Pete laughed. ‘You’ve been spending too much time with Rika,’ he said. ‘Don’t read the worst into it.’ And maybe he was right, for when Aaron arrived with a cheerful slap to Pete’s shoulder, aya Aita’s face changed. She lifted Aaron’s hand to her face as they spoke, their voices a melody moving back and forth, with a chorus of onlookers breaking in.

‘How did you settle that?’ Pete asked when aya Aita had padded off.

‘I told her that at her age, born before, she’ll go to the ancestors either way.’

‘Ah. The light hand of compromise,’ Pete said, though to Martha it seemed hardly an answer.

‘Come,’ Aaron said to Pete, ‘afa Noah is asking where you are.’

Martha watched them cross the dance ground, a tail of small boys exactly getting their two different walks, before she retreated to the shade, where the women had spread mats and were swatting at mosquitoes and gossiping. Rika was chewing betel with them, spitting red, as they watched the dancers warming up, circling around, still waiting for the conch shell to call them across the water. Dulcie was opening green coconuts with the practised tap of a bush-knife. Sunny Naomi, the baby still at her breast, was leaning towards Rika, wanting to look through the lens of the Leica. ‘There,’ she said. ‘There,’ directing the camera to the small girls with feathers in their hair, ready to dance with their sisters. ‘Everyone dressed for dancing.’

‘Come and sit with me,’ Angel said to Martha. ‘Be my friend. Angel friend.’ She was sitting at the edge of the tree’s shade, where sun came through the leaves and danced on her face. Unlike the other young women, Angel had only one delicate line of tattoo marks high across her cheekbones.

‘Why just that one row?’ Martha asked.

‘Because,’ she said, ‘I am half saltwater girl, half future.’

Naomi gave a snort and laughed. ‘She is afraid,’ she said, closing her eyes against the memory. ‘It takes a strong woman, plenty pain, the face tattoo.’ Her skin, a soft brown, gleamed beneath the lines that curved with the contours of her face. ‘Fjord woman,’ she said.

There was a light breeze coming from the water, and after a while Martha lay back on the mat. Up in the trees were rustling sounds; she couldn’t distinguish what they were, though she knew that to Naomi, sitting next to her, each murmur would have a source, and each tree a history.

Could Rika ever be part of this place? Would her child be, if it lived in Hohola and not here? What life would the child choose? These weren’t questions Martha could put to Rika. Even thinking them felt close to betrayal.

‘Look,’ Naomi said, standing up. ‘Trouble, it comes.’

The carnival atmosphere had evaporated. Young men with painted faces and fresh herbs in their armbands had stopped dancing. Girls entering the dance for the first time retreated to their sisters. The signal to begin the vasái that had been expected at the close of the church service - Aaron had been sure of it in the morning – had not come. No conch had sounded in invitation.