Child of the Dawn by Coleman Clare;

Author:Coleman, Clare;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 1993-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

When the visit was over, their curly-haired escort accompanied them to the gap in the rail, where the rope ladder hung down to Purea's canoe.

'Tell them that we enjoyed seeing the ship...." Purea began, turning to Hau. She did not complete her request. A raucous yowl erupted as she hastily withdrew her heel from something ropelike and furry that whipped away from beneath her foot. An animal's tail?

Tupaia gave a shrill battle cry and lunged to protect his chiefess from the small but ferocious beast that crouched, hunched and hissing, in front of her. Its eyes were orange coals aglow in its black face. In an instant he snatched it up in his two big hands. Holding the writhing black-and-white animal above his head, he turned to throw it into the water.

Shouts of protest rang out from the foreign sailors. A pale-haired youth ran at Tupaia, tried to seize his arm. The priest's eyes flashed and he shifted his squalling captive quickly to one hand. The other went to his shell dagger.

Purea knew that everything she had accomplished could be undone in an instant. She grabbed Tupaia's weapon hand. The priest's face turned to hers, his eyes bulging, his features contorted with battle frenzy and bewilderment. For a moment he froze.

Then with a disgusted grunt he thrust the struggling animal into the hands of the red-faced boy. The youth clutched it tightly and shrank against the tall, curly-haired man, who lifted both hands to calm the other men down.

"Have we broken some tapu?" Purea asked Hau as her priest stood stiffly beside her with an air of affronted dignity. She could not guess what this creature meant to the foreigners. Her people kept only dogs and pigs—animals raised for meat—yet sometimes coddled and fondled young ones.

Purea turned to the curly-haired sailor and tried to make him understand, with words and gestures, that her priest had intended no harm. He seemed to grasp her meaning, for as he took the little beast from the flustered youth and stroked it, he smiled with his eyes. The creature also seemed soothed by his touch. Its lashing tail stilled and its flattened ears came up. As it turned its head to fix a baleful gaze on Purea, the intense copper of its eyes startled her.

"Oh," she cried as the curly-haired man began to hand the little beast to another sailor, "do not take it away!"

The foreigners exchanged puzzled looks, but the curly-haired man turned back with the animal in his arms. Her interest seemed to please the others.

Intensely curious, Purea peered at the creature. At first she had taken it for a strange kind of short-muzzled dog, but as it opened its mouth in a yawn and blinked at her, she saw many differences. The large lustrous eyes fascinated her. They shifted and shimmied like the light on the lagoon at sundown. The unwavering gaze seemed to reach deeply into her and touch something there.

A god would have such eyes, she thought, looking into the leaf-shaped black pupils that narrowed to slits in full sun.

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