“You’d better watch out, Skylark,” Kotuku said. Kahu was pushing his beautiful daughter, Kahurangi, forward. “You have competition.”
“Arnie and I are not together,” Skylark said.
“You’re not?” Kotuku teased. She watched Skylark’s face as Kahurangi placed a small lizard in front of Arnie.
“A small token of my esteem,” Kahurangi simpered, batting her eyelids for all they were worth. “Please accept it, strange heroic warrior from the iwi of the future.”
“Gee, thanks,” Arnie said as he swallowed it.
“Gross,” Skylark said.
Now, Kotuku wondered, was Skylark’s disgust to do with the lizard or with Kahurangi’s obvious advances?
“Time to rock and roll,” Arnie said.
All the long afternoon, formations of seabirds had been practising military manoeuvres over the offshore islands. The landbirds’ evening birdsong was muted. Now, darkness was falling and, under its cover, Chieftain Pekapeka and his best bat warriors left their underground caverns to rendezvous with Arnie at the neck of Manu Valley. One minute the branches around Arnie, Chieftain Tui, Chieftain Kahu and Chieftain Ruru were empty. Next minute, bat warriors were settling softly like sinister dreams.
“I hate it when they do that,” Ruru said, shivering. “Couldn’t they knock?”
“What is your command, Chieftain Arnie?” Pekapeka asked, his face twitching with anticipation.
“Your mission, should you decide to accept it,” Arnie said, “is to scout the area between here and the offshore islands. If the seabirds see you they won’t worry because, after all, are not bats creatures who fly in the night? On your report that the air is clear, I will begin our operation.”
With whistles and clicks, Pekapeka ordered his bat scouts to take wing. Soon, they were flapping silently into the air away from Manu Valley. Pekapeka began to scan the sky with his sonar. He had flown the area many times before and recognised the familiar contours of the valley which bounced back to his receptors: the forest below, the waterfall, the river, the lowland leading to the coast. Ahead should be the sea and the three offshore islands. Two were nesting places for the seabirds where they had established their rookeries and nurseries. The third was topped by Karuhiruhi’s fortress. Even as Pekapeka approached he could hear the seabirds at haka, feasting and carousing before the battle to come. “Ka mate, ka mate, ka ora ka ora …”
Pekapeka could also smell the smoke of many cooking fires. But where was the sea? It had disappeared, and instead a solid mass presented itself to his sonar. Something was wrong there too: the mass seemed to be moving.
Puzzled, Pekapeka issued an order to his scouts. “We must grid the area. How far out to the horizon does this new mass extend? Find where the sea begins again.”
Ten minutes later, whistling through the night, Pekapeka reported back to Arnie. “Chieftain Arnie, the seabirds are celebrating on their offshore islands.”
“Karuhiruhi must be overjoyed to see his descendant, Kawanatanga.” Arnie said.
“The seabirds are so confident of victory tomorrow,” Pekapeka continued, “that they have not posted sentries. The sky is clear. However, I must report that the sea seems to have receded from the land. Where the coastline once existed, there is no coastline, nor could we find the new coastline.”
“How can there be land where there was once sea? How can this happen within the space of a day?” Chieftain Ruru asked.
Arnie digested the news, puzzling over it. “All will be made clear when we are airborne,” he said. “Timata.”
He launched himself and gaining the air, waited for Kahu, Ruru of owls and their warrior scouts — a group eight in all — to join him. Kahu’s impetuous warriors were already climbing higher.
“Come back,” Arnie called. The moon had come out, a huge wan eye flooding the sky. “Your silhouettes will be seen against the moon. Stay close to the ground, follow the contours of the land and hide against the darkness where we will be invisible. Keep close ranks. Do not engage the enemy. Do not attack unless attacked. Let’s get in there, assess the situation, and get out. I want no fancy stuff from any of you, is that clear?”
“Not even one tiny aerial encounter?” a hawk warrior asked.
“Save that for tomorrow,” Arnie answered. “Chieftain Ruru, would you lead us? All birds respect the wisdom of the owl clan and know that you, above all others, are experts at low-level flying.”
“As you say,” Ruru answered.
Soundless, he dipped below foliage level, found a slipstream heading down through the Great Forest and planed into the centre of it. Arnie, Kahu and the hawk warriors followed him, cursing whenever they flew into overhanging branches.
“You boys would wake the dead,” Ruru sighed.
Ruru reached the neck of Manu Valley, where the lowland began. Arnie braked and used his binocular vision. “There before us is the reason why the sea has become solid.”
By moonlight, an extraordinary and chilling vista presented itself. For as far as the eye could see, seabirds smothered the sea — albatrosses, mollymawks, fulmars, petrels, prions, shearwaters, gannets, boobies, pelicans, shags, tropicbirds, frigate birds and skuas — a presentiment of ominous power.
“What is this unholy vision?” Ruru asked. “It looks like a Sea of White Feathers.”
“Aha,” Arnie said as he recognised Ruru’s imagery. “Auntie Hoki always wondered who was the original author of the Great Book of Birds. You must be the one, and your owl clan the ones to carry the stories of these times down through all the ages —”
“There must be thousands of seabirds,” Chieftain Kahu interrupted. “Do they all come from the future, Chieftain Arnie?”
“Yes, and these are but a small number of the seabirds that now ravage our world.”
“How can that be?”
“The world of the future has become a rubbish dump. The seabirds are the ones who have most benefited by this. They are the great scavengers of the Earth. Come on, follow me —”
“What do you intend to do?” Kahu asked.
“We must fly across that Sea of White Feathers and make an accurate count of the seabird numbers.”
“It will be suicidal,” Kahu said. “As soon as the seabirds see us, they will rise up and kill us.”
“There’s no way out of it,” Arnie answered. “Without good intelligence we cannot mount a defence to match. Trust me, Chieftain Kahu, I know what I’m doing. When I was in the Army I learnt a thing or two about camouflage. See the moon? As we fly across the sea, it will light our backs, but all the seabirds will see will be our shadows. Although our configuration does not match that of gulls, they will assume we are seabirds.”
Before Kahu could argue, Arnie turned to Ruru. “I will rely on you to do the count. Let’s go. Neke neke.” His strategy was to keep the surveillance team on the move. If they had the chance to think about what they were doing, they could take fright, make a false move and destroy their cover.
The surveillance team had good reason to be afraid. The seabirds were yelling, jostling, laughing with each other over the battle that would come with the dawn. Their voices rose up to Arnie and his team with chilling clarity:
“Just think, my brothers, tomorrow we shall rule the world.”
“We shall divide the spoils amongst us.”
“Kawanatanga has promised me and my recruits all the lands to the east.”
“For my support, he has told me I can divide the lands to the south amongst my iwi. We are looking forward to feasting on the flesh of the landbirds.”