Witi Ihimaera - Sky Dancer

“But she’s alive?”

“Yes. Her message is ‘Mum? Will you tell Hoki and Bella to send somebody to get me?’”

Bella gave a hoarse cry.

“I haven’t got a bloody clue what’s going on,” Cora said. “But when you see her will you tell her that —”

“That?”

“I know what she did for me. Tell her thank you and that —” Cora began to drift away into unconsciousness — “I love her.”

The pouakai clamped its jaws around Skylark. She kicked and screamed, trying to wriggle loose. “Let me go, you big bully —”

The pouakai was amused at first but then became irritated. It gave a sudden flick, not quite enough to break Skylark’s neck but enough to render her senseless, and she fainted.

Skylark had no idea how long she was unconscious. When she revived she was so disoriented she didn’t know whether she was dreaming or awake. Had she really become a bird and flown through the gateway all the way back through Time to help the manu whenua? Nah, get real. Surely, she was still dreaming.

“In which case,” Skylark said, “it’s time to wake up. On the count of three I’ll awake in Tuapa and I’ll make Mum a cup of coffee and —”

Skylark counted, one, two, three, but nothing happened. She went to pinch herself. Oh no, where were her hands and fingers? What was she doing with a beak, feathers and claws?

It was dark. It was raining. Lightning crackled overhead. At every flash her memory came back to her. The pouakai had captured her. It had brought her back to its nest on an island orbiting deep space. The nest was conical, as big as the Auckland Skytower, and attached to the inside of a volcanic rim. The pouakai had woven the nest out of thorny branches and plastered it over with mud.

“I’m not dreaming after all.” Skylark squinted her eyes and wiped the rain away. Where was the pouakai? Flying somewhere looking for other food? The lightning flashed even whiter and Skylark saw, far on the other side of the nest, three giant eggs.

The horror began to sink in. I’ve seen a movie like this, she thought. The pouakai is like the Mother Alien. Soon her eggs will hatch, crack apart, and horrible things with great big razor teeth, snapping jaws and dripping in goo will come out — and I’m their first meal.

Whimpering, Skylark scrabbled around looking for a way out. The sides of the nest were high and impenetrable and, when she tried to climb over them or even fly, she found that she had been tethered to the ground with a piece of twisted rope. After repeated attempts she fell back. She tried to climb again, grabbing at the mud plaster. The mud came away, revealing that skulls and bones of previous victims had been used to seal the nest. Screaming, Skylark scrambled away. Lightning forked overhead and she saw that the entire nest was latticed with bird bones. For a while she went completely berserk, pecking desperately at the rope, yanking at it with her beak and trying vainly to unpick the knot. She realised she was losing her head.

“Skylark O’Shea,” she said sternly to herself. “Calm down, get over yourself, and think this through. The worst case scenario is that you’ll die. Actually, you should be dead by now, but you’re not.” That thought made her feel better. “Where there’s hope there’s life,” she continued, echoing the kind of optimism she’d always scoffed at in her mother. “So although your situation is desperate, it’s not entirely hopeless … is it? Do you really intend being anyone’s dinner? No you don’t —”

The thought of her mother had jolted her. An idea slipped into her brain.

“I’m not going to give up without a fight,” she said.

She sent her message to Cora.

“So she’s alive —”

Overcome, Hoki swayed and her eyes filled with tears.

“Could be,” Bella answered. But she was having serious reservations about what Cora had told her. “Maybe Cora was just dreaming. Can we rely on what she saw or heard?”

“Yes,” Arnie yelled. “After all, I managed to get a message to Auntie Hoki from that place, so why can’t Skylark?”

Still feverish, he leapt out of bed and began pulling a shirt over his head and shoulder sling. He was hyper, going out of his tree, talking to Skylark as if she could hear him: “You have to hang in there, okay? I know how alone you feel. We’ve been through so much, so just hang on ’cause I’m on my way —”

Bella tried to restrain him. “Just where do you think you’re going?” she asked as he headed for the door.

“I’m on to it,” Arnie answered. “Don’t you see? I know the way. I’ve been before. I know where she is. I’ll go through the portal and —”

Bella looked at him as if he was crazy. “Haven’t you forgotten something?”

“Don’t try to stop me, Auntie,”

“The portal doesn’t exist any more, even if it did, how could you fly with your shoulder like that!”

Arnie’s face paled. He slumped against the door. “The portal is closed? What’s wrong with my shoulder?” His face became dark with despair. “There’s got to be another way in. We can’t just leave her there.”

A long silence fell. Then Hoki gave a deep gasp.

“What is it?” Arnie asked.

“Actually, there is another entrance to the past,” she said. “And there is another way of getting back, another way of putting this right.”

Bella froze. She folded her arms. “I don’t want you to talk about it or even think about it,” she said.

Arnie’s hopes mounted. “What is this other way?”

“Through the ripped sky, of course,” Hoki answered. “The same way as the seabirds have taken to get back to the past.”

“I’ll go that way then,” Arnie said.

Hoki shook her head. “I know you really want to go, Nephew, but you can’t. You haven’t got a chance. And there’s another problem.” She slid away and went to the sitting room. When she returned she held in her hands the Great Book of Birds. She opened it at Revelations Chapter Four Verse Six:

“Verily, all that is written will come to pass. The battle of the birds will be fought again. And the outcome will hang in the balance, and many birds on both sides shall perish or be sorely wounded in the fight. Then will be heard the voice of the Hokioi and her flight across the sky —”

With a cry of fear, Bella pushed the book out of Hoki’s hands and it fell to the floor.

“Forget what the book says,” she yelled. “The option you’re considering just won’t work, Hoki, and you know it. I refuse to discuss it with you.”

“You can’t bury your head in the sand like an ostrich,” Hoki answered. “Skylark has to be rescued and there’s only one way to do it.”

“Would someone explain what you two are talking about?” Arnie interrupted. But Bella and Hoki were too busy arguing to hear him.

“If there was a ninety-nine per cent chance that Skylark was still alive, yes,” Bella said. “But it’s been almost two days since Arnie last saw her. If she wasn’t dead then, she must as sure as eggs be dead now.”

“Listen to me, Sister,” Hoki insisted. “As long as that one per cent chance remains, we have to risk it. And the best chance we have to rescue Skylark lies with the flight of the Hokioi.”

“The Hokioi?” Arnie asked. Thank goodness his two old aunties heard him this time.

“In the old days,” Hoki explained, “when the Lord Tane made the Great Forest, not all the birds left the Heavens to come down to the Earth. Some stayed in the upper reaches of the Sky. They became birds of immense supernatural and psychic power. You encountered one of them when thermals carried you too high.”

“The pouakai —”