The pouakai roared in response.
Then go about delivering your messages. You have no business here.
“Oh no?” Hoki answered. “Watch this space.”
She flew up to the pouakai’s nest and disappeared over the rim. When she reappeared, she had one of the squawking chicks in her claws. Furious, the pouakai half scrambled, half flew towards her. Calmly, Hoki reversed out of the way. She and the pouakai eyeballed each other. The pouakai rattled and hissed.
Don’t even think of harming my child.
“You took one of mine,” Hoki said, “so I am taking one of yours. Don’t like it do you?” She indicated Skylark. “You wanna do a trade? Then back up. Back up, I say!”
The pouakai understood the deal and nodded.
Hoki turned to Skylark. “What are you like at the sprints, the hundred-yard dash?”
“Hopeless. Me and school sports never worked out.”
“Well, hitch up your skirts, girl,” Hoki said, “because I’m going to persuade the pouakai to follow me. I’ll use her chick to lure her as far away as I can from you. While I’m doing this, I want you to to fly as fast as you can to the place where the sky hangs down to the horizon. That is where the ripped sky is, at the paepae o te Rangi. We’re going out the way the seabirds came in.”
The plan confirmed, Hoki continued her reversing movement, the pouakai’s chick in her claws. The pouakai followed her. Across the sky they went, feinting, attacking, fending like boxers. The pouakai roared and hissed with anger, but Hoki kept her cool. From the corner of her left eye she saw a black hole forming. It began to swell, then widened below her, an inverted cone leading into infinity.
“Go, Skylark!” Weak and exhausted, Skylark crawled out of the crack in the volcano and began to fly in the direction of the ripped sky. Seeing this, the pouakai could not retain her rage.
We had an arrangement. Honour it now.
“Okay,” Hoki shrugged. She dropped the chick into the black hole. Screaming, the pouakai went after it, trying to save it before it disappeared forever.
My baby.
“That’ll keep her busy,” Hoki said. She tensed, wheeled and used a turbo-boost of speed to catch up with Skylark.
“I’d almost given up hope,” Skylark wept. She had crossed almost halfway to the ripped sky.
“You didn’t think I’d leave you out here all alone in the dark, did you? Hush, Skylark dear, don’t you cry. Switch your booster rockets on and let’s high tail it out of here.”
All of a sudden, Hoki heard a distant roar. The mother pouakai had rescued her chick and was placing it back into the nest.
“Don’t worry about her,” Hoki said. “She won’t be able to catch us up now.”
Oh yeah?
The pouakai had an ace up her sleeve. She did a curious thing. As the volcanic island revolved, she revolved with it, like a satellite orbiting the Earth.
“The pouakai is using the speed of the revolving island as a slingshot,” Hoki said, alarmed. “Once she reaches escape velocity, she’ll be able to catch us up.”
Sure enough, there was a series of loud reports as the pouakai broke free of the island and began to accelerate after them. So fast was her flight that she closed in very quickly on Skylark and Hoki. Her talons were braced for deadly duty.
Coming ready or not.
“Just keep on my left wing, Skylark,” Hoki yelled. “Conserve your strength. Glide along in my wake. Cruise in my slipstream. We’re almost there.”
Skylark was whimpering. Ahead was the vertical wind shaft leading to the ripped sky, so tantalisingly near. But the pouakai was crashing through the stars, roaring through meteor showers like a train, getting closer and closer.
Hoki took a gamble. Calibrated the distance. Stalled and sideslipped.
“What are you doing?” Skylark shouted as Hoki fell behind.
“Don’t worry about me. It’s you the pouakai’s after!”
Hoki was right. The pouakai wasn’t about to hunt another supernatural bird. It went for the easier catch. Ignoring Hoki, it grabbed for Skylark. Extended its neck. Snapped its jaws. Missed. Roared with rage as its quarry made it up the wind shaft.
I’m coming to get you.
That’s when Hoki made her move. “Not if I have anything to do with it,” she said. She knew she was no body match for the heavier bird, but as the pouakai went past her she threw all her strength into a powerful side thrust. “Yeeargh!” Body-slammed the bugger. Saw the pouakai’s look as it was pushed off course. Went for the slam dunk.
“Hhhuuuuhhh!” Excreted a stream of splashing and blinding shit into the pouakai’s eye.
Having bought valuable seconds before the pouakai could recover, Hoki sped up the wind shaft after Skylark. Not far above them was the jagged edge of the ripped sky.
“We’re going to make it!” Skylark cried.
But lumbering behind them came the pouakai.
“Go through,” Hoki shouted.
And Skylark fell through the ripped sky.
There was a crack as she did so. It scared the living daylights out of Bella. She fell against Arnie, who grabbed Francis and Mitch to keep his balance.
“What the heck is that —”
Mitch’s shotgun went boom, the bullet whizzing through the air, causing further confusion among the seabirds still trying to get in. To make things more puzzling, a little bird was trying to get out. When Arnie saw the bird coming through the rip, his heart leapt. But she was out of control, rolling over and over, trying to stabilise herself.
“Skylark, oh, Skylark —”
She was going too fast, in danger of going over the cliff. Arnie leapt for her and caught her. Skylark felt his warm hands around her. Saw the bright sunlight. Everything was a kaleidoscope of sky, sea and Manu Valley.
“Arnie —”
Dazed, Skylark looked up and into his eyes. Then the whole world began to whirl around.
“Put her on the ground,” Bella told Arnie. “Quickly!”
With awe, Bella, Arnie, Mitch and Francis watched as Skylark changed slowly back into her human form. Mitch and Francis stared open-mouthed at her transformation.
Skylark looked up at the ripped sky. “Where’s Hoki? She was right behind me.”
The sky bulged and the huge head of the mother pouakai came through the rip, blinked and looked around, surprised. She tried to push her way through.
What have we here?
“Holy smoke!” Mitch shouted.
Arnie’s wits were about him. He let the pouakai have it with both barrels. “Take that, you cyborg freak.”
Roaring with pain, the pouakai fell back through the rip. As she did so, she chomped on some of the seabirds and pulled them with her.
Bella shivered with anxiety. Where was Hoki? She closed her eyes. An image came to her of a small crippled bird buffeted by the currents of Time, trying to get the pouakai’s attention, trying to coax it away from the ripped sky.
“Here kitty kitty kitty,” Hoki called. “Come to Mama.”
The pouakai tried to clear her eyes. Tiny pellets of shot had lodged there like grit. When she saw Hoki she gave a snort of irritation.
Get a life.
After all, the pouakai had found a new paradise, a great new hunting ground. Lots of new food for its chicks. It tried to clamber back through, presenting Hoki with the unseemly sight of its posterior.
“What’s a girl to do?” Hoki asked herself. With a grimace of distaste — Hoki had always been fastidious — she closed her eyes, hoped that her tetanus shot would protect her, and bit the pouakai on the bum.