The Princely Flower

by Garry Kilworth

Genres: Horror; Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure

Synopsis

THE EPIC FANTASY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND CONTINUES . . . Kieto's destiny, set in the heavens, is to conquer the Land-of-Mists, the mysterious island discovered by Kupe, one of the great Polynesian voyagers. But he knows it won't be easy: the wild native tribes, particularly the Scots and Picts, have two formidable advantages - iron and horses. But Kieto has heard of a magnificent warrior race, the Maori, who live in another world and from whom he hopes to learn the secret of success in war. The gateway to this world is on the island of giants, and Kieto and his friends, Boy-Girl, Seumas and Dorcha, themselves taken years before from the Land-of-Mists, leave the safety of Rarotonga and embark on an epic voyage of discovery aboard THE PRINCELY FLOWER. Pursued by sea-fairies, vengeful gods, power-hungry priests and, in Seumas's case, by a murderously angry son, confronting their worst fears and supernatural horrors, the friends finally face the awesome wrath of the mighty Maori. THE PRINCELY FLOWERS is the second wonderful volume of THE NAVIGATOR KINGS, set in the richly imaginative world of Polynesian life and myth.

Release date: February 18, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 384

Sample

This is a work of fantasy fiction, based on the myths and legends of the Polynesian peoples and not an attempt to faithfully recreate the magnificent migrational voyages of those peoples. Other authors have done that, will do it again, far more accurately than I am able to do. This particular set of tales, within these pages, alters a piece of known geography, while hopefully retaining the internal logic of the story; my apologies to the country of New Zealand, which has changed places with Britain. (New Zealand and the Maori are not forgotten and appeared in Book II of The Navigator Kings). The gods of the Pacific region are many and diverse, some shared between many groups of islands, others specific to one set of islands or even to a single island. Their exact roles are confused and confusing, and no writer has yet managed to classify them to absolute clarity, though Jan Knappert’s book is the best. Where possible I have used the universal Polynesian deities, but on rare occasion have used a god from a specific island or group for the purposes of the story. Since the spelling of Polynesian gods and the Polynesian names for such ranks as ‘priest’ varies between island groups, I have had to make a choice, for example Tangaroa (Maori) for the god of the sea and Kahuna (Hawaiian) for priest. In short, for purposes of homogeneity I have taken liberties with the names of gods and with language.

For the facts behind the fiction I am indebted to the following works: The Polynesians by Peter Bellwood (Thames and Hudson); Nomads of the Wind by Peter Crawford (BBC); Polynesian Seafaring and Navigation by Richard Feinberg (The Kent State University Press); Ancient Tahitian Canoes by Commandant P. Jourdain (Société des Oceanistes Paris Dossier); Pacific Mythology by Jan Knappert (HarperCollins); that inspiring work, Polynesian Seafaring by Edward Dodd (Nautical Publishing Company Limited); Aristocrats of the South Seas by Alexander Russell (Robert Hale); the brilliant Myths and Legends of the Polynesians by Johannes C. Andersen (Harrap); and finally the two articles published back to back that sparked my imagination and began the story for me way back before I had even published my first novel, The Isles of the Pacific by Kenneth P. Emory, and Wind, Wave, Star and Bird by David Lewis (National Geographic Vol. 146 No. 6 December 1974).

Also: Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race by T. W. Rolleston (Constable); Dictionary of Celtic Mythology by Peter Berresford Ellis (Constable); and Celtic Gods Celtic Goddesses by R. J. Stewart (Blandford).

Once again, and finally, grateful thanks to Wendy Leigh-James, the design artist who provided me with a map of Oceania decorated with Polynesian symbols and motifs and the various windflowers which decorated each of the ten separate parts of each volume.

Amai-te-rangi: Deity of the sky who angles for mortals on earth, pulling them up in baskets to devour them.

Ao: God of Clouds.

Apu Hau: A god of storms, God of the Fierce Squall.

Apu Matangi: A god of storms, God of the Howling Rain.

Ara Tiotio: God of the Whirlwind and Tornado.

Aremata-rorua and Aremata-popoa: ‘Long-wave’ and ‘Shortwave’, two demons of the sea who destroy mariners.

Atanua: Goddess of the Dawn.

Atea: God of Space.

Atua: Ancestor’s spirit revered as a god.

Brighid: Celtic Goddess of smithcraft and metalwork.

Dakuwanga: Shark-God, eater of lost souls.

Dengei: Serpent-God, a judge in the Land of the Dead.

Hau Maringi: God of Mists and Fog.

Hine-keha, Hine-uri: The Moon-Goddess, wife of Marama the Moon-God, whose forms are Hina-keha (bright moon) and Hine-uri (dark moon).

Hine-nui-to-po: Goddess of the Night, of Darkness and Death. Hine is actually a universal goddess with many functions. She is represented with two heads, night and day. One of her functions is as patroness of arts and crafts. She loved Tuna the fish-man, out of whose head grew the first coconut.

Hine-te-ngaru-moana: Lady of the Ocean Waves. Hine in her fish form.

Hine-tu-whenua: Benevolent goddess of the wind who blows vessels to their destination.

Hua-hega: Mother of the trickster demi-god Maui.

Io: The Supreme Being, the ‘Old One’, greatest of the gods who dwells in the sky above the sky, in the highest of the twelve upper worlds.

Ira: Mother of the Stars.

Kahoali: Hawaiian God of Sorcerers.

Kukailimoku: Hawaiian God of War.

Kuku Lau: Goddess of Mirages.

Limu: Guardian of the Dead.

Lingadua: One-armed God of Drums.

Magantu: Great White Shark, a monster fish able to swallow a pahi canoe whole.

Manannan mac Lir: Celtic Sea God.

Maomao: Great Wind-God, father of the many storm-gods, including ‘Howling Rainfall’ and ‘Fierce Squall’.

Marama: God of the Moon, husband of Hine-keha, Hine-uri.

Mareikura: Personal attendants of Io, the Old One. His ‘angels’.

Marikoriko: First woman and divine ancestor, wife of Tiki. She was fashioned by the Goddess of Mirages out of the noonday heatwaves.

Maui: Great Oceanian trickster hero and demi-god. Maui was born to Taranga, who wrapped the child in her hair and gave him to the sea-fairies. Maui is responsible for many things, including the birth of the myriad of islands in Oceania, the coconut, and the length of the day, which was once too short until Maui beat Ra with a stick and forced him to travel across the sky more slowly.

Milu: Ruler of the Underworld.

Moko: Lizard-God.

Mueu: Goddess who gave bark-beating, to make tapa cloth, to the world. The stroke of her cloth-flail is death to a mortal.

Nangananga: Goddess of Punishment, who waits at the entrance to the Land of the Dead for bachelors.

Nareau: Spider-God.

Nganga: God of Sleet.

Oenghus mac in Og: Celtic Lord of Fatal Love.

Oro: God of War and Peace, commander of the warrior hordes of the spirit world. In peacetime he is ‘Oro with the spear down’ but in war he is ‘killer of men’. Patron of the Arioi.

Paikea: God of Sea-Monsters.

Papa: Mother Earth, first woman, wife of Rangi.

Pele: Goddess of Fire and the Volcano.

Pere: Goddess of the Waters which Surround Islands.

Punga: God of Ugly Creatures.

Ra: Tama Nui-te-ra, the Sun-god.

Rangi: God of the Upper Sky, originally coupled to his wife Papa, the Goddess of the Earth, but separated by their children, mainly Tane the God of Forests whose trees push the couple apart and provide a space between the brown earth and blue sky, to make room for creatures to walk and fly.

Rehua: Star-God, son of Rangi and Papa, ancestor of the demigod Maui.

Ro: Demi-god, wife of the trickster demi-god Maui, who became tired of his mischief and left him to live in the netherworld.

Rongo: God of Agriculture, Fruits and Cultivated Plants. Along with Tane and Tu he forms the creative unity, the Trinity, equal in essence but each with distinctly different attributes. They are responsible for making Man, in the image of Tane, out of pieces of earth fetched by Rongo and shaped, using his spittle as mortar, by Tu the Constructor. When they breathed over him, Man came to life.

Rongo-ma-tane: God of the Sweet Potato, staple diet of Oceanians.

Rongo-mai: God of Comets and Whales.

Ro’o: Healer-God, whose curative chants were taught to men to help them drive out evil spirits which cause sickness.

Ruau-moko: Unborn God of Earthquakes, trapped in Papa’s womb.

Samulayo: God of Death in Battle.

Tane: Son of Rangi the Sky God, and himself the God of artisans and boat builders. He is also the God of Light (especially to underwater swimmers because to skin divers light is where life is), the God of Artistic Beauty, the God of the Forest, and Lord of the Fairies. As Creator in one of his minor forms he is the God of Hope.

Tangaroa: God of the Ocean, who breathes only twice in 24 hours, thus creating the tides.

Taranis: Celtic God of Thunder.

Tawhaki: God of Thunder and Lightning. Tawhaki gives birth to Uira (lightning) out of his armpits. Tawhaki is also the God of Good Health, an artisan god particularly adept at building houses and plaiting decorative mats.

Tawhiri-atea: Storm-God, leveller of forests, wave-whipper.

Te Tuna: ‘Long eel’, a fish-god and vegetation-god. Tuna lived in a tidal pool near the beach and one day Hine went down to the pool to bathe. Tuna made love to her while she did so and they lived for some time on the ocean bed.

Tiki: Divine ancestor of all Oceanians who led his people in their fleet to the first islands of Oceania.

Tikokura: Wave-god of monstrous size whose enormous power and quick-flaring temper are to be greatly feared.

Tini Rau: Lord of the Fishes.

Tui Delai Gau: Mountain God who lives in a tree and sends his hands fishing for him when he grows hungry.

Tui Tofua: God of all the sharks.

Ua: Rain God, whose many sons and daughters, such as ‘long rains’ and ‘short rains’ are responsible for providing the earth with water.

Uira: Lightning (See Tawhaki).

Ulupoka: Minor god of evil, decapitated in a battle amongst the gods and whose head now rolls along beaches looking for victims.

Whatu: The God of Hail.

The Earthquake-God Ruau-moko turned unexpectedly in his mother’s womb and woke Tikokura, who rose up out of a gentle ocean to form a giant angry face of water which swept over the surface towards a defenceless atoll.

The mouth of the Tikokura’s face was a massive maw filled with white, foam-flecked teeth. The hidden eyes were sightless, blinded by fury, buried beneath heavy lids of water. The hair on the head of the wave was spindrift, terrible in its aspect, which trailed behind the broad expanse of Tikokura’s brow.

On the beaches of the atoll, a ring of six islands, the fishermen and shellfish gatherers saw the tidal wave coming. Since the atoll was not more than six feet above sea level they knew that many, if not all of them, were about to drown.

‘Tikokura’s coming!’ one of the women screamed. ‘Save my children! Save my children!’

Birds flew up from the trees and beaches in a blast which momentarily filled the sky with black dots.

‘I’m an old man, I can’t run,’ cried a white-hair in despair. ‘Help me! Sons, daughters, help me!’

No one came to the elderly father’s assistance, nor that of the unfortunate mother, for there was nothing anyone could do, there was nowhere to run.

Some islanders were immediately resigned to the idea of death: as inhabitants of a low sandy atoll on which life was hard, where work filled almost every waking hour, and disasters were common, they were an unhappy group of people hammered into a dulled state of acceptance by misery, constant labour and deprivation.

A few, however, scuttled away for the palm trees, hoping to climb high enough to be out of the reach of Tikokura. They dropped their nets, without which they would probably die of starvation anyway, and ran for the scrubby patches of palm trees which were all but the only vegetation on the isles. In these few that unquenchable spark known as the will-to-live drove out all common sense and had them mindlessly attempting to cling on to their empty and worthless existence.

One or two, those lucky enough to own canoes, took to the boats.

No one questioned: why? Tikokura was a minor but unpredictable god, capable of destructive fury for no reason at all. His breast was full of bitterness; he preferred hate over all other emotions; he killed for the love of killing.

One young man already in an ocean-going canoe, a seafaring warrior, a stranger merely touching the shores of the atoll briefly in order to replenish his water supplies, immediately turned his canoe and, unlike the islanders themselves, raced directly into the maw of the wave.

Those who saw this action were astounded. They wanted to call to the youth, warn him of the terrible consequences of his actions, turn him from his course. The warrior stood at his mast, however, a determined expression in his blue eyes, ready to do battle with the god of sudden waves.

He was a tall fair-skinned youth, out of whose partly shaven head protruded two dark-red twisted horns of hair in the fashion of the Hivans. Indeed, the three solid bars tattooed across the bridge of his nose, making his battle expression one of the fiercest in Oceania, also proclaimed him to be of the Hivan-peopled islands. In his right hand he held a barbed spear, which he brandished in the face of the oncoming god.

‘Tikokura,’ screamed the youth. ‘My name is Kumiki, a warrior of Nuku Hiva. These useless people have no temples, or I would have sacrificed a pig or dog to you …’

The wave rushed onwards, seemingly unaffected by these words.

‘Let me ride over your head, Tikokura,’ pleaded Kumiki, ‘for you have no quarrel with me. I’m not one of these miserable wretches who scrape an existence from your back. I’m Kumiki the Hivan, on a life-long quest to kill my own father. I must live until my father lies at my feet, the blood gushing forth from his throat, staining the coral of his home isle. Spare me until that moment – then take my life, if you must.’

Tikokura heard these words and knew then who was Kumiki’s father. He sympathised with the youth’s mission, for he had little love of his own people, let alone those from an alien place. The wave-god’s hate for mankind would be better served by allowing this one Hivan warrior to live, so that the youth could cause an untold misery and upheaval amongst a distant island group. The boy was a weapon, a spear in flight, and for the sake of bitterness it was better not to knock him aside, but to let him fly onwards to his target.

Kumiki saw the wave part before him, allowing him a narrow passage over calm waters between tumultuous seas. Once his canoe was through and he was safe the gap closed and the wave continued on its relentless path towards the hapless atoll. When it hit the outer reef it thundered over the coral bed, drumming the island from a distance and causing climbers to be shaken from the palms like insects. They fell screaming to their deaths. Coconuts followed, raining on their twisted forms, pounding their bruised bodies into the coral dust.

Tikokura swept at last over the beaches and the islands, taking with him men, women and children, the force of his momentum gathering them up as a flood collects twigs. Flimsy huts disintegrated, fires were quenched in a brief hiss of steam, precious nets disappeared. The tops of palm trees, some bearing clinging mortals, were snapped like broom heads and washed away to unknown shores. Fishermen’s boats were overturned, spilling out their occupants, who were instantly lost in the crashing, whirlwind foam of the breakers which tossed and tumbled over the small islands, grasping, crushing, destroying everything and anything which had been made or planted by human hand.

When the spilling torrent had finally rushed on, towards the horizon, the water left in its wake drained from the atoll, leaving the group of islands above the surface again.

Kumiki saw figures descending from the strongest and tallest of the palms, a few survivors climbing down to the wet coral dust, to stand and stare bleakly at the devastation that lay before their eyes. Everything they had ever owned had been torn from their grasp in a matter of moments. Their means of livelihood – their nets, their canoes, their scant crops – were all gone. All that was left were the flat islands themselves.

For the next few months, perhaps years, they would be scrabbling about in the lagoon searching for those shellfish which had not been ripped off rocks and carried away. They would be living on limpets and clams, seaweed and roots, fighting over the sparse numbers of coconuts, their only source of fresh drink since they had no wells. They would dwindle in numbers to eventually disappear completely as a people, until more exiles from the high islands began to land and populate the flat, uninteresting atoll – and the next wave came.

Kumiki turned his canoe in the direction of Arue roa on the windflower.

On his home isle of Nuku Hiva the eighteen-year-old Kumiki had left the girl who he hoped would one day be his wife. Her name was Miro and he loved her deeply. They had already made love in the sand and surf of the Hivan beaches, with others of their own age, since promiscuity and sexual licence among the unmarried was perfectly acceptable to Oceanians.

Once they were married, however, adultery was punishable by death, and she would be his alone to love and cherish.

It would not have been fair to have married her before he left, for he might never be able to return to Nuku Hiva. The sea might swallow him, the gods might take him, or a man might kill him, making the return trip impossible. Also, he had left her free to love whom she pleased, in a casual way, extracting only the promise that she would not marry another unless he, Kumiki, failed to return home within five years.

When Kumiki had asked for her promise, Miro had said, ‘I shall never marry another – instead, if you do not return, I shall go to the leaping place of souls and end my life – for I know if you do not come back to me you must be dead.’

‘Do not kill yourself,’ he told her, knowing she meant to throw herself over the cliff where spurned and lost lovers ended their lives, ‘for you can learn to love again.’

‘Without you sharing my mat, dear Kumiki, I shall not want to live.’

This had disturbed Kumiki greatly. He did not want such a beautiful thing as the love between him and Miro to be stained with blood. It was enough they had loved for the short time given them until now. Still, he had every intention of returning to her, and no intention at all of allowing Tikokura to snatch his life, even after he had killed his father, despite what he had promised the wave-god in a moment of rashness.

Kumiki brooded on images of his father’s death, once the pictures had re-entered his head.

The death of his birth-right father.

A brief inspection of Kumiki’s skin would tell anyone that he was not of pure Hivan descent. From a distance he had sometimes been mistaken by strangers for an albino, or perhaps one of the Peerless Ones, the fair-skinned, fair-haired fairies of the mountains. Then, when he came closer and they noticed his hair, they changed their minds to believe him a goblin or demon. It was only when he was close enough to speak to them, and they recognised his tattoos, that they knew him to be a Hivan warrior from a princely family. A youth of noble lineage.

Kumiki had fair skin – fairer even than the pale Tongan, Samoan and Tahitian princes – and dark-reddish hair. Although adopted by a chief, his real father it might be thought was a supernatural creature. Yet Kumiki had been told a story which proved his real father nothing but a man – a man not from Oceania but from a land discovered by Kupe the Raiatean. A place called Land-of-Mists, where all men had white skins and blue eyes.

Kumiki’s adopted father had told him that his real father had invaded their island with a band of warriors from Raiatea and had, in the course of that invasion, raped an innocent woman, who later died giving birth to Kumiki himself. Kumiki was the product of a savage outsider, a wild creature with none of the finer instincts of an Oceanian, no strong code of honour, no generosity of spirit.

The man known as Seumas possessed none of the traits which made men proud of themselves. He had not conducted himself with dignity after raiding Nuku Hiva, but had taken a woman by force in the troubled heat of the battle. This Seumas had not been able to control his basic urges at a time when he should have been glorifying Oro, the God of War, not slaking his lust in the dirt with a terrified woman.

Kumiki had been incensed when he heard what the boastful savage Seumas had done to his mother, even though it had resulted in his own birth. There and then he had resolved to seek out this foreign monster and kill him, first letting him know why he was going to die, then crushing his skull with a club. It was then Kumiki’s intention to eat the head of Seumas, to steal his mana, and chew on his eyes and heart to humiliate him utterly.

Kumiki sighed as the wind drove the spray against his face, now set in the direction of Rarotonga.

‘I can almost taste his brains,’ whispered the youth, with longing in his voice. ‘I can almost savour his eyes on my tongue at this very moment.’

There was a long way to go yet, however. Kumiki was no great navigator, no Kupe or Hiro, or even Karika. He was a youth who until the age of seventeen had sailed only in home waters. But sea-farers had come to his island, and he had talked long and hard with them, learning the ways of the open ocean, discovering the name and location of his enemy, gleaning the secrets of navigation on the high seas.

He had gathered together knowledge of the setting and rising stars in the roof of voyaging, the fanakenga and kaveinga; of waves, their sizes and shapes; of swells, rips, currents; of different types of wind; of seaweed and birds; of important cloud formations; of sounds and smells of distant land; of the colour of different running seas.

Still, he had no experience and would probably become lost at times. It would be enough to survive, eventually to track down his prey, murder him in cold blood, and laugh at those who tried to stop him.

It was all Kumiki could ask of his Tiki, the First Ancestor of all men, sitting now on the front of his ocean-going canoe. It was all he could wish of the demi-god Maui, the trickster whose body was held in thrall by the Hine-nui-te-po Goddess of Death, but whose spirit still roamed the world. It was all he could request of Tawhaki, the Great God of Thunder and Lightning, of whom Kumiki wished to be a personal favourite.

‘I shall leave his body to be picked clean by the reef fish,’ snarled the horn-haired Hivan youth, the three solid bars of his tattoo twisting into a ferocious expression as he thought about his quarry. ‘I shall throw his liver to the frigate birds and watch them tear it to pieces as they fight over the shreds.’

These juvenile and immature chants by the warrior, into the teeth of the wind, helped him maintain his courage in the face of the long, dangerous and arduous voyage. He was not cutting new pathways through the ocean, but following a memorised pattern of the swells, clouds, islands, reefs, rips and other navigational signs, given him by adventurers who had traversed the same route before him and had returned to pass on their knowledge. His fury at his real father helped him to overcome his fears of being lost, or of meeting monsters, or of being swallowed by gods.

‘I hate him for his nothing-family!’

This was the main reason why Kumiki loathed his real father: because Seumas had left him no family line, no ancestors to revere. A community worshipped the gods, but an individual worshipped the spirits of his ancestors. Kumiki had no ancestors to look up to, to love and fear, to thank in times of plenty, of whom to beg forgiveness and food in times of want. Kumiki had no long genealogy to trot out in front of severe and intractable temple priests, no thousand names, no layers of generations which would make him proud. His name stopped with his blood-father, who had no real name, no name which meant ‘son of the moon’ or ‘strong as a spear’ but was just a jumble of worthless letters which when put together was pronounced ‘Seumas’. There were of course ancestors on his mother’s side, but these were so much less powerful.

‘I’m coming for you, Seumas,’ screamed Kumiki, his muscles rippling over the tautness of his chest as his hate fought to get out. ‘I’m coming to eat your head, you lizard’s tongue, you sperm of stone fish, you festering dog’s intestines – I’m coming to tear the heart from under your ribs!’

And the words were swept away, over the vast reaches of the ocean, lost in a thousand miles of watery world, seeking the ear of the man they had once called ‘the goblin’.

In the distance, a thousand miles away, a volcano erupted, spewing its red-and-white hot molten lava into the atmosphere in an immense spectacular pyrotechnical display. Kumiki took this breathtaking sight as a sign that Pele the Goddess of Fire and Volcano was on his side. The youth felt buoyed by the sight of redness covering the sky. This artificial sunset was Pele’s stamp of approval on his mission.

Rarotonga has only two seasons: Winter and Breadfruit. This was the Breadfruit season, a time of plenty.

Two thousand miles away from the voyaging youth, unaware that he had a son in the world, Seumas sat on his mat and contemplated his past. He was now in his early fifties, as was his wife Dorcha, and the pair were childless. Yet, that fact apart, they were not unhappy.

He had been happy on Rarotonga, an island which he had helped to find, and win. The two kings who ruled jointly had found a tribe in the interior, the remnants of an ancient race of people known as the Menehuna.

The Menehuna were wonderful masons and builders. It was the fairer-skinned Menehuna who had built the Toi’s Road, which circled the island, and who had constructed the magnificent temple called Arai-te-tonga.

Over the years Seumas the Pict had gathered much mana unto himself. The young Oceanians regarded him as one of themselves, a distinguished citizen and warrior, full of honour.

It was true, too, that he looked very much like any other elder Rarotongan. Tattoos covered much of his torso, his arms and legs. His skin had been burned by the sun and stars into a rich mahogany colour. His pride and joy, his fiery hair, once plaited by Dorcha into a long red pigtail, had changed its hue. He was now an Oceanian in appearance as well as manner. Only his blue eyes gave any hint of his real origins.

‘Seumas, don’t sit in the sun too long,’ warned Dorcha, her own black hair now streaked with white, ‘you’ll get one of your headaches.’

‘Don’t fuss over me, woman,’ he grumbled. ‘I like it here in the doorway.’

There was a dog named Dirk near his feet. All his dogs had been called Dirk, from the first faithful hound that he had owned in the country of Albainn, to this whelp that stared at him now, its brown eyes full of sorrow at having to laze away the day instead of running along the beaches with his master.

The shadows of day lengthened quickly, as they always do close to the equator, and soon it was dark. The sky above became a soft black imbedded with masses of bright stars. Hine-keha, the Moon Goddess, began smiling down on the island.

Dorcha had a fire going in the middle of the house, its smoke curling out through a hole in the roof, and Seumas went in and sat beside it.

While Seumas was serving them both the red snapper he had caught, cooked by Dorcha in a coconut sauce and garnished with a delicate seaweed, someone entered by the window.

‘Hello, Kieto,’ smiled Dorcha, ‘you saw the smoke of our fire?’

Kieto’s entrance by the window, instead of the door, was a gentle reminder that he was higher in rank than either of the house’s occupants.

Kieto laughed. ‘Since both Seumas and I are basket-sharers anyway, your rebuke has very little sting.’

Kieto was now a sturdy man in his mid-thirties, a strong warrior prince, the adopted son of Tangiia.

Kieto said, as he sat on the mat and was offered some fish, ‘I’ve asked Boy-girl to join us. We need to talk about war, Seumas. The time is getting close.’

Shortly afterwards, the tall willowy figure of Boy-girl appeared in the doorway.

‘At least someone comes in by the right entrance,’ said Dorcha, with a sidelong glance at Kieto.

Boy-girl smiled at her hostess. The lean smooth Boy-girl had been born the seventh son of a family without girls and had been raised as a woman and as such she had great mana. Like Dorcha, Boy-girl was steeped in the occult.

‘Come, Lei-o-mano,’ said Boy-girl to a cockerel who followed her, ‘heel, boy.’

Seumas growled, but said nothing.

This was Boy-girl’s idea of a joke, to copy Seumas by training a rooster like a dog and have it follow her everywhere, even naming it after the Oceanian dagger.

The cockerel trotted in, running between Boy-girl’s legs, and began pecking at unseen bits of food around the hearth, much to the consternation of Dirk, who kept looking at his master, then back at the bird, as if wondering when Seumas was going to toss this arrogant creature out into the night.

Boy-girl sat down between the two men, her decorative shells rattling as she did so.

Seumas shook his head as he stared at Boy-girl. ‘Who would believe you’re almost as old as me – you don’t look as though you’ve added a year since we’ve been on Rarotonga.’

Boy-girl laughed, delighted at the compliment.

‘Now,’ said Kieto, ‘to business. You have heard that the old king, Haari, is dying?’

What had once been an arduous and terrible journey, from Raiatea to Rarotonga, was now a flourishing shipping route. Consequently, news travelled between the islands too, keeping everyone informed.

Dorcha had now sat down and she said, ‘I have heard this.’

‘Well,’ continued Kieto, ‘one of the princes on the island is using the king’s death as an excuse to form an expedition to find another island. He has no elder brother chasing him away, but he feels the island has grown too populous.’

‘You’re talking of Ru,’ inte. . .