| Monday 4th February, 1936 We have spent two days settling in – our camp is half an hour’s walk to the nearest part of the coast, where we have been avidly sketching and mapping. There is one small settlement on a little inlet; its folk are certainly chicken farmers, and we could hear their charges clucking before we came around the corner. Hundreds of wild birds were in that one little valley, of all breeds and sizes – I noticed Molly looking around a little puzzled, as if there was one missing that she expected to find. It seems she had taken the menu back at Bow Thai too literally, and knowing my favourite is Thai Green Chicken Curry, she expected to see some Thai Green Chickens. There was no point hiding, as the birds immediately kicked up such a racket that half the coast must have heard. We strolled into the village with notebooks in hand, and made our introductions. Sometimes it is best to hide in plain sight – whatever else, we really are doing wildlife studies for a Songmark project, and we are not the first such group they have seen. As Miss Devinski says, it is mysterious people who get noticed, and one should always have a cover story however basic. There are only five houses in Topikiha Landing, all of them inhabited by coyote families with several hundred feathered charges and two small fields of maize on the headland looking out over the lagoon. They were quite friendly and very willing to chat, not too surprising considering we were the first new snouts they had seen for days. It is amazing what some people value, we traded our whole collection of millet and manioc mash with them in exchange for fresh and dried fish – this piece of coast being too dry and rocky to grow tubers at all well, they regard it as a rare treat. Fortunately our Spontoonie is now good enough to casually chat in, as they had a lot to say about life on Orpington Island that we jotted down in our notebooks. Shorthand is jolly useful when a circle of people are talking at once! As we noticed back in the main town, on Orpington the original tribes are still very much a feature. They are not all based on species as is the Duck tribe – some are named for their “Spirit Totem” animal. There is a Seabird Spirit tribe who are not all seabirds, split into Puffin, Albatross and (unfortunately named, at least in English) Boobies. Similarly there are Frog Spirit, Chicken Spirit and presumably others – the Chicken Spirit tribe farm chickens, but the Frog Spirit tribe do not herd frogs. All rather confusing, actually – but then again, folk back home who keep bees are called apiarists, even if those who keep apes are not “beepiarists”. From what we gathered, there are long-running tribal and religious disputes, the exact details of which one would probably have to be brought up here to fully understand. But everyone agreed, in the last few years the Duck tribe has been getting quite troublesome – even to sending “Missionaries” over to Spontoon, from where the authorities often send them straight back home with their feathers ruffled. Perhaps I can arrange Madelene X to have a religious discussion with one of them sometime – it might be fun to watch from a distance. The ducks we saw back in town wore little but loincloths, and Madelene is still scandalised by that idea; she even objects if her salad turns up without dressing. We asked about the nearby villages, discovering the larger one a mile to the west is Pudotu Bay (where Namoeta lives) and further on is Tamo’ha Landing, one of the main hot-beds (or should that be “hot nests”?) of the more militant Duck tribe. Just the sort of thing we needed to know. Tuesday 5 th February, 1936 A day for finding out just how waterproof our tents really are. I woke up in pitch darkness to the sound of flapping canvas and torrential rain hammering on the canvas just a few inches above my snout; although crossing the interior we rather cursed the weight of formal camping kit, we were very glad not to be sheltering under an improvised leaf framework this morning. A cold and cheerless breakfast of dried fish and rainwater left us all feeling out of sorts, but I managed to persuade folk that we might as well use the cover of the rain to take a look around. Anyway, sitting in wet fireless tents is nobody’s idea of fun. I felt definitely homesick for the solidly built Hoele’toemi family guest longhouse and the company there, and I know Helen feels the same. It might be a good thing that only one of us is Tailfast right now, or that place could get crowded. An hour and a half of muddy tracks in fifty yard visibility took us to Tamo’ha Landing, where we sheltered under an overhang looking over the dock to see what was happening. It was a hive of activity, the locals bustling about loading and unloading at full speed despite the weather; the phrase “water off a duck’s back” certainly springs to mind. Although there were folk of various species to be seen on the streets, all the workers we saw on the boats and docks were ducks. This looks as if it could be hard to infiltrate. We did the logical thing for soaked travellers and headed straight in to the shelter of the nearest teahouse, a modern tin roofed affair with the rain hammering loudly on it; straw roofing is quieter even though leakier. The only person serving was a rather perky coyote girl, who made us quite welcome. We noticed the lunch menu was rather sparse, and dishes such as omelette and scrambled eggs were conspicuously absent. Still, the seafood and rice was very welcome, though as Helen found out “Mixed seafood” is a dish best attempted only by the brave. (Memo to myself: Sea Cucumber is NOT a vegetable.) Notebooks out, we managed to ask the waitress about the port here, though were careful only to start with the sort of things commercial travellers would want to know. The whole shipping trade in the village is run by three Duck families, who are rather clannish in who they recruit. They have extensive foreign trade connections, but it is hard to say what due to the rather odd state of affairs at Orpington Island. The long-distance shipping anchors well offshore and only the light local boats are ever seen close to, generally heading straight into a warehouse, duck owned of course. Molly whispered that it would be a sweet setup for smuggling, as it was what she called a “company town” and any police would probably be in on the deal up to their tail-feathers. Very probably – but it brings us little nearer our actual mission, trying to spot Namoeta. We asked the waitress if there were any felines employed in the shipping at Tamo’ha Landing as Helen and I were looking for a holiday job – at which she just laughed. I noticed some large drakes at the other table looking us over with interest; one very striking mallard asked me if we were competing in the contests. Not being too sure what he meant and not wanting to broadcast we were rank outsiders, I said we had been considering it. Must find out what they meant, as we are getting quite good at local dances and suchlike. The rain showed little sign of slacking, so we went on our way after making some “landscape sketches” out of the teahouse window. It was certainly atmospheric – about the thickest atmosphere we have seen for ages, down to twenty yards visibility at times. There was no point in arousing suspicion by investigating the docks too closely, when any aircraft with a camera on a clear day could take a better picture than us and look down into open yards and holds besides. An hour along the track over the headland had us soaked to the skin again, but we found Pudoto Bay right on schedule and were soon sheltering in another teahouse with steaming pots of tea and coffee in front of us. I fear we hardly look like a fashion plate right now, in drab oilskins and with our boots and puttees plastered in mud up to the hocks. More Paschendale than Paris fashion, in fact. This time we found a rather more mixed population in town and rather less industrial development: just one open jetty and some longhouse sized sheds. If anyone is smuggling here, they might be bringing in the odd crate of ammunition but definitely no tankettes. There were only fishing boats tied up at the jetty, but certainly there was room for lighters the size of the one we arrived in. Amazingly enough, the rain stopped – in half an hour we were blinking in strong sunlight, and spotted a general store at the far end of the village. That put quite a different complexion on things: we managed to load up on cans before making the half hour trip back to our dripping wet tents. Pouring puddles off the oilskin groundsheets came rather too late, all our spare clothing and food was soaked through already. A rather dismal evening followed, though it was enlivened when Molly brought out a large bottle of Nootnops Blue she had purchased behind my back. I must say, it quite lifts one’s spirits – we were still soaked to the skin as was everything else around (someone should invent a better tent material than canvas) but somehow it felt much less important – and indeed we ended up performing an impromptu hula around the spirit-stove, which might have won no points for style at our Dance School but at least shook some of the water out of our fur. Wednesday 6th February, 1936 A brilliantly sunny day after yesterday’s rain, our tents and fur quite steaming. We laid everything out to dry in the sun and headed down the path again to Topikiha Landing, now we have found a few of the right questions to ask. The coyote families were pleased to chat and we offered to help them carry grain out to some distant coops, where several hundred animal chickens were also pleased to see us. Oh my. It seems on Orpington they really have kept some classical Polynesian traditions alive, despite everything the missionaries doubtless tried to do. I have seen postcards of the mock battles and dances – the battles being more like fencing rituals with carefully sized bamboo staffs rather than war-clubs, rarely causing much injury. We have parish sports days and cooking contests back home, but the rival tribes here really DO seem to be comprehensive in proving as the song says, “we can do Anything better than you.” I think the contest the drakes were keen on asking us about was what they call the “Weho’la’laha” match in Spontoonie, which even I can translate after being Tailfast with Jirry and learning a lot of relevant vocabulary. Suffice it to say that Helen is disqualified from taking part by her Tailfast necklace, even if she wanted to. One supposes that having mostly solid blocks of incompatible avian, reptile and mammal tribes competing would save a lot of problems later. I wonder how folk all agree on a scoring system? Anyway, it seems we have arrived at the right time; the matches start on Friday, though some of them are definitely not tourist spectator sports. Molly wistfully remarked she could sell any number of tickets, but Helen vigorously dissuaded her with a wet sock. Maria says there is a traditional Tyrolean snout-slapping dance rather like that. One thing is certain, there will be a lot of traffic around these islands in the next week as folk travel to the festivals; good cover for slipping in some extra cargo traffic without anyone noticing. It looks as if our original plan of watching from a distance is not going to be good enough; we need to get in to scent range. After another quick discussion (for which read argument) the four of us decided to go with my original plan after all; suddenly we need a local contact if we are to attend the festival, and Namoeta is our girl for that. It took us all afternoon to find her, as it turned out she does not exactly live in the village of Pudoto Bay but quite a way inland, in a longhouse sheltered by the tallest trees we have seen on Orpington. Even then we had to wait until she returned in the evening – and Namoeta immediately invited us to stay in her longhouse, prophesying more heavy rain in the next few days. She does look very pleased to see us. We could hardly refuse her offer, as even if she was doing anything illicit it would make her suspicious of our rejecting traditional hospitality. All five of us dashed out at top speed to break camp and pack up before full darkness came, and indeed we would have been quite lost on the final stretch back to her longhouse without her knowing the trails. So, we ended the day more comfortably than we had expected in some respects. It was very pleasant to look out into the rain through the carven doorposts of her dry hut, rather than having it forced in as a fine spray through the canvas and pooling on the ground sheets. But we could not forget what really brought us here – Mr. Sapohatan has some evidence she is involved with smuggling, and we cannot really relax till we find out. Thursday 7th February, 1936 I am sure our Althing contact will be pleased to know we have not let Namoeta out of our sight all day, for whatever it’s worth. One thing is certainly true, that she is in the import-export trade – she has a lighter that trades around the coast of Orpington, supplying the smaller settlements with various goods. Of course this means she knows the whole coast and the reef like the back of her paw in all weathers, and her craft excites no comment anywhere it goes. So far, so good – but she is hardly going to be taking on cargoes of contraband while we are helping sail the boat. We have found out a lot more about the festivals, and indeed one of the reasons she was so keen to see us is that many of her friends and relatives in the trade are busy practicing for the weekend. Maria has had a bout or two herself – of the mock combat at least, putting our self-defence training into practice with six feet of sturdy bamboo. She has a hard head and packs quite a wallop, so should do well. Molly is equally keen on that one, and of course we are all going to enter the dances. Namoeta had to do some fast talking with the Village councils to get us accepted, but she managed it; it seems Songmark girls are quite famous even out here, and two of us having been Tailfast into her family persuaded the doubters. Of course we shan’t be going in for the “Weho’la’laha” match. Certainly not. But I have enquired about the scoring system in the spirit of scientific interest, and have to say it seems fair. I expect when the Missionaries objected the Orpington Islanders just pointed to the section in the Bible exhorting them to “Love thy neighbour” and at least had material for a sturdy argument. The evening was spent putting together suitable costume to mark us as guest members of the Chicken Spirit tribe; we were formally introduced to the birds and now wear Buff Orpington pinion feathers in our new headdresses. Maria was less than keen on that side of things, but promises us she can square it with Father Mulcathy when she gets back to Spontoon. Anyway, from one point of view it is a disguise put on to help Law and Order, so I hardly see him getting into too much of a stew over some chickens. One thing we discovered was though Chicken does not feature too highly on the menu here, there is no shortage of eggs. Namoeta showed us how to tell which ones will have chicks by “candling” against a strong light, and which ones we can have for breakfast. Hurrah! Whatever else, our diet is markedly improving here, as we have donated our remaining stocks of millet and manioc flakes as an offering to the birds; by far the best thing to do with it. I wonder if one can make eggnog with Nootnops Blue? Saturday 9 th February, 1936 Dear Diary – it has been another of those Broadening Experiences. Yesterday we climbed into the lighter and set sail for a village four miles West of Tamo’ha Landing, where by tradition the ritual games are held. It was a decidedly windy day, the waves crashing over the reefs a hundred yards to starboard as we skimmed along the North Coast. There was quite a tent city when we got there, easily a thousand folk gathered from all over the island. Our costume was relatively modest compared with the full Native dress, and indeed it reminded us that where Spontoon’s traditions are “rebuilt”, here they are authentic and unbroken for centuries. Still, it was rather chilly out on the waters. Our notebooks and sketchbooks were busy as we were shown around, noting all the different tribes and their costumes and rituals. Definitely, this is being kept out of the guidebooks. I doubt even many anthropologists get to see these festivals. Namoeta had to vouch for us in front of her Shaman, who examined our costumes and looked us over like a medic with an infantry recruit before giving us her blessing. One supposes personal health is more important than in traditional times, since the “Euros” brought less welcome things than trade routes to the islands. It was a full day’s contest, and by the time the log drums beat for luncheon we were definitely glad of the fitness our Songmark course gives us. There was about an hour of dancing, where I think we held up our end quite successfully, and the first heats of the ritual combats. The only controversy was Maria being rather too successful – she had checked the rules, and there is nothing against trapping a pole with her horns and twisting it to disarm an opponent. With neck muscles like hers, it is easy to see why she thinks of herself as a “female bull” as I am sure she could defeat many of the male ones. Indeed, she was the only bovine competing for the Chicken Spirit tribe, and there were murmurs of us having brought in a “ringer” as her style was quite unexpected. But the other tribe’s judges declared it a fair win, so she went on to the next rounds. The afternoon was the first of the “Weho’la’laha” matches, which for obvious reasons are spread over two days. Only the judges actually keep score and announce the results, and they are mostly merry-eyed but grey-furred elder Priestesses; it is far less public than I had feared. Anyone Molly had sold tickets to would probably want their money back. The Priestesses pick the individual matches from out of the opposing teams, which reduces a lot of problems I am sure. Actually, when I first heard of this I thought it the very last thing one would ever want to set up as a competitive sport, but having seen how things are arranged and talked to some of the girls I can see how it works. One of Namoeta’s other cousins (from the Orpington Island side) won the first of her (well titled) heats having triumphed over the Seabird Spirit Tribe’s champion, and looks absolutely none the worse for her experiences. Ote’ana is her name, a most demure looking Jellicle feline who certainly looks more like a Missionary’s daughter than the tribe’s champion. She gave me several exceedingly practical hints that I stored away and told myself someday I might find useful. The day ended with a very fine feast, also part of the competitions as the more domestically inclined members of the tribes get to show their talents. A non-competitive dance rounded off the evening, and those who were already eliminated from the competition were loudly drowning their sorrows with palm wine and Arak. I did notice the Duck tribe are still in the running for all the events, and bumped into the very distinctive mallard drake we met on Tuesday. Wakkakana is his name, it appears, and he seems quite proud of his victories already. His plumage certainly is very well groomed, and quite a few avian ladies seemed to be following him around with their gaze tonight. I made sure the rest of us got plenty of sleep, after half a bottle of palm wine apiece and no more; the Chicken Spirit clan had been good enough to let us compete, so of course we needed to be at our best. The second day started off much like the first after a communal breakfast; the finals of the dance and mock-battle contests came first. I notice the judges were equipped with “Kilikiti” bats, those very practical war-clubs we have seen folk playing Samoan cricket with on Spontoon’s Main Island. I assume they keep order with them, as severely as the situation demands. Molly got as far as the semi-final before being disarmed by a very fast Wolverine girl, her bamboo being sent spinning right over the crowd’s ears. Maria proved again that she can both take punishment and ladle it out in triple helpings, staying on her feet when a Komodo Dragon native broke his bamboo over her head. Her own pole did not break, but the lizard did (albeit not seriously.) Bravo for Maria! Just as we were celebrating that victory, Namoeta called round with some troubling news. Ote’ana rather foolishly celebrated last night with catnip wine after the contests, and failed the medical for today’s heat. Catnip is quite rightly banned as an unfair advantage, but she had thought the effects would have worn off in time. Dear Diary – we had promised each other to do the best we could for our hosts. Helen was disqualified by her Tailfast locket, and Maria had foolishly put her own name down in full (I registered as “Amelia, of the Chicken Spirit Clan”) and cannot risk word of such things getting back to her Uncle. Molly was less than keen on the idea, as she is saving herself for Lars (a pointless exercise if ever there was one). That just left me. Of course I could not walk away and let our borrowed clan be downtrodden by the Ducks for the third year running, especially since I learned what “trodden” meant in poultry terms. It must be rather like one of those recruiting drives in 1914 where folk volunteered by the thousand in music halls and theatres – once you put your hand up, it starts events that utterly sweep one along. I found myself registering and then having half an hour with a rather glum Ote’ana who primed me as to exactly what to expect – as she knows we will be facing the Duck tribe in the finals, and need to win this event. It is a good thing they are not mammals, that is one thing less to worry about. Ten minutes after that, I was with the rest of my team, checking each other’s ritual costume. The mood was less like troops about to go “over the top” and more like a grudge hockey match, with the rest detailing fiercely what they were going to do given the chance – and how to get those chances. I got quite caught up in the idea, I admit – and found my tail definitely responding unbidden at the scent of feathers on the breeze. As I expected, it was a wise-looking ferret Priestess who lined us up and looked the respective tribes over. Certainly, there were a dozen of the finest Drakes I had ever seen there – a prime flock of sleek feathers and polished bills. From the murmurs I heard, I rather felt my ears blushing as I realised I had been picked to be in a team just as good – and I vowed not to let my Chicken Feather symbol down. Although folk displaying lack of moral fibre in the Great War were given white feathers as a mark of shame, these are brown and we will try to add to their reputation. Wakkakana was there as I had expected, his white “flash” of brow feathers unmistakable. I remembered his boasting of a certain victory yesterday, and indeed my gaze flashed to meet him – the Priestess spotted it, and cheerfully selected us as a pair. Dear Diary. I don’t ever want to think about winning or losing in a thing like this. It was a very nice afternoon, is all I can say. Actually, the Priestess eventually called it a victory on my part and commented that I was like a starving wild fox in a hen-house … certainly there were a lot of feathers flying around by the time she called to me for the third time the contests were over. I don’t know much about ducks in general, but I can quite believe how Wakkakana won the previous two years. Hurrah for the Chicken Tribe! We did not exactly make a hash and a fricassee out of the Ducks, but we won by a very comfortable margin. The celebration feast was definitely frenzied, with even the clans who had been eliminated early cheering along with us. It was not till we had been feasting for an hour that I really had time to think about what I had been doing in detail, this time without the accident of catnip to excuse things. I might have passed a troubled minute, but realised that everyone else just looked on me the way the girls back at St. Winifred’s did when I scored the winning shot in the Lacrosse match against St. Jezebel’s Reformatory, ninety minutes into injury time with the referee’s whistle in her hand and about to blow for full-time. Different places, different ideas. I suppose a Contentious Objector would be horrified at the idea of someone earning a Victoria Cross in battle, too. Actually, there was only one thing that kept troubling me. It must have been an awful shock for Wakkakana to hear he had let his clan down, and to an outsider at that. I had seen him slowly heading back to the Duck tents, beak down and trying disconsolately to smooth the gaps where my claws had robbed him of feathers. As soon as the formal part of the feast was over I made my excuses and left, pleading tiredness even though I felt nothing of the kind. The Duck tribe may be boastful, but in some cases they have a lot to squawk about; I might not be here this time next year so – the etiquette books’ chapters on sport always do say never to boast about winning but to offer a sporting opponent a return match. And they are right, too. next  |