THE CHANGELING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 129, 2 June 1934, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE CHANGELING.

(By Ilutli Park, 78. Sandriughani Uoad, Auckland, S.W.I; age 1(5.) Kangi Te Maim left her baby asleep under a flax-bush one night whilst she and the rest went gathering pipies in the sand. It was .elear and moonlight, and Kangi, as she waded about with the other women, glanced back so frequently at the sleeping child that no one could liave possibly approached it without her knowledge. Yet when she returned, she started back with a loud cry, for the child lay there awake looking up at her with eyes of a curious glimmering green. Now Kangi had often prided herself or. the deep brown eyes of her little one. and her first thought was one of terror, for surely some evil spirit had stolen them away and substituted these shining goblin green ones. Tho tohunga muttered spells over the child and pronounced her bewitched, for such an odd colour had never before been seen in any brown Maori face. However, tho daughter of Kangi Te Manu grew and thrived, taking her place amongst the rest of the maidens in the dancing and the singing, living as one of them in very truth, Anahera-hau, daughter of Kangi, walked by night on the lonely sands. By day she was a laughing girl, singing and weaving and swimming with the rest, scarcely distinguishable from them sayo for hoi- odd night siie walked alone. When the village was asicep she would slip down to the shore, where tic: wet sands glimmered faintly and the. great sea came curling in. tossing in long lines of ghostly whiteness on the beach. Anahera-hau walked with a faint swish of her skirt, her bare feet sinking into the shining sand. Her skin was strangely white in the moonlight, and her dark hair glinted queerly silver as though it had taken some of the moon's own wavering colour. Only her eyes shone clear and green as the restless sea. To her ears tame the voice of the sea-caverns, the lulling song of the waters in the gloomy grottos, the hushing echoes and the vast whisperings that awoke in the twilight vauits below. 'She could see the faint phosphorescence that swirled and quivered round the coral pillars; the shattered black pinnacles and the dark abysses of the hidden mountain ranges, the imponderable ooze of tho ocean floor, where the serpents writhed in gleaming coils, their scales shining in blue-green iridescence through the shadowy veil of water. Anahera-hau knew that the sea-peopl'j were gathered in the deep caverns, where the roofs rang vast and hollow and the waters swirled up in flickering green fire from the phosphorescent floor. There, she knew, would her kindred be, in the place where she was born —the subterranean labyrinths that lay beneath the shining ocean. They would lie upon the rocky shelves that stood above the water, with their great silver tails glowing like blue-green sequins in tho ghostly half-light, their white skins glistening wet, their green eyes luminous and beautiful. The women would shake out clouds of misty spray from their long silvery hair, and laugh and sing to the ceaseless tune of the waters —and their eyes would gleam and flash like emeralds. ....

Anahera-hau stretched out her hands to the great contented sea, and her eyes longed after the shadowy half-light of its abysses. "Oh, great Mother!" she cried, and her speech was not that of the Maori, but swift and passionate in its intensity, its words dropping strange and musical from her lips. "Why did you give me as a daughter to Rangi Te Manu and take her own child to your hungry heart? Why did you give me to the earth with its heat and dryness, when I was born for the twilight of the ocean floor?"

But only the night wind fled 6ilently across the waters.

Taiaha, the tohunga, crouched in the manuka that fringed the sandy shore. He had long been suspicious of Anaherahau. and now he was undecided whether to flee in terror or remain. He saw the girl stand slim and tall on the shining sands, with the cool white waters curling softly over her feet. He saw her stretch out her hands, and heard the

swift words of a strange language fall from her lips. And ho saw only tlfe wind ruffle the sea in answer.

Then the eyes of Taiaha the tohunga, opened in agonised terror. He could hear the faraway Singing of the seapeople as they rose to greet the changeling, Anahera-hau, their thin delicate voices glowing, hither and thither on tlio soft wind like the fine threads of a cobweb. The pipes of a merman called yearningly, alluringly, in an elvish

glimmer of music that fell in broken quivers of silver :m<l blue on the shining waters. Ho saw the silvery hair of the sea maids drifting like seaweed on the .surface, saw the flash and dip of great tails, iridescent and glittering. Anahera-hau stood in a frown ecstasy. Her skin was ivory-white in the moonlight and her hair was shining silver—only her eyes glimmered grco.i and luminous in her still face. She took a step forward to meet tiie great wave that swept [dunging in from the deep ocean, and she wais lost in the tumbling thunder of the falling waters. . Taiaha the tohunga swears that ho saw the Mash of a silvery tail in the moonlight before the curling breaker burst in a thunder of foam over Ana-hera-hau, daughter of Kangi Te .Mann.