The daughter of the dawn

by William Reginald Hodder

“Now, Friend of the Forest Tree, I will answer your words to me about the woman Miriami Kerei.

“Many moons of fasting and singing of karakias passed over my head before the Great Tohungas

“ ‘THIS, O PAKEHAS, WAS THE LEGEND GIVEN ME BY MY FATHER.’ ”

began to speak to me in dreams. One night the spirit of my father stood before me and told me that the woman upon whom the tohungas had set their true mark was travelling southwards with her husband, inland, towards Hokitika. She was the woman by whose magic the age-long fetters of Hinauri should be broken; therefore he bade me find her and take her to the white cave, where she must dwell as sacred as Hinauri’s self until the object of her coming was accomplished. Therefore, I summoned the warriors of my tribe and sent them to guard all the mountain ways to the south of the ‘Pensive Water,’ and to take the man and the woman without injury and bring them to me at the boundary of the Great Tapu, which enclosed the plain and the sacred mountain.

“At the end of half a moon they returned with the pakeha and his wife. She was a comely wahine, with eyes like those of a Maori chieftainess, but they held more of the ‘magic of a woman.’ O Pakehas, have you looked into a dark lake among the mountains and seen the star Tawera shining there all alone? Like that was the light of Miriami’s eyes; like that was the spirit far within them. I do not remember the pakeha’s name, but I remember learning by the signs he made to me, that he had journeyed from Hokitika to Wakatu to meet his wife, who had come in a great canoe from the land beyond the sea, and that now they were on their way back to Hokitika. I was sorry, and my heart went out to the pakeha, but the word of the tohungas was to be obeyed. I could not let him go his way, lest he should bring a great army against the mountain for revenge, so I ordered the tongueless men of the temple to bear both man and woman to the mountain, for there I meant to deal with the man according to the customs of our ancient magic. By a secret entrance at the back of the mountain, which no man might find—the ‘way of the lizard’—then by the secret ‘way of the fish with wings,’ which no man can travel without guidance, I had them taken to the white cave, where I showed them the stone and explained as much of the ancient story as I could by signs. The woman understood me, for a clear light came in her eyes as she gazed at the stone. At that moment the sun ray, coming through a rift in the crags outside, fell through the opening like a shaft of gold, and shone upon the white fetters of the Bright One. Then I saw that the Tohungas’ real mark was on the woman, for her eyes became fixed. She held out her arms to the stone with a cry, and the pakeha caught her as she fell. I knew now that she was matakite,^[11] and had seen Hinauri within the stone.

“When she came out of darkness she spoke to the pakeha with many words, and I judged her meaning to be this: that she would stay in the cave and release Hinauri from the stone, and he would stay with her; but when they made me understand this I replied by signs that the man must go, but the woman must stay. He grew angry, and showed me with his hands that he would go and call the pakehas together and bring them with guns against the mountain, and take the woman away by force.

“At this I ordered the tongueless men to bind the pakeha again. Then I signed to the woman that he should be taken down and set free, and that if she would watch from the opening of the cave she should see him go. This quieted her, and I conducted the pakeha down through the secret ways; but before setting him free I tatooed upon his breast one of the magic signs of the temple—the sign of silence and forgetting, and rubbed into it an ointment which has power to make a man forget the events of his life while the tohunga lives who cast the spell over him. There is another ointment, O Kahikatea, which will cause a man to forget only the events of a single moon, or at least to recall them dimly as dreams. But it was necessary that the pakeha should forget everything, and he went forth from the mountain as one in a trance, from which at sunset he would awake in his right mind, but as a man who can speak the words that he always spoke, and do the things which he always did, yet can remember neither his own name nor the face of his friend. This, O men of to-day, is a word of the ancient magic for which our lower tohungas seek in vain.

“Then I did many things for the comfort of the woman Miriami—that is the name by which she bade me call her, O Wanaki. I placed mats within a recess of the white cave and brought her food and water and firewood, and in it all I made her understand that she was tapu^[12], and she grew to trust me. At her bidding I procured through my tribe some sharp instruments for her with which to break the bonds of the Radiant One, and also some books, that she might learn to speak the Maori tongue. When this was done she showed me the ‘magic of the woman’ by which Hinauri should return. She would break and cut the stone away from the divine form within, so that it should stand free.

“When I knew this I fell at her feet and worshipped her. For many moons she laboured, and though I heard the chipping of the tools upon the stone—the breaking of Hinauri’s fetters—I set not my foot within the cave. Eight moons passed away, and the ninth was growing old, when one day she waited for me outside the entrance to her abode, on the white steps that lead down into the lower parts of the temple.