The Whale Rider
Authors: Witi Ihimaera
The Whale Rider
Witi Ihimaera
A RAUPO BOOK
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
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First published by Penguin Group (NZ), 1987
Copyright © Witi Ihimaera 1987
The right of Witi Ihimaera to be identified as the author of this work in terms of section 96 of the Copyright Act 1994 is hereby asserted.
Digital conversion by Pindar NZ
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.
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ISBN 978-1-74228-708-9
For Jessica Kiri and Olivia Ata, the best girls in the whole
wide world
This story is set in Whangara, on the East Coast of New Zealand, where Paikea is the tipuna ancestor. However, the story, people and events described are entirely fictional and have not been based on any people in Whangara.
He tohu aroha ki a Whangara me nga uri o Paikea.
Thanks also to Julia Keelan, Caroline Haapu and Hekia Parata for their advice and assistance.
prologue
the coming of kahutia te rangi
one
In the old days, in the years that have gone before us, the land and
sea felt a great emptiness, a yearning. The mountains were like a stairway to heaven, and
the lush green rainforest was a rippling cloak of many colours. The sky was iridescent,
swirling with the patterns of wind and clouds; sometimes it reflected the prisms of rainbow
or southern aurora. The sea was ever-changing, shimmering and seamless to the sky. This was
the well at the bottom of the world and when you looked into it you felt you could see to
the end of forever.
This is not to say that the land and sea were without life, without
vivacity. The tuatara, the ancient lizard with its third eye, was sentinel here, unblinking
in the hot sun, watching and waiting to the east. The moa browsed in giant wingless herds
across the southern island. Within the warm stomach of the rainforests, kiwi, weka and the
other birds foraged for huhu and similar succulent insects. The forests were loud with the
clatter of tree bark, chatter of cicada and murmur of fish-laden streams. Sometimes the
forest grew suddenly quiet and in wet bush could be heard the filigree of fairy laughter
like a sparkling glissando.
The sea, too, teemed with fish but they also seemed to be waiting.
They swam in brilliant shoals, like rains of glittering dust, throughout the greenstone
depths — hapuku, manga, kahawai, tamure, moki and warehou — herded by
shark or mango ururoa. Sometimes from far off a white shape would be seen flying through the
sea but it would only be the serene flight of the tarawhai, the stingray with the spike on
its tail.
Waiting. Waiting for the seeding. Waiting for the gifting. Waiting for
the blessing to come.
Suddenly, looking up at the surface, the fish began to see the dark
bellies of the canoes from the east. The first of the Ancients were coming, journeying from
their island kingdom beyond the horizon. Then, after a period, canoes were seen to be
returning to the east, making long cracks on the surface sheen. The land and the sea sighed
with gladness:
We have been found.
The news is being taken back to the place of the Ancients.
Our blessing will come soon.
In that waiting time, earth and sea began to feel the sharp pangs of
need, for an end to the yearning. The forests sent sweet perfumes upon the eastern winds and
garlands of pohutukawa upon the eastern tides. The sea flashed continuously with flying
fish, leaping high to look beyond the horizon and to be the first to announce the coming; in
the shallows, the chameleon seahorses pranced at attention. The only reluctant ones were the
fairy people who retreated with their silver laughter to caves in glistening waterfalls.
The sun rose and set, rose and set. Then one day, at its noon apex,
the first sighting was made. A spume on the horizon. A dark shape rising from the greenstone
depths of the ocean, awesome, leviathan, breaching through the surface and hurling itself
skyward before falling seaward again. Under water the muted thunder boomed like a great door
opening far away, and both sea and land trembled from the impact of that downward plunging.
Suddenly the sea was filled with awesome singing, a song with eternity
in it, a song to the land:
You have called and I have come,
bearing the gift of the Gods.
The dark shape rising, rising again. A whale, gigantic. A sea monster.
Just as it burst through the sea, a flying fish leaping high in its ecstasy saw water and
air streaming like thunderous foam from that noble beast and knew, ah yes, that the time had
come. For the sacred sign was on the monster, a swirling moko pattern imprinted on the
forehead.
Then the flying fish saw that astride the head, as it broke skyward,
was a man. He was wondrous to look upon, the whale rider. The water streamed away from him
and he opened his mouth to gasp in the cold air. His eyes were shining with splendour. His
body dazzled with diamond spray. Upon that beast he looked like a small tattooed figurine,
dark brown, glistening and erect. He seemed, with all his strength, to be pulling the whale
into the sky.
Rising, rising. And the man felt the power of the whale as it
propelled itself from the sea. He saw far off the land long sought and now found, and he
began to fling small spears seaward and landward on his magnificent journey toward the land.
Some of the spears in mid flight turned into pigeons which flew into
the forests. Others on landing in the sea changed into eels. And the song in the sea
drenched the air with ageless music and land and sea opened themselves to him, the gift long
waited for: tangata, man. With great gladness and thanksgiving he, the man, cried out to the
land.
Karanga mai, karanga mai, karanga mai.
But there was one spear, so it is told, the last, which, when the
whale rider tried to throw it, refused to leave his hand. Try as he might, the spear would
not fly.
So the whale rider uttered a prayer over the wooden spear, saying,
‘Let this spear be planted in the years to come, for there are sufficient spear
already implanted. Let this be the one to flower when the people are troubled and it is most
needed.’
And the spear then leapt from his hands with gladness and soared
through the sky. It flew across a thousand years. When it hit the earth it did not change
but waited for another hundred and fifty years to pass until it was needed.
The flukes of the whale stroked majestically at the sky.
Hui e, haumi e,
taiki e.
Let it be done.
spring
the force of destiny
two
The Valdes Peninsula, Patagonia. Te Whiti Te Ra. The nursery, the
cetacean crib. The giant whales had migrated four months earlier from their Antarctic
feeding range to mate, calve and rear their young in two large, calm bays. Their leader,
the ancient bull whale, together with the elderly female whales, fluted whalesongs of
benign magnificence as they watched over the rest of the herd. In that glassy sea known
as the Pathway of the Sun, and under the turning splendour of the stars, they waited
until the newly born were strong enough for the long voyages ahead.
Watching, the ancient bull whale was swept up in memories of his own
birthing. His mother had been savaged by sharks three months later; crying over her in
the shallows of Hawaiki, he had been succoured by the golden human who became his
master. The human had heard the young whale’s distress and had come into the
sea, playing a flute. The sound was plangent and sad as he tried to communicate his
oneness with the young whale’s mourning. Quite without the musician knowing
it, the melodic patterns of the flute’s phrases imitated the whalesong of
comfort. The young whale drew nearer to the human, who cradled him and pressed noses
with the orphan in greeting. When the herd travelled onward, the young whale remained
and grew under the tutelage of his master.
The bull whale had become handsome and virile, and he had loved his
master. In the early days his master would play the flute and the whale would come to
the call. Even in his lumbering years of age the whale would remember his adolescence
and his master; at such moments he would send long, undulating songs of mourning through
the lambent water. The elderly females would swim to him hastily, for they loved him,
and gently in the dappled warmth they would minister to him.
In a welter of sonics, the ancient bull whale would communicate his
nostalgia. And then, in the echoing water, he would hear his master’s flute.
Straight away the whale would cease his feeding and try to leap out of the sea, as he
used to when he was younger and able to speed toward his master.
As the years had burgeoned the happiness of those days was like a
siren call to the ancient bull whale. But his elderly females were fearful; for them,
that rhapsody of adolescence, that song of the flute, seemed only to signify that their
leader was turning his thoughts to the dangerous islands to the south-west.