Witi Ihimaera - Sky Dancer

Arnie digested the news, puzzling over it. “All will be made clear when we are airborne,” he said. “Timata.”

He launched himself and gaining the air, waited for Kahu, Ruru of owls and their warrior scouts — a group eight in all — to join him. Kahu’s impetuous warriors were already climbing higher.

“Come back,” Arnie called. The moon had come out, a huge wan eye flooding the sky. “Your silhouettes will be seen against the moon. Stay close to the ground, follow the contours of the land and hide against the darkness where we will be invisible. Keep close ranks. Do not engage the enemy. Do not attack unless attacked. Let’s get in there, assess the situation, and get out. I want no fancy stuff from any of you, is that clear?”

“Not even one tiny aerial encounter?” a hawk warrior asked.

“Save that for tomorrow,” Arnie answered. “Chieftain Ruru, would you lead us? All birds respect the wisdom of the owl clan and know that you, above all others, are experts at low-level flying.”

“As you say,” Ruru answered.

Soundless, he dipped below foliage level, found a slipstream heading down through the Great Forest and planed into the centre of it. Arnie, Kahu and the hawk warriors followed him, cursing whenever they flew into overhanging branches.

“You boys would wake the dead,” Ruru sighed.

Ruru reached the neck of Manu Valley, where the lowland began. Arnie braked and used his binocular vision. “There before us is the reason why the sea has become solid.”

By moonlight, an extraordinary and chilling vista presented itself. For as far as the eye could see, seabirds smothered the sea — albatrosses, mollymawks, fulmars, petrels, prions, shearwaters, gannets, boobies, pelicans, shags, tropicbirds, frigate birds and skuas — a presentiment of ominous power.

“What is this unholy vision?” Ruru asked. “It looks like a Sea of White Feathers.”

“Aha,” Arnie said as he recognised Ruru’s imagery. “Auntie Hoki always wondered who was the original author of the Great Book of Birds. You must be the one, and your owl clan the ones to carry the stories of these times down through all the ages —”

“There must be thousands of seabirds,” Chieftain Kahu interrupted. “Do they all come from the future, Chieftain Arnie?”

“Yes, and these are but a small number of the seabirds that now ravage our world.”

“How can that be?”

“The world of the future has become a rubbish dump. The seabirds are the ones who have most benefited by this. They are the great scavengers of the Earth. Come on, follow me —”

“What do you intend to do?” Kahu asked.

“We must fly across that Sea of White Feathers and make an accurate count of the seabird numbers.”

“It will be suicidal,” Kahu said. “As soon as the seabirds see us, they will rise up and kill us.”

“There’s no way out of it,” Arnie answered. “Without good intelligence we cannot mount a defence to match. Trust me, Chieftain Kahu, I know what I’m doing. When I was in the Army I learnt a thing or two about camouflage. See the moon? As we fly across the sea, it will light our backs, but all the seabirds will see will be our shadows. Although our configuration does not match that of gulls, they will assume we are seabirds.”

Before Kahu could argue, Arnie turned to Ruru. “I will rely on you to do the count. Let’s go. Neke neke.” His strategy was to keep the surveillance team on the move. If they had the chance to think about what they were doing, they could take fright, make a false move and destroy their cover.

The surveillance team had good reason to be afraid. The seabirds were yelling, jostling, laughing with each other over the battle that would come with the dawn. Their voices rose up to Arnie and his team with chilling clarity:

“Just think, my brothers, tomorrow we shall rule the world.”

“We shall divide the spoils amongst us.”

“Kawanatanga has promised me and my recruits all the lands to the east.”

“For my support, he has told me I can divide the lands to the south amongst my iwi. We are looking forward to feasting on the flesh of the landbirds.”

The air was filled with hissing and boasting. Chieftain Kahu was aghast. Until that moment he had been unaware of the seabird’s real intent.

“The seabirds from the future are mercenaries,” Arnie said. “They are piratical. They are a military nation of great intelligence. It is not to be wondered at that their whole purpose in life is conquest. Thousands of years of living with man has given them an accumulation of greater cunning, greater hunting skills, greater practice in killing. To you they will seem to move faster than any bird should move. They will seem like terminators of supernatural strength. Keep in formation now. Neke neke.”

It took nerves of steel to fly back and forth over that unholy sea. Some of the young hawks under Chieftain Kahu’s wing were sweating and beginning to break under the pressure. One of them let out a squeal of suppressed fear, drawing the attention of an alert seagull.

“Who goes there?” he called.

“At ease, Corporal,” Arnie called back. “We’ve just been to the celebration at the fortress. Our general drank too much and is a little under the weather.”

Arnie was right. The seabirds suspected nothing. After all, who’d have thought that land-bound birds would have the audacity or courage to venture out over the sea? As they continued their journey, one aspect of the survey made Arnie curious. Between one of the offshore islands and the coast there was a small area of sea that was devoid of seagulls.

“What place is that?” he asked Chieftain Kahu.

“No birds ever go there,” Kahu said, wrinkling his face.

“Why not?”

“A foul-smelling substance rises to the surface,” Kahu explained. “It is black and viscous, and any bird that alights on it is immediately coated with it. Once trapped in the mire, none can escape. Even to inhale the substance can be poisonous: it can make you lose consciousness, fall into the sea and drown.”

Curious, Arnie flew over to the area to investigate. As soon as he smelt the toxic fumes, he knew what the substance was: oil, bubbling up from coastal vents. “Hey, hey, hey,” Arnie exclaimed. “The folks at Tuapa are not going to believe me when I get back and tell them about this! And Lucas’s garage is right in the middle of it.”

The survey was completed. Ruru confirmed the tally.

“Now give me the odds,” Arnie said.

“The seabirds outnumber us at four to one.”

“As high as that?” Kahu asked.

“It could be worse,” Arnie said. “But we’d better keep this information to ourselves. Let’s not worry our landbirds unduly. Chieftain Ruru, please return with the statistics to Chieftain Tui. We’ll have to try to figure ways to chip away at the seabirds and balance the odds more in our favour. In the meantime I’m going to take a look at Karuhiruhi’s island fortress.”

“I had a feeling you’d say that,” Kahu sighed.

“I have to deliver our foes a message,” Arnie answered.

“In that case, me and my boys better protect your butt!”

“Keep up if you can,” Arnie said. “Neke neke.”

He banked and, using the offshore winds to carry him, glided back across the silver sea towards the seabird islands. Very soon he was over the first of them. The mating season had just passed, and the guano-encrusted plateau was dotted with gulls’ nests and parent birds protecting their fluffy young. Further on, the second island appeared similar to the first, except that the seabird nurseries were in holes in the cliffs. Territorial roosting seagulls came out to shriek at Arnie and his squad as they wheeled past.