Tui had already reclaimed the perch of chiefs. “The seabirds are hungry,” he warbled. “The seabirds are voracious. The seabirds are power hungry. They have already committed the Ultimate Heresy. They have already broken the treaty —”
Birds were hopping up and down and scratching marks into the branches in their frenzy.
“If we don’t stop them now they will overturn the Great Division. Today Aotearoa, tomorrow the rest of the world. Do you want this to happen?”
“No!” the landbirds screamed.
“Then is it agreed? Is it to be war?” Tui asked. “Kei te tautoko?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“So there was a war?” Skylark asked.
She was sitting with Hoki beneath the sacred tree, looking across the Manu Valley to the sea.
“Yes,” Hoki nodded, “and the seabirds were the aggressors. They should have remembered the dictum ‘Ko Tane mata nui’, Tane sees everything, but they were so arrogant. They flew even in Tane’s face when they decided to overturn his Great Division. They thought they could get away with it. More seriously they had caught the landbirds hopping. They were way ahead in terms of preparations for war —”
It was Te Arikinui Kotuku who realised that the odds were favouring the seabirds.
“Aue,” Kotuku said to Tui, “what a big job you have now. How, my Lord, can you possibly bring our troops up to speed? The only iwi that is battle ready is Kahu’s. It is hopeless —”
Kotuku let out a theatrical sigh but, under cover of her gorgeous plumes, winked at her sister leaders. They knew very well what she was doing: appealing to Tui’s vanity by implying, in ever such an indirect way, that his chieftains just weren’t up to the job.
“Don’t worry, Kotuku,” Tui answered, puffing out his breast feathers in a show of manliness. “I will order Kahu to begin compulsory military training, and to put our young warriors through a strict physical fitness regimen. Look at them! They’ve all grown so weak and plump from living the good life for so long. A war will do them good.”
“He should talk!” Huia said to Te Arikinui Korimako. “Has he looked in the river lately? Even his puku drags along the ground when he walks. It’s no wonder that he has trouble getting it up — I mean, getting his weight up into the sky —”
“Sly one,” Te Arikinui Karuwai. “Sly one.”
“Be reasonable,” Chieftain Kaka interjected. “When was the last time any of us led a raiding party on an enemy? We’ve lived peacefully all these years and we’ve lost our skills.”
“That may be true, but the seabirds won’t be as reasonable as us,” Kotuku said. “As far as I’m concerned, a long peace in our landbird history is not an acceptable excuse.”
She turned to Tui, flirting with him again.
“Kotuku is right,” Tui intoned. He lifted his voice to the assembled birds. “Let all landbird chieftains of all bird iwi and clans assign taiaha tutors to teach the ancient arts of warfare! All young men who have achieved mature feathers are to be called up. It is time for them to sharpen their beaks and claws! Time to get fit, start some serious wing ups, weight training, claw boxing, route flights and battle drills! Timata! Begin!”
Over the following week even Te Arikinui Kotuku was impressed at how quickly the chieftains achieved a level of battle readiness. But did she ever let up? She sidled up to Tui again, and honeyed words dripped from her beak. “Your leadership is of the highest quality,” she said, stroking his feathers. “You have managed to get our warriors to an acceptable military standard. But, e rangatira, you need a battle plan to go with it.”
“Who are you to tell us what we should be doing?” Chieftain Kawau interjected. “Let the men do what men do and let women do what women do.”
“Don’t be so complacent, you teke,” Te Arikinui Korimako said. “Are you so ready that you are prepared to be in the front rank? After all, it will be your lagoon over which the war will be fought.”
“I–I-I —” Kawau quailed.
“What’s your battle plan, Tui?” Te Arikinui Kotuku repeated. “What sophisticated military techniques and stratagems are you going to deploy?”
Tui saw her point. He turned to his other chieftains, Titi and Kaka in particular, and gave them a withering look. “Hoi! Do you fellas think we can just turn up at the battlefield and expect our superiority to win the day? And what is that superiority anyhow? If any of you think that the seabirds will recognise our divinity, our mana and our chiefly status and retreat, think again. They won’t, and we all know it.” Tui puffed out his lacy collar and the double tuft of curled white feathers at his throat. “Kotuku is right,” he said. “We need a plan.”
There was a rustle in the trees and Chieftain Ruru came flying into the discussion. You think his going to sleep during the day was a natural inclination? Get a grip. It was all because of boredom. Ruru relished the idea of a battle. “Did somebody mention my name?” he asked.
“So it was,” Hoki said, “that guided by Te Arikinui Kotuku’s cool and measured hints the landbirds were able to set up their defensive system — and they had a battle plan to go with it.”
Worked out by Ruru, the plan called for the strongest landbirds to lead a defensive war party. Chieftain Kahu, of course, was Chieftain Tui’s left hand man and Second in Command. Among the other leaders were Chieftain Kuku of the pigeon clan, Chieftain Kaka of the parrots and Chieftain Kokako of the crows. Chieftain Pitoitoi was assigned to forward sentry duty. Straws were drawn for the great honour of sending out the three challengers in the first battle against the seabirds. The honours went to Chieftain Koekoea of long-tailed cuckoos, Chieftain Piwakawaka of fantails and, joy of joys, Kahu himself.
“A strong team,” Tui approved. “Solid. Ace.”
With increasing confidence, the landbirds practised their drills. All the while, far off, they could see the seabird ranks circling above the offshore islands and hear the savage chants and haka coming across the sea.
One afternoon, the chanting of the seabirds stopped.
An uneasy silence fell across the Great Forest.
“Well, boys,” Tui said. “I think the time’s come, ready or not. We should expect a dawn attack. Let everyone be in their positions. Is everybody clear on the battle plan? The war party will be at the forefront of the defence against the seabird army. They will engage the seabirds and then —”
At that moment, Hoki’s lesson was interrupted by a flash of sunlight. She shaded her eyes and looked down from the clifftop to Manu Valley below. A car was coming up the valley road. Cora, returning home after her rehearsal.
“And then?” Skylark asked. She didn’t want Hoki to stop telling the story of the war. But the mood was broken.
“We’d better get back home,” Hoki answered. “Your mother will worry about where you are. We’ll resume the story later. And by the way —”
“Yes?”
Hoki looked at the sacred tree. Rebellious, Skylark followed her gaze — and took a step back. For the first time she felt the mana and power of the tree. She saw it with new eyes, glowing, utterly commanding, and she felt she should kneel before it.
“You should never have followed me up here,” Hoki said. “Only a few people know of the tree’s existence. We who have guarded it all these years have a commitment to defend it unto the death. On no account must you come up here without my and Bella’s express permission.”
“You still haven’t told me about the heliacal rising of the planet Venus,” Skylark called as Hoki started her walk back down the track. Did Hoki really think she would let her get away so easily? No way.
Hoki stopped. “I was afraid you would ask me that,” she said. “It’s a special conjunction of the rising of the sun with the appearance of the planet Venus. Only at such conjunctions can extraordinary events beyond human understanding occur. All ancient cultures who watch the skies for new stars, comets and any astronomical disturbances to time and space know this.”