The Whale Rider

Nineteen

Apotheosis. In the sunless sea sixty whales were sounding slowly, steeply diving. An ancient bull whale, twenty metres long and bearing a sacred sign, was in the middle of the herd. Flanking him were seven females, half his size, like black-gowned women, shepherding him gently downward.

‘Haramai, haramai e koro,’ the women sibilantly sang. ‘Tomo mai i waenganui i o tatou iwi.’ Come old one. Join us, your whole tribe in the sea.

The sea hissed and sparkled with love for the ancient bull whale and, every now and then, the old mother whale among the female whales would close in on him, gently, to nuzzle him, caress him, and kiss him just to let him know how much he had been missed. But in her heart of hearts she knew that he was badly wounded and near to exhaustion.

From the corner of her eye, the old mother whale noticed a small white shape clasping her husband just behind his tattooed head. She rose to observe the figure and then drifted back beside him.

‘Ko wai te tekoteko kei runga?’ she sang, her voice musically pulsing. ‘Who are you carrying?’

‘Ko Paikea, ko Paikea,’ the bull whale responded, and the bass notes boomed like an organ through the subterranean cathedral of the sea. ‘I am carrying my lord, Paikea.’

The sea was a giant liquid sky and the whales were descending, plummeting downward like ancient dreams. On either side of the bull whale and his female entourage were warrior whales, te hokowhitu a Tu, swift and sturdy, always alert, a phalanx of fierceness.

‘Keep close ranks,’ the warrior whales warned. ‘Neke neke.’

The leader signalled to some of the warriors to fall back to the rear to close up and tighten the remaining herd of women, men and children.

Meanwhile, the old mother whale was processing the information that the bull whale had given her. ‘Ko Paikea? Ko Paikea?’ The other women caught flashes of her puzzlement and, curious themselves, rose to look at the motionless rider. One of them nudged the tiny shape and saw a white face like a sleeping dolphin. The female whales hummed their considerations among themselves, trying to figure it all out. Then they shrugged. If the bull whale said it was Paikea, it was Paikea. After all, the bull whale was the boss, the chief, and they knew how crotchety he became if they did not respect his words.

‘Keep close ranks,’ the warrior whales whistled reprovingly.

The whales shifted closer together, to support one another, as they fell through the sea.

‘Ko Paikea? Ko Paikea?’ the old mother whale wondered anxiously. Although she loved her husband, and had done so for many whaleyears, she was not blind to his faults. Over the last few years, for instance, he had become more and more depressed, considering that death was upon him and revisiting the places of his memory. The Valdes Peninsula. Tonga. Galapagos. Tokelau. Easter Island. Rarotonga. Hawaiki, the Island of the Ancients. Antarctica. Now, Whangara, where he had almost been lost to the herd.

Then she knew.

‘Halt,’ the old mother whale called. In her memory’s eye she saw Paikea himself and he was flinging small spears seaward and landward.

Instantly the herd ceased its sounding and became poised in mid flight between the glassy surface of the sea and the glittering ocean abyss.

The warrior whales glided up to the old mother whale. ‘What’s the matter?’ they trumpeted belligerently. The old mother whale was always calling for a halt.

The old mother whale’s heart was pounding. ‘I wish to speak,’ she said sweetly, ‘to my husband.’ So saying, she descended gently toward the ancient bull whale, to talk with him.

The sea scintillated with the sweetness of the old mother whale as she hovered near her ancient mate. Illuminated jellyfish exploded silvered starbursts through the dark depths. Far below, a river of phosphorescence lent lambent light to the abyss like a moonlit tide. The ocean was alive with noises: dolphin chatter, krill hiss, squid thresh, shark swirl, shrimp click and, ever present, the strong swelling chords of the sea’s constant rise and fall.

‘E koro,’ the old mother whale began in a three-tone sequence drenched with love. ‘My dear lord,’ she continued, adding a string of harmonics. ‘My man,’ she breathed with slyness, threading her words with sensuous major arpeggios, ‘the rider that you carry isn’t Paikea.’

The other female whales edged away carefully but they secretly admired the courage of the old mother whale in questioning the identity of the whale rider.

‘Yes it is Paikea,’ the bull whale said, insistent, ‘it’s Paikea.’

The old mother whale cast her eyes downward, hoping that the bull whale would take this as a sign of feminine submission, but she knew in fact what she was up to.

‘No, no my lord,’ she belled sweetly.

The female whales gasped at the old mother whale’s stubbornness. The warrior whales waited for the word from their leader to teach her a lesson.

The bull whale responded in a testy manner. ‘Of course it is! When my lord mounted me, he said his name was Kahutia Te Rangi.’ Surely the old mother whale should know this was another name for Paikea. ‘Ko Kahutia Te Rangi ko Paikea.’

The old mother whale allowed herself to drift just below her husband.

‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ she trilled in soprano tones of innocent guile.

The other female whales now decided to give her a wide berth. She had a lot of gumption, all right. Fancy saying, ‘Perhaps,’ to their leader.

The old mother whale saw the warrior whales preparing to give her a sharp nip in the behind. She moved quickly toward the ancient bull whale and let a fin accidentally on purpose caress the place of his deepest pleasure. ‘But,’ she told him, ‘I can see the rider and it’s not who you think it is.’ She gave her head two shakes to emphasise that when she had looked at the rider it didn’t look like Paikea at all. Instead, the rider looked like a human girl. ‘Perhaps it’s a descendant of your lord?’ she asked modestly. ‘Think back, husband.’ Her song inflected the questions with graceful ornamentation.

The other female whales nodded to each other. She was clever all right, the old mother whale. They were dumb by comparison. By asking questions she was enabling their leader to come to the decision she had already reached. No wonder she was the queen and they were the ladies in waiting.

The ancient bull whale waved the warrior whales away; he was getting irritated with them and their fancy drills.

‘Think back?’ he repeated to himself. And through the mists of time he saw his master, Paikea, flinging wooden spears into the sky. Some in mid flight became birds. And others on reaching the sea turned into eels. And he, Paikea himself, was a spear populating the land and sea so that it was no longer barren.

The ancient bull whale began to assess the weight of the rider and, hmnn, it was light all right, and the legs were shorter than he remembered and —

‘Yes,’ the old mother whale crooned, agreeing with the decision he hadn’t yet made, ‘This is the last spear, the one which was to flower in the future.’ She let the words sink in, because she knew that it always took the males longer than the females to understand. She wanted to make sure that the bull whale really understood that the rider was Paikea’s descendant and, if it was not returned to the surface and taken back to the land, then it would not fulfil its tasks. ‘It is the seed of Paikea,’ she said, ‘and we must return it to the land.’ In her voice was ageless music.

The ancient bull whale swayed in the silken tides of the stirring sea. Though tired, he sensed the truth in his consort’s words. For he remembered that Paikea had hesitated before throwing the last of his wooden spears and, when he did this, he had said, ‘Let this one be planted in the years to come when the people are troubled and it is most needed.’ And the spear, soaring through the sky, came to rest in the earth where the afterbirth of a female child would be placed.

And as he remembered, the bull whale began to lose his nostalgia for the past and to put his thoughts to the present and the future. Surely, in the tidal waves of Fate, there must have been a reason for his living so long. It could not have been coincidence that he should return to Whangara and be ridden by a descendant of his beloved golden master. Perhaps his fate and that of the rider on top of him were inextricably intertwined? Ah yes, for nothing would have been left to chance.

The herd as they waited for the ancient bull whale’s judgment began to add the colour of their opinion. The female whales chattered that they knew all along the old mother whale was right, and the warrior whales, seeing the way things were going, added their two cents’ worth also.

The ancient bull whale gave a swift gesture.

‘We must return to the surface,’ he commanded, readying himself for a quick ascent. ‘We must return this new rider back to Whangara. Do we all agree?’

The herd sang a song of agreement to their ancient leader’s decision.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ they chorused in a song of benign and burn- ished tenderness. ‘Ae. Ae. Ae.’

Slowly, the phalanx of whales began their graceful procession to the surface of the sea, broadcasting their orchestral affirmation to the universe.

Hui e, haumi e, taiki e.

Let it be done.

Twenty

After Kahu’s departure, Nanny Flowers collapsed. She was taken to the hospital where, five days later, her eyelids flickered open. She saw Koro Apirana sitting next to the bed. Me and the boys were also there.

Nanny Flowers shook herself awake. The nurse and Koro Apirana helped her to sit up. Once she had gotten comfortable she closed her eyes a second time. Then she peeked out of one eye and sighed.

‘Hmm,’ she said sarcastically. ‘If you lot are still here that must mean I haven’t gone to Heaven.’

But we didn’t mind her sarcasm because we were used to her being an old grump. Koro Apirana looked at her lovingly.

‘You have to lose some weight, Putiputi,’ he said to her. ‘Your ticker is too weak. I don’t know what I would have done if the both of you —’

Nanny Flowers suddenly remembered. ‘What has happened to Kahu —’

Koro Apirana quietened her quickly. ‘No, no, Flowers,’ he said. ‘She’s all right. She’s all right.’ He told Nanny Flowers what had happened.

Three days after the sacred whale and its accompanying herd had gone, and after Kahu had been given up for dead, she had been found unconscious, floating in a nest of dark lustrous kelp in the middle of the ocean. How she got there nobody knew, but when she was found the dolphins that were guarding her sped away with happy somersaults and leaps into the air.

Kahu had been rushed to the hospital. Her breathing had stopped, started, stopped and then started again. She was now off the respirator but she was still in a coma. The doctors did not know whether she would regain consciousness.

‘Where is she? Where’s my Kahu?’ Nanny Flowers cried.

‘She’s here with you,’ Koro Apirana said. ‘Right here in this same hospital. Me and the iwi have been looking over you both, waiting for you to come back to us. You two have been mates for each other, just like in the vegetable garden.’

Koro Apirana gestured to the other bed in the room. The boys separated and, through the gap, Nanny Flowers saw a little girl in pigtails, her face waxed and still.

The tears streamed down Nanny Flowers’ cheeks.

‘Push my bed over to her bed,’ Nanny said. ‘I’m too far away from her. I want to hold her and talk to her.’

The boys huffed and puffed with pretended exertion.

‘Now all of you Big Ears can wait outside the door,’ Nanny said. ‘Just leave me and your Koro here alone with our Kahu.’

She was like a little doll. Her eyes were closed and her eyelashes looked very long against her pallid skin. White ribbons had been used to tie her plaits. There was no colour in her cheeks, and she seemed not to be breathing at all.

The bedcovers had been pulled right up to Kahu’s chin, but her arms were on top of the covers. She was wearing warm flannel pyjamas, and the pyjama top was buttoned up to her neck.

The minutes passed. Koro Apirana and Nanny Flowers looked at each other, and their hearts ached.

‘You know, dear,’ Koro Apirana said, ‘I blame myself for this. It’s all my fault.’

‘Yeah, it sure is,’ Nanny Flowers wept.

‘I should have known she was the one,’ Koro Apirana said. ‘Ever since that time when she was a baby and bit my toe.’

‘Boy, if only she had real teeth,’ Nanny Flowers agreed.

‘And all those times I ordered her away from the meeting house, I should have known.’

‘You were deaf, dumb, blind and stubborn.’

The window to the room was half open. The sunlight shone through the billowing curtains. Nanny Flowers noticed that the door was slowly inching open and that the nosey-parkers were looking in. Talk about no privacy, with them out there with their eyes all red and the tears coming out.

‘You never even helped with Kahu’s birth cord,’ Nanny Flowers sobbed.

‘You’re right, dear, I’ve been no good.’

‘Always telling Kahu she’s no use because she’s a girl. Always growling at her. Growl, growl, growl.’

‘And I never knew,’ Koro Apirana said, ‘until you showed me the stone.’

‘I should have cracked you over the head with it, you old paka.’

Dappled shadows chased each other across the white walls. On the window-sill were vases of flowers in glorious profusion.

Koro Apirana suddenly got up from his chair. His face was filled with the understanding of how rotten he had been.

‘You should divorce me,’ he said to Nanny Flowers. ‘You should go and marry old Waari over the hill.’

‘Yeah, I should too,’ Nanny Flowers said. ‘He knows how to treat a woman. He wouldn’t trample on my Muriwai blood as much as you have.’

‘You’re right, dear, you’re right.’

‘I’m always right, you old paka, and —’

Suddenly Kahu gave a long sigh. Her eyebrows began to knit as if she was thinking of something.

‘You two are always arguing,’ she breathed.

The whales were rising from the sea. Their skins were lucent and their profiles were gilded with the moon’s splendour. Rising, rising.

‘Does the rider still live?’ the ancient bull whale asked. He was concerned that the rider was okay, still breathing.

‘Yes,’ the old mother whale nodded. She had been singing gently to the whale rider, telling her not to be afraid.

‘Very well,’ the ancient bull whale said. ‘Then let everyone live, and let the partnership between land and sea, whales and all humankind, also remain.’

And the whale herd sang their gladness that the tribe would also live, because they knew that the girl would need to be carefully taught before she could claim the place for her people in the world.

The whales breached the surface and the thunderous spray was like silver fountains in the moonlight.

Twenty-One

Nanny Flowers gave an anguished sob and reached out to hold Kahu tightly. Koro Apirana tottered to the bedside and looked down at the sleeping girl. He began to say a prayer, and he asked the Gods to forgive him. He saw Kahu stir.

Oh yes, grandchild. Rise up from the depths of your long sleep. Return to the people and take your rightful place among them.

Kahu drew another breath. She opened her eyes. ‘Is it time to wake up now?’ she asked.

Nanny Flowers began to blubber. Koro Apirana’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Yes. It is time to return.’

‘They told me not to wake until you were both here,’ Kahu said gravely.

‘Who are you talking about?’ Koro Apirana asked.

‘The whales,’ she said. Then she smiled, ‘You two sounded just like the old mother whale and the bull whale arguing.’

Nanny Flowers looked up at Koro Apirana. ‘We don’t argue,’ she said. ‘He argues and I win.’

‘Your Muriwai blood,’ Koro Apirana said. ‘Always too strong for me.’

Kahu giggled. She paused. Then her eyes brimmed with tears. In a small voice she said, ‘I fell off.’

‘What?’

‘I fell off the whale. If I was a boy I would have held on tight. I’m sorry, Paka, I’m not a boy.’

The old man cradled Kahu in his arms, partly because of emotion and partly because he didn’t want those big ears out there to hear their big chief crying.

‘You’re the best grandchild in the whole wide world,’ he said. ‘Boy or girl, it doesn’t matter.’

‘Really, Paka?’ Kahu gasped. She hugged him tightly and pressed her face against him. ‘Oh thank you, Paka. You’re the best grandad in the whole wide world.’

‘I love you,’ Koro Apirana said.

‘Me too,’ Nanny Flowers added.

‘And don’t forget about us,’ said the rest of the iwi as they crowded into the room.

Suddenly, in the joyous melee, Kahu raised a finger to her lips: Sssshh.

The ancient bull whale breached the surface, leaping high into the moonlit sky. The sacred sign, the tattoo, was agleam like liquid silver. The bull whale flexed his muscles, releasing Kahu, and she felt herself tumbling along his back, tumbling, tumbling, tumbling. All around her the whales were leaping, and the air was filled with diamond spray.

‘Can’t you hear them?’ Kahu asked. Interlock.

She fell into the sea. The thunder of the whales departing was loud in her ears. She opened her eyes and looked downward. Through the foaming water she could see huge tail fins waving farewell, ‘Child, farewell.’

Then from the backwash of Time came the voice of the old mother whale. ‘Child, your people await you. Return to the Kingdom of Tane and fulfil your destiny.’ And suddenly the sea was drenched again with a glorious echoing music from the dark shapes sounding.

Kahu looked at Koro Apirana, her eyes shining.

‘Oh Paka, can’t you hear them? I’ve been listening to them for ages now. Oh Paka, and the whales are still singing,’ she said.

Haumi e, hui e, taiki e.

Let it be done.