The woman was old, with hardly a tooth.

One eye was milky, the colour of an oyster, the other was beady and sharp. She let out a stream of words and walked off behind the houses, taking Dulcie with her.

Rika’s face was tight, closed. ‘It’s what always happens,’ she said when Martha went to her, put an arm around her. ‘Aaron says it’s how the old women are, scolding the young ones when they come into the family. It’s their job as mothers of the clan.’ Aya Aita was his mother’s sister.

‘If he says you’re coming into the family, isn’t that something to hang on to?’

‘You reckon I’m family?’ Rika said, letting her anger show. ‘You saw how Aita looked at me.’

Yes, Martha had seen the veins knot in Aita’s ancient face, and the angry finger jabbing first at Rika and then towards the young women. What was a white woman doing here, taking Aaron while there were girls in the village with the right relationship of clan and tribe? That’s how it seemed to Rika when aya Aita strode away, out of sight beyond the hibiscus. And it’s how it seemed to Martha, though later she wasn’t so sure. Had that really been her reaction, or one put there by Rika? Why wouldn’t Aaron be right?

Late that afternoon, old Aita took Rika’s hand and rubbed her arm. She was wearing the dress Rika had brought for her. Bright red with orange flowers. ‘Good,’ she said, indicating the crispness of the material. ‘Nice.’

SINCE THE MISSIONS, THE VASÁI HAD TAKEN THE PRECAUTION OF beginning with a church service. An each-way bet, Aaron called it. So the next day everyone - including Pete, who never went willingly into a church, even one with woven walls and an altar decorated with clamshells - sat through the heat of noon listening to the visiting pastor, a stout Tongan, praise at great length the will of God and his miracles. A number of babies were baptised, maybe a dozen, and almost as many old people were splashed with water to mark the gift of entry into paradise. There was singing and vigorous praying until, at last, in the name of God, the pastor blessed the coming vasái, which He, the Lord, had created, along with everything else, including the clans gathered in this church and the host clans awaiting them in their own church across the water at the top of an adjacent peninsula.

Aaron’s village on the tip of the fjord was in vasái partnership with the clans from the village across the way, high on the next peninsula. Jacob was already up there. It was his clan village, Aaron’s dead mother’s village, whose clans who would be giving the feast for this vasái, and therefore making the signal to commence. Aaron’s clans, in the village at the edge of the fjord, would accept the invitation, dancing in exchange for the gifts and the feast that awaited them. Pete, equipped with his notebook and field recorder, had told Martha the essentials. On one side, prestige was gained by the greatness of the feast, greater than the feast they’d received at the last vasái when the roles were reversed; on the other side, prestige lay with the perfection of the dance, the beauty of the feathers and drums. That was the role, this time, of Aaron’s clans. It might seem a simple exchange, Pete said, but it wasn’t. Rivalries were bound into the vasái, which presented an opportunity to shame the partner clans, thereby gaining an advantage, even as alliance was secured.