THE BOOK OF WIRIMU

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 97, 2 May 1941, Page 47

THE BOOK OF WIRIMU

Story by

STELLA

MORICE

Chapter V. TINOPAI HE cool spring air whispered softly among the pale plumes of the toi-toi and played gently with Hini’s dark mane as she stood carved like rock against the first pale-clear light of morning. Hori climbed the hill and put on her bridle, and led her to the whare. He pulled out the saddle and put it on her back and did up the girth. He took a sack with both ends sewn up and a split in the middle of one side, and he tied it on to his saddle. This was his pikau for carrying home the flour and sugar he was going to town to buy. For the flour and sugar he meant to buy to fill his empty flour box and his empty sugar tin. He called to Wiri and lifted him behind the saddle. He called to Tiger and tied him under the Whare. He led Hini to the step and climbed on between Wiri and the pikau, and they rode off down the track and across the river. As they went up the long hill above the Waterfords, they looked back at the beauty of the morning. The rising sun had drawn the mist from the river bed and left it floating like fleeces above the sleeping pa. . Hini neighed loudly to a piebald mare who was feeding with her foal on the hill, and a family of

hares caught at their play crouched with silly flattened ears as they passed. But, by corry, what was that! a sparrow hawk swooped, picked at Hori’s hat and flew screeching to his nest in a tall dead tree. They rode slowly down into the sun-flecked green of the bush. A fantail fluttered ahead, chattering as she led them away through the shadow and the sunlight and the tumult of bird-songs, to the lake, lying like a slab of greenstone in its setting of Raupo. Like greenstone fringed with the pink lake weed. With wild duck floating still and flat as though carved on its smooth green surface. With pukekos on its swampy edge, stalking blue and white on their scarlet legs, always searching in the pinkness. Then Wiri sang, by corry he sang, to frighten away the big Taniwha, his grandmother had told him about. The big dragon she said was hiding beneath the still lake water. When they left the lake the road ran out of the bush into the open country, and Wiri grew very tired as they rode up the long hill. As they neared the top the bushes beside them had a grey, dry look and the banks of the road were very white. The warm air was heavy with sulphur and a big yellow board on the roadside said:

just past the notice, they turned off and went along a track through the manuka bushes, because Wiri was to be left with his grandmother Tinopai, and in a moment they would see her whare. In a moment they did see her whare, and there was Tinopai, wise, kind, comfortable Tinopai, standing in her doorway watching them. Her face was shining like polished copper. Her eyes were still and deep as the river, and her thoughts shone in her eyes like patches of light in a river pool. Her hair hung in greying plaits over the shoulders of her loose red blouse, and her feet were bare beneath the full blue skirt. ¥ She walked slowly to meet them and shook Hori’s hand and pressed her nose to his. She stooped and murmured to Wiri as she took him by the hand and led him into the whare. She made them some téa and fed them on raisin bread and all the time she and Hori talked to each other in Maori. When he had finished Hori got on his horse and rode off towards the town. Then Tinopai lifted Wiri to her knee and stroked his hair and rocked him as she sang her strange old Maori songs, till Win thought in all the world there was no one as comfortable as Tinopai. : (Next week we shall finish this chapter about Tinopai.)

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