Storm Singing and other Tangled Tasks by Lari Don

They were brown. The deep blue came from lines of tightly packed tattoos.
    Helen turned to the girl on her right and stared at her upper arm and shoulder. She was decorated with blue swirls and spirals, on top of warm brown skin. The girl wasn’t completely covered in tattoos; Helen could see clear patches of skin on the inside of her arm.
    The girl saw Helen looking, smiled shyly and said, “Do you want some smoked ray wings?”
    Helen spluttered, “No thanks,” and turned away, embarrassed at being caught staring. Now she was facing Tangaroa, who was grinning at her embarrassment.
    He leant closer and held his arm out for her to examine. But Helen kept looking at his face. The blue on his lips, which made his teeth so white, was the only solid blue on his face. The rest of his face was covered in thin confident lines, arching over his eyebrows, slashing across his cheeks.
    Intricate mazes of ink were tattooed onto his arms and shoulders too. Unlike the girl, he had almost no spaces, apart from the palms of his wide hands.
    “I’m not completely covered yet,” he said, “but I’ve collected all I need to become our Sea Herald contestant, so I might not bother getting any more.”
    “What have you collected?” Helen leant forward, examining the back of his hand, and realised the tattooswere made of tiny letters. Tiny words. Long lines of rhyming verse. “Did you write these?”
    “We don’t write them, we gather them. We demand rhymes from those who put themselves in our hands by coming into our waters.”
    “You’ve threatened to sink this many people?” She gestured at the tens of thousands of words cut into his skin.
    “I’m good at persuading lines from lone sailors who’re too frightened or confused to tell anyone afterwards. Even though their rhymes don’t usually make much sense.”
    “Maybe they don’t make sense because they’re frightened!”
    He shrugged. “I’m also good at listening to people who don’t know I’m there, listening to their conversation and their music, gathering anything which sounds convincing.”
    “But why do you need rhymes?”
    Tangaroa frowned. “Our elders believe these rhymes will help us find our way home, to the island where our ancestors were born. Our ancestors navigated using rhyming word trails, and our tribe hope that if we listen hard enough, we will find the true words to lead us home.”
    “How can words be used for navigation? Don’t you need compasses and maps?”
    “No. Long before the electronic instruments your sailors use, before even instruments for north-seeking and star-reading, sea people used descriptions of shorelines, currents and swells to remember and pass on journeys.
    “Words can be easier to pass on than maps. If I wanted to guide you to that smaller cave, I’d say: standup, walk ten paces to your right, follow the cave wall to your left until you come to an arch, then walk down the tunnel. That would get you there much faster than a map, because with a map you have to work out where you are, how to orientate it and what the scale is.”
    Helen nodded. “But why in rhyme?”
    “Because directions from one side of the world to the other are long, and rhymes are easier to remember.”
    “Surely maps are more accurate for long distances?”
    “Not if we don’t know the modern map name of our island. We come from the largest ocean in the world, with many thousands of islands.”
    “Why don’t you just reverse the instructions which got you here?”
    He looked embarrassed himself now, pink tingeing the edges of the blue patterns on his cheeks. “We got here by accident. Our ancestors were blown far off course, and found themselves in the wrong ocean, with no verses to help them find their way home. We can’t reverse the direction, because we don’t know how we got here. That’s why we gather verses, hoping to find the ones which will get us home.”
    Helen glanced over at the pool, which was filling up with rising