Potiki

As in his premonition, Toko awakes one night to an array of colors and sounds, which are caused by a fire raging in the meeting house. Manu gets up and, seeing the fire and commotion, believes it to be a nightmare he will awake from. Toko eventually manages to ease himself from his bed into his wheelchair and instructs Manu to wheel him outside, where he witnesses the “shouting, crying, daylit colour [sic] night” (135). He approaches Mary, who is crying and lamenting the loss of the poupou (wooden figures). Once the fireman finish putting out the fire, which has destroyed the roof and walls of the meeting house, the night falls dark and silent. The Maori people sit and cry for the loss of their sacred building and begin to sing, although “there was little comfort in it” (137). Tangi starts shouting angrily and vows to take revenge herself on those who started the fire, dismissing someone else’s suggestion of requesting another inquiry as pointless.

In the morning, they go out to observe “the ruin that had been the house of genealogies” (137) and see Mary retrieving “a scarred and blackened poupou from the pile” (138).