Child of the Dawn (35 page)

She knew that her time had come. Stay-long had promised to help with the birth. But if she woke the headman's wife, Tepua would wake Pehu-pehu as well. Whatever happened, she was determined that the Blackleg would play no part in it.
 

She reached over to Maukiri, who lay beside her, and gently prodded her cousin awake. Tepua whispered a plea. "Come with me now. The Blackleg is sleeping soundly."
 

Feeling their way in the darkness, the two found their way out of the house. Then they had moonlight to show them the path. Maukiri had managed to bring the basket that held their belongings. Tepua hoped it contained everything they would need.
 

The next contraction caught her only a short way from the house. Tepua had to stop and brace herself against her cousin while she struggled to keep from crying out. "I must go on," she whispered fiercely. Bent over, clutching her distended stomach, she started to walk again.
 

She did not go far before another spasm struck. They were coming too quickly now. If she could only reach a hiding place where no one would hear her...

"Help me," Tepua begged. Leaning on her cousin, she staggered forward again. The houses were behind her now. Ahead she saw the supple shapes of banana trees. Perhaps she could get past the grove....
 

A gush of water cascaded down Tepua's inner thighs. "Go!" she cried to Maukiri. "Gather leaves. Prepare a bed." While her cousin ran ahead, Tepua used a makeshift staff to support herself as she made her own slow way along the path.
 

The walk went on and on. Each time a contraction struck, she closed her eyes and gripped the staff. Sometimes her lips moved and she whispered a prayer to her guardian spirit.
 

"I am back, Tepua." Dazedly, she felt Maukiri take her arm again. "Just over there," her cousin said. "Away from the path, out of sight."
 

Somehow they reached the bed of banana leaves. Tepua lay down and tried, in vain, to find a comfortable position. Maukiri began a long, droning chant.
 

It was a song that Tepua had heard many times as the women of her family gave birth. A new spasm came, but the chanting helped her through it. Repeated again and again, the words began to lull her into a daze.
 

This is not what I want
! Tepua needed to be fully awake. She tried to tell Maukiri to stop droning, but she could not find the strength.
 

Then she realized what was happening. From far off, something seemed to be calling her. Not now! This was no time for the gods to be bringing a vision.
 

Yet Purea's presence summoned her. Tepua prayed that the moment would be brief.

 

On the wooded path along a riverbank, Tapani Vari strode beside Purea, seeming stronger with each step he took. His face showed no worry. His confidence in her appeared complete.
 

What a betrayal if Tutaha should attack now! What would Tapani Vari think, in his dying moment, of the woman he had dubbed chiefess over all of Tahiti? Trembling with concern over what lay around the bend in the trail, Purea edged even closer so that her arm brushed against that of her guest.
 

Everything seemed to be happening more slowly. She felt each motion as she lifted one foot, then the other. She dared a glance to the side, expecting to catch sight of warriors crouching behind the trees. Had Tutaha abandoned his plan? She saw the river flowing quietly beside the path, its smooth surface reflecting the overhanging branches. Were men hiding among the clumps of fern?
 

Then she saw the high ironwood trees beside the beach and the glistening water beyond. No sling-men or warriors stood anywhere in sight. A crowd had gathered to see off the foreigners. She called to them gaily, beckoned them closer. With onlookers on every side, she advanced toward the shore.

Purea felt dizzy with relief as Tapani Vari raised her hand to his lips in his strange salutation. He made a brief speech. Watching his party leave shore in their small planked vessel, long-shafted paddles propelling them backward, she could barely grasp that she had kept her guests from harm.
 

But nothing had been settled! Tutaha had withdrawn this time, but the conflict had merely been postponed. She turned, knowing that she must end his foolish notion of destroying the foreigners.
 

She saw Tupaia close behind her. "Tell Tutaha that I will meet him at his house. I have something important to say to him."

Then Purea closed her eyes, moved her lips in silent prayer. Her feeling of relief was gone now. She retained only a steadfast determination. "Stand with me, mother of my father, brought on waves from the sunrise. Support me, Grandmother, you who have helped me for so long. It is your strength and wisdom that must guide me now, Tepua-mua-ari'i...."
 

 

 

 

NINETEEN

 

Tepua felt the vision fading while the words still echoed in her mind.
Tepua-mua-ari'i.
Her own name, as a Tahitian would say it. At last she knew her connection with the noble chiefess who had not yet been born, the woman who spoke of Tepua as "grandmother."
 

She still did not know, in those days yet to come, whether the
ari'i vahine
would achieve her goal of peace. But she understood how important that attempt would be.
If my child does not live, there will be no grandchild, no Purea to confront Tutaha.

With those words ringing in her thoughts, Tepua emerged fully out of her trance. She felt a new contraction coming, but she had a moment of respite to look around her. How much time had passed? she wondered. Though the vision had not seemed long, dawn was already spreading gray light across the leaf-strewn ground. And Maukiri...

Then Tepua gasped as she turned her head and saw a crowd of women around her. Stay-long stood closest, chanting loudly to the spirits that aided childbirth. And Pehu-pehu stood just behind.
 

How had they found her? Had she betrayed herself with cries of pain? Tepua felt her heart beating faster in panic. The women here all understood what the Arioi required her to do now. Stay-long had said firmly that she would not interfere.
 

A heavy contraction hardened Tepua's belly. She felt it begin at the top of her womb, just beneath her rib cage and her breasts. As it rippled down, she felt as if powerful bands were tightening slowly, but inexorably, about the greatness of her pregnancy. Then other bands squeezed her lower down, through her loins and into her back.
 

The Blackleg sat watching, seemingly indifferent to Tepua's labor. Pehu-pehu toyed with a thick piece of soaked
tapa
, winding the wet cloth around her fingers.
The suffocation cloth.
Tepua knew its purpose.
To stifle a newborn's life before it takes a first breath.

The sight of this sent a stab of fear through her, a stab that seemed to go right through her stomach and into the laboring womb. She could feel her muscles clamping down on the baby. The flower of her birthway, which had been opening, shrank and closed. Her body knew. It would not let this infant be born into murderous hands.
 

Yet the contractions continued, and because the infant was no longer progressing, they became frightening and painful. Tepua wanted to get up and run away, but her body was too heavy, her strength devoured by the spasms of her womb. She could only lie with her head back, sweat streaming, while her belly heaved with the struggle.
 

The baby would die now, Tepua thought in despair. And she would die as well, still distended by the child inside her. Pehu-pehu would be rid of both problems.
 

She ground her teeth against the racking pain. "Gods curse you, Pehu-pehu. Take that cloth away!"

She saw Stay-long's eyes narrow, first at Pehu-pehu, then at her. Pehu-pehu ignored the outburst.

A rage filled Tepua.
You think I will make it easy? I will not give you my baby's life or my own. You can sit there playing with that cloth for as long as you like. I am going to produce this child alive
!
 

She shut her eyes, blanking Pehu-pehu and the others from her vision. "Help me," she said to Maukiri, who was standing protectively over her. "You know what to do."
 

Wearily, Tepua pulled herself up into a crouch. She felt Maukiri take up a cross-legged sitting position behind her. Tepua leaned back into Maukiri's comforting embrace, feeling her cousin's arms wrap around her. She controlled her urge to bear down. It would do no good. Fear had closed the birthway tightly like a bud. She had to open it again.
 

She made herself think of slow yet powerful things. A wave, far out to sea, rolling toward the reef, building, arching over, spilling and then ebbing away. She imagined fruit, full and ripe and ready to fall.
 

Then she formed the image of a white
tiare
bud, glistening with dew. The morning sun bathed it and the flower, warmed, began to open. Spaces appeared between the petals as they unfolded and spread back, exposing the flower's heart to the sun.
 

She let herself open like the sun-warmed bud and felt the baby sink deep into her pelvis. The hard ball of the head pushed down insistently, stretching her, but now the birthway was loose and ready and she could expand at each outward shove. Now nothing existed for her but the feeling of the infant tunneling down through her body. The intensely sexual sensation made her vaginal lips grow warm and engorged. She was opening for the outward thrust of the new life as she might open for the inward thrust of a man.
 

"It is coming," she gasped. Maukiri helped support her as another contraction drove the infant deeper into her pelvis. Now she felt the baby's head like a coconut between her legs, making the skin there bulge outward. She squatted, spreading her feet as far apart as she could. From behind, Maukiri laid her palms on the top of the womb and pressed down firmly.
 

This time, when the contraction came, Tepua felt her abdomen being relentlessly squeezed by a huge fist, slowly, but harder and harder, until something must burst. The loosened flesh of her birthway stretched and spread over the crowning head. Suddenly she feared the baby had grown to giant dimensions, that however much she opened, she would never be wide enough.
 

"Maukiri...I can't...." she panted. "It's too big!"

Her cousin continued to croon the birthing song in her ear and hugged Tepua against her, her grip firm, but gentle.

Tepua was seized by an impulse to push. Not only did she have to, she wanted to. Her despair evaporated as excitement took its place. Now it felt good, very good. With each push, a grunting cry welled up from deep in her belly. It was coming; yes, it was coming and the flower was open wide.
 

Her womb heaved with the powerful force gripping her body as Maukiri held on to her. The flesh of her birthway, stretched tight about the infant, pulsed in waves, as though in orgasm. Pain was there, too, but was so flooded with ecstasy that it became all one sensation.
 

Stay-long crouched in front of her. "You must let me help you now," she said softly.

"Do not let Pehu..." Tepua could no longer speak. Another powerful surge made her open just a little more. Suddenly she felt the baby's head sliding through. Tepua put her own fingers down, cradling the tiny head that was slippery with the coating of birth. One last long push and the infant's body slithered out into Stay-long's hands.
 

"A son," Maukiri said in a trembling voice. Stay-long held the child carefully to avoid pulling on the umbilical cord. Tepua curled forward to see the tiny figure of an infant boy, resting in the hands of the
tahutahu.
His hair was darkened from the birth fluids, and his pale brown skin was smeared with birth blood and the white, waxy womb coating. His blue-gray eyes were open, and his tiny hands and feet flailed silently as Stay-long held him low between Tepua's legs. He had not yet taken a breath.
 

Maukiri reached out with a bamboo blade and cut the glistening cord. Suddenly another hand appeared within the sacrosanct arena of the birth. It held the damp suffocation cloth. Maukiri gave a startled cry. Tepua looked up into the harsh features of Pehu-pehu.
 

"Take it, Tepua, and do what you must," hissed the Blackleg. "This is what Aitofa demands, what all the Arioi demand. Hurry, before it is too late."
 

For an instant Tepua wavered, her conviction weakened by exhaustion and the threat of Pehu-pehu looming over her. The dance, the companionship, the protection. All these the Arioi had given her. Most important was her duty to serve Oro. He had come to her more than once. She remembered the words he had spoken.
 

Tepua plucked the cloth from the Blackleg's hand....

And tossed it in Pehu-pehu's face. "This is Oro's child," she shouted. "I will not destroy it." Taking the baby from Stay-long, she clutched it to her breast.

With a scream of anger, Pehu-pehu was on her. Sharp-nailed hands pulled apart her arms, dragging the newborn from her frantic embrace. She cried out in horror as Pehu-pehu locked an arm about the infant and, with her free hand, raised a stone-blade knife.
 

Tepua was caught up in a frenzy unlike anything she had known before. It was as if she had become a female shark, driving swiftly at her prey. Grabbing Pehu-pehu's weapon hand, she wrenched the stout arm back so hard that the woman hissed in pain. The knife fell, but the Blackleg reached with her fingers for the baby's delicate throat.
 

Tepua rammed her knee into Pehu-pehu's stomach, but this did not stop her attempt to strangle the child. With the heel of her palm, Tepua aimed a hard blow to the Blackleg's nose. She missed, but only slightly, and Pehu-pehu staggered, her upper lip split and oozing blood.