“A Little Child shall Lead Them”
It was just an ordinary stone about the size of a swede turnip, with nothing particular in size, shape or colour to distinguish it from many another in the bed of a mountain stream, but it had held a whole village in terror, and would have compelled all, men women and children, to spend at least one night in the bush but for Matareu the teacher.
The village was Groi at Nara, and late one afternoon Poe Ava, wanting some food, went to his garden, but found some one had been there before him, and had cleared off with what he and his family had expected to eat. Poe had no intention of taking that quietly, so hastening back to the village he began a long oration about the wrong he had suffered, and wound up with the threat that he knew where to find the sorcery stone which had belonged to his family for so long, and he would bring it to the village and call upon its spirit Aikaika. He was the master and maker of the thunder, and would send it with lightning and rain and demolish the village, as a punishment for the theft.
Excitement soon reigned in the village. Women gathered food and valuables into their kiapas (the large netted bag) and got ready to hide in the bush. The children catching the spirit of fright began to cry, and the dogs joined in with their dismal howl. They always do when there is any excitement.
Queen Koloka carried to Matareu the teacher news of the terrible threat, but it made little impression on him, and in a few minutes he was in the village trying to prevent the exodus, and put courage into the people. By promising that he would go and see the stone he so far succeeded that few of the people left the village, but that night there was no laughter, and no children were playing round about the houses.
Poe tried to magnify the size of this terrible stone, as he had the evils that would follow its introduction into the village. He was sure it was far too heavy for Matareu to lift, but when he found Matareu determined to see the matter through, he promised to take him to the hiding-place in the morning.
When the morning came, of all in the village only one, a young fellow who had lived with the teacher for some years, had courage enough to risk seeing the stone. Matareu, Poe and this boy started off, and in time halted near a big tree. Then exaggeration number one was exploded, for the stone was found to be small enough to be put into a cracked cooking-pot.
“There is the stone,” said Poe, “but you must not touch it, if you do your hand will shrivel up; but if that boy touches it he will die on the spot.”
“We will see,” answered Matareu, and going to the pot he turned the stone out on the ground.
That was too much for Poe, and he took to his heels, but from a distance seeing that nothing dreadful happened to Matareu, and hearing him calling, he returned.
Matareu is a real believer in prayer, and, there under the shadow of the big tree, with the broken cooking-pot, and the sorcery stone at his feet, and Poe and the boy standing by, he offered a prayer that light might come to Poe and that he might know there was but one God, not Aikaika, but Jehovah.
The stone came to the village, but it was Matareu who carried it. The people were again ready to run when they saw it in his hand, but he called that it had done him no harm and would do them none, and with that sent it bounding over the uneven ground. He was in his element. Determined to show that the stone was a stone, and nothing more, he put it in the fire where his food was being cooked, and still nothing dreadful happened. Later he placed it on the verandah of his house, but the house remained safe and those in it were not sick, and gradually the fear of the people wore away, and they would sit on the same verandah with this representative of Aikaika, but none would touch it.
Matareu’s baby girl succeeded where her father had failed. She had no fear of the stone, and as it was fairly round she started it rolling along the boards, until it rolled off the verandah. The little one followed it to the ground, and her little playmates there joining in, they rolled that much-feared stone all over the place, and had a grand time. Their parents called to them to leave the stone alone or it would hurt them, but their reply was, “It had not hurt Matoakana, and will not hurt us.”
The little child had led the rising generation at Nara out from the bondage of fear of the stone and its master the dreaded Aikaika.