He watches, his mouth agape in horror. She digs again, this time in the middle of a group of siphon holes, and uncovers a colony.
"Want one?" He closes his mouth with a snap, and shakes his head vehemently.
She chuckles, and prises another shrinking pipi from its shell.
He flutters his hand with distress.
"It moves, it's alive? Yeah, I know. So is an oyster when you eat it. And that was what you were enjoying a couple of weeks ago. Very nice, weren't they?"
His mouth draws down.
"I can assure you," speaking thickly, her mouth full of soft sweet and salt flesh, "that an organism like this doesn't feel pain as we do. It doesn't realise its impending death. It's just cut and gulp, and that's it for the pipi." I bloody hope so, anyway.
"You understand Sim?" Schloop, carve, swallow, as she downs another pipi.
The little boy quivers.
"Look, it would be wrong, very wrong, to eat a fowl or a frog alive supposing we had the stomach to do it. But not these."
She hopes he won't ask why, because she isn't sure herself. She suspects it's because even a lowly frog, not to mention a fowl, could make one hell of a racket as you gnawed 'em. All the helpless pipi could do, was spurt a feeble squirt of water and die between your teeth. Dammit kid, you've started to make me feel guilty.
The boy sighs.
He goes away by himself, and stands on all the tell-tale siphon holes.
She follows, and wherever his footprints become many, digs down, and brings up another horde of pipis, thanking the child in a loud voice as she does so, until Simon P is stamping any old where in despair.
"Hey!" she calls at last. "I've got enough. E tenderheart, it's all over, the massacre. You can stop protecting them now."
She giggles over the full kete, and he comes back dumb with rage and glowering, and hits at the bag.
"Go easy, fella. You'll damage yourself, doing that."
He shakes his head fiercely, and begins crying.
"Whatsamatter? You crying for them? Believe you me, this is what their mothers brought them up for-"
Tears dribbling down, channeled toward his pointed chin, Kerewin, you piss me off. She grins at him, standing there hunched and miserable in the winter sun.
"Hell, I wasn't trying to upset you. Much, that is."
He doesn't smile.
"Berloody oath… look boy, to the best of my knowledge, and that's
considerable, it doesn't hurt shellfish to be eaten straight from the shell. Not as it would hurt us to be gobbled up whole. I believe the scientific expression is, the shellfish receives a terminal negative stimulus, okay?"
And I hope the multisyllables intrigue you enough to stop your weeping because I'm beginning to get some kind of guilty indigestion.
He sniffs, sighs resignedly, crouches down by her, and pats her shoulders. Then he holds out his hand.
"O?"
Points to his mouth, and the kete.
"You wanta pipi? After all that bloody fuss?"
She gives him two, ready shelled. He eats them slowly, screwing his face up and weeping all the while. He begs for more when he's finished.
"I do not understand kids," says Kerewin to the world at large, and gets up, to hunt for more pipi.
She lay back on her elbows and watched him wander along the beach. He fossicks, picking up tide debris, bringing it back to her.
She assumes he wants to know what they are, so identifies each object.
"Gull's feather. Wouldn't hazard a guess as to the species."
"That's a segment of sea biscuit. Not for eating, you silly little bugger. It's an echinoderm."
"Um, lamanaria of some kind… lessee, this is the Coast, and it's a roughish beach and the weed's got no side-spikes. Yep. Lessonia variegata for your information, boy, and get it to hell away from here. Sandflies love it for a breeding ground."
"Fishbone. Haven't the faintest idea as to what kind of fish, but the bone's a vertebra."
"That is part of an electric light bulb. Probably chucked overboard by a marauding squid boat. I wouldn't bother keeping it, unless you want to go in for some kind of revengeful voodoo. Then I'll help you."
"O those. Co-eye, kor-fie, alia same tree."
He wrinkles his nose, Yeah?
"That's part of a poem, believe it or not. These are seeds of a tree, golden seeds for golden flowers, seaborne to make more sea-trees. Well, it's a coast-dweller, anyway."
He's still puzzled.
"The kowhai is a tall thin tree, with greybrown bark. It blooms in the earliest part of spring, with flowers that the tui and korimako love. It likes coastal areas, and lets its seeds fall into rivers and the sea. And they are carried to other beaches so the kowhai blooms
through the land. A sea-tree emblem for a sea-people, only the people haven't woken up to the fact they are a sea-people yet… anyway, co-eye English pronunciation, kor-fie Maori pronunciation, alia same tree, getit?"
He reaches over and pats her on the shoulder again. It is a curiously adult gesture from a small boy. He smiles as he does it. Don't get upset, Kerewin, I believe you.
Romance on.
Kerewin lifts her eyebrows until they disappear into the brown bush of her hair.
"And the same to you, urchin… collect as many as you can, and I'll show you how to make a necklace from them. Made so you can plant the seeds at a later date, if you want."
He comes back with a handful and puts them carefully in her pocket. Wanders off down the strand again.
The wayward brat… she squints at the winter sun, and closes her eyes. She keeps seeing scarlet patterns that jiggle and flash.
A touch on her hand.
She stiffens, then relaxes.
"What's up?" closing her eyes again.
He blows in her ear gently, and she shudders at the unexpected breath.
"Meaning?"
He sits back on his heels, and smiles with half-closed eyes, shaking his head all the while.
He'd thought,
knowing names is nice, but it don't mean much. Knowing this is a whatever she said is neat, but it don't change it. Names aren't much. The things are.
Laughing secretly at himself. Because you can't say names, Clare. But he'd come back anyway, and blown into her ear.
A whole stream of names that is. Do you like them? Segment-lamanaria-vertebrae-lessonia-variegata-marauding-voodoo-korfie and ALL.
Her eyes flicked open quick again, and were as sharp and threatening as glass splinters.
It was just air, see? he'd thought hurriedly, my hand was more real, see? But Kerewin didn't ever get really wild. She just sat there, frowning at him.
She'll get to know it, one of these days.
He'd sat, smiling his know-all smile into the sun, until, tired of making explanations for words, he lay down and went to sleep.
The first thing he saw, right by his eyes when he wakened, was the sea biscuit shard. He took his time about waking, doing it slowly
(because it is Kerewin sitting there, still squinting at the sun, still dreaming) until he was clearheaded and calm. Then he picked up the shard: still lying sprawled, he started building. The sea biscuit in the centre, a network of dry marramgrass stalks on top, the feather, a sliver of driftwood, a seaweed bladder, a pipi shell… putting them together neatly, quickly, and it seemed to Kerewin's bemused eyes, inevitably… it finally stands about six inches high, sturdy yet delicate, an odd little temple, a pivot for sounds to swing round-
He moved a few inches to lie down beside it, ear nearly touching the thing.
Slowly his eyes closed, and his mouth loosened, opened. His expression was one of rapture.
Is it being trusted? She tamps the tobacco into the bowl more firmly.
It's almost a feeling of protection I have… because he's leaving himself so wide open? I could sneer, or scold, or stomp on it, or him… but he seems to have decided I'll do none of these things. So that's him trusting me, and this, this peculiar sensation that tightens my chest and throat is the spinoff.