Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
chapter six / legends of the pounamu
If the walls could talk, Ilyshah Tūrei would hear the call of her ancestors delivering a sermon directly through to her soul. Loving arms enveloped her like vines of a forest in their act of pure aroha, planting her in the soil like the seed of a fern watering her until her spirit unfurled. Holding truths of their tongue as the masters of storytelling. They would tell her, one day this will all be yours Ilyshah.
At the ripe age of six years old, she slipped off her worn out billabong sandals and stepped into the sacred meeting space of the marae, marking the passage between the two realms. Outside, Tūmatauenga the God of War raged on, and inside Rongo, The God of Peace protected herinacollision between two brothers. A deep exhale escaped from her chest at the artfully sculpted doorframe, breathing new life into the structure as she entered each time.
While other coastie kids skimmed their boogie boards across the waves before they journeyed to the dairy to cool their tongues off with free ice blocks, Ilyshah had a sense of duty to uphold. For her land, her people. Drilled into her mind until it gave way to numbness—her childhood torn from it's tendril hold page by page and restored with prodigy on her horizons.
With large, innocent doe eyes she gazed up at her progenitress of a Grandmother, Arapera. Frizzy, darkened brown locks intertwined with lustrous strands of silver waterfalling to her waist. Curved shapes and spirals of ta moko permanently marked her wairua, her chin. On that wooden floor, her young heart stitched together with admiration and eagerness building up to a big swell. The spoilt one, they always called Ilyshah. Everyone's favourite. Especially her kuia.
"Kei te mohio koe he aha tenei toku mokopuna?" Arapera questioned softly, placing two tender fingers on the spiral pendant that brushed against the sternum of the young Tūrei.
(Do you know what this is my granddaughter?)
Ilyshah gave a nod as she glanced down. "Ae kuia, it's pounamu."
