Sister of the Sun (13 page)

She tried to soothe Cone-shell. "I am learning to speak with the outsiders. Soon I will be able to ask what these things are and how they were made and how they can be used safely. When I can explain these marvels to the priests, they may allow us to keep some. But only if the men are willing to part with them."
 

Cone-shell seemed unimpressed by her promise. "This is no way to win my allegiance, Tepua-mua," he said, pointedly omitting her title. "The people of Varoa have no use for weak hands at the steering oar. We need a chief who has allegiance only to this land."
 

Tepua stared at him, trying to fathom his meaning. Was he hinting that her time in Tahiti had made her disloyal to her own people. Or did he think that she unduly favored the outsiders?
 

His other concern remained unspoken, but she understood. He was impatient, along with the others of his clan, to see Umia become high chief. And now Cone-shell had another reason to want to push her from office. With Umia as chief he could do what he pleased with the foreigners and their goods.
 

Umia must take the office, she agreed, but not if he remained under Cone-shell's troublesome influence. She needed to woo her brother from his uncle. Somehow Umia must learn to stand on his own.
 

 

 

 

SEVEN

 

Early the next morning Tepua stood in the shade of the
fara
palms beyond her doorway and gave orders to her growing retinue of young attendants. Later in the day she would present a feast and entertainment, to help the outsiders feel at ease among her people.
 

She hoped Umia would join the celebration. If he accepted her invitation to attend, then perhaps she could begin to make peace with him. But she feared that Cone-shell would refuse to let Umia come. Then she would have to find another way to speak with her brother.
 

When the tasks had been assigned, and the attendants had gone off to make their arrangements, Tepua at last found herself free. Kiore was still in the guesthouse. She was eager to continue the lessons and thought that they might move quickly now that he was ashore. Perhaps he would soon be able to tell her about life in his own land.
 

When she met him at the guesthouse, Kiore looked well rested. His expression brightened as he approached her. "Walk?" he asked eagerly, waving his hand in one direction and then another.
 

"Yes. We can do that. What about Nika?"

"With...Paruru."

Tepua was not entirely surprised. She had seen the warrior conversing with Nika on the boat. It puzzled her that Paruru would take such an interest in the young sailor, but she was glad to be alone with Kiore. She wished to show him many things—trees, shrubs, the long pits where taro plants were cultivated. She hoped to find things that Kiore would enjoy seeing.
 

As they began to walk a shady inland path, the sailor took a glance behind him. "Men watch," he said with a grimace. Tepua turned and signaled the guards to stay back. This was no way to make a stranger welcome!
 

Only at Paruru's insistence had she agreed to let a contingent of armed men shadow her. Paruru had warned that she could not safely be alone with the foreigner. Tepua sensed something else—jealousy—in the words of her
kaito-nui
.
 

It was because she remained cool to Paruru, she thought, that the warrior believed her interest had turned to the sailor. But the attention she paid Kiore was mostly a matter of curiosity. Everyone on the atoll wanted to know more about the outsiders.
 

Tepua admitted to herself that she found Kiore's company a refreshing change. Now that she was chief, Paruru and the other men often seemed uncomfortable in her presence. Though Kiore understood that she was ruler here, he appeared to enjoy being with her.
 

"Look!" she said, pointing to a lofty
pukatea
tree. The sailor threw back his head as he studied the upward-pointing branches and the high clusters of leaves. "A fine tree, very useful," she tried to explain. "For houses." She gestured at a branch, then stepped to a small, thatched dwelling that lay just off the path. She touched one of the poles that framed the doorway. "
Pukatea
," she repeated. "Strong." For emphasis she mimed trying to break the pole, without success.
 

This performance made Kiore laugh, and do his own imitation of straining to break a tough stick. "Strong wood," he agreed.

She explained more about the house. The thatching was of slender
fara
leaves folded over a stick, one leaf overlapping the next, and held in place by a long wooden pin. She made motions with an imaginary needle to show how the pinning rod was inserted.
 

"What are your houses like?" she asked, pointing to Kiore and then the dwelling.

He paused, seemingly bewildered. Then he knelt and began to heap up fist-sized pieces of coral beside the path. He showed with his hands that the pile should be taller and thicker than the one he was making. He stood and raised his arms above his head, indicating that he needed to go higher still.
 

Tepua laughed, and wondered if she had misunderstood. "Come, let me show you something," she told him. As she headed down the path she noticed, to her annoyance, that a crowd of youngsters had gathered to see the foreigner. Their expressions, as they watched him approach, showed both curiosity and fright.
 

"Go away, all of you," Tepua commanded. The children scattered into the bush, but she knew they had not gone far.

"Children," said Kiore, speaking the word almost perfectly.

"Do you have sons?" she asked him.

He seemed taken aback by the query, first frowning then smiling. "No," he finally answered. "Maybe."

Unable to make sense of that reply, she returned to the question of houses. After a short walk she led him toward one of the island's lesser
marae
, an open-air sanctuary. Carefully she circled the sacred site, repeating the word "
tapu
'' and raising her outstretched arm in front of his chest to show that he must not approach closer. At the narrow end of the courtyard stood a low platform of coral blocks. She showed it to him, asking, "Is that how you build the walls of your houses?"
 

"Wall," he repeated, pointing to the blocks, then miming building a much taller structure.

Tepua tried to imagine the house he was trying to describe to her. Thick walls of coral all around...She frowned, for it seemed more like a place where the bones of the dead might be stored. In such a house, how would one feel the cool night air, or see the morning sunlight?
 

As they continued their walk Kiore began to frame clumsy questions. He was interested in fresh water and seemed to be looking for a stream or spring. "To drink?" she asked. "To wash in?" She tried to explain that fresh water was scarce. Her islet had a few pools that caught rainwater and a well for drinking. Most people preferred to drink coconut milk.
 

"My water...gone," he told her. He made her understand that his boat carried water in a large drum, which he had been able to fill only partially before setting out from the larger vessel. When he spoke of that time, his brow furrowed and a look of despair filled his eyes.
 

"We will fill your drum," she said. "But you have only just arrived. Are you already planning to depart?" He did not understand her until she framed the question another way.
 

He wetted his finger, raised it to the breeze. "Winds not good." In his small vessel he hoped eventually to travel north and then west. That way he could reach a port used by his own people, and find a larger boat to take him on the long journey home.
 

"Then you will stay with us awhile." Favorable winds were not all he required, Tepua realized. He would need to learn his way through the swarm of atolls and underwater reefs. He would also have to replace the dead crewman.... The thought that Kiore could not leave soon made her mood brighten.
 

They walked a bit more, and Tepua had to chase off the persistent gawkers again. After a stroll over a sunlit stretch of coral sand, she noticed that Kiore's face was damp with sweat. "Too many clothes," she said, pointing to his outermost wrap. She fingered the blue cloth at his wrist and playfully gave it a tug. "They make you hot." She fanned her face with her hand.
 

"Clothing hot." Kiore looked down at the garment, which was slit open in front and decorated on one edge by a row of round, flat bits of shell. He made a shrugging motion with his shoulders, pulled one arm free, then the other. Tepua felt a moment of anticipation, followed at once by disappointment. Underneath he was covered from neck to waist in a cloth even finer than the one he had removed; not even his arms had been bared.
 

She indicated that she wanted his discarded wrap, and he handed it to her. With a cry of delight she thrust her arms through the round openings. Then Kiore began to laugh, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes.
 

"What is so funny?" she demanded. Of course, her arms were too short. They did not reach all the way through, and the ends of the garment flapped as she moved.
 

Kiore evidently saw something else amiss. He tugged at the closed part of the garment in front of her, then went around to her back where the cloth lay open. She felt his warm touch on her skin, his fingers softly moving, as he tried to explain.
Wearing it the wrong way
. When she understood her mistake, Tepua also began to laugh.
 

Now that she had it on, however, she paraded around awhile, admiring the blue cloth as she waved her covered hands. She was glad that the guards were far behind and that no children were spying. People must not say that their chief put clothing on backward!
 

When she finally tried to pull her arms free, they caught, and she needed Kiore's aid to untangle herself. He tugged gently at the cloth, easing it over her hands. Then, standing behind her, he helped her don the garment properly. The sensations—the foreign cloth against her skin, his firm hand encircling her waist as he guided her—were so odd that Tepua found herself giggling like a girl.
 

She discovered that her arms were still too short, but he rolled up the end parts that covered her hands. For a moment he stood before her, gazing with a look of admiration. Then he began a surprising feat. Moving his fingers down the front of the open garment, he slipped each round little shell through a matching hole so that the two cloth edges gradually closed up.
 

She was not sure which was more amusing—the cleverness of the fastening or the gentle tickling of his fingers as he worked. Then he lifted his fingers to her neck. One fastening had been left open. He started to do it, then paused.
 

His fingertips lingered on her skin, then slowly glided up the sides of her neck. Little shivers ran down to her shoulders. As she looked in his face the color of his eyes seemed to change. They had been light and playful, but now the color shifted, like the azure hue of the lagoon, growing more intense as one gazed into greater depths....
 

In Kiore's face she saw a kind of beauty unlike any she had ever known. She wanted to tell him so in all the liquid poetry of her language. But she held back, knowing that he would hear only wordless babbling.
 

There was another way to speak, the language of hands. As she looked into his eyes she put her palms to his cheeks. Gently she drew them together across his face. She felt the brush of his blond lashes and the soft skin beneath his eyes. At last her thumbs rested together on his upper lip, her fingers meeting across the bridge of his nose.
 

Then she took her hands away, showing how they met at an angle, hoping he would understand.
Your face is like the edge of a great rock that fronts the sea. It looks as if it can withstand anything.

She felt her stomach give a jump when she realized that he was pleased. A warmth like a sunbeam shone in the blue-green depths of his eyes.
 

Then he put his hands gently to her face, but instead of starting at the sides, as she had done, he laid his fingers together where the bridge of her nose dished in slightly. His fingers were rough with calluses, yet he moved them with care and tenderness. He paused to stroke her eyelashes and he did not have to speak to make her feel that they were as long and black as tropic bird feathers. He traced the arch of her brow, then let his fingertips travel over the flare of her nostrils.
 

Speech might lie, but touch could not. He, too, had found beauty in a face that was new to him. She trembled inside at the way he paused for a moment on the plane of her cheekbones.
 

Finally, he slid his hands behind her neck and began to draw her face toward his. She leaned toward him, eager to feel the warm silkiness of her nose sliding against his. But he hesitated, as if afraid that the gesture was not permitted.
 

Tepua had seen every woman on the beach vie to give him an embrace. "It is not
tapu
," she said. Kiore smiled and seemed to forget his caution. He bent closer...but something went wrong. Instead of pressing nose against nose, he touched lip against lip!
 

So strange was the sensation that Tepua gave a muffled cry, pulling away from him. He let her go just as the guards came running, their long spears ready to strike. "It is nothing," she shouted to the men while she struggled to regain her composure. She waved the guards back, then touched her finger to her mouth, remembering the hot, moist pressure that had startled her. What an odd way of showing affection!
 

"Not good?" Kiore asked her, raising pale, bushy brows. If the guards' appearance had frightened him, he seemed only mildly frustrated now. In the glitter of his eyes she thought she even detected a certain amusement.