Page 198 of Once an Angel
shells and an impudent grin.
Naked children ringed her. Emily had never seen so much baby fat in one place.
These children had never been swaddled in corsets and crinolines. They'd never been stuffed into stockings or endured the torture of hooking a dozen buttons on high black boots that pinched their toes. They stared at her, and Emily stared back, shocked but fascinated by their freedom.
A solemn little girl gazed shyly at her from behind a fall of dark hair. Her belly pooched out in the swayback posture of a toddler. She popped her thumb in her mouth, sucking it noisily.
Groaning, Emily flopped to her back in the sand. "Why couldn't you have been Pygmies? I hate
children."
The little boy offered her his hand. "Isn't it a bit intolerant of you to condemn an entire echelon of
society based only on their collective ages?"
She jerked her head up. She hadn't expected him to understand her, much less answer in anything more than childish jabber.
She warily took his hand and climbed to her feet. "Let me guess. Justin must have taught you English."
"Justin?" he repeated.
The little girl spat out her thumb and squealed, "Pakeha!"
The children's faces lit up as they joined in her joyful trilling.
"Oh, for heaven's sake. Stop that, won't you? You're making my head ache." Emily backed away from them, throwing out her arms in a helpless gesture. "Of course. It only makes sense that Justin would be the almighty, magnificent, all-holy Pakeha!"
They lapsed into silence. The boy stared at her vacantly. Apparently, his tutor had yet to teach him the sting of sarcasm. The little girl gazed up at her with something akin to awe.
"Must she stare so? It makes me fidget."
The boy gathered the toddler to his side. "She is my sister, Dani. They call me Kawiri."
Emily bobbed a reluctant curtsy. "They call me Emily." She rested her hands on her hips. "Why were
you chasing me?"
"We weren't chasing you. We were following you. We had no idea you'd be asinine enough to fall off
the hill." Emily couldn't find an argument for such evenhanded logic. "Neither did I," she muttered. "Asinine. Now, there's a good word. Did your mighty Pakeha begin with theA's?"
Dani opened her mouth to chirp. Emily didn't think she could bear another hymn to Justin's goodness,
so she squatted and plugged the child's thumb back in. While the other children experimented with
Emily's name, the little girl pulled a crimson flower from behind her ear.
She tucked the bloom in Emily's hair, weaving it among the curls. Emily felt a hesitant smile touch her lips.
As a new excitement rippled through the children, she straightened. A plump boy pointed toward the waves, yelling in Maori.
"High tide," Kawiri explained.
"High tide?"
At Emily's blank look, he added, "A natural phenomenon initiated by the waxing and waning of lunar forces which in turn—"
"I know what a tide is," she interrupted.
