“But I hate flying,” Skylark moaned. The brightness became so intense she had to close her eyes. She felt giddy from fighting against the descent, and she felt as if she was spiralling out of control. As much as she hated to follow Arnie’s example, she realised that pretending to be a sky diver was the only way to get out of this mess. And because Arnie wasn’t around, she let out a most unladylike scream of terror.
“Eeaarggh!”
The tunnel spat Skylark out. She had the sensation that she was falling through a huge sky. She felt coldness. She felt currents of air …
Then something nudged her.
“You can put on your brakes now,” Arnie said. “And you can open your eyes.”
“I don’t want to look,” Skylark said. Even so, she peeked out of her left eye and saw the Southern Cross directly above. She would have to remember that when she and Arnie needed to find their way back. The Time Portal was between the two pointer stars.
Skylark took a deep breath and looked down. Big mistake. For a moment vertigo overwhelmed her, and she screamed again. Who would catch her if she fell?
“You can use your wings now.” Arnie said as he flew alongside her. He saw that she was frightened, and tried to calm her fears.
Skylark remembered what she was, spread her wings and stabilised. Her heart stopped beating so fast. Her breathing became normal. She would have thanked Arnie for his solicitude, but he spoilt it by smiling like an idiot.
“What!” Skylark asked him.
“I heard you as you came out of the Time tunnel,” he kidded her. “What’s with the ‘Eeaarggh’?”
“I was practising my karanga,” Skylark sniffed.
“Your karanga? Do you want to frighten the birds away? Come on, Skylark, admit it. You were scared, weren’t you! You were out of your tree!”
“A Masters in avian aeronautics is not part of my CV,” she answered. “Nor is finding my way without a map.”
Arnie laughed, then quickly became more sober. The Southern Cross had winked out and, in its place, was a primaeval sky. Planets whirled around like pinballs. Comets trailed fiery tails from north to south. Strange shapes like winged snakes were gathering above them.
“I’m getting a bad feeling about this,” he said. “I think we’re in the highest Heavens, the uppermost reaches of the sky, where the giant pouakai lives.”
Don’t look back, Lottie had said. Fly like hell and get the blazes out of there.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that,” Skylark said. “We’d better not stick around.”
This time it was she who folded her wings and dived. Arnie zoomed after her. All the way his feathers were prickling, and he had the sense that he and Skylark were being followed.
“Hurry, Skylark!” he urged.
Down, down, down they went, dropping from one Heaven to the next. Not until he felt they were safe did Arnie call out to Skylark that she could rest.
“Well, wherever we are,” Skylark said when he caught up with her, “one thing’s for sure. You’re not in Guatemala now, Dr Ropata.”
Below, the sky became dark with thickening clouds. A distant blue star was trying to break through the cover. Everything was rippling, faster and faster, and all around them the sky was transforming from one shape into another. From far off came a glow.
“That’s it,” Arnie said “We’re in a time warp. It’s not just a question of where we are but also of how far back we’ve come —”
The clouds shimmered with the shifting pastels of the dawn horizon. As the glow brightened, they rippled with blues, ochres, vermilions and crimsons. Right at the centre of the glow emerged an orange core.
“The sun is rising,” Arnie said.
“But look at it! It’s so huge, so bright, and the sky, Arnie, it looks so new as if, as if —”
Shades of pink began to spiral out from the core of the sun. They were followed by shades of crimson which, as they reached the earth’s atmosphere, filled the air with auroras that bathed the sky with shimmering beauty. Blessing it, purifying it, sanctifying it. Benediction after benediction.
Skylark turned to Arnie. “You’re right,” she said. “We’ve done it. We’re back at the beginning of Time when the Lord Tane made the world. This is the First Sky, and —” She looked up. Remembered the Great Book of Birds. The clouds were opening like a huge gate. From the other side of it came swathes of glorious excited song. Then there was a boom as the gates opened, and the sound of a laughing voice: “Go then, my impatient ones!”
Skylark took one look at Arnie. “Clear the way!” she yelled.
Brightly coloured ribbons were falling from the sky above them. As they dropped closer, Arnie saw that they weren’t ribbons at all. They were feathers. They were —
“Holy cow!” Arnie said.
Skylark was already streaking clear and away to the perimeters of the sky. Arnie sped after her, spearing into the orbiting sun, and hovered. Currents of disturbed air chased after him.
“It’s the great exodus,” Skylark said with awe. “The Time of the Falling Feathers.”
Great fleets of birds were corkscrewing down through the sky. Dancing, twisting and turning, whirring and jostling, they filled the air with grandeur. As they descended, they sang their songs of liberation, melodies such as the world has never since heard. “The world is ours, sing praises to Tane for his bounty —”
“Let’s follow them,” Skylark said.
She dived after the birds. When she had penetrated the clouds she saw that the world below was filled with light, and thousands of birds — grebes, dabchicks, pigeons, tui, pelicans, herons, egrets, shovelers, cranes, bellbirds, crakes, dotterels, plovers, sandsnipes, curlews, whimbrels, godwits, huia, greenshanks, turnstones, knots, dunlins, sanderlings, kea, parakeets, cuckoos, kingfishers — were making their way across a brilliant azure sea. Way out on point were albatrosses. Guarding the upper air was a flight of hawks.
“Hey, there’s some of my cousins!” Arnie said. Skylark watched as he joined the hawks. One in particular was very playful, and Skylark knew intuitively that she was a female. But there was no time to protest. All of a sudden she felt the buffeting of the wind.
Shadows were cast in the sky. Skylark found herself in the slipstream of some hard-pressed swans and heard them chanting: “Hii haa! Hii haa!” What were they doing? Skylark moved out of the shadows and saw that the sky was filled with hundreds of giant canoes. Each canoe was made up of groups of swans flying in close formation.
“Neke neke! Neke neke! Keep your ranks!” The giant sky-going waka cruised above and around her, making a slow descent. Across their backs, hanging on for dear life, were moa, kiwi, weka, moorhens, kakapo, penguins and other flightless birds being carried down to the Earth. Flycatchers, finches and starlings twitted and twirled among the swans, soothing their fears. Authoritative kaka, like canoe captains, shrilled their orders, encouraging the swans onward. “Toia mai, nga moa! Ki te urunga, nga kiwi —”
Skylark felt her breath catch with wonder. She even failed to notice Arnie’s return until he nudged her. “My cuzzies wanted me to stay with them,” he said, irritated she hadn’t missed him. “One of them was a cute terciel,” he hinted.
“What’s that?”
“A female,” he said nonchalantly. “But I told her I was with you.”
“You can go if you want. I can always ask for help from some of my kind,” she said. Two could play that game.
To prove her point, Skylark flew off to join some bush wrens. She assumed they would welcome her with open wings. But some of them started to jostle her and she was soon surrounded by a small group of males who were getting too close for comfort. She slapped one of the bush wrens with a wing and hurried back to Arnie.