Daughter of the Reef (17 page)

The task progressed by striking first with the coarsest side, then slowly working toward the finest. Hard-mallet generously allowed Tepua to use one of her prized cloth beaters, and in many other ways tried to make her feel welcome. The hollow
tok tok tok
as the mallets struck the beam was a joyful sound and often the women's voices rose in chants or work songs.
 

These peaceful days did not last. One morning, as Tepua was kneeling at the beam, enjoying the fresh breeze and the clatter of mallets, the headman's guards admitted an unusual visitor. She paused in her work to peer at the newcomer. Between the dust and the bodies of the men who escorted him, she could see that he did not wear Maohi dress. In truth, there was a disconcertingly familiar look about the visitor, but he disappeared so quickly into the headman's house that she could not be sure what she had seen.
 

Uneasily, she turned back to her work. It was not long before a womanservant came from the house with news. The visitor was a trader, she said. He had come to pay respects, and ask permission to remain awhile in the underchief's district.
 

When the stranger stood in the shaded doorway, still speaking to Pigs-run-out, the words of their conversation drifted to Tepua. The trader spoke slowly, evidently unused to the Tahitian dialect. He used the hard “k” sound that Tahitians always omitted.
 

Her
tapa
beater froze in her grip. She knew the accent. And when he stepped out into daylight, she saw the finely plaited matting of his skirt and the patterns of tattoos—alternating squares of black—that swept down from each shoulder to border his chest. He must have come from an island in her own group!
 

She studied the stranger more closely. He walked with a quick determined step and swung his shoulders in an arrogant way. He had a rugged dark face and hard black eyes that returned the contemptuous stares of the Tahitians around him.
 

She found herself watching him with a mixture of longing and dread. Just to see a man of her own people made her heart hammer as hard as the beater she'd been using. Was he here only to trade, she wondered, or for some other purpose?
 

Suddenly the trader turned his head as if he knew he was being appraised. His sharp gaze crossed the courtyard and she felt it settle on her. His forehead wrinkled, then his brows rose. She tried to duck among the other women, who were still bending to their work, but he had already seen enough.
 

She heard him cross the courtyard with purposeful steps. Quickly she turned the back of her hand away from him. The tattoo of her family meant nothing to Tahitian eyes, but this man might recognize it.
 

Then he crouched before her, staring intensely into her eyes. He spoke rapidly in the atoll dialect, the “k” and “g” sounding wonderful to her ears. He asked her name and how she had come there. She longed to free her own tongue to answer, and to ask what he knew of her family, but she dared not reply. Instead she made gestures with her eyebrows and head to indicate that she did not understand. When he persisted, she answered only in the soft Maohi manner she had learned.
 

A hand on the visitor's arm brought his inquisition to a halt. The hand belonged to one of the headman's warriors, but Pigs-run-out, standing beside him, had given the order. The trader shrugged off the guard's grasp and turned away.

“I have given you permission to trade shell hooks for cloth, not to meddle with my women,” the headman warned. “Be gone before I revoke your privilege.”
 

The stranger looked as if he were about to argue. Then, with one last glance at Tepua, he turned and strode away.

With uncertain fingers she picked up her mallet again. The headman's guards had gone to escort the trader from the compound, but Pigs-run-out still stood over Tepua. When she glanced up, she saw his measuring stare.
 

“You have a knack for attracting attention, woman,” he said in a caustic tone. “Perhaps I should learn something more about you.”
 

Tepua averted her eyes and clenched the mallet.

“I have heard that
motu
women are different. Maybe you will show me.” He laughed softly. “Yes, soon, when I feel the need for a change.” Tepua stared at her work, saying nothing, until she felt his shadow slide off her and heard him amble away. Then she let out a long, low breath and hit the cloth so hard that she almost tore it.
 

“Gently, gently,” said Hard-mallet, laying a cool hand on top of Tepua's. “He is all talk and little else. I have been with him many times, so I know.” She gave Tepua a shy, yet roguish wink.
 

Tepua frowned. Compared with her new problem, the headman was a minor worry. This trader was not from her own island, but she realized that he might have seen her on a visit. Even if he did not know her, he had certainly heard by now of the sea disaster and the lost bride. Such news traveled quickly through the atolls.
 

He would be trading in the district, talking to all the men. What if he learned that she once had called herself a chief's daughter? She needed to find out what he was thinking, what he might do if he discovered her identity. She knew only one person who might be able to help her now.
 

Late in the day, after Hoihoi had gone off for a tryst with her Papara man, Rimapoa sat in his yard making a new albacore line from the inner bark of the
roa
bush. Raw fiber lay on a banana leaf before him and the growing cord he was making was tied to his big toe. Rolling fibers on his bare thigh, he formed two separate strands, then twisted the pair tightly into a two-ply cord.
 

When he glanced up and saw Tepua approaching his house, he yanked the cord from his toe and jumped up to greet her. “My flower, it has been so long,” he chided, though he could not be angry with her for more than an instant. “And the headman's guards, I am sure, never gave you my messages.” He put his hand on her shoulder and tenderly greeted her with a pressing of noses.
 

He felt his desire stirring, but sensed her reluctance. He sighed, knowing that he would continue pleasing her in every way he could. It did not matter to him how long he must wait. He looked at her face, and saw worry in her eyes.
 

“Rimapoa, I have been unkind to you,” she said quietly.

“It is nothing. The headman keeps you busy. I understand why you cannot get away.”

“Even so ...” She looked down, her voice trailing off.

Then he noticed that the back of her hand was red and swollen, crossed by a network of newly tattooed lines that overlaid the old design. “What have you done?” he asked in alarm.
 

She winced when he tried to touch her hand. “Something I delayed too long. The
tatatau
who did this is a master of his art. He promised it will look like a flower when it heals.”
 

Seeing that she was fighting her tears, he tried to soothe her, until she finally explained about the trader's arrival. “I do not know what this stranger wants,” she concluded. “If he learns who I am, he may go back and tell my people. That is why I must hide the mark of my family.”
 

Rimapoa laid one gentle finger on her lips. “Shh. We will talk more about it later. First, I have a gift for you.”

He got down on his knees and reached for a loosely tied bundle he had stored under a bush. Over the past days he had often prepared similar ones, but Tepua had not come to claim them.
 

Hoping the shade had kept the bud fresh, he drew it out. Yes, it was still crisp, beaded with dew, and had opened into a star-shaped flower with petals whiter than the palest coral. He touched the moist waxy petals with his forefinger. With the flower cupped in his palms, he turned to Tepua. “I picked it early this morning in the hills. It is called
tiare-maohi
.”
 

Tepua took the tiare by its stem, touched it, smelled it, all with such an open look of wonder that Rimapoa sorrowed for her. What kind of life had she led, so empty of such beauty?
 

“Did you have flowers on your atoll?” he asked softly.

“None like this.”

“Let me put it in your hair,” he said. With gentle fingers, he separated the strands of her hair and wove the flower's stem skillfully among them. When he stepped back to admire his handiwork, he felt a rush of tenderness. Standing there, her face tilted up to him, her body bronzed by the golden light of late afternoon, the
tiare
shining in her hair like a star, she seemed like a goddess from the old legends.
 

He was almost afraid to take her in his arms again, but when he did, he clasped her to him tightly, speaking old words that his grandfather had taught him, words that were the deepest expression of fondness for the beloved.
 

“
Ta 'u tiare 'apetahi 'oe
,” he breathed into her hair. “The tiare itself wilts when compared with your beauty, woman of the atolls.”
 

Though she clung to him for comfort, he sensed that she was still too troubled to think of pleasure. For her sake, he tried to turn his thoughts elsewhere. “Do you know that a flower like this once gave me a fright?” he asked as they sat down together beneath a breadfruit tree.
 

“A flower frighten you? Now you are teasing me.”

“When I was a stripling and as arrogant as Front-tooth, I visited the island Urietea with my father. We stayed there for several days. One morning I rose long before sunrise and walked up a great mountain called Temahani. When the sun started to rise, from all about me came sounds like darts hitting a tree.”
 

“Someone attacking you!”

“I thought so, and ducked fast. But then, just in front of me, I saw a bud pop open as the first rays of the sun struck it. The stem split and the petals flew out. And then another and another until the air was filled with the noise. Pop-pop-pop-pop, just like this.”
 

“This same flower?” Tepua inhaled the fragrance of the
tiare
.
 

“No. Only on far Urietea do the buds make such a noise. Here in Tahiti we leave the task of frightening people to chief's and high priests.” He had meant only to be clever, but he saw that his words brought a shadow across Tepua's face. “I have been thinking about this atoll man who worries you so,” he said, reluctantly coming back to her problem.
 

Tepua frowned. “I wish I could have talked with the trader. He might have heard what happened to my family. I do not know if I have anyone left!” Her voice shook and tears shimmered in her eyes. “But I cannot let him learn who I am...”
 

Rimapoa stroked her hair and tried to comfort her. “Do you think the man actually recognized you?”

“I cannot be sure. He grew angry when I did not answer in his dialect. Perhaps he once came to a religious ceremony on my island and saw me—when I was still maiden-to-the-gods.”
 

Rimapoa wished she would forget that part of her past. “Remember,” he said gently. “Your life is changed now. You are under the headman's protection.”
 

“Pigs-run-out,” Tepua scorned. “He is but a big lump of
poi
. I know my people, Rimapoa. Tahitians may look down on us as savages, but we are like coconut crabs. We fight hard and we are tenacious. If this man wants to know who I am, he will find out. And then he will return with his friends and try to take me away.”
 

“I will not let that happen. No one is going to take you from Tahiti. Tomorrow, I promise, I will find out what that scoundrel is thinking.”
 

 

The next morning, Rimapoa rose early, hoping to get his fishing done before the day grew hot. He went out alone, because his assistant, Front-tooth, had gone to visit cousins in a nearby valley. Rimapoa did not follow his usual habits. Since the albacore had started biting well lately for everyone, he decided to risk sailing within sight of one of the double canoes used for trolling. The fishing would be better over the albacore hole where the
tira
worked.
 

He had a second reason for watching this other boat. When its fishing was done, he thought it might lead him to Tepua's trader. The
tira's
crew always had a need for pearl-shell hooks.
 

He set a floating sea anchor and cast his lines, but his gaze kept straying to the
tira
. It was well made, better than any craft he could hope to own. So fine was the boat and so high its reputation that its owners had bestowed it with a name, something rarely done except with sacred craft that belonged to a chief. It was called
Reef-wrecker
, in honor of its hulls of tough
tamanu
wood, which had battled many a submerged shoal and broken off chunks of coral.
 

Rimapoa once had worked aboard that boat. He remembered the smell of sweating salt-sprayed men, the creak of the fish crane as it swung, and the splash of the albacore bursting from the water. He shook his head ruefully. If he had stayed with the group, he might have earned himself a share in the boat and its equipment.
Reef-wrecker
was communally owned—by women as well as men, for it was the fishermen's wives and daughters who netted the red mullet used as bait.
 

But too much quarreling had ended that possibility. He gazed at the great canoe with longing, recalling its solid feel beneath his feet. Now the men who had been his companions called him a fish stealer. He watched, trying not to feel envious as
Reef-wrecker
began to troll.
 

As soon as the crane swung down to drop the baited hooks into the water, a fish struck. When the men pulled it up, gleaming and thrashing, he saw that it was a big one, the albacore known as
aahi mapepe
. But soon his own lines grew active and he nearly forgot the other boat. He was busy for a time fighting to bring in several smaller, but no less tenacious fish. When he finally glanced again at the trolling canoe, it had raised its crane and was paddling for home.