The thought of her mother had jolted her. An idea slipped into her brain.
“I’m not going to give up without a fight,” she said.
She sent her message to Cora.
“So she’s alive —”
Overcome, Hoki swayed and her eyes filled with tears.
“Could be,” Bella answered. But she was having serious reservations about what Cora had told her. “Maybe Cora was just dreaming. Can we rely on what she saw or heard?”
“Yes,” Arnie yelled. “After all, I managed to get a message to Auntie Hoki from that place, so why can’t Skylark?”
Still feverish, he leapt out of bed and began pulling a shirt over his head and shoulder sling. He was hyper, going out of his tree, talking to Skylark as if she could hear him: “You have to hang in there, okay? I know how alone you feel. We’ve been through so much, so just hang on ’cause I’m on my way —”
Bella tried to restrain him. “Just where do you think you’re going?” she asked as he headed for the door.
“I’m on to it,” Arnie answered. “Don’t you see? I know the way. I’ve been before. I know where she is. I’ll go through the portal and —”
Bella looked at him as if he was crazy. “Haven’t you forgotten something?”
“Don’t try to stop me, Auntie,”
“The portal doesn’t exist any more, even if it did, how could you fly with your shoulder like that!”
Arnie’s face paled. He slumped against the door. “The portal is closed? What’s wrong with my shoulder?” His face became dark with despair. “There’s got to be another way in. We can’t just leave her there.”
A long silence fell. Then Hoki gave a deep gasp.
“What is it?” Arnie asked.
“Actually, there is another entrance to the past,” she said. “And there is another way of getting back, another way of putting this right.”
Bella froze. She folded her arms. “I don’t want you to talk about it or even think about it,” she said.
Arnie’s hopes mounted. “What is this other way?”
“Through the ripped sky, of course,” Hoki answered. “The same way as the seabirds have taken to get back to the past.”
“I’ll go that way then,” Arnie said.
Hoki shook her head. “I know you really want to go, Nephew, but you can’t. You haven’t got a chance. And there’s another problem.” She slid away and went to the sitting room. When she returned she held in her hands the Great Book of Birds. She opened it at Revelations Chapter Four Verse Six:
“Verily, all that is written will come to pass. The battle of the birds will be fought again. And the outcome will hang in the balance, and many birds on both sides shall perish or be sorely wounded in the fight. Then will be heard the voice of the Hokioi and her flight across the sky —”
With a cry of fear, Bella pushed the book out of Hoki’s hands and it fell to the floor.
“Forget what the book says,” she yelled. “The option you’re considering just won’t work, Hoki, and you know it. I refuse to discuss it with you.”
“You can’t bury your head in the sand like an ostrich,” Hoki answered. “Skylark has to be rescued and there’s only one way to do it.”
“Would someone explain what you two are talking about?” Arnie interrupted. But Bella and Hoki were too busy arguing to hear him.
“If there was a ninety-nine per cent chance that Skylark was still alive, yes,” Bella said. “But it’s been almost two days since Arnie last saw her. If she wasn’t dead then, she must as sure as eggs be dead now.”
“Listen to me, Sister,” Hoki insisted. “As long as that one per cent chance remains, we have to risk it. And the best chance we have to rescue Skylark lies with the flight of the Hokioi.”
“The Hokioi?” Arnie asked. Thank goodness his two old aunties heard him this time.
“In the old days,” Hoki explained, “when the Lord Tane made the Great Forest, not all the birds left the Heavens to come down to the Earth. Some stayed in the upper reaches of the Sky. They became birds of immense supernatural and psychic power. You encountered one of them when thermals carried you too high.”
“The pouakai —”
“The giant ogre birds, like the pouakai or his cousin the poua, circumnavigate the world,” Bella cut in. “Some of them have sworn eternal vengeance against man for what he has done to the world. If hungry or enraged, they have the awesome power to devastate entire territories. They prey on man and devour him wherever he settles.”
“This doesn’t explain the Hokioi,” Arnie said, his patience wearing thin.
“I’m coming to that,” Hoki continued. “The realm of the supernatural birds can only be negotiated safely by supernatural birds themselves. Whoever goes through the ripped sky has to be one of these birds, one who is not only able to survive the perilous winds and currents of space, but also has the leave of the manu Atua, the God birds, to whom the Lord Tane entrusted this realm. The Hokioi is one of these birds sanctioned to travel through the upper sky realm. It was known as the Spirit Messenger of the Gods and of Immortal Life.”
Arnie’s face set with determination. “Then we have to find this bird.”
Hoki looked at Arnie as if he was dumb.
“You’re looking at her,” she said.
Darkness, rain and forked lightning.
On an island rolling through deep space, Skylark was busy trying to break free of her tether. She was chattering away, talking to herself, and it helped her because it made her feel as if she wasn’t so alone. Mind you, some of her dialogue was inane, but who else was around to hear her? “No pain without gain,” she said as she hopped the length of her tether, her sharp eyes looking for some weakness, some flaw. She found one: a spot where the tether was frayed and most thin, connected by seven strands loosely bound together. “Aha! When one door closes another opens.” Oh, if only she had that penknife! There had to be something else she could use. She found it: the sharp edge of a long curved beak, the remnant of some earlier meal enjoyed by the pouakai. “Waste not, want not,” she said.
At the same time Skylark noticed a small subsidence in the floor of the nest. She hopped over to investigate: Yes! Scraping away with her tiny feet she saw that with a little bit of work she might be able to squeeze through.
If I can’t go over the top or sides, I’ll go through the bottom, Skylark thought to herself, but first things first. She went back to the curved beak and looked at it intensely. “I know you belonged to a bird which didn’t escape the pouakai,” she said. “Please help me to do what your owner couldn’t.”
Skylark took the beak in hers and began to saw. “Time to get down and dirty,” she said. Her progress was agonisingly slow. She had no idea how long it took her to cut through one of the strands. “Six to go —”
An ear-splitting shriek interrupted her work. She yelped and ran for cover. From out of the darkness came the pouakai. “Fee fi fo fum,” Skylark said. “I’d forgotten how gigantic you were.” As the pouakai circled the nest, Skylark saw a clutch of wriggling blindworms in her claws and remembered the dark uppermost Heavens. “So that’s your happy hunting ground.”
With a dizzying swoop, the pouakai glided down to the nest. She flapped her wings, causing a swirling whirlwind, stalled and landed. Brought back to reality, Skylark managed to saw through another strand. Five strands left. But she was as firmly tied as ever.
The pouakai released the blindworms into the nest. She didn’t bother to tether them as she had done Skylark. After all, they had no wings and they were blind. The pouakai cocked her head and checked out Skylark. She gave a low growl and opened her beak menacingly — and her breath was absolutely foul. “You need to see an orthodontist immediately,” Skylark said. The pouakai gave a menacing cluck, hiss and rattle.