knowledge of her origin. She rides a turtle.”

“She rides a turtle. That means she’s still swimming in the ocean around us?”

“Could be,” says Keo, winking at Paneke. “You seen her, Cowrie?”

Cowrie smiles. “What if I have, Keo?”

Keo grunts. “You keep away from her, girl. She burnt down her brother’s house. She has strong powers.” For a moment he looks serious, then he breaks into a highpitched contralto laugh. “Just watch you don’t eat her,” he adds, screaming with laughter.

Cowrie enjoys the thought, but not as Keo means it.

Kia ora Mere,

I’ve met cousin Keo! He lives with a gorgeously huge, round-bellied wahine, Paneke, high up above the sugar cane plantation at Pahala. Paneke reminds me of you. Felt home sick. They told me Apelahama was a brilliant musician and had a special friendship with Koana’s grandmother. Wonder if It was more than that? Keo didn’t say. This island is laced with myth—just like home. Keep wanting to cry at the familiarity of it all. Did you get my p.c. from Ka Lae? That’s where the first Maori canoes left for Aotearoa. This one shows the black lava sand of Punalu‘u Beach, beneath Pahala. Paneke says giant sea turtles surf into the beach at night. You can write to me c/- Koana at Na‘alehu P.O. Think of you often. Hope the kahawai are still biting and falling for that bone and paua trace I made you. Think of me eating raw ‘ahi drenched in limes—yum!

Arohanui—Cowrie.