Ahia hia
Mauatua

Dogs bark at night, and secrets speak,
The black ti’i
The white man’s warm blood,
The hanging-down banana flower.

Tahitinui began to feel small. Its shores too narrow, its peaks too high, and beyond, nothing to be seen but the distant horizon. Beyond that horizon, somewhere, were the white men. Their world, that Mai had spoken of, full of riches and mystery. The life we lived seemed but a dream of the past. The new world was within us. The sound of tapa beating, the drumming and singing, were like fragile remnants of an old pattern on decaying cloth.

One day I looked up from my work and found Teraura there. That was always her way, to appear unexpectedly. The white flash of her smile flew like a spark to me. We leapt to embrace, and to mingle our breath, and call each other sister once more. I had to bend to her now and I realised at once how tall I had grown, and how much I had missed her.

She admired my pearl necklet, my reddened fingers. ‘Hei, what riches!’ she exclaimed. ‘Your cloth is famous all over Tahiti. You and your book of words. But they say you have no man. How can that be, you should have a lover.’

‘I can live without one. And there are plenty of men ... ’

‘I know what you’re waiting for.’

‘Itia has every little chief of the islands here to look at us.’

‘You should choose one. A tall one with a big canoe. Make love to him! It may be long before the others return, the white ones. You may have wrinkles down to here when they come.’

‘I am waiting for your sons to grow up. Then I’ll choose.’

‘Hei, they will be too short for you, Mauatua!’

‘Where are they?’

‘With my mother at Mahina. Come to see us there. Today I come alone to tell you.’

‘To tell me what?’

‘Mauatua, at Hitiaa the men are practising with weapons. They say that Tute will not be coming back, and Tu cannot protect himself. The priests and warriors are holding counsel on the marae.’

‘But Tu has many friends and allies.’

‘He should not trust them. I have heard my husband speaking of it. They say he gives himself too much power and raises himself too high. It is an affront to their mana.’

At Matavai, Hinuia too spoke with foreboding. ‘Hiro is abroad, the dark one, the whirring god of thieves and evil doers, who incites envy and greed in men. Then Oro, that bloody god, will be quickly aroused by the priests. The weapons will be tested again, the to’ere will rattle for sacrifice.’

A wind shuddered through the house walls. I felt the lizards wait motionless on the rafters, and my arms shivered with dread.

‘You feel that wind?’ she said. ‘It is the wind Mauriuri pe’e va’a, the wind that detaches canoes, the wind that brings war. E hine, I am going up there.’ Hinuia gestured to the cloud-wreathed peaks.

‘To the mountains?’

‘E, up into the mountains.’

‘Who is going with you, patea?’

‘I go alone.’

‘Who will care for you?’

‘The gods will care for me, the spirits will be my companions.’

‘E patea, who will care for me? Who will be left here to praise our ancestors and keep the weeds from our marae?’

She brought out of the shadows the canoe-shaped box of our family ti’i, and placed it before me. ‘She whose cord is buried in her people’s land will be rooted there,’ she said. ‘But she whose cord is cast into the water will follow it, and nothing can keep her from her journeys. I cannot keep you from your desires, this is seen now, but this must go with you. For there is no prosperity here, all is gone. Where are our heirs, where are our warriors? Itia and her wily husband have taken advantage of our weakness.’

‘Was it not the curse of Vehiatua?’

‘Truly this valley has been cursed, and outsiders come to trample over our mana.’

Her voice began to rise and tremble to commemorate those griefs, and I too. Aue! For the bones of our dead, secreted in the mountain caves, and for those whose bones are lost, and whose spirits wander unprotected in the labyrinths of te po. Aue!

She embraced me. She was skin and bones beneath her robe, but her ihu, the life force which animated her, had not shrunk. It burned like an invisible flame around her. ‘Hold fast to your ancestors,’ she instructed me. ‘Beloved of your ancestors you must be, and they will protect you.’

It was from the marae of Nu’urua on Aimeo that the black ti’i had come, with Tetua Avari’i when she married Ti’ipari’i. It was to Nu’urua she returned now with me. Her bulging eyes sealed, her mouth close lipped. Her squatting knees resisting the downpulling earth, her long fingers clasping her belly. Blackness her age, her mana, the years of her knowing. I alone now had the power to summon her spirit with prayer and offering. To connect with the ones who went before.

We put to sea before the plundering chiefs of Hitiaa and Paea and Atehuru came, the ti’i wrapped carefully among my bundles. Taina had fled into the mountains with his priests and servants. Our canoe was crowded with women and children, bundles of food were crammed into every space, a litter of puppies clambering over everything. On a separate canoe travelled Itia and Auo and their children, with their servants, including Maunu.

Beyond the reef we turned to look back at Tahitinui Mare’area. When we saw a rainbow, arcing up from the mist-filled bowl of the highest valley of Aora’i, we prayed. We understood that Tahiti was the abode of gods. What men can reach those highest places? Only the bone carriers reach there, into the arms of the gods, there where the sky descends.

But we didn’t look back for long because Aimeo awaited us, afloat in the haze of afternoon. Now we felt the wind that sucked between the two islands tugging roughly at the matting sail, the long feather pennants at the mast tip writhed on the eddying breezes. The helmsman braced himself at the steering oar, and from the curving prow our companion, Teio, leaned forward into the splashing spray as we plunged across the wildly dancing water, throwing a chant up to the gods that govern the many winds.

With the lowering of the sun the slopes of Aimeo quickly darkened ahead of us and thick shades of purple blackness bloomed on them, like banana flower. Wings of great birds were sweeping above the reddened crests when we came through the pass of Vaiare at dusk. The sail was brought down, the paddles manned, and only fishermen on the reef would have seen our canoes slip around the coast, heading silently towards the safety of Nu’urua. We arrived there by starlight, the tall black stones of the marae looming on the point.

The lagoon embraces Nu’urua. The breath of the sea comes to meet you. It is like a mother, the smell of the mother, humid and familiar. Aimeo is circled by that warm, liquid embrace, the reef protecting, the lagoon providing. One day is the same as the next there, the same flower opening, the same leaf falling, the same fruit ripening. From Nu’urua, Tahiti cannot be seen.

The news from Pare was not good. The raiders had overcome Taina’s warriors and the valley had been stripped. Not a plantain was left uncut, every breadfruit and coconut was gone, Taina’s white Peretane pigs were slaughtered, his long-legged foreign dogs were stolen away, all his foreign tools and trinkets looted. So we stayed at Nu’urua and Aimeo fed us.

Often we women had only each other for company for days on end. The men stayed on the other side of the marae. They had their own activities there and kept to themselves. The priests of the marae were vigilant. Every protocol and tapu was strictly observed there. There was seldom opportunity to meet alone with a man, although Rehua had watched me from the day of our arrival.

It was by the water’s edge at sunset. He came and sat near to me, a little behind me.

I waited for him to speak, night coming swiftly, the reef encircling with its fine line of light, stars emerging.

‘It’s no good for fishing tonight,’ were his words at last.

I waited for whatever foolishness would follow.

‘But it is a good night for sailing to Raiatea. Feel the wind – Matari’i will be clear in the heavens.’

‘You are sailing to Raiatea tonight?’

‘No, I’m going fishing. Maybe I will be lucky.’

Rehua the navigator. I laughed. ‘Why didn’t you come to Pare when the fishing was good there?’ I teased him.

‘I was studying, not chasing women. And I knew you would come to me.’

Rehua too, dreamed of sailing white ships. ‘But not as a slave of the white men. One day we will capture a ship and take it for ourselves. We’ll do it in the night when the ones supposed to be on watch are sleeping.’ He drew his finger across his throat.

My blood surged. ‘Would you kill them all by stealth? What about their guns?’

‘We need to take them, then the power is ours.’

‘It will be difficult,’ I said.

‘It can be done.’

‘There may be better ways, without killing.’

‘What ways are those?’

‘The ways of women.’

‘Trickery!’ Rehua said. ‘Then we will tie them all up and hold them prisoner while we sail their ship around the islands, plenty of trading. Then we send them on their way. Don’t come back or next time you will die.’

‘It is impossible to stop them coming. We should befriend them and travel with them.’

‘They are too dangerous, too unpredictable.’

He told me that when Tute had come to Aimeo he and the white sailors had rampaged across the island, smashing canoes and burning houses for two days after someone stole one of his hairy animals that were grazing near the ship.

‘Is it true? Yet he was always peaceful and friendly on Tahiti,’ I protested, wanting to defend my old friend.

‘As if possessed by demons. The old ones were terrified. They are still talking about the white devils.’

Rehua was as vain of his tattoos as of his navigational skills. His belly was ocean girt, the prow of a canoe pierced his navel. On his thighs were engraved concentric circles of symbols, fitted to the contour of muscle beneath as perfectly as if they had grown there. Between them hung the black flower of his manhood, the folds of his scrotum plucked and oiled, foreskin smooth as petals, the shaft of Tane rising like a ti’i ... Of this too he was vain, and pleased with my admiration of it.

Itia encouraged me too. She spoke of a marriage ceremony, there at Nu’urua. ‘I will speak for you as a sister,’ she said. ‘It is a good match, your grandmother would be pleased. You will bring fresh blood to Matavai, a new chiefly line. Why don’t you marry him? You’re as crazy for the sea as he is, you can travel together ... ’

I delayed and demurred. I used the insufficient excuse that Rehua and I shared a great grandmother in common. How could I say that I was waiting for another man, a stranger?

When our son was born he was given over to his father’s people. He grew happily among his cousins, but although I spent time with my son and his aunts there, I never lived in Rehua’s household. I remained attached to Itia’s, travelling from Nu’urua to Pare and back to Nu’urua according to the whims and wishes of that chiefess, according to the growth of pigs and breadfruit to feed her moving chiefdom, according to the priests and prophets consulted by Taina, who remained hidden in the mountains and installed his brother Ari’ipaea to keep watch over the ruins of his chiefdom.

All the while Rehua went on men’s voyages, extending his studies of navigation, memorising the pathways from island to island. Of sea currents and winds and stars he seemed made and his body tasted of salt.

It was Rehua who brought the news from Huahine that Mai was dead, and his two friends from Aotearoa also. The white ship seemed further away each day.

Under the trees, along the beach in the afternoon, creeps the melancholy. The melancholy is the air of the afternoon, it is the spirit of the hour. The lagoon lies still, it hardly moves, only small questions. It is the rustle of the leaves, the dark shade from which the streams run out, murmuring to each other. The silent ti’i speaks of generations. The present is only her dream. When will we awaken from it?