Free Isle of Tears by Deborah Challinor

village. Isla forgot most people’s names almost immediately, and knew her siblings would, too. She did, however, remember that the elderly, imperious-looking gentleman, whom Mere said was one of the village’s tohunga, or learned men, was called Te Katate. And that Mere’s daughter,
    an attractive young woman with a small baby at her breast, was Ngahere, and her son, a hefty but heavily muscled young man with a perpetual smile on his face, Harapeta.
    ‘Ye must have had them when ye were verra young,’ Isla commented.
    ‘Not really. Ngahere and Harapeta are our two youngest. We have three other children. The first was born when I was fifteen,’ Mere replied, then laughed at the startled expression on Isla’s face. ‘Our other daughters are living with the hapu of their husbands, but they visit often. Ngahere married a man from Waikaraka, so has remained here. Harapeta has not yet taken a wife.’
    The other person to have an immediate impact on Isla was the ancient woman who had led the chanting when they had first arrived. Instead of beckoning to the woman to come and meet the newcomers as she had everyone else, Mere led them to where the woman sat, not on the ground, but on a wooden ladder-backed chair placed near the head of the largest mat. Approaching the woman with considerable deference, Mere introduced her as Pikaki, Ngati Pono’s oldest living member.
    She was so aged in fact that Isla had to will herself not to stare, hoping that the twins would also remember their manners, but a quick glance told her that Jean was standing with her mouth hanging unbecomingly open. She tugged discreetly on her sister’s pinafore and was relieved when Jean dropped her gaze and stared instead at the old woman’s feet, which were encased in a pristine pair of very fine men’s silk-embroidered carpet slippers.
    Pikaki’s face had clearly seen the passing of many, many years.Her dark skin was cross-hatched with myriad wrinkles, which had eliminated her natural expression lines. Both eyes were milky, though she appeared to be staring directly at Isla, and she had worn her kauae for so long that the lines marking her chin and darkening her lips had spread and faded to a deep jade that rendered the pattern almost indiscernible. The skin at her neck hung in loose folds, her twisted hands were knobbed and yellow-nailed, and her frame was as tiny and fleshless as a bird in winter. She wore a bombazine skirt and blouse that were too large for her and so old that they were turning green, heavy jade pendants in her elongated ears, and a copper bangle around one chicken-bone wrist. Her toothless gums were clamped around a clay pipe, the smoke from the bowl wafting upwards and staining her thin white plaits a bilious yellow. But despite the slippers and her obvious frailty, she had about her an air of immense dignity and, Isla realized after a moment, power. Was this woman the real head, the paramount chieftainess?
    ‘Whaea!’ Mere said loudly. When she had Pikaki’s attention, she said something in Maori and gestured at the McKinnon children.
    Pikaki leant creakily forward in her chair. ‘Eh?’
    Mere said it again and, after a moment, Pikaki beckoned to Isla.
    Isla stepped forward, desperately hoping that the old woman would not touch her. There had been elderly women in the villages at home of course, but none, she was sure, quite as ancient and as wizened as this one.
    But Pikaki did touch her, running her bony fingers slowly across Isla’s face in a manner that made Isla suspect that she might be blind. Her body smelled of old clothes and unwashed skin, and her breath of tobacco smoke. Her fingers lingered on Isla’s hair, then, in a rasping voice, Pikaki addressed her in Maori.
    Isla darted a helpless look at Mere.
    ‘She says your hair is pale like the moon. She wishes to know has it always been like that?’
    Isla nodded, and thought what a strange question it was—then suddenly realized that Pikaki could not be