Witi Ihimaera - The Whale Rider

‘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.