The birds squawked louder as I got near where one tree had been rooted out. They curved in a circle around me, screeching to each other. I stopped and stared down.

A bowl lay on the ground in front of me. A scruffy bowl made of twigs and grass. A nest. Four speckled blue eggs lay inside it.

I squatted down to look closer. The magpies shrieked, skimmed so low over my head, I felt their wings whack past. I glimpsed yellow eyes staring.

I picked the nest up, carefully. The two birds squawked and skidded by. I carried the little bowl and its eggs over to a big puriri tree the contractors must have been told to leave. Three metres up, two branches forked, with a hollow between them. I pulled myself up with my free hand. As gently as I could, I placed the nest in the fork, and wiggled it so it was held fast.

I slid back to the ground. Where were the magpies? Up above me in the puriri branches, perched silently, those yellow eyes watching me, dagger beaks half-open.

‘There you are, boids,’ I said. ‘Say “thank you”.’ As I walked away, I heard a fluttering behind me. The magpies were checking the nest.

One of them called. It was a different call, like music. We’d read a poem at school, where magpies went ‘Quardle oodle, ardle wardle doodle’, and that was exactly the sound this one made. It was almost like they were saying ‘thanks’ to me, though I know that’s stupid. But I felt sort of special.

I remembered all that today, as I looked at my watch. Back in our farmhouse, they must have made their minds up by now. What did I want? Town and exciting stuff? The valley and a certain person I could see in town, anyway? I was starting to make my mind up, too.

I reached the riverbed, and sent a couple of stones skimming across the water. I guess the nearest our valley ever got to real treasure was when Great-grandad Alan and Tipene found that carving. It’s been kept on the marae ever since, and it’s amazing: all scrolls and patterns and staring eyes. Every time I see it, I feel like the eyes know about me, somehow.

A university group came and dug in the swamp years ago. The marae had given them permission to search for anything that early Maori people might have hidden there after they came to Waimoana. They discovered a few more carvings: there’s a big one, probably from over the doorway of a meeting house. Near the edge of the swamp were a few little wooden things that could have been spinning tops. Funny to think of kids playing there while their parents maybe did something mysterious and important.