That did the trick. The pouakai fell back again, lost its balance and began to twist out of control down through the wind shaft. Roaring with rage, it locked on to Hoki and pulled her down with it.
Helplessly caught in the pouakai’s claws, Hoki didn’t have a chance to free herself until they had reached the lip of the universe. And was the mother pouakai angry? Was she what! Staggering in the air, fierce eyed, she looked at Hoki:
Whoever or whatever you are, I don’t give a shit. This time you’ve really pissed me off.
The pouakai attacked. Hoki sideslipped and followed with a sudden upswing and a hover.
“You want to mess with me?” Hoki asked, facing off. “Even on your best day you’re not as good as I am on my worst.”
Wings back-paddling, Hoki turned at right angles and beat across the universe, striking out for the higher thermals.
“I’ve got to keep in front of her,” she said to herself.
She dropped into a jetstream. Smaller and lighter, Hoki set a cracking pace with a fast deep-pumping wingbeat. Her short wings and long tail configuration, designed for speed and manoeuvrability, allowed her to keep just a little ahead of the pouakai, but it took all of her effort. The pouakai made a bone-cracking lunge, and managed to flick at her. The motion was devastating, and Hoki began to tumble out of control.
Is that your highest speed? the pouakai asked scornfully.
Luck was running out for Hoki. The pouakai closed on her, menacing, positioning itself for the kill. Hoki looked desperately for a way out. But she was in a No Exit street.
“Ah well, I’ve had a good life,” Hoki said. Far below was the green and blue orb of earth. “But I’m definitely not going to die out here in the universe,” she continued. “If I have to go, let it be in the embrace of Papatuanuku, the mother of us all.” Defiant to the last, she yelled at the pouakai. “If you want me so bad, then damn well come and get me.”
Proudly, Hoki tipped, felt the G-forces and let them pull her down. The speedometer went into the red. Reaching 200 kilometres an hour, she dived through the space. The pouakai dived after her. As for Hoki, she had decided that if she had to go, she’d make sure everybody knew about it.
“Hokiiii-oiii! Hokiii-oiii!”
She hurtled across the Heavens. She was the Bird of Destiny. She was the Bird of Fate. She hit the Earth’s stratosphere and her feathers warmed up and burst into flames. Behind her, the same thing was happening to the pouakai. From Earth, they looked like two meteors flaming across the sky, one small, the other large — and gaining.
“Hokiii-oiii! Hokiii-oiii!”
Below, the manu whenua heard the call of the Hokioi. They gathered around Te Arikinui Kotuku, Chieftain Kahu and all the birds of the paepae.
“Remember this day,” Kotuku said with awe. “On this day, after our second war with the seabirds, remember that you saw the Hokioi.”
The pouakai opened its jaws. It extended its neck. Hoki felt its hot and fetid breath. She waited for the pouakai’s beak to make its quick jab, slide through the intersection of bone and skull and impale her brains.
“Oh Lord Tane,” Hoki cried. “I offer my spirit up unto you. All I have ever wanted to do was to serve you in life and unto death. Receive me —”
In her last moments, Hoki thought of Skylark. She also thought of Bella, and wondered how her sister would get on without her.
“Goodbye, Sister.”
But something extraordinary happened. From everywhere in the upper sky came the manu Atua, the supernatural ones of the bird kingdom, God birds of indescribable magnificence. Some of them looked like immense flying dragons. Others like darkly gleaming bats with pearl-veined wings. Some were heavy-bodied, grotesque with mask-like heads and three-digit hands and feet. Others were beings of pure light, of such surpassing beauty, that they took Hoki’s breath away. As they hovered, they wove a screen of incredible brilliance around Hoki so that the pouakai could not get through to her.
But she is mine, the pouakai roared.
The manu Atua stilled, held court, made a collective decision. The pouakai waited for the affirmative. The manu Atua uttered judgement.
Foolish, arrogant pouakai, they said. This one is yours, you say?
The pouakai knew she was lost.
No, of all the Lord Tane’s creatures, this one above all others is his.
The manu Atua swirled in a gigantic carousel, faster and faster, individual birds blurring into one gigantic phoenix. Their wings touched. Lightning crackled, and a skein of death wove around the pouakai. She began to shudder and scream. The electric bolts pierced her carapace, sheeting and sizzling through every vein, reaching to her heart. A sudden discharge, and the pouakai exploded.
For a moment there was silence. Hoki dared not move. Dared not look up on the faces of the manu Atua. When the voices began to speak to her, she nodded in assent.
And now, you, bird of Tane, will you pay the price?
“No!”
On the other side of the sky, Bella heard the voices of the manu Atua. Then she saw Hoki in her mind’s eye. Sometimes Hoki was a bird with wings, sometimes an old woman stabilising herself on her walking sticks.
“Bella? Sister? Can you hear me?” Hoki’s voice whistled in Bella’s mind.
“Yes. And I can see you, Hoki.”
Hoki was hastening across the sky and up the wind shaft. “The manu Atua have agreed that the Great Division may stand. I have to close the ripped sky so that never again will it be challenged.”
“You know what this will mean?” Bella cried. Her voice was like a whirlwind screaming along the corridor of past and present.
“Yes,” Hoki said. “It’s the price, and the time has come to pay it.”
“I won’t let you,” Bella yelled.
At that moment Hoki herself appeared, darting through the ripped sky and fluttering over Bella’s head.
“Please don’t make this difficult for me,” she whistled.
Bella’s face began to stream with tears.
“Why are you crying?” Skylark asked, afraid.
“Hoki has to do her job,” Bella said. “She has to close the sky.”
Arnie, Mitch and Francis gathered around.
“So what’s the problem?” Skylark asked.
“She has to do it from the inside.”
And Hoki flew back to the ripped sky. She became a bird of blinding light and awesome beauty. Suddenly she extended her wings. Her feathered pinions struck at the top right and left edges of the rip. Flames burst out where the pinions had pierced through, soldering the bird firmly so that she could not move. At each strike Hoki arched her neck and crooned with pain.
“Sister —” Bella sobbed.
Hoki closed her eyes. Her head drooped with the exertion. Then she opened her eyes and smiled at Bella. “You know I have to do this. Maybe I’m not so hopeless, after all.”
She cried out again, a scream of anger, and she was an old woman balancing on her walking sticks in the middle of the air, trying to grab the edges of the sky with both hands. She took three deep breaths and, when she cried out again, she was a dazzling bird, pulsing with energy.
The bird began to move its wings, backwards and forwards, faster and faster. The valley filled with light and the roar of the wind. The air blurred.
With a roar, Hoki nailed it.
She began to pull the ripped sky together.
“What on earth was that!” Flora Cornish asked.
She heard a roar and ran outside the diner to see what was causing the commotion. She shaded her eyes and looked up in the direction of the noise. Some Korean sailors from the massage parlour joined her, and cowered in fright.