She was shaking, horrified at herself for what she had already said. Well, she had said it. No point in going back. “I told you! I’m a mouse, a watcher from corners. I don’t have anything to do with the plot. I’m happier if I can just stay to myself, watching. Which I must do, until I come to obeying my mother’s dying words. No, don’t ask. Please please, Colonel . . .”
He frowned in concentration, telling himself not to argue with her, not to accuse her of silliness or stupidity, to take her words seriously though everything in him denied what she was saying. He promised that he would move into the house by morning, after which she sent him away before going upstairs to lie on her bed and cry for all the things she was feeling with no way at all to be rid of them or do anything about them.
When she had cried herself out, she got up, washed her face, returned to her bed, and took up the book that lay open upon the table, determined to lose herself in thinking about something else. After Alicia had mentioned the book, the strange account of their mutual ancestress, the Lord Paramount’s wife, Queen Stephanie, Genevieve had found it in the library.
She read:
This is a story our people tell
Long, long ago on another world, our grandmother te kui nui, mother of us all, heard the voice of all worlds singing.
“E, kui,” the spirit called. “I have a task for you.”
“Oh, lo,” cried our grandmother. “Am I not burdened down with tasks’? Here are children at my knees, here are sons running wild, here are daughters begging knowledge, here are gardens to be cared for, am I not well laden with burdens?”
And the voice said, “This is a greater task than all of those, and on this task the lives of your children and gardens will depend, for I set upon you the task of sailing among the stars in the long time to come.”
And our grandmother did not know what to say for a time, but then she replied, “Oh, great filler ofworlds, surely only those who have passed beyond the world may sail between the stars. Are my children not to have the gift oflife?”
And Tangaroa said, “The time will come when te wairua hohonu needs a service of you, and against that time, I would prepare you.
“You must go to your sons and grandsons and tell them to build great canoes, and you must take all your children and all your belongings, and you must set sail as I shall guide you, to a new land.”
So our grandmother came to her sons and grandsons, who were many, and told them of the command she had received. And after a time of talk, not all of which was sensible or respectful, so that our grandmother was forced to shout loudly, our people set about building the great canoes. And when the first canoe was built, the people came to grandmother and asked what name it should have.
And grandmother said, “It shall be named nga Tumau Hohonu, the servants of the deep, and when it comes to land, the people of that canoe shall take that name forever.”
So it sailed away. And when the second canoe was finished, grandmother said, “It shall be named nga Kaikaukau Whetu, the star swimmers, and when it comes to land, the people of that canoe shall take that name forever.”
This is the story my people tell. Others say this did not happen, that it was not until the great ship left the world that our people were visited by the spirit. And others say that the spirit never spoke, it was all accidental, that we just happened to be there, for we and the spirit left the world together. I, Stephanie, sometimes believe one and sometimes another, but I like to think of the ancestral canoes setting out upon the great and trackless sea, nga matawaka hollowed from the trees of the forest, sailing on and on, into the emptiness at the edge of the sky.
However it happened, I came to be he Kaikaukau Whetu, a star swimmer, and I am still he tumau hohonu, a servant of the deep . . .