WAIETA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 2, 3 January 1934, Page 12

WAIETA.

(By Ruth Park, 120, Symonds Street; Auckland; age 16.) Up the face of the cliff climbed Waieta, clinging precariously to the narrow crevices and the jutting points of grey rock, clutching the stunted bushes and the tangled vines that lay like a green stain upon the ancient stone. Below her lay a vast plain stretching away to the coast like a tapestry of grey and green; before her was the frowning rock, weathered and crumbling from the storms of a thousand years. Waieta set her teeth and went upwards. The sky above seemed to draw nearer, the top of the cliff was almost within reach. She could see a few strands of grass blowing over the edge. She was touching them, her fingers sinking into caked and crumbling earth.

Waieta lay face downwards upon the ground, her brown hands clenching and unclenching as they lay by her sides, her hair falling disorderly over her bare shoulders. Gradually her panting breath became normal and she sat up, flinging her damp hair back from her face. She was on a great plateau like the flat top of some colossal mountain, the sides of which had been cut straight and sheer by some cataclysm >of prehistoric times. Great slabs of stone lay upon the flat surface of the plain, some standing upright like the pillars of a giant's temple, some lying shattered and broken, crumbling like the ruins of some sculptured idols. The sky above was a pitiless blue and the sun beat cruelly down from its burning depths. Waieta moved slowly forward among the fallen columns of stone, her brown face strained and intense, her eyes watchful and filled with a nameless fear. The lowering rocks seemed to come closer, their shadows to stretch out witch-like arms of darkness. They seemed to be the enchanted forms of ancient tohungas guarding the temple of the water spirits, standing in stone silence, caught in the thraldom of the gods of toe underground caverns. From afar off came the whispering of water, which grew into a rushing like that of the storming sea upon the beach. Waieta saw that it was a mighty fail that burst out of a dark cavern like an eager horse, thundering out in a torrent of muddy brown water, creaming and smoking in the basin at its foot. The air was filled with its hollow thunder and Waieta whispered in an awed voice as she listened to the mighty voice of that hungry water. "Wahi-tapu o te wai! The holy place of the waters!" For she saw that there was no stream issuing from the basin, even though it was brimming with the seething water, but that it was in reality a bottomless hole leading down to the deep enchanted vaults of the water spirit, to the subterranean caverns, the walls of which are engraven with the age-old spells of the tohungas. It was Waiputa, the water-hole, of which she had heard the ancient Maoris speak, that dreaded name which stood as a symbol of witchcraft and unimaginable evil. For the gods had struck that fertile land and left it desolate and its name was shunned throughout Aotearoa, and its people looked upon as kin to the dead.

Waieta fell on her knees at the brink and looked down with dilated eyes into that boiling maelstrom. She lifted her pinched brown face to the arching torrent, while around her the spray fell mistily, and above the fall the rainbows shuddered and wavered away. "Oh, god of the waters," she cried, "thou hast struck this land in thine anger, and its plains are barren and dry. But there is a valley in the desert below which was once watered by the great river from this fall, and which they called Te Mara o te Atua—the garden of the gods. But the Waiputa opened its hungry mouth below the fall, and the river is no more, and the valley is fed only by the springs of the earth. My people are fugitives. The enemy has taken their rich southern lands and driven them into the north to take up their abode in the spirit-haunted valley. But even the streams are dried up, and the children are dying from thirst. Oh, atua, we cannot go back, for the enemy is upon the edge of the plains, and the deserts are too far to cross. I have dared to set foot upon tapu land, here upon the lip of the Waiputa, and the punishment is death. Hear me, oh great water spirit! Help them who die in the valley below." But only the rainbow trembled above the torrent, and the spray swept in a misty veil about her bowed head, while the voice of the fall was lifted in its eternal song to the empty skies. "Yes, O Atua I'' cried Waieta, springing to her feet. "My life shall appease thine anger. Take thou my life, O god of the waters." And the water laughed as the black hair of the girl tossed like floating strands of seaweed upon the boiling surface before she went down to the dark vaults of the dead, where the walls are engraven with forgotten words.

But the water spirit heard from his desolate caverns, and he came swift aa the foam riding the torrent. The moan of the waters was louder than the thunder, and the shriek of his voice like the raging wind, as he called to the dark fire epirits who lay sleeping in the heart of the earth. And the rock smoked and shattered under their feet, and the tortured earth groaned and trembled as the Waiputa closed his hungry mouth and returned to sleep in the water caverns. But the torrent surged forth in a joyous leap and rushed down its age-old watercourse, which was dry and baked by the pitiless sun. Down over the high plateau to the cliff-face it surged, spilling over in the ancient channels it had worn for itself in the dark ages, plunging down the cliff-race in silver and brown.

And it swept through Te Mara o to Atqa, where the children were dying with thirst, and it went slowly, majestically, as a mighty river does, to its meeting with the bitter eea-water. And it murmurs among the river reeds and the tall and swaying grasses, and it sings a song of its birth in the desolate hill caverns.

"Lost, lost," is the song of the river, "lost is Waieta, the merry, the glad. Ahi, Waieta!"