Just as quickly as it had started, the feeding frenzy was over. The seabirds resumed their slow procession towards the offshore islands. All that was left was water stained with blood and bits and pieces of the catch.
The crew, open-mouthed, began to haul in the net. Nothing.
Mitch thought of Manu Valley. He thought of Hoki and Bella.
“We have to go back to Tuapa,” he said.
Skylark finished her coffee. She saw Bella heading off to set her traps. A few moments later, Hoki appeared and began walking up the cliff path. She had binoculars slung around her neck.
Hoki must be going to the lookout point, Skylark realised.
For a few moments she watched Hoki’s ascent. Then she took a deep breath and turned her mind to the most difficult mission of the morning: giving Cora her wake-up call.
“Mum?”
Cora was lying with a sleeping mask over her face. She was also wearing her high heels; they were sticking out of the end of the bed. She had got back very late last night.
“Go away,” Cora moaned.
“I haven’t made you a cup of coffee for nothing.”
“I didn’t get any sleep at all,” Cora wailed. “Isn’t there some way we can turn off the birds?” She reached grumpily for the first cigarette of the day.
“Mum, do you have to smoke?”
Cora frowned. “Let’s make a deal today, honey. You don’t talk about my smoking, I won’t talk about your weight.”
“Whoa,” Skylark said. Cora was rocking today. Well, there were two ways of handling Mum’s ultimatums. One was to rock on with the issue; the other was to be kind to the dear. Skylark chose to be kind. “So how did the rehearsal go?”
“The rehearsal? Oh! The re-hearsal!”
Immediately Cora was awake, sitting up in bed, plumping the pillows around her, reaching for her coffee and ready to dish Skylark the goss. “Honey, all I can say is that Ronnie is very lucky that I happened to be in town. I mean, it’s not his fault that the girl who plays the lead can’t sing and the boy who plays the hero can’t dance and has no sex appeal whatsoever — but after all it is a college production.”
Skylark always loved it when her mother played the star who comes in the nick of time to save the production.
“I watched the run-through,” Cora continued, waving her hands to indicate it was so-so, “and then Ronnie and I got down to business. Ronnie — he has such lovely brown eyes, just like a puppy — asked me what I had in mind for my specialty routine. You know the story, don’t you? It’s set in the 1960s and famous rock star Conrad Birdie is drafted into the army. Just before he gets his hair cut he makes his final appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Well, a light went on in my head and I remembered something —”
Cora was in full flight now. She gulped at her coffee, took a long drag on her cigarette and brought Skylark into her confidence.
“Can you remember, honey, when I did my Madonna number at the TVNZ Christmas party a few years ago?”
Who could forget it, Skylark thought dismally. Mum was trying the comeback trail and chose to sing “Like a Virgin”. Unfortunately, all that her frenetic, excruciating performance showed was that underneath her makeup was an ordinary and desperate woman — and certainly not a virgin — trying to hold on in a world that had grown young.
“I said to Ronnie, ‘How about this! Not only is Conrad Birdie in the show but also —’” Cora was winding up to her big idea — “Madonna!”
“But Madonna wasn’t around in the 1960s,” Skylark said.
“A mere trifle,” Cora sniffed. “Since when did you become so pedantic?” Lost in a vision of her own cleverness, Cora burst into song: “I wanted everybody to love me …” She forgot the words half way through, saw the look on Skylark’s face and hastened to explain. “Luckily, Ronnie has the song on CD, so this time I’ll lipsync it.”
“That’ll help,” Skylark said, without meaning it.
“It’ll all come together this time,” Cora went on. “I even had a fitting for my costume, and one of the girls over at the massage parlour has a blonde wig — you wouldn’t believe how many times Korean sailors ask her to put it on — and I’ll sing the song, and then I’ll turn to Conrad Birdie and give him the sweetest kiss.”
Cora closed her eyes and pursed her lips. Skylark winced, embarrassed, and then was cross with herself. Mum was one of the world’s courageous souls. She put herself out there, in the spotlight. What you saw was what you got. How many people were that brave?
“So what do you think, honey?” Cora asked.
Skylark knew she could never let her mother down. After all these years, when the audiences had slowly dwindled, she was still there to clap.
“Great, Mum. Just great.”
An hour later, Lucas turned up to take Cora down to a dress rehearsal.
“What are you doing here?” Cora laughed. “Where’s Ronnie?”
“I told him I’d collect you,” Lucas said, which was a more polite version of the words he had used to warn Ronnie off his patch. In his hand he had a small bouquet of plastic roses. “These are for you,” he said. They looked suspiciously like the ones Flora Cornish had on the tables of her diner.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Cora laughed.
Cora accepted the flowers and then, with a rush and a roar she and Lucas were off.
No sooner had they gone than Mitch Mahana turned up.
“Hello, Skylark,” Mitch smiled. “Home alone? Is Bella or Hoki around?” He seemed anxious about something.
“I don’t know where Bella’s gone,” Skylark told him, “but last time I saw Hoki she was walking up the cliff path.”
“I know where to find her,” said Mitch. “Catch you later.”
Curious, Skylark watched as Mitch ascended the path. He reached the midway point and paused, looking out to sea. There was something so frightening about his stillness that Skylark turned and followed his gaze.
What was that shadow over the sea?
Then she realised: seabirds, hundreds of them, circling over the offshore islands.
“That does it,” Skylark said to herself. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this, and I’m going to do it now —” With that, Skylark took off after Mitch.
When she reached the summit she saw Mitch and Hoki talking earnestly. She also saw something she hadn’t noticed before:
A tree. But no ordinary tree. This one was skeletal. Bony, with many branches but no leaves. It looked like two hands, cupped like a bowl, with fingers clutching at the sky. There was something grand about the tree, something profound, and had Skylark been receptive she may have understood. But she had other bones to pick.
Hoki and Mitch didn’t hear Skylark arriving. They were taking turns to look at the gathering birds through Hoki’s binoculars.
Hoki’s voice was grave. “Thank you for coming by with your news,” she said to Mitch. “You are right to be anxious and to tell me off for not involving you earlier.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Mitch said. “I should have worked it out myself. I should have realised that the heliacal rising of the planet Venus is only two mornings away. No wonder the seabirds are arriving.”
The heliacal rising of the planet Venus?
“Two mornings left to stop what has been prophesied. Skylark is the key. Only she has the power to lock the seabirds out so that the prophecy is not fulfilled.”
I’m the key? What prophecy?