Isle of Tears (5 page)

‘Has it no’ been sold tae the government? Ma Da said it had.’

‘Your Governor Browne thinks he has made the way clear for that to happen, but he has not,’ Mere replied sharply.

Isla didn’t know who Governor Browne was, but Mere’s angry expression dissuaded her from admitting it, and certainly from asking anything more.

They soon approached a large area of flat, cultivated land: Isla recognized potato and kumara plants, but not the other leafy varieties arranged in neat rows across the soil. A separately fenced cultivation contained corn and, Isla thought, wheat. There were a dozen men and women working on the cultivations, and a few small children playing in the dirt nearby. They all stopped to stare as the travelling party neared. Wira shouted something, and one of the women laid down her hoe and hurried off.

‘We will wait,’ Mere said.

Isla saw that the gardens were set in a lush valley bisected by a narrow river whose depths reflected the varying shades of green surrounding it. A stand of bush bordered the far end of the gardens, beyond which the woman had disappeared.

‘She has gone to the kainga to tell them that we have returned,’ Mere said eventually. ‘And that you accompany us. They must prepare.’

Isla wasn’t sure how to interpret Mere’s comments, and experienced a frightening moment of doubt. What did ‘prepare’ mean? To fill the awkward silence that ensued, and to calm her nerves, she said, ‘How long have ye been away?’

‘One full cycle of the moon.’

‘Were ye hunting?’ Niel sounded almost, but not quite, friendly.

‘In a sense,’ Mere replied, but declined to say anything more.

Isla and Niel exchanged an uneasy glance, although neither quite knew why.

‘I’m hungry,’ Jean complained, and sat down in the dirt at the edge of one of the gardens. A small Maori child, wearing a patched shirt that came down to its knees, sidled up to her and reached out to touch her bright copper hair, but ran off shrieking when Jean made an exaggerated growling noise. Laddie’s ears pricked and he trotted over, making the child squeal even louder until someone came to pick it up and soothe it.

‘That wisnae verra nice, Jean,’ Isla admonished.

‘But I’m hungry.’

‘Well, there’s no need tae be unkind.’

‘But she wis dirty, wi’ a snotty nose,’ Jean declared loudly.

‘“He”,’ Mere corrected. ‘The child is a boy. One of my niece’s children.’

Jean looked aghast. ‘But he’s got long hair!’

‘Ae,’ Mere said benignly.

‘What a wee jessie!’

‘Jean!’ Isla warned.

But before Jean could protest, the woman who had gone off reappeared and spoke quickly to Wira. He and the rest of the travelling party, excluding Mere, moved off with the woman and the other gardeners, the children trotting behind them. When they had disappeared into the trees, Mere gave the signal for Isla, Niel, Jamie and Jean to follow her.

‘You will be welcomed onto our marae,’ she explained as they walked, ‘and then we will eat to celebrate your arrival.’ She glanced at Laddie. ‘Can you control your dog? We have dogs at our kainga. They may fight.’

‘Aye,’ Isla replied, hoping that Laddie would behave. ‘But what if your family dinnae want us there?’

‘Oh, they will. Whangai is a common thing among my people.’

‘But we’re no’…’ Isla struggled to put into words what was bothering her. She glanced at Niel, whose hair was as fair as hers, and at Jamie and Jean, two little carrot-tops with freckles dusting their pink noses and pale skin. At home, on Skye, it also had been very common for the raising of children to be shared among families, but there the children had always, without fail,

been Scottish, and always some sort of kin. ‘We’re no’ Maori,’ she said eventually, not bothering to dress up her words. ‘We willnae fit in.’

Mere raised one eyebrow in amusement. ‘You will fit in, you will see.’

Another thought struck Isla. ‘But what if settler folk see us? Will they no’ think ye’ve kidnapped us?’

Mere gave a casual shrug. ‘They can think what they like. You do not have any other family in the area?’

‘No, it wis just Mam and Da and us.’ Isla felt her bottom lip tremble at the immense and lonely truth of the fact, and struggled not to cry.

‘Are there not friends who will come looking for you?’

‘No’ really,’ Isla said truthfully.

‘Then you will have family here.’

They came then to the village, a cleared area in the bush dotted with huts and houses of various sizes and surrounded by a solid fence of manuka poles. Outside the fence stood a few lonely little huts, and a patch of ground randomly studded with unpainted wooden crosses. The village’s main gate was bordered by a pair of tall wooden posts carved with what seemed to Isla to be a hierarchy of figures with strange, distorted bodies and exceedingly ugly countenances. An ornately carved lintel joined the two posts, reaching a high point in the middle where another ferocious-looking creature perched.

Beyond the gate waited a crowd of intimidating proportions. Isla felt Mere’s gentle hand on her shoulder, and reluctantly began
to walk through the gate towards the courtyard in front of the largest of the houses, Niel on her left and the twins, tightly holding hands, on her right. She glanced nervously at Mere, who nodded at her encouragingly to continue.

Suddenly, the crowd parted to reveal a man wearing only a very brief skirt, apparently made of reeds. His hair was tied up in a topknot and the sweat on his dark skin accentuated the lines of the tattoos on his face, thighs and, shockingly, his naked buttocks, glimpsed when his skirt swayed. He carried a long, intricately carved staff, sharpened at one end and flattened like a narrow paddle at the other, which he brandished with alarming rapidity and strength, the weapon making an unnerving sound as it cut through the heat-laden air.

Jean gave a small, stifled squeal. Isla stopped dead as he approached, feeling a surge of panic engulf her. Had it all been a trick? Were they to perish here after all? She reached for Niel’s hand, and drew Jean and Jamie closer.

The man darted and pranced, the reeds of his skirt rattling as he whirled his staff, hissed and pulled the most alarming faces. Watching intently, the crowd didn’t move, not even when he took a sprig of leaves from his waistband and tossed it onto the ground at Niel’s feet.

Behind them, Mere calmly instructed, ‘Pick it up, Niel.’

Niel hesitated, then bent to retrieve the sprig, and watched with obvious relief as the man danced backwards and melted into the crowd.

Then came an eerie, reedy wailing and an ancient woman
shuffled forward, uttering something that was between a song and a chant. As her call tapered away, Isla’s heart missed a beat as, directly behind her, Mere responded in kind. As Jamie’s whimpers of fear became very audible, Isla slipped her free arm around his shoulders and pressed him against her skirts until, once again, she felt Mere’s hand urging her forward.

The bulk of the crowd then launched into an energetic sort of dance, stamping their feet and fluttering their hands in unison. Some of the women held bunches of leaves, which they shook and swished about. All of this was accompanied by a loud and very boisterous chant, and, when several rows of staff-wielding men moved to the front and proceeded to shout and leap about, Jamie and Jean burst into frightened tears. At Isla’s side Niel’s face was white, and his grip on her hand was so tight that it hurt.

After the dance had come to an end, Mere said to Isla, ‘Do you have a dance or a song that you would care to perform?’

Isla looked at her blankly, deeply alarmed by the preceding performance and bewildered by the question. ‘Here? Now?’

‘Ae. It is part of the powhiri. First comes the wero—the challenge—then the karanga, which imparts information to both the tangata whenua and the manuhiri, then the tangata whenua perform a haka to greet you.’

The native words Mere had used were meaningless to Isla, but she certainly recognized the last two. ‘That wis a greeting?’

‘Ae. Now you may respond if you care to.’

Isla eyed the crowd, who were watching this exchange with interest; waiting to see, she suspected, whether the strange, pale
children were capable of doing anything more than quaking in their boots. She felt instinctively that it was important that they respond with something, but all she could think to offer was a dance from her native Skye. She had been dancing since she was a tot and had become very accomplished. But to do that she would need two swords, and the Maori didn’t seem to carry them.

But they did have those intricately carved staffs. She closed her eyes and conjured an image of her da telling her that she could do anything she wanted to do as long as she believed she could, then took a deep breath and opened her eyes again. Niel started to say something as she marched off across the sun-baked ground towards the crowd of onlookers, but she ignored him and kept going, her arms swinging and her head high.

She stopped before one of the dancers and pointed to his staff. Looking nonplussed, he nevertheless passed it to her. She did the same with the man beside him, then strode determinedly back to the middle of the courtyard. The crowd, engrossed, was utterly silent. Without looking at anyone, she arranged the two weapons on the ground to form a cross, then stepped to one side, untied her boot laces and slipped them off, and, as an afterthought, pulled the ribbon from her hair so that her hair tumbled down her back.

She stood with her head bowed for a moment, fixing in her mind the beat that would normally be provided by her father’s pipes. She bowed to the crowd, then the crossed staffs, raised her arms and began to dance.

Beginning slowly and turning always widdershins, she executed
the steps that were those of Highland warriors, who had used the dance to hone their strength, agility and state of mind before battle. Like those ancestors, she soon began to feel the heat rise in her veins and, as she recalled the congealing pools of blood beneath the still bodies of her mother and father, she became gloriously angry and danced with more and more intensity until the sweat dripped off her brow and stung her eyes. Everything around her began to blur, and she knew she was grunting and hissing with effort and emotion, but didn’t care. She danced for her parents, and she danced for all those who had ever fought under the McKinnon banner, but most of all she danced to express her grief and her desire for vengeance. But still she was careful to point her toes and avoid the staffs, because to touch them would mean certain disaster on the battlefield, and her clash with Tulloch was one she had privately vowed to win.

By the time the dance was nearing its end, the bodice of her dress was soaked and long wisps of her hair stuck clammily to her damp face. She performed the final few steps—three slow, followed by three very quick and a high jump—then moved deliberately away from the staffs and, panting, bowed to the onlookers, then to her brothers and sister. Niel was biting his lip and blinking furiously, and Jamie and Jean were clutching each other with awe and delight.

Isla grunted with satisfaction, knowing that her da would have been very pleased with her.

A mutter of approval rippled through the crowd, then Wira, dressed now in a fancy feather cloak over his shirt and trousers,

stepped forward and addressed the McKinnon children first in Maori, then in rather formal English.

‘Haeremai, haeremai, haeremai, e te tamariki, ki tenei marae o tatou. Haeremai, mauria mai nga taimahatanga o te ao. Mauria mai a houtou mate, kia mihia kia tangihia. He tino hanore kua tae mai koe. McKinnon children, welcome to this, our marae. Bring with you the burdens of the time. Bring the spirits of your dead, that they may be greeted and mourned. We are honoured that you have arrived. As rangatira of Ngati Pono, I say that you may live here, and eat of our food and learn of our kaumatua, our elders, and sleep in the protection of our ancestors as long as you choose. You will not just be guests, but nga tamariki whangai, members of my family, and of our hapu. I have spoken.’

Isla was mortified: Wira was the chieftain of the tribe, and she had gone out of her way to be offensive to him from the moment he had set eyes on her!

‘I’m verra sorry,’ she said to Mere later. ‘Should I no’ go and apologize?’

‘What for?’

‘For being so rude. But I didnae ken.’

Mere shrugged. ‘It is not a thing to apologize for. He would have done the same had he been you.’ She smiled slightly. ‘He respects you for it. He admires children with…’

‘Mettle?’ Isla suggested doubtfully. Although it hadn’t been mettle that had made her so rude; it had been terror and rage.

‘Ae. Although you are not really a child, are you?’

‘I’m only just fourteen.’

‘But you look like a woman,’ Mere said, ‘so to Ngati Pono you
are
a woman.’

Isla crossed her arms over her small breasts, pleased to note that the tenderness in them had finally receded.

‘And as a woman there are many things you must learn,’ Mere continued. Two small children sat in her lap, and when one of them yanked hard on her hair she said a few sharp words in Maori and pushed him away. Or her. It was difficult for Isla to tell because of the hair.

‘I have told you about what you must not do when you have the mate marama, but that is only the beginning,’ Mere said, shaking her head at the child who was determinedly trying to climb back onto her lap. ‘There is much more for you to learn.’ She smiled at Isla. ‘And perhaps you can teach me some things about
your
people.’

Isla nodded, absurdly pleased. She had offered to help prepare the feast, which Wira declared would be held in honour of Ngati Pono’s new additions, and had felt slightly rebuffed when Mere had declined her offer. Now, she recalled why it wouldn’t do. ‘But can I help after that?’ she asked.

‘Of course you can. Everyone at Waikaraka has tasks,’ Mere said as she capitulated, picked up the misbehaving child and settled it on her knee. ‘It is the way a hapu works. A
successful
hapu, that is. And Ngati Pono are a very successful hapu. But, as I said, there is much for you to learn.’