Moko of Hineteiwaiwa
I rest my hand on my brows, a small respite from the sun. Her body is framed by a golden outline. Hair streams behind her muscled and lithe body like dark seaweed, whipping my face. I reach for the folds of a blue and green feathered korowai, chubby hands grasping with need.
Sweat pools under my armpits and I blow unruly hair from my face. Her elbow brushes my shoulder, and I look up. Her mouth widens, revealing white teeth framed by reddened cheeks. She’s carrying something on her back, a wahakura. It’s not finished.
At the faint edges, I hear the soothing sounds of the sea as the waves suck away layers of crumbled shells. I can smell the salt in the wind. As we reach the edge of the cliff, the sky is orange and purple-tinged. A crude footpath traverses the face of the cliff and fifty metres below, it leads to a sandy beach flanked by crumbling, red cliffs.
I sink to the ground. My feet ache, we’ve been walking for hours. Reaching into a kete she retrieves a soft-pink and creamy white clamshell, opening it up. With the tip of her index finger she scrapes out a green cream, lathering it on my blisters. I hiss in a breath as her slender fingers rub my feet.
She closes the clamshell and rolls out a mat. I inhale the smell of dried harakeke as I roll onto my belly and hook my fingers into the grassy spaces between the weave. Wriggling my green-creamed toes I feel the crisscrossing of the harakeke pressing into the curve of my puku. She brushes the sand off me while unhooking the feathered korowai from around her shoulders. I stroke the soft black and blue feathers with the tips of my fingers and sigh as she lifts the korowai up and flicks her hands. I shudder as the feathers settle, tickling my body. Surrounded by a womb-like warmth, I roll over and close my eyes, aware only of the moving of my shoulders with every breath.
I cough and poke out my tongue, my throat dry. A carved gourd lies beside me and so I reach for it and press it to my lips, the warm water trickling down my throat and into my puku where it slops against the walls.
She is sitting, her hair brushing across the dirt with her movement, the black strands filling with detritus and her woven skirt scrunched up around her waist. Her long, muscled legs splay forwards. I toddle over to her, brain still filled with sleep, and sit next to her. I grab at the nearly-finished wahakura and her eyes twinkle. Her fingers grasp mine and then she continues to work her magic, my hands in hers, layering the strands of flax over the top of one another. For many hours we sit there as the sun rises from the blue water’s edge.
Heat bears down on us as the sun reaches the middle of the sky. Finally, we finish the wahakura, so we take a rest and gather berries from the nearby bushes. Our lips red with their juices, I collect them into a gourd. She smiles a blood-stained smile and I give her a hug, pressing my head into her chest.
She takes my hand, and for the first time, we traverse the rough path leading down the face of the cliff to the beach. My stomach drops as I take a step and the edge of the path crumbles away, rolling down the cliff. I swallow and clutch her skirt, pressing my face into her lower back, my eyes closed.
As we step onto the beach, I shout and fall to my knees to kiss the sweet sand. Placing a hand on her puku, she throws her head back, and a soft, raucous laugh tingles my ears. She pulls me up, pointing to where the waves meander in and out. On my hands and knees, I search for the feel of pipi’s as the foamy water rushes past my body. Digging my fingers and nails into the sand, I find one and wrest it from its deep-dug home. Placing it into her cupped hands I continue searching.
We return to the sand, where we wrench shells open with the edge of another shell. I taste the salt on my tongue, and the tender, slimy sustenance. We sit together, our hands on our puku. Tāwhiri laughs and blows the sand into a mini-tornado around us. We scrunch up our faces. The sand is crunchy in my teeth and I spit it out.
Back up the path we tread, arriving as the orange and red sun drops beneath the grasslands. I stare at our finished creation from today, the wahakura, and she motions to it. I lie down, enclosed by the woven walls, and I sleep with her arms around me, the korowai covering both of us.
Sand flicks up from between my toes as I sprint to the water and dive headfirst into the frothy waves. My skin prickles with the blast of cold. She dives under the waves with her long black hair streaming behind her, and I watch her swim down to the dark blue depths. I take a deep breath and then follow, going deeper and deeper. I can see a dark shape in the blue waters. I stop, drifting in the current.
The form swims into view. A whare-sized whale with a white puku. Scratched lines and encrusted lumps decorate the thick, dark grey blubber. I watch her swim alongside the underwater behemoth, hair floating behind like an unfolding flower as her hands clutch at a grey fin and she is pulled through the water.
I fight against the current generated by the undulating tail when another dark shape rushes past. I clutch at the smaller white fin, air bubbles escaping from my mouth and then with a splash we break the surface, and I gasp for air. Blowhole spray sprinkles my face. I spit and screw up my eyes and take a deep breath as we descend again, light rays shimmering like moving spotlights on the sandy floor.
I see a wriggling starfish on a coral reef painted the colours of Ānianiwa and the twitching whiskers of a crayfish slinking back into a darkened recess. I reach out with a hand to touch the brightly coloured, moving coral masterpiece. Under the water we play, Hine and I, the māmā and the baby whale.
Somehow, they know when to come up to the surface for us. They whistle, click and call to one another, and to us. The closest sound I know to their call is the call of a karanga.
After a while, I get tired. My skin is starting to prune, the saltwater itchy and grating. She looks at me and jumps from the whale, swimming to my side.
Waving to our new friends, we paddle back to shore. Sodden and cold we trudge up the beach and climb the path at the bottom of the cliff. The dark shapes are still frolicking in open water, blowholes erupting into the air like frothy volcanos.
She takes my hand, and we walk back, collecting dried wood on the way. She rubs the wood together, and we sit and watch the sun as it drops beneath the grasslands next to the warmth of a crackling fire. It dries our skin and our hair, leaving only the streaks of salt behind. I settle into my woven bed as she lays the korowai over us. My eyelids droop, and I snap them open to stare at the stars one last time. The entire sky is illuminated by their flickering and cosmic swirls.
The next morning, we return to the beach. Her lips are pursed, and she walks fast, faster than I can keep up. She motions to me - hurry up! I feel a rising panic in my chest and swallow a lump. She starts to cry and wail as tears stream down her sculpted face and we sprint across the beach as the sand whirls behind us like a sandstorm.
She stops and begins to karanga, a wailing lament that frightens me. Her arms are moving, and she is calling to the atua to help us and I put my face in my hands and sob, clutching to her skirt. The māmā and the punua tohorā are lying on the scorching sand, their breathing laboured.
I drop to my knees, press my face into the warmth of the sand and scream as a pain in my chest throbs. I cough. She rushes to my side and lifts me up and carries me over to the two whales, still doing her karanga.
I wrap my legs around her waist and turn my face away from the dying pair, looking over her shoulder through blurred eyes. Her karanga continues for hours, and she carries me the entire time. My legs get pins and needles, I kick them out, and she drops me. Falling over, sand covering my palms I rush over to the punua tohorā, wrapping my arms around it.
The sun sinks behind the crumbling cliffs as she walks down to the water, unhooks her korowai and places it in the sea. I can see water dripping onto the sand as she carries it up the beach and she throws the korowai over both of us. Even though the blanket is wet, the heat of the baby whale warms me.
I can’t hear her wailing anymore, only the gentle rushing of water across the silt. I open my eyes. The māmā is still lying there, the sand around her body dried from the sun. The sea has receded to low tide and I roll over and stare at my friend, the punua tohorā, and look into its eyes, and they look back at me. I feel a sense of dread and fear rise up inside of me. The punua tohorāis scared and it wants to go back into the cold, safe water. It doesn’t want to die.
I wipe my face as cool droplets snake down my cheeks, and I look around. Where is she? All I can see is sand and wind. She’s gone.
I run up the coastal path and look back one last time. Narrowing my eyes, I continue running and find her, hunched over, her hands moving feverishly. Flax is strewn everywhere. I sit next to her, and we work, crisscrossing the harakeke together. I can feel the sweat running down my back, my puku is rumbling, and my throat is dry. Still, I don’t care as our hands move together in complete unison.
The palm of my hand presses against hers, our fingers intertwined like our weaving. We stand to admire our new creation, but only for a moment before she hauls it over her back, and we rush to the beach.
My hand glistens with sweat as she coils her ropes around the body of the māmā. I wave to her and point at the punua tohorā, but she shakes her head and I drop my eyes to the sand as they go blurry.
Something hits me on the head; it’s the end of a rope. I clutch at it with stubby fingers and wade into the water, and gasp as I stare at the collection of sea creatures that have joined us in the shallows of the ocean.
She hands her rope to an eight-legged creature with peach skin broken by numerous white suckers. I give mine to a pod of wandering dolphins with obtuse noses. They grunt, click and laugh at me.
She grabs my fingers and we race back to the shore to get more ropes and she hands hers to a menacing, sharp-toothed monster. A membrane covers its eyes like a blink, and it smiles at me. I shudder.
A pack of seals are playing in the water, and I hand a rope to them. They stay well away from the shark and bite at the line with their mouths. She hands a rope to a school of glittering fish as I dive down and give the end of another one to a mass of a kumara-coloured starfish. We wrap one last rope around the māmā before returning to the water, holding one end of the line each.
Together, we pull on the giant mother. Hineteiwaiwa starts to karanga again, crying and wailing as I pull as hard as I can. I can’t breathe, and my puku is rumbling so hard that I feel dizzy. The sun reflects off the water into my face, searing my skin, and yet still, we pull.
But the māmā is unmoving.
My strength fails and the sand rises up to meet me. The familiar warmth of feathers falls over me.
I get up. She is sitting with the māmā, her palm resting on slippery skin. I look back at the punua tohorā, and I throw the korowai over the baby whale. She stares at me with swollen, red eyes. I peer out into the ocean and see something. Huge and dark.
I grab her rope, sprint to the sea and dive under the water, bubbles streaming behind me. I give the line to the one even bigger than the māmā. It’s the pāpā.
It grasps the rope in an enormous mouth, turning its body and I dodge his falling tail as I am whooshed away. Treading water, I rush back to shore, trip over and fall to my knees. With a loud breath, I push myself back up and grab at her rope as her face tightens into a grimace. The pāpā swims with the rope in its teeth and sand pools against the body of the māmā as it begins to slide down the beach.
We pull.
And we pull.
My arms and legs are quivering, they are about to give out.
We pull.
Finally, she reaches the wet sand and then rolls into shallow waters. We keep pulling, and the māmā falls into deeper waters, unmoving. We dive in and tread water, watching the pāpā nudge at her.
The pāpā stares at us. Flitting around māmā’s body like mermaids we untie the ropes, wrap them around ourselves and swim back to shore. We run up the beach, and I lay my wet body over the punua tohorā, protecting it from the sun. She throws the soaked korowai, and I place it over the body.
Its eyes are closed, its breathing guttural and grasping. I hug it tighter and press my face against the cracked and dried blubber. I watch her tie the ropes around it, and then we sprint to the water. I splutter and cough as we dive under and give the ropes back to the waiting sea creatures. The pāpā grasps at one of the ropes, entwining it between plankton-trapping teeth.
I sprint to the beach and stand behind the punua tohorā, ready to push. The ropes go taut and I grit my teeth as I push as hard as I can on the soft blubber.
Nothing, no movement.
I hear footsteps racing up the beach. It’s her. She grabs at another rope and takes it back into the water. I see her hand it to the māmā, who has regained her strength. The lines go taut again, and I press my back against the body of the baby whale.
Inch by inch the body crawls towards the water. I scream to Tangaroa as I push with everything I have. The waves of the shallows crash onto the punua tohorā and then with one more pull it rolls into the depths.
The body lays there, unmoving.
I feel the cold and bubbles stream past me as I dive in and hug the punua tohorā with my arms wrapped around its head. The eyes are closed as it drifts with the current. She swims to me, and I clutch at her body. The harakeke ropes fall away, drifting into the darkness below.
The body of the punua tohorā starts to sink, following the ropes. The sea creatures are all watching as the tail touches the darkness, and then the body and then… just as it is about to completely disappear, an eye opens. The māmā swims to the baby whale and she and the pāpā lift the punua tohorā up with their noses.
The sea creatures disperse, the shark following the seals just a bit too close. The school of fish flits off to another part of the ocean and the octopus squirts off into the depths. The dolphins laugh and play, joining the māmā and pāpā in a circle around the punua tohorā.
I’ve run out of breath. I swim towards the light and burst above the waves. A few moments later, she joins me, and we crawl to the shore. We lurch to our camp, and when we arrive, I fall upon our stash of gourds, drowning my stomach in water. I shove berries into my mouth, too tired to search for more and collapse onto the harakeke mat.
After stripping, she removes my wet clothes and lights a fire to dry them. We sit together on the edge of the cliff, her hand enclosing mine. Her hair rests on the grass, and we stare out at the ocean, watching three dark shapes disappear under the fading light of the setting sun.
