Child of the Dawn (27 page)

 

Dust swirled in the dancing area, raised by the feet of the novices and the women of the lower grades—Pointed-thorn and Seasoned-bamboo. The morning sun shone on backs and bare legs. Sweat gathered and trickled down faces.
 

Ordinarily Tepua enjoyed the practice. Today, however, she kept wishing for the session to end. The bath had helped, but her body had not exhausted its repertoire of tricks to play on her.
 

He breasts strained and chafed against her wrap as she danced. As she swayed her hips, the feeling of her inner thighs rubbing against each other sent little trickles up into the nest between her legs. The sensation created a moist, expanding heat that quickly grew insistent, then demanding.
 

She glanced at the other women. Everyone knew that dance movements caused excitement; such feelings gave fire and spirit to the performance. She had seen the signs in other dancers and felt neither shame nor embarrassment. But the surges of raw lust she felt now could only cause distraction.
 

Aue
! It was fortunate that she was not a man; then her condition would be unmistakable. To make matters worse, she needed urgently to urinate.
 

At last, the dancing master's voice rang out, ending the session. Tepua tried to make herself walk, not run, to the bushes, but halfway there she was overcome by the urgency. She crouched behind some low foliage and, with a groan of relief, released the water she had kept dammed up in her body. She let her head fall forward as her stream gushed softly into the soil, and the maddening sensation eased.
 

Standing up, she was glad to see that the dancers had dispersed. Right now she did not want to talk to anyone, not even Maukiri or Curling-leaf. She walked into a shady breadfruit grove, then leaned her back against a tree and sat down.
 

Beside being hot, the day was humid. Her breasts chafed against her wrap. As she loosened the cloth, her hands brushed against her nipples. She gasped at the warm rush of pleasure that went through her body.
 

Her breasts had often been sensitive lately, and they were not the only part of her that had changed. Her whole body felt warm, languid, earthy. She thought of Matopahu and the last time he had been with her. She remembered the touch of his hands and the look in his eyes.
 

How she had desired him then and how she wanted him now. She found herself trailing her fingers up the inside of her thigh, toward the place that was already damp and swollen, lips opening as if to receive the length of a man....
 

She rolled her hips, amazed at how aroused she felt. She was expanding inside as if she could take in
anything.
If she could only understand what was happening to her.
 

Thoughts of her atoll childhood crept back, scenes of her foster mother, Ehi, and the large family that crowded around her. Young Maukiri and her sisters were there, along with a few older girls. Tepua remembered how one was constantly going off to find her lover. The others would joke, saying that she was already filled with a growing child, so how could she want more?
 

Filled.
Tepua lifted her hand, placed it on her belly. Could that be the answer? There was something strange about her body, a sense of deepening, a sense of change. Could there be a child growing, after all?
 

So stunned was she by the thought that she surrendered to it and lay back against the tree, her mind whirling. She needed to talk to a woman who knew more about these things. Perhaps Curling-leaf could help her.
 

She sighed and stood up. There was no denying that something was wrong. And as she retraced her steps back through the forest, she found that she had to stop once again in the bushes.

 

"You can be carrying and still have a moon flow," Curling-leaf explained, sitting back on her heels in the guest house. "At least it can happen for a while. Do you remember how much there was or how long it lasted?"
 

"Barely two days," Tepua answered, looking up from the mat where she lay. "And the flow was light."

Beside Curling-leaf, Maukiri sat cross-legged, her face solemn, her eyes round.

"Two of my mother's sisters grew big bellies when I still lived at home," Curling-leaf added. "I learned a lot from them."

"So you think—" Tepua broke off.

"If I touch you, I may be able to tell." With a feeling of trepidation, Tepua lay back and drew aside her wrap. Curling-leaf's palm, warm and dry, pressed deeply into Tepua's belly just above the curls of her nest.
 

"My mother showed me how to check for the beginning of a child. She pressed my fingers in, like this. Once you have felt it, you never forget." Curling-leaf's face showed a frown of concentration. "Here. I have your answer."
 

Trembling, Tepua let Curling-leaf guide her hand to the place and press her fingers into the flesh. Low in her belly she felt a small round firmness, like the pod of the
rata
tree. Now all doubts fled. She let out a groan of despair.
 

The rules of the order. No child of an Arioi may live.

Yet she pushed that knowledge aside as a feeling of wild joy burst upon her. How could she explain it? She felt as if she contained a ball of golden light. If left alone, this ball would expand. She would grow round and ripe, sweet and strong, like the breadfruit at harvest.
 

Tepua had often envied women with their outthrust bellies, proudly standing where they could be admired by all who passed. When they came to term, she had heard their cries and knew that these were far more than protests of pain or grunts of effort. Perhaps the act of pushing out the life within ignited something more intense than even sexual release, something that spilled from between their legs in the form of a living, open-eyed child.
 

"It is true," Tepua cried, but her voice sounded too thin and faint to her ears to express the immensity of what she felt. Curling-leaf seemed to understand. Maukiri, staring solemnly, did not.
 

"I am sorry, Tepua," Curling-leaf said. "I can tell that you are hoping, somehow, to hold on to this child."

"I cannot help it." Tepua wished she could make Maukiri understand. How could she explain to her cousin what it felt like? A vast gulf had suddenly been crossed. Tepua had left her girlhood behind.
 

She was seized by an unexpected rush of energy. Leaping up, she pulled her friend with one hand and Maukiri with the other. "Come with me, down to the lagoon. I want to run into the waves and sing and splash."
 

Though their expressions showed puzzlement, the other two came with her to a place where breakers rolled in on a black-sand beach. Usually the waves inside the reef were gentle, but today the wind had whipped up their strength. When Tepua saw that this section of beach was empty, she threw aside her wrap. Maukiri and Curling-leaf shed theirs and they all plunged in. Slowly her companions caught Tepua's mood, and all three began to frolic like children.
 

The waves caught Tepua and tumbled her over, but she fought free and popped up again, leaping high in celebration and throwing spray around her.
 

Matopahu's child.

She slapped the waves out of sheer exuberance, dunked and splashed Curling-leaf and frolicked like a dolphin in the surf.

Oro's child.

Curling-leaf surfaced beside her, her expression grown solemn again, but her eyes still sparkling. She cupped her hands, filled them with foaming seawater, lifted them over Tepua's head to let the water drain out and flow down over her hair.
 

"I am a fool to be happy for you," she said. "But I am."

Tepua reached out, hugged her friend and received a briny hug in return. Over the crash of the waves and Maukiri's delighted shrieks, she shouted, "Yes, it makes no sense. This will only bring me pain. But somehow, I want to shout and sing."
 

Her friend's voice was steady. "It is not something you
can
make sense out of."
 

Curling-leaf groped beneath the water and came up with a handful of seaweed and a starfish of midnight blue, all of which she arranged on top of Tepua's head. "There is your new headdress." She giggled.
 

Tepua took down the slowly curling starfish and held it to the place low on her belly where Curling-leaf had pressed her fingers. She looked out over the reef, at the heaving back of the sea. A voice out of the past sounded in her mind. The priest, Eye-to-heaven, speaking in ritual.
 

"There is prayer in the moving ocean. The ocean is the great
marae
of the world."
 

My...child.

With a sudden mischievous laugh, Maukiri surfaced like a prowling shark, grabbed the starfish away from Tepua, and threw it at Curling-leaf.
 

"You daughter of an octopus!" Curling-leaf shouted, and dragged Maukiri backward into an oncoming roller. Tepua joined the noisy, splashing fray. At last the three staggered ashore, weak with laughter.
 

"She made me swallow so much water that there is a new ocean—inside me!" Maukiri complained to Tepua, pushing Curling-leaf.

"You won't have it long," the accused retorted. "You and your cousin can crouch side by side in the bushes."

Tepua wrung the brine out of her hair. The ocean had reclaimed her crown of seaweed, but she felt as if she still wore it. Curling-leaf's little ritual had been purely impulsive, yet Tepua felt the depth of feeling in it.
 

All three sat down on a log beneath the shade of a huge ironwood, their wraps plastered against their wet bodies, their feet crusted with fine black sand.
 

For a long time they talked, then fell silent. Maukiri finally wandered off.

"She will understand, someday," Curling-leaf said. "For this to come and then go away without some celebration— that would be sad. Our dance in the sea was not much, but at least it was something." She sighed. "What will you do now?"
 

"I have no choice. I must tell Aitofa."

"She cannot punish you," said Curling-leaf.

"I was careless," Tepua confessed. A priest had taught her chants to prevent pregnancy, and had urged her to bathe in the sea after lying with a man. On that night with Matopahu she had been so caught up in her feelings that she had done neither....
 

"Even so, she will not blame you. Look at how often this happens in our troupe!"

 

As soon as Tepua stepped across the threshold of Aitofa's quarters, she wished she had not come. The lodge chiefess looked tired, and there were new lines under her eyes. Tepua sensed a deep weariness of the spirit that made her wonder if Aitofa had already lost the struggle with her rival. Tepua wished she did not have to add her woes to Aitofa's burden.
 

The chiefess greeted her, but her voice lacked warmth. "You look pale. Not more trouble with Pehu-pehu, I hope."

"Only if she finds out. That is why I have come." Tepua tried to keep her voice steady as she explained her predicament.

"You know then what you must do. What you swore to do."

"Noble chiefess, I cannot bear the thought of growing large with this child and then killing it when it is born."

Aitofa was silent.

Tepua's lips and tongue went dry. "Are there ever reasons...for sparing a child?"

"Only when the woman is of the highest Arioi rank. You are far from that. And you understand that your atoll ancestry gives you few privileges here."
 

"The father is Matopahu."

"The father's rank alone cannot help you," Aitofa answered solemnly. "And look how precarious Matopahu's position is now. Even if you were foolish enough to leave the order and keep the child, it would be constantly in danger. Land-crab wants no rivals to his chiefhood."
 

Tepua clenched her teeth, not wishing to be reminded of Matopahu's struggles. "There is another reason I ask for an exception."

Aitofa cocked her head, indicating that she would listen.

"The great gods do not usually bother with our affairs, but you know that Oro has seized me more than once. And when I joined with Matopahu, Oro was there as well. I carry the seed of the god as well as that of my lover."
 

Aitofa folded her arms. "So you ask me to make an exception because the child was sired by Oro. Do you know how many girls with growing bellies have told me the same tale? I thought you, at least, would come up with something more original."
 

"The god did come," Tepua cried, stung.

Aitofa began to tap one finger on her knee, a sign that she was losing patience. "Even if I believed this wild tale of yours, what would I say to the priests? Where is the sign? they would ask. What can I show them?"
 

Defiantly Tepua laid her hand on her belly. "It is here."

Aitofa took a deep breath. "Have you not understood what I struggled to teach you? It was Oro who commanded the Arioi to be childless. How can the god make such an edict, then plant his seed in a woman of his order? It makes no sense, unless he is trying to test your obedience."
 

Tepua's mouth fell open. "Test? No. It is too cruel."

"Be careful, Tepua. Only the priests can tell us what the gods expect of us. And the priests have made themselves clear."

"Yet I know you have doubts about some of their pronouncements.''

"Doubts, yes. But I cannot overturn such a basic rule as this. I have already learned how much trouble even a small rebellion can bring."
 

Is that why you are weak and Pehu-pehu grows stronger
? Tepua wanted to ask the question, but kept silent, knowing the answer would not change anything. She could see that in Aitofa's face.