Potiki

Toko continues to narrate the story of his big fish. After the meat is smoked, he takes some to Granny Tamihana. She is weaving a basket out of fresh green fronds, and although she explains the process, it still looks like magic to Toko. After a while, she puts the basket aside and prepares the fish and tea to share with her great-grandson. At one point when she opens the stove to put more wood on the fire, Toko gets the impression that she’s made of fire herself, with flames flashing in her eyes and her hair whisping around her head like smoke.

Afterward, Granny Tamihana shows Toko a photograph of her and her brother Tokowaru-i-te-Marama, after whom Toko is named. He was born during an epidemic that claimed the lives of eight people in a month, and he died when he was still a boy, 70 years earlier. He and Granny Tamihana were riding their horses on the beach when a kehua (a ghost) scared his animal, causing it to throw him. His head crashed into a rock at the edge of the water. He died instantly, and no one was allowed to fish or go in the sea for a long time, just like when Toko was born. Granny Tamihana describes how angry she was when her brother died.

There’s one more bit about the fish story, Toko says. At the time, Roimata had a cutting from Granny Tamihana’s passionfruit vine that was failing to thrive. When Hemi buried the eel’s head under it, it suddenly flourished: life from death, as Roimata always says.