Sister of the Sun by Clare; Coleman Page A

that his life? Perhaps they did if he could not find his way home without them.  
    "Store them in a safe place," she suggested to the sailor, adopting a soothing tone. "Here. On the boat."
    "Here?" She thought that he understood her, for he began to glance around him. Under the seat in the stern lay a storage place that was covered by a wooden board. The board swung up under the touch of his foot, and then fell with a clap. At last, to her relief, he put his weapon aside.  
    He found a length of cloth and used it to wrap up his yellow sticks and his magical petals. These wonders he placed behind the swinging board. Then he picked up a tool that resembled a food pounder mounted on a shaft. With his other hand he held a thin sliver—she did not know if it was made of wood or bone.  
    He pressed the sliver's pointed end to the board and then he pounded its flat end with the head of the tool. The noise startled her and she took a step backward. He took another sliver, and then another, making loud blows as he banged each into the wood until only its flat end showed.  
    At last he stopped pounding and put his hand on the board. He shook it and pulled it, but now it would not swing open. "Good," he said. As a final test, he kicked at the storage place and then grunted his satisfaction.  
    "Will you come now, in peace?"
    When he indicated his agreement, walking away from his own spear, Tepua ordered the guards to put down their weapons. Then, for a moment, Kiore turned his aquamarine gaze on her and she felt an odd tingle go up her spine. His eyes were deep-set and shadowed, but that only made their glow more intense. His eyebrows were straight, paralleling the top line of each eye before angling down to the inner corner, adding a certain stubbornness to his face.  
    "It is good that we can be friends," she said, relieved that the disagreement had been settled. Yet Kiore still held on to the small box that contained his "lok-puk".  
    She turned to the priest, explaining the nature of the "puk" as well as she understood it. Faka-ora signed for the sailor to open it again, and remained silent as he leafed through the sheets. Some marks looked like bird tracks, others like tiny finger signs. "Cloth with marks," said Faka-ora. "I see no harm in it." He made a brief incantation and allowed Kiore to carry this last of his belongings into the canoe that stood waiting.  
    "We will take care of you. You will be greeted well," Tepua assured Kiore. Then she gave orders to men in another canoe. "Have a guesthouse readied. Make these strangers welcome." On the beach, she saw that a large crowd had gathered in anticipation of the sailors' arrival. Women were braiding wreaths of vines and blossoms to drape over the visitors' necks. Others carried coconuts and fara fruit. She watched with satisfaction as the foreigners headed to their welcome.  
    Then she turned to Faka-ora, waiting for him to chant the words and complete the rituals over the goods remaining in the boat. Everywhere she looked she saw something that piqued her interest—glints of color, tangles of cord and cloth, shapes she had never seen before. She could scarcely contain her eagerness to rush aboard.  
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    SIX
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    By late afternoon, the clan chief's and their advisers had gathered in the clearing outside Tepua's house. As was her right, Tepua sat on the carved four-legged stool that raised her above the rest of the meeting. This seat, which so long had been her father's, felt wrong beneath her. How she wished he could be here to take it.  
    She had no illusions that the task before her would be easy. Everyone knew about the foreigners' goods, now unloaded and in Faka-ora's keeping. The chief's had come to demand a share.  
    Paruru sat at her right hand, here because of his position and not because she wanted his company. When she had asked him to explain how women had visited the foreign vessel at night, he had answered