The Star Path

ONE

Can you see him now?

That’s Teva, he is sixteen and on his way to school. He lives with his father, Ra’imana, and mother, Odile, in an apartment not far from the garage Ra’imana owns. Not in the best part of Cours Julien in Marseilles, but it is clean and they are happy there. Ra’imana — usually known as Ray — makes a good income as a mechanic. Every afternoon after school, Teva helps him at the garage with the easier tasks: changing tyres, checking the lights and grooming the cars. Dad reckons that customers who collect their vehicles and discover they’re spotless and fresh-smelling will keep coming back.

As for Odile, she had been a promising ballerina but gave up her career to marry Ray. She is content to offer yoga classes in the apartment each morning and ballet lessons in the afternoons. Her students are mostly older women trying to stay youthful and young girls with pushy parents.

Ra’imana and Odile’s marriage has been fraught with problems. Her upper-class parents disapproved of the union, thinking Ray must be North African to have such dark skin, so the two lovers ran away. Even Teva’s arrival failed to heal the rift.

To be frank, family relationships on Ray’s side are not much better. He is not from Africa but a small Pacific island, Rurutu, in French Polynesia. His father sent him to France to acquire a university education, but Ray had no aptitude for the law and stopped studying. He has no intention of returning to the Pacific.

Quick! Turn away: Teva is looking in our direction and, if he knows you are watching him, he will keep to the shadows as he goes up the street. He will hide amid the crowds that mill on the steps or merge with the colourful shopfronts and billboards. He’s good at that, sidling up to the advertisement for the surreal-art exhibition and standing quite still beside the man with the elephant head or the singer with duck feet. See, he’s doing that now.

Why? Well, although he looks like any other teenager of the don’t-want-to-go-to-school kind — hastily washed, uncombed hair, hands in pockets, shambling along — Teva has an unusual curved back. When he was younger, he was bullied because of his shape, but he is older now and has outgrown his tormentors and learnt how to defend himself — and how to blend in.

Teva also has unusual birthmarks behind both ears: darker ridges of extra subcutaneous tissue that extend from his lobes to his shoulders. He’s not worried about those, however, as they are easily concealed by his long hair.

Today he hides his back by standing straight. But sometimes he forgets, and then you see the curve. Pretend you don’t notice it and that your shoelaces are unlaced. Bend to tie them.

Teva has shifted away from the billboard and is walking past you now. You should follow him as he twists through the dappled sun under the trees stretching out from the adjoining park.

Where is the boy heading? He pauses to peer through the entrance to a large building: the winter quarters of Circus World, one of the most important international big tops around.

What are Teva’s thoughts as he looks through the grille? Does he yearn to be anybody else rather than who he is now? Does he ponder how the circus could be a good place to evade notice? Among the family of tumblers, gymnasts, aerialists, living statues, magicians, jugglers, skaters, sword-swallowers and clowns, he — and his curved back — would at last fit in. Yes, he is like his parents, who were not satisfied with who they were but wanted to be somebody else, somewhere else. Very soon Teva will be like that too.

His great adventure is about to begin.

TWO

The universe was jet black and sparkling with the million eyes of heaven. The white continent of Antarctica was swept with howling winds and snowstorms. Beneath the ice and turbulent waves, however, all was calm. The entourage of Metura’a, king of baleen whales, moved with infinite majesty through a vast subterranean maze of connecting ice chambers. The guards swam to the front, back and on each flank, guiding the tribe carefully along a wide underwater channel carved out by an ancient glacier.

’Ia vai ’ōta’i noa tātou! they chanted. Keep together!

Just behind the front guards were Ti’a-ari’i, queen and consort, and her four female attendants, known affectionately as ‘the Aunties’.

They were the queen’s sisters, therefore of equal ranking to her but not of equal allure. You could tell She-Whose-Beauty-Is-Blinding anywhere. She had distinctive white markings around her shoulders, almost as if she wore a royal cloak of feathers. With her beauty, she also brought the iron will required of the queen of the Oceanic Mysticeti, the baleen whales who ranged from the Pacific to Antarctica and back again.

Vocalising to all other inhabitants near and far, the Aunties announced the tribe’s genealogy:

Maeva, Maeva!

Maeva ia Metura’a, ’o ’oe te ’a’apa’o, te arata’i, Maeva ia Ti’a-ari’i, Te Miti nō Te Hono, ’o te miti ïa,

Rurutu te puna, ’a auraro i tāna, i tā Ta’aroa, ’A rave i te reira!

Clear the way!

Clear the way for Metura’a who rules you, For Ti’a-ari’i the power behind the throne! The great Ocean of Te Hono is our sea!

Rurutu our island! As Ta’aroa wills it, Let it be done!

The rest of their royal pod was sixty-strong. They followed in line strongly and proudly, their movements languid and lyrical. Around and above them seals, penguins and other Antarctic denizens darted, circled and swooped in graceful waltz.

At last, Metura’a, the tribe’s ancient leader, appeared:

’A pi’o i mua i te ari’i. Bow down to the king!

He came rumbling out of Time from the age when the supreme creator, Ta’aroa, had created great creatures, real and unreal. To see Metura’a was to tremble because he was over ten centuries old. In his presence, you were privy to the extraordinary, the unbelievable, the incredible.

Forty metres long and weighing over 120 tonnes, Metura’a was double the length and weight of any other whale living or dead.

A giant among giants, he was also distinguished by his breathtaking markings. During the era known to people as Mataora — when history was as fantastical as it was real and humankind communed with monsters — great artists had tattooed him from his blowhole to the giant flukes of his tail. They had inscribed emblems of his mana

through moko: whorls, chevrons, double and triple twists, spirals and other ancient figurations. What was the purpose? Why, to embody him as Ta’aroa incarnate. Otherworldly. Supernatural as well as natural.

Metura’a was also marked by many battles. His skin was gnarled with ancient bruises and discolourations, his left side once slashed with huge wounds from fights with other bulls. His flippers were scarred from protecting the tribe from killer whales and sharks.

Everywhere were cuts from the propellers of ships and the pockmarks from multiple harpoons hurled at him. Over the centuries, oh,

how humankind had tried to hunt him down!

Auē, he was arthritic now. Moving slower. Half blind.

How could such a mammal like Metura’a confound Time and still be living?

Even he would not be able to tell you. Only, perhaps, to reply that this was what Ta’aroa had commanded. And as the god had commanded, so Time had obeyed.

Suddenly the entourage reached an unfamiliar delta. ‘Tē ora nei tātou!’

The command to rest from Ti’a-ari’i was passed all the way back to Tehani, who was the rear guard. At last he could stand down, take a breather from the cetacean crap, piss and fart-bubbles the tribe lovingly passed to him in their slipstream.

Lovingly? Yeah, right. Some of those royal guards liked to pass wind on purpose or splatter him with their shit because they thought he was up himself. He couldn’t help it if he was the youngest of the tribe and therefore favoured by Ti’a-ari’i.

Favourite or not, here he was in his usual position at the back. While the others swam head forward, Tehani swam with his tail flukes forward so he could watch for danger from behind.

Tehani was aware that somebody had floated back to talk to him.

He turned and saw the queen.

Ti’a-ari’i wrinkled her nose. ‘Pooh, Tehani, it stinks back here.’ ‘You get used to it, Gran,’ he answered. ‘It’s my job, somebody has

to do it. Why have we stopped?’

Anxiety flooded through Ti’a-ari’i’s reply. ‘The Mysticeti rarely travel this close to ice or in ice,’ she began. ‘We have already faced danger from icefalls, so I have asked the royal guard to scout ahead for the best exit. We should be in open waters, not these mazes of unending corridors that Metura’a insists we explore. Since his cata- strophic stroke, he shows signs of increasing dementia. I need to get him home to Te Hono i Vairua, our warm homeland waters in the Pacific. Therefore, I have a quest for you, Grandson.’

‘A quest?’

‘Yes. While our season in the ice has only just begun, I must look ahead to when we should travel back to our summer seas. I cannot afford to put our tribe at risk to our king’s infirmity. Being so loyal, they follow him without question, which is admirable but potentially fatal.’

Although She-Whose-Beauty-Is-Blinding rarely showed unseemly sadness, she put her forehead against Tehani’s and began to sob.

Through her tears, she told him, ‘We must try to encourage our king to turn from his descent into death towards the ascent into life, not only for his sake but for all of us.’

She steadied herself.

‘There is only one person who might help him. Metura’a would do anything for the human known as the whale rider. Whenever the golden lord — Te Ariki Kōura — called, Metura’a would go to him.

Whatever he commanded, Metura’a would obey. They had a powerful bond. Even I must acknowledge the rival who lived with him at the beginning of Time.’

This was an impossible task. ‘Your majesty,’ Tehani answered, ‘the human life span is short and, if there really was a whale rider, he would have died many, many years ago. How can I find such a ghost, a dream, a figment of his majesty’s imagination . . . and yours?’

Ti’a-ari’i shook with anger. She was not accustomed to having her word questioned. Up came her right flipper to slap Tehani across his head, ouch.

‘Figment or not,’ she said, ‘you are to leave the herd and travel to Whāngārā in Aotearoa to find the whale rider and bring him here.’