“We wait for the signal from Arnie,” Skylark said.
Hopping down from the shotgun, she checked the system of winches, pulleys and ropes which Arnie had arranged so that the shotgun could be fired. Six of Ruru’s strongest owl warriors were ready to take the rope in their beaks and pull.
But Skylark was bothered. She was sure that one item on her checklist was missing. What was it? It was something important.
Then Kawau came flying out of the sun. “The seabirds have breached Manu Valley,” he said.
With a cry Karuhiruhi urged the seabird army forward. “Charge! Take no prisoners!”
The ranks of landbird defenders buckled and broke apart.
“They’re through,”Arnie said “It will only be a matter of time before they overrun us.”
“We can hold them a while longer,” Tui answered. “Ara! Look —”
He pointed his wing at a birdfight between six seashags and three aggressive kaka; and the seashags were coming out much worse for wear. Arnie remembered Flash Harry and the kaka colony on Joe’s island.
“He kaka kai uta, he mango kai te moana,” said Tui as he watched one of the kaka warriors deliver the coup de grâce. “The kaka feeds just like the shark.”
Throughout the sky, the battle had broken up into individual and desperate birdfights: kea against albatross, shoveler against gannet, parakeet against petrel, bellbird against prion, cuckoo head to head with fulmar, crow with mollymawk. Darting in between were the valiant remnants of the swifts, joined by the smaller birds — rifleman, robin, silver-eye, thrush, tit, grey warbler, waxeye, wren, yellowhead — squeaking and chirruping, trying to divert attention so that their bigger cousins could make the fatal thrust, the lethal slice of claw or cut of beak.
Chieftain Kea and his stocky warriors were right in the thick of it. Arnie well understood why they had earned a fearsome reputation as sheep killers. This time their target was a flock of albatrosses who were braying across the sky in an attempt to shake their kea attackers off.
Elsewhere, Arnie saw Chieftain Kuruwhengi and his shoveler tribe entering the fray. Working in pairs, and in tandem, the shovelers used their speed and body weight to slam the seabirds to smithereens. Flying very fast with short, rapid wingbeats, they closed on their targets, banked, rocketed and bang: another gannet went to the Great Bird Heaven in the sky. Using similar tactics, Chieftain Kotare and the kingfisher clan joined the melee. Flying at considerable force, with a churring noise like a jet plane descending, they speared their opponents in skilful rapier thrusts of beak to beak.
But the seabirds were unstoppable. “How can you turn back the tide in full flood?” Tui asked Arnie in despair. “How can you stop a forest fire when it is raging through the trees? How can you stop the coming of the night? This is our twilight —”
Arnie sounded the retreat. He hoped that Skylark was ready.
“Fall back! Regroup at the inlet.”
Skylark was anxious. The noise of battle was drawing closer and closer. All around her, the birds who had been assigned to protect the lagoon were growing nervous. “E kui, will the seabirds kill us? Will they take us as their slaves? What will they do to our children?” Te Arikinui Kotuku, Te Arikinui Huia, Te Arikinui Korimako, Te Arikinui Parera and Te Arikinui Karuwai walked among them, soothing their fears.
“Hush,” they said. “Trust in the Lord Tane.”
“There will still be time for a treaty,” Chieftain Titi interjected. “I told you all right from the start that to fight the seabirds was the wrong thing to do. Now we shall suffer for it.”
Kotuku turned a baleful yellow eye on him. “Kra-aak. Kra-aak,” she warned, waving her beak back and forth as if she was sharpening it. “Enough of your talk of a treaty, Titi. All of you, kia kaha, kia manawanui. Have strength. Be of brave heart.”
The landbirds settled down. The robins began to sing a beautiful waiata of comfort. As the strains drifted across the lake, others joined in. With hope and faith restored, the song grew fierce with passion. Seizing the moment, Te Arikinui Kotuku, eyes blazing and feet stamping, began a women’s haka. Her strength and conviction reminded Skylark of Hoki. Things of value must always be fought for. “Ka whawhai tonu atu, ake, ake ake! We shall fight on forever and ever!”
Skylark was so stirred, she didn’t notice that Te Arikinui Huia had come up to her side. “Tell me, Skylark, you who come from beyond a thousand birdsong mornings, do great things happen to the landbirds?”
A deep pang of sadness came over Skylark. How could she tell Huia that by the year 2003 AD at least fifty of more than 100 native birds species would have disappeared? That the huia clan itself would become extinct and that the only place you could see a huia was as a stuffed bird in a museum? How could she tell Huia that the noble moa, New Zealand eagle, laughing owl, Eyles’ harrier, bush wren, New Zealand crow, Chatham Island fernbird and New Zealand coot would also become extinct? That at the very last moment the black robin, stitchbird, saddleback, takahe and kakapo would be brought back from the brink to live their lives on protected sanctuary islands?
Skylark decided to answer the question like Hoki and take the long way round.
“Great things do happen for the landbirds,” she said. “For a time, you become the rulers of the Great Forest of Tane and your progeny is as numerous as there are stars in the sky.”
“For a time?” Te Arikinui Karuwai of robins asked.
“Yes,” Skylark nodded, “until the coming of the Lord Tane’s next great creation — man. He is born far beyond the horizon and his seed spreads far and wide across the world. It is one of these seeds — that sown at Raiatea in French Polynesia — which spawns the race who eventually come by many canoes down to these southern islands at the bottom of the world. It is a bird, the long-tailed cuckoo who, during regular migratory flights from east of Fiji, leads man here. With man the birds create a partnership.”
Skylark turned to Huia. “For instance you, Te Arikinui Huia, are elevated to high status by the First Man. They call you the bird of Whaitiri. Because of your beauty, they honour you as a bird of the gods.”
“My beauty?” Huia asked. “You flatterer you.”
“Not only that, but because you have twelve tail feathers you are revered as a sacred bird. Twelve is a sacred number and you are regarded as looking after the twelve appearances of the moon every year. Your feathers are therefore much desired because they give prestige and power to the owner. They are used as barter and passed from tribe to tribe. Land, women, greenstone could be exchanged for one such feather. However, with the arrival of the Second Man, all things change —”
That was the beginning of the end of the time of the birds. This second man cut down the native forest, logging it and farming the land. He sprayed chemicals across the trees and killed off native species — birds, mammals, flora as well as fauna. He brought with him his companions — mice, rats, wild cats, dogs, stoats, ferrets, weasels, hedgehogs, possums, deer, goats and the marauding honeybee, which competed with the birds for food. When that food diminished, man’s companions turned to the eggs, chicks or the adult birds of the Great Forest. Slowly but inevitably the bird species diminished. Picked off one by one by man himself. By gun. By car. Often for the fun of it.
Man, the toxic being.
“And will this thing, this man, look like the ghost that appeared to burn down the sacred tree?” Huia asked.
Skylark drew a human in the dirt.
“What? No wings?” Huia laughed. “Where are its beak and claws? How could the Lord Tane think of creating such an ugly creature!”