Close up, she was terrifying. Her face was massive. The eyes were black slits surrounded by red orbs, like a devil’s, and surmounted by triangular patches of white. She had large ear orifices. Her razor-like beak was conspicuously long and covered with horny plates; at its base were quill-like whiskers. All this was surmounted by a crest of three crimson horns.
“Pretty, aren’t you?” Skylark murmured.
The pouakai seemed to be sensitive to aspersions about her looks. She opened her beak and gave Skylark a closeup of her sharp teeth.
Take a look, little one.
Skylark backed away. “Okay, okay, I get the message,” she said. Satisfied, the pouakai began to preen herself, as if she had all the time in the world. No reason to hurry.
Around the pouakai’s throat was a collar of bright red feathers. Her plumage, black and bronze, looked like reptilian scales, shaggy, falling down and around her monstrous body to muscular hindquarters. The wings were awesome, spreading out like knives, black-tipped as daggers and diaphanous as a bat’s. Her legs and feet were heavy and powerful. When she moved her tail swished, long and tapered like a dinosaur’s.
“You’re an alien queen all right,” Skylark said, a hint of admiration and awe in her voice. “No doubt about it.”
Skylark’s attention was taken by the blindworms. They knew they were in deep trouble. There were twelve of them, shining, luminous, wriggling and wrapping themselves around each other, trying to be the one in the middle.
Dear oh dear oh dear, my sisters, what have we come to? Dear oh dear oh dear, my brothers, is there no way to escape our unhappy fate?
“No,” Skylark sighed. “We’re all in the same basket.”
The blindworms heard Skylark and came sliding over to her, sniffing her with their nostrils.
You’re not one of us! What are you?
“Another burger for chicken dinner,” Skylark answered. “Something nice, warm and tasty for the pouakai’s little kiddies.”
Is it that bad, stranger?
“Yes,” Skylark answered, “and it’s just about to get a lot worse.”
From the corners of her eyes, she had picked up a slight movement. The pouakai noticed the movement too. With a cry of joy, she waddled over to the three eggs, the nest creaking and quaking at her footfalls. She inclined her head, listened and purred.
From one egg after another came a faint peeping. The first egg developed a hairline crack as the chick inside jabbed at the shell and prised it open. Stretching and cracking noises followed, and the chick emerged, squealing, as it broke through the albumen and blood of its amniotic fluid. The second chick came too, a nightmarish vision of pink pulsing flesh through wet congealed down. With a scream, the third chick smashed open its shell and fell out, bawling, thrashing its feet and wings. Eyes not quite open. Ugly as.
The blindworms went crazy. They smelt and heard the chicks and knew their goose was cooked.
Something is hungry, sisters. Something is squealing for food, brothers.
Sniffing the air, the baby chicks advanced on the blindworms. Skylark watched them coming and, seeing that they were only interested in the very interesting white wriggling worms, sidled away into the shadows. As for the blindworms, they acted as if they were rabbits and a python was in the room. They simply gave up.
Ah well. Ho hum. Fiddle dee dee. What goes around comes around.
They knew they were done for.
Watching from the sideline, the pouakai gave a lightning swift downward kick and decapitated one of the blindworms. Its stomach and guts cascaded in a steaming heap before the three chicks.
Yes, babies, food.
The chicks pounced on the dead blindworm and demolished it. Horrified, Skylark pressed herself further into the dark. Was that how she would be eaten? Whimpering, she began to saw again at the tether. Another strand snapped. Four to go.
The three chicks were yelping and screaming at the mother pouakai.
More, Mummy, more.
The pouakai shook her head. Nonchalantly, she picked one of the other blindworms up and threw it at the feet of her chicks.
Get your own dinner, children.
The chicks scrambled after the blindworm. They gave it some tentative pecks.
Mmmn, yummy.
In a frenzy, the chicks shredded the worm to pieces. The nest became a butchery site. The chicks exploded into violence, hissing, spitting, crashing and fighting each other over the other blindworms. Very soon, another six blindworms were massacred. Then one of the chicks saw Skylark.
What have we here? Dessert?
In space, nobody can hear you scream.
Back in Manu Valley, day had ended and Mitch and Francis had gone to Tuapa for the night. Hoki knocked on the door to Bella’s room. Bella had stormed off in anger, refusing to even think about Hoki going back to rescue Skylark. When she opened the door she was grim-faced.
“I should never have told you what I heard from Cora,” Bella said. “It’s only given you and Arnie false hope. Look at you both: away with the fairies. There’s another way. I’ll go. I’m stronger than you —”
“But when you change,” Hoki answered, “you’ll only change into a bellbird. I’m the one who will become the Hokioi. I’m the one whose name is imprinted with the genetic code of the Hokioi. I’m the one who can fly in the upper Heavens. It looks like all my pigeons have come home to roost, ne? I cannot escape my destiny. It’s already written, Sister. You and I always knew this day might come.”
“Not like this, though,” Bella said. “Not with this crazy brainless foolishness you seem insistent on carrying out. Look at you. A cripple who has to use walking sticks to get around.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“You’re so hopeless, Hoki,” Bella continued. “When it comes to physical things, you haven’t a show! If you can’t walk without aid, how are you going to be able to fly!”
“I know what you’re saying, but —”
“You’ve never been able to do anything right. Sometimes I wonder whether you know which side is up.”
“You don’t have to rub it in.”
“You’re dead in the water even before you start. No, Sister. No. I won’t let you do it. No.”
From his bedroom Arnie heard the two women arguing. He got up to find out what was happening and was just in time to see Hoki walking out of the house followed by an irate Bella.
“Does everything I say always go in one ear and out the other?” Bella yelled.
Arnie went after them.
Outside, the sky was already turning red from the sunset. Hoki had paused at the back of the house where there was an old armchair under some apple trees. Arnie caught up with his aunties there.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Hoki had that look on her face. “Bella has been trying to persuade me not to go,” she said, “but I have no alternative. I’m going.” She took a deep breath. “And I’m leaving right now.”
“Now?” asked Bella, taken aback. She looked at Arnie as if it were all his fault.
“By my calculations, the pouakai’s island is due to come orbiting back towards our planetary system tonight. I need to be waiting for it when it is closest to earth. If I miss it, there won’t be another chance for Skylark. It’s now or never.”
“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you,” Bella said, compressing her lips. “Well, go then.”