The Whale Rider (12 page)

eighteen

She was the whale rider. Astride the whale she felt the sting of the
surf and rain upon her face. On either side the younger whales were escorting their leader
through the surf. They broke through into deeper water.

Her heart was pounding. She saw that now she was surrounded by the
whale herd. Every now and then, one of the whales would come to rub alongside the ancient
leader. Slowly, the herd made its way to the open sea.

She was Kahutia Te Rangi. She felt a shiver running down the whale
and, instinctively, she placed her head against its skin and closed her eyes. The whale
descended in a shallow dive and the water was like streaming silk. A few seconds later the
whale surfaced, gently spouting.

Her face was wet with sea and tears. The whales were gathering speed,
leaving the land behind. She took a quick look and saw headlights far away. Then she felt
that same shiver again, and again placed her head against the whale’s skin. This
time when the whale dived, it stayed underwater longer. But Kahu had made a discovery. Where
her face was pressed the whale had opened up a small breathing chamber.

She was Paikea. In the deepening ocean the fury of the storm was
abating. The whale’s motions were stronger. As it rose from the sea, its spout was
a silver jet in the night sky. Then it dived a third time, and the pressure on her eardrums
indicated to the young girl that this was a longer dive than the first two had been. And she
knew that the next time would be forever.

She was serene. When the whale broke the surface she made her farewell
to sky and earth and sea and land. She called her farewells to her people. She prepared
herself as best she could with the little understanding she had. She said goodbye to her
Paka, her Nanny, her father and mother, her Uncle Rawiri, and prayed for their good health
always. She wanted them to live for ever and ever.

The whale’s body tensed. The girl felt her feet being locked
by strong muscles. The cavity for her face widened. The wind whipped at her hair.

Suddenly the moon came out. Around her the girl could see whales
sounding, sounding, sounding. She lowered her face into the whale and closed her eyes.
‘I am not afraid to die,’ she whispered to herself.

The whale’s body arched and then slid into a steep dive. The
water hissed and surged over the girl. The huge flukes seemed to stand on the surface of the
sea, stroking at the rain-drenched sky. Then slowly, they too slid beneath the surface.

She was Kahutia Te Rangi. She was Paikea. She was the whale rider.

Hui e, haumi e,
taiki e
. Let it be
done.

The tribe was weeping on the beach. The storm was
leaving with Kahu. Nanny Flowers’ heart was racing and her tears were streaming
down her face. She reached into her pockets for a handkerchief. Her fingers curled around a
carved stone. She took it out and gave it to Koro Apirana.

‘Which of the boys?’ he gasped in grief.
‘Which of the —’

Nanny Flowers was pointing out to sea. Her face was filled with
emotion as she cried out to Kahu. The old man understood. He raised his arms as if to claw
down the sky upon him.

epilogue

the girl from the sea

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.