Retell: Rona and The Moon

Rona was a beautiful woman who lived with her husband and two sons on a little kainga beside the sea. Rona's husband loved her dearly, but sometimes her bad temper and her angry way of growing at him and their boys upset them all. one day Rona's husband said to her that the moon is good to fish tonight. I will take our boys with me to the island across the bay. There will be many fish to be caught there now. We won't be back till tomorrow night so have a meal waiting for us when we return. They loaded their nets, lines, hooks and baits into the canoe and petaled away. The next day Rona began to prepare the hangi to cook the meal in. First she cleared out the ashes, embers and cooking stones from the pit dug into the ground that she would prepare the meal in. Then Rona built a stuck of small sticks and dry leaves at the bottom of the pit. Over these she put bigger branches and small logs, next she placed the cooking stones on top of the piles of wood and lit the hangi with the embers from the old fire. In those times moari people had to be very careful not to let their fires go out. The only why of starting a fire was to rube kaikomako and mahoe wood together. As it began to grow dark, and the heated cooking stones glowed red, Rona could hear her family singing as they returned across the bay in their canoe. She was about to place the food on top of the stones when she discovered that her bottles were empty. She needed water to throw over the hot stones so the steam could cook the food. The singing voices grew louder and Rona knew her family would be hungry. She grabbed the bottles and ran down the path to the lake which was some distance away. It was dark by the time she got near to the end of the path a full moon was shining and she could clearly see in its selvarey light suddenly the moon went behind a cloud it became so dark that Rona couldn't see the path. She stubbed her toe on a root tree and then crashed into a rock bruising her shin. Rona was in so much pain, and so angry at the moon for hiding his light, that she shouted at him saying "POKOKOHUA!" which means boil your head. This was a terrible curse and a great insult. The moon heard her rude words and came down from the sky. He took hold of Rona and began to lift her from the ground. Rona grabbed hold of the upper branch of a ngaio tree and hung on to it as tightly as she could. The moon was so strong that the tree roots were torn from the ground. Rona and the tree were lifted up into the sky. When Rona's family returned from their fishing trip, there was no sign of her. Their meal was uncooked by the flickering flames of the oven. It wasn't until they looked up at the night sky that they realised their angry wife and mother had been rude once too often. There on the face of the full moon was Rona, with the ngaio tree and her bottles in her hands.