Free In Solitary by Garry Kilworth Page B

legendary. Legends based on historicalfact. In the early times, long before the Soal arrived, migrating Polynesian fleets carried with them navigators higher in rank even than their kings. Tangiia was aware of only small excerpts of these old stories but he carried in his frame an inherent aptitude for crossing the wide waters of his ocean. It was an inborn skill that had survived a period of high civilization, though it was necessary to couple natural talent with knowledge. The latter had been retained by the fishermen and adventurers, and Tangiia’s ancestor, at the time the Soal arrived, survived because of it.
    Legends are stories of adversity dressed in the mysticism of age and the beauty of fine words.
    One legend tells that the
Fafakitani
, the Feelers of the Sea, were born on a voyage from Samoa to Tonga when King Taufa’ahau’s catamaran-style canoes lost their way. The chief navigators had confessed their ignorance of their location on the wide blue waters when a blind old man, a navigator of low rank, dipped a hand into the sea.
    ‘Tell the King we are in Fijian waters,’ he announced after touching the waves.
    The chief navigators scoffed but the stores were low and the King asked for more information. He was told by the blind old man, Kaho, that when the sun was in the middle of the sky the flotilla would sight land. A few hours later the fleet arrived at a group of islands to the east of Fiji. Kaho was a hero.
    It is said that Kaho confessed many months later to having been informed of the presence of a fish-eatingbird that never ventured far from land – but the Feelers of the Sea did not lose their prestige.
    The islands of Tangiia’s ocean were green stars flashing on a convex watery sky. Imbedded in millions of square kilometres of sea, they glittered like the scattered fragments of epidote crystals in the morning light. Tangiia paused at the first island with rich growth tumbling down to the beaches that he came across, to take on stores of yams, breadfruit and
nyali
nuts and wrapped them in
pandanus
leaves. Our meat would come from the sea in the form of fish. The boat was already stocked with drinking coconuts.
    He was careful not to disturb the undergrowth as he collected his foodstuffs – we did not wish to arouse any occupant of the island. A fight was not what we sought on this journey.
    Once on the ocean again he took his course from the wind and current. He was bound he said for Raiatea, where he knew he would find Peloa, the lava-tongued young partner of his recent mating. The spear and the deep narrow target would again find each other out.
(Is it the spear that finds the mark? Or is it the magnetic cleft that draws the spear towards its deep centre?)
    The wind chased the large canoe across the surface of the water leaving transient snail-silver tracks in the waves. Tangiia travelled the paths of his forefathers, using the stars by night and the swells by day, fearfully sniffing the air for ‘the stink of ghosts’ as he passed an island which had become a nightmare via the tongues of parents who demanded their young’s obedience.
    Nocturnally he landed to replenish our stores and he skirted the beaches, sometimes to be stared at by aggressive males ready to defend their territories; at other times watched coolly by mothers and young maidens. Once or twice we were tempted by light brown torsos with long black hair, but we resisted, each remembering the dampness of a particular pair of slim young thighs. Better the delight you know than the promise you do not.
    At the steering oar hour by hour, for I now took an active part in the sailing, our skins became windburnt and our lips chapped with continual onslaughts from saltwater and sun. The small creases round my eyes cracked at the seams to turn to thin red sores and I played my tongue incessantly around the corners of my mouth, making a masochistic game out of the stinging pain, to relieve the boredom. Occasionally Tangiia took down the