Magic Hands

Prologue/Teaser

My family told me from birth I was special.

In my village, babies are a sacred occasion, especially in the days when our population is low. The mother is taken aside into the depths of the quartz caves, left to be tended by our ringa whakaoras.

My mokopuna – my grandmother – was whakaora by the time I was ready for my birth. In the years that followed, she always told me about a secret ritual done; one that no mothers remembered and all hands died before revealing. She always said mine had changed her.

She never explained how it changed her.

My whaea – mother – didn't shy away from her experience with my birth. She told the story often.

On birth days, the waters grow still around the edges of Maea Moutere. The wind moans and warms. The sky's colors soften. The villagers gather around our great hearth, awaiting the mother and hand at the foot of the quartz hill. It is always at dusk when the mother and hand emerge with the child, shrouded entirely in the gold veils of birth.

I was born in a roar. The wind howled. The oceans roiled. The water grew too cold to bear.

My whaea and mokopuna left the caves at midnight, with a half moon blazing the brightest it had ever been. My swaddling clothes were silver under its light.

When beginning with this part of the story, my whaea often gathers the children closer to her, meeting each luminescent eye with her own. She always saves mine, in the back, for last.

She never looks long.

As a babe, my cries were loud and dusky, demanding, she declared. Many of the village elders tease me with the image of a huge, wriggling bundle almost too big for my whaea's arms, waking the hills with my hunger. That's you, they would say, grinning and winking at me, as if it weren't obvious.

I was so large, whaea could scarcely hold me on her shoulder. Being so weak after childbirth, she could not have handled more than a few feet of walking. Not without my mokopuna to help carry me.

Stepping down from the quartz caves, the wind dropped to a ghostly moan at the sight of the three lives. It swished the skirts of the elders, spun the sand into a dance. It was silent, but for my bawling. They staggered down the hill, one prodding ankle at a time. It was my whaea's first time, and she shook fiercely. It was far from mokopuna's first, but even she struggled as I writhed the entire stride down the hill.

When they reached the Rounding, I tumbled out of my mokopuna's arms with a squeal, nearly unraveling all of her hard work on the veils. When I was settled at last, the villagers gathered around my flailing head to gawk at my size.

My papa wanted to name me Aata. Stone. He-who-holds-firm.

But when Hunu – our hononga – wafted the smoke of the hearthfire over my body, whaea saw differently. She talks of her vision in the fire more than my birth.

Everyone stared rapturously at the smoke for signs of the Ope Nui wishing to communicate with them. Whaea couldn't look away from the fire. It twisted and furled, like the petals of a flower, as she watched it. Time stretched on in silence; a little ember danced among these flowers.

Whaea always takes a breath here.

From one bud to the next, it bobbed. Reveling in the flames that dripped from the edges of these flower petals. As if they were overflowing with some hidden, sweet honey.

At that moment, the name came to her. Loud and clear, she said, as if straight from the Ope Nui's lips to her ear.

The name whistled past her lips like a breeze, a buzz. As if it were drawn from her mouth.

Honey.

Haniko.

The moment she said it, the fire roared and cracked like thunder. Villagers darted away from it in fear. Whaea screamed, her trance broken. Papa caught her shoulders to protect her.

My mokopuna always takes over at this part, lifting her hands and waving her long white sleeves around like sea spray. Hunu leaned ever closer, she would crow, as infant me began to wail louder.

Hunu's lips trembled. He stood so near me his milky eyes looked yellow from the glare of the fire. And as he stared down at my writhing golden form with those burning eyes, his muttered declaration was impossible to mistake.

"Ra takirua."

My mokopuna would wait a beat, two, in the storytelling. Then, with her sturdy fingers curled into grotesque claws – mokopuna always revels in the macabre parts of this story – she snarls the next line of the story.

Hunu fell to the ground by my head, dead.

And as the village stood there, shocked, my meaty infantile fist wrestled out of the veil and rested in the fire. Whaea shrieked as I gripped one of the brightest glowing coals, holding it close. She staggered forward to help me, papa moments behind. Mokopuna stood frozen, staring.

At that part, my mokopuna will often kneel down in front of us, the children, and pull me forward from the back. Dutifully, I would unfurl my still meaty hand and show its unscarred surface to the other children.

"Ra takirua." My mokopuna would hiss in delight. "Ra takirua, in the palm of our Ope Nui. A blessing from our spirits."

Ra takirua, the children would whisper back, staring at my large body. Ra takirua.

Destined pair.

I hate the way they cower away from me. How they fear that my presence would make them fall, dead, like Hunu. How they stare at me brightly, whispering about the power of spirits running through me. How I was a sacred body. None can touch me. None can look at me. All feared me.

To the rest of the children, I was a revered legend.

To the rest of the village, I was a miracle.

To the Ope Nui, I was neither. But the only thing that mattered was what I would discover myself.

My mokopuna was wrong.

Ra takirua was not a blessing.