Selai got everything right

The scent of burnt kawakawa still hung in the smoke-darkened thatch above, mingling with the damp musk of fern and earth walls. No food had been brought into the birthing house—the sacred tapu of the mother demanded silence and separation from noa, normal things. Outside, the hush of night wrapped the house in heavy stillness, broken only by the distant rush of the Matavai River and the haunting cry of a kula—the red shining-parrot that watched from the branches. Selai noticed it had not moved in hours, its stillness too perfect. Perhaps it was not just a bird. An ancestor’s spirit, she hoped, cloaked in feathers. Watching over this child’s arrival.

The moon was in its third phase—a good sign. The tide had been low that morning. She recited the karakia twice, once at sunrise and again after nightfall, and burned the offered herbs in all the right corners of the birthing house.

Selai had the right kōhatu placed, the pounamu on the eastern wall to catch the rising energy of birth. She had even drunk a small dose of puga to heighten her sight. To glimpse the colours of the baby’s wairua. If the child truly carried chiefly seed, as Hiraina claimed, the hue would show it, for it was known that some ariki took captives as they pleased, and the wairua of their line often flared bright in newborns.

Sere, sat beside the mother, wrapped in a ______, was the right birthing aunty—produced seven children herself and attended over a hundred births already. Not too old to be feeble, not too young to panic. Reliable hands.

So why did everything feel wrong?

“Aaahh,” Hiraina cried out as the pain in her chest intensified. Selai mimicked the cry suddenly, pain erupting in her stomach.

“Are you alright, tohunga?” Sere asked.

“Yes, it’s fine,” Selai answered, despite the words trembling out of her. “I think the gods are letting me feel this one more deeply.”

Sere sat beside the mother, wrapped in tapa cloth, the right birthing aunty: seven children of her own, and more than a hundred births attended already. Not too old to be feeble, not too young to panic. Reliable hands.

“The gods are speaking, and they are asking for the child,” she whispered into the mother’s ear. “Now push.”

“Push, child,” echoed Sere.

The final part of the birth came too quickly, with sharp waves of pain that wracked Hiraina’s body. Sere guided her into the kneeling position, thighs wide, leaning against a folded mat pressed to the birthing wall. The old woman braced one knee against Hiraina’s back to steady her—the way it was done. Her two toddlers sat nearby with their nana.

Hiraina, like many women in the Matavai rohe had a blessed womb: seven pregnancies before her twentieth year, though four had ended in miscarriage, one in stillbirth. Some whispered it was the waters of Ulu Waimate, where the Matavai River sprang, that blessed the wombs of their women. The water was sacred, thick with limestone and forest runoff, and believed to carry the mana of old fertility rites. Vessels of it were often carried across Kafiki—to the ariki of other tribes—whenever a noble struggled to conceive. Such was the reverence for Matavai waters that even births seemed to surge in their presence.

“UUUghhhhh,” Hiraina moaned. “I can’t, Selai.” Her eyes were wide with fear.

“No. Listen to me. Your baby is about to wake into this world. Call them through with your breath. Welcome them with your pain. Degei is waiting to bless the child.”

The mother pushed, screamed. The baby slid partway out, and Selai cupped the head.

“It’s here, alive, and wanting to be free. One more breath, Hiraina.”

Tears streamed down Hiraina’s face, mingling with sweat. She looked like she had risen from the Matavai River itself.

“Unnnghghhg—aaaajhhhhhh!”

To Selai, the pain seemed to echo with something else—not just Hiraina’s, but her own.

Or is it me who is hiding another pain?

“It’s here!” Selai cried as the child slipped fully from its mother.

Sere cut the cord, tied it with muka fibre, wrapped the baby in soft tapa, and handed it to Hiraina. She then folded the whenua into another piece of tapa, murmuring a low karakia to ensure no wandering spirit followed its path. It would be buried near the base of the vesi tree outside the birthing house before sunrise, as was right.

Selai stood, but her stomach twisted violently. A sour heat rushed up her throat. She stumbled outside; the sharp reek of crushed ferns and damp soil rose around her. The cool night air felt thick with smoke and old blood. She dropped to her knees and vomited into the earth, bile mixing with the musk of decay and moon-drenched foliage.

What is wrong with me?

As she straightened, dizziness surged and a faint ringing filled her ears. Then—

A sharp pain stabbed in her lower belly. She reeled, clutching her womb. It felt like when she carried Teā—yet this was no memory. As her hand pressed lower, her pāreu shifted, and in the wavering light of a lamalama torch she glimpsed a bruise already blooming, mulberry-dark.

She rushed back into the birthing house. Sere looked up from washing Hiraina, her brow tight.

“Selai, what’s wrong?”

“Teā just kicked me!”

Sere blinked. “What? Is he back from the hakari already?”

“He left with Ngara, Sukey, and Kura for the Rāhoroi feast. They were due back tomorrow by the main village track—unless they came early?”

“Are you worried?”

“He’s in trouble, Sere. I need to go up the Matavai.”

“Home?” Sere’s eyes held hers for a breath, then she nodded. “I can handle things here. Go, child.”

Selai nodded, heart pounding. She stepped into the night air, still dizzy, still shaking. Her instincts roared.

If that boy came back alone… if someone caught him outside the village…

But who would dare in Matavai?

She had made herself known. The chief’s third and last wife. A renowned healer. Not as famed as Irihapeti or as strange as Pakkuu of Feke—that jellyfish wrapped in seawater and secrets—but Selai had delivered more children than any other. Her name carried across regions. And her son—white-skinned, god-touched, born of Wātea of the Cosmos.

To many, she was a god herself. And so was Teā.

Selai followed the path to the village threshold. Two tall posts shouldered a crossbeam, low woven screens funnelling the track beneath. A narrow threshold log lay across the earth, polished by feet. To the right, under a pandanus lean-to, Tanehu lay on a rolled tapa mat beside a spear rack and a conch shell. Lamalama torches guttered along the screens, breathing resin smoke into the night.

“Tanehu,” she said, already stepping toward the lean-to.

He startled up, pushing hair from his brow. “Healer?”

“Open.”

A banked fire glowed inside the threshold, where the watchmen sat on their tapa mats. She moved carefully past Tawhero, cousin to Selai’s sister-in-law and chosen to lead them, who sat with three guards, trading quiet jokes. She felt his gaze and let it pass. Her mana spared her the small courtesies owed to lesser kin. Besides, he was known for laziness and a roaming hunger of the eyes—a habit some lower-born men wore like boldness when rank thinned between women and men. His grin was half-hidden in the torchlight. Spears and a bow rested within reach, a vesi club across one knee. Extra torches had been set along the screens since the last Baby Eater taking; even laughter sounded thin beneath their smoke.

Tanehu lifted the conch as if to sound it, then thought better and barked instead, “On your feet. The healer needs the way.”

Tawhero rose at once. The others scrambled up, snatching spear, bow, and club. Tanehu swung the gate wide; Selai stepped over the threshold log, and the watchmen fell in behind her.

“Keep close,” she said.

Maybe it was Hiraina’s fear seeping into her. Maybe it’s just that—the terror all women carry, that the Baby Eater will steal their child. With the men around her, almost a proper guard, her discomfort eased as they crossed the open clearing beyond the posts. Firelight died at their backs. Ahead, the southern trees gathered, their vesi trunks pale as old bone, hushed without a breath of wind to give their leaves voice.

A branch snapped ahead, beyond the torch, inside the dark of the forest. Selai stopped to listen. The warriors surged ahead, fanning wider, weapons readied, eyes fixed on the tree line.

Tawhero whispered. “If Baby Eater rushes us, we attack two at a time.”

“Why not all four?”

“Because I don’t trust Tanehu’s swing. He’ll cut us before he hits the beast.”

“Shut it, Tawhero. Your club is bent as your back.”

Selai hissed. “Hush! All of you!”

The warriors stilled.

Footsteps now—branches snapping.

“Who goes there?” Tawhero called.

The footfall became faster, heading towards them.

A voice rose from the dark: “It is Sukey of Ahukai. Ngara of Autara, and Kura of Feke.”

Selai listened for more. Teā’s name didn’t follow. Panic arriving instead, “What about Teā?! Where’s my son?!”

The forest remained without voice. Then the three children burst through the bush. Sukey charging straight towards her.

“We lost Teā! We lost him Tohunga!”

Selai wailed, the sound tearing from her throat, and collapsed to her knees. Teā had now been taken. All what gave life meaning gone. She felt Sukey’s embrace, sharing her grief. Clawing into the ground Selai called on her ancestors, on all atua listening to find her treasured boy, cursing any spirit, any man, who would dare touch Teā, a child of the gods, son of Wātea. Sukey now invoked a calling to her own ancestors, her atua Takali Foto, to protect her friend Teā. Selai wished she could escape now. Hide from what had to happen next. She would be under watch more than ever. Every action open to further judgement.

“Let me go. Leave me here to sleep forever.” Papatuanuku was soft and damp beneath her. “Let me become a mound of dirt.” The torchlight caught along each blade of grass. Faint steam rose up from the ground’s body, as if even she too exhaled in sorrow.

“Swallow me up please earth mother. I no longer care to be alive.”