"After the dancing was over that evening [when little Maui had presented himself to his astonished mother and his 4 elder brothers] and the sleeping mats were unrolled, Taranga called her last-born child to her mat. 'Come here, child, and sleep with your mother', she said. So when everyone else was settling down to sleep, Maui lay beside his mother on her sleeping-mat, and she pulled a cloak over them, and he curled up with her arm around him.

This made his elder brothers jealous, especially the two younger ones, and in the morning they were muttering about it. 'Look at that', they said. 'Our mother never asks us to go and sleep with her, and yet we are the children there is no doubt about, we are the ones she actually saw born. Why, when we were little she nursed and fed us, and played with us on those mats of hers. She was fond of us then, but she doesn't treat us lik that now, and never asks us to sleep beside her. As for this little abortion - who can tell whether he was really nursed by the sea-tangles, as he says, or whether he isn't someone else's child, who is now sleeping with our mother? Who would believe that a little object like that, tossed into the sea and forgotten, would turn up as a human being? And now he has the cheek to call himself a relation of ours!'

The two younger ones were going on about it like this, but the two older ones said: 'Never mind. Let him be our brother. Remember the proverb: In time of war, settle your disputes by force, but in time of peace let things be done in a friendly way. Let us be careful not to be like the children of Rangi and Papa, who once talked of killing their parents. Remember all the quarrelling that led to, and try not to let the same thing happen to us.' The younger ones decided that their brothers were right, and stopped their grumbling. And so Maui was accepted as their brother, and he slept beside his mother every night.

Now every morning at daybreak, Taranga used to wake up before her children and leave the house, and vanish until night. The older brothers were used to this, they knew that their mother was there at night but gone in the morning, but little Maui was not used to it and he found it very annoying. At first he thought in the mornings, 'Well, perhaps she has only gone to prepare some food for us.' But no, she really was gone, she was far away.

In the evening, when her children were all singing and dancing in the meeting house as usual, she used to return. And after the dancing she called young Maui to her sleeping mat, and this happened every night. And as soon as the daylight came she disappeared again.

One day Maui asked his brothers to tell him where their mother and father lived. He said he wanted to visit them. They said they did not know. 'How can we tell?' they said. 'We don't know whether they live up there somewhere, or down below, or over there.'

'Well, never mind,' said Maui, 'I'll find them for myself.'

'Nonsense,' they said, 'how can you tell where they are, you, the youngest of all of us, when we ourselves don't know? After that first night when you turned up in the meeting house and made yourself known to us all, you know that our mother slept here every night, and as soon as the sun rose she went away, and she came back at evening, and this is how it always is. How can we tell where she goes?'

Now when Maui had this conversation with his brothers he had already discovered something for himself. During the previous night, as his mother and brothers were all sleeping, he had crept out and stolen his mother's skirt, her woven belt, and her warm, feathered cloak, and had hidden them. Then he had taken various garments and stopped up all the chinks around the doorway of the house and of its single wooden window, so that the first light of day would not get in and Taranga would not wake in time to go. When that was done he could not sleep. He was afraid his mother would wake up in the dark and spoil the trick. But Taranga did sleep on.

When the first faint light appeared at the far end of the house, Maui could see the legs of all the other people sleeping, and his mother was sleeping too. Then the sun came up, and Taranga stirred, and partly woke. 'What kind of night is this,' she wondered, 'that lasts so long?' But because it was dark in the house she dozed off again. At last she woke up properly, and knew that something was wrong. She threw off the cloak that covered her and jumped up, with nothing on, and went round looking for her skirt and belt. Little Maui pretended to be fast asleep.

Taranga rushed to the door, and the window beside it, and pulled out all the things that Maui had used to stop them up. When she saw that the sun was already in the sky she muttered some angry things and hurried out, holding in front of her a piece of old flax cloak that Maui had used to stop up the door. Away she ran, crying and whimpering in being so badly treated by her children.

No sooner was she out of the house than little Maui was on his knees behind the sliding door, which she had closed behind her as she left. He was watching to see which way she went. Not far away he saw her stop and pull up a clump of rushes. There was a hole under it, which she dropped into. She pulled the rushes into place behind her, and was gone. Maui slipped out and ran as fast as he was able to the clump of rushes. He pulled it and it came away, and he felt a wind against his face as he looked through the hole. Looking down, he saw another world, with trees and the ocean, and fires burning, and men and women walking about. He put the rushes back, and returned to the house and woke his brothers, who were still fast asleep.

'Come on, come on! Wake up!' he cried. 'Here we are, tricked by our mother again!' So they all got up, and realised from the height of the sun that they had overslept.

That was the day when Maui asked them to tell him where his parents lived. He did not admit what he had seen that morning. And they said they did not know, and he would never know either.

'What does it matter to you, anyway?' they said. 'Do we care about our father or our mother? Did she feed us and look after us until we grew up? Not a bit of it. She went off every morning, just like this. Our true father, without any doubt, is great Rangi the Sky, whose offspring provide us with trees for our houses and birds and fishes for us to eat, and sweet potatoes and fern root. And who was it that sent those other offspring down to help us - Touarangi, the rain that waters our plants. Hau ma rotoroto, the fine weather that enables them to grow, Hau whenua, the soft winds that cool them, and Hau ma ringiringi, the mists that keep them moist? Did not Rangi give us all of these to make our food grow, and did not Papa make the seeds sprout in the earth? You know all this.'

'I certaínly do know it all,' said Maui. 'In fact I know it far better than you do. For I was nursed and fed by the sea-tangles, whereas you four were nursed at our mother's breast. It could not have been until after she weaned you that you ate the foods you speak of, whereas I have never tasted either her milk or her cooking. Yet I love her, because I once lay in her womb. And because I love her, I want to find out where she and our father live, and go and see them.'

The other four were astonished when they heard their little brother speak like this. When they recovered themselves and were able to keep their faces straight, they glanced at one another and decided that they might as well let him have his way, and go to find their parents.

Now Maui had already performed some of his magic for them on the night when they first set eyes on him, in the meeting house. On that occasion, in front of all his relatives, he had transformed himself into all kinds of birds that live in the forest. None of the shapes he assumed had pleased them particularly then, but now he turned himself into a kereru, or wood pigeon, and with this they were delighted.

'Heavens!' they said. 'You do look handsome. Much more beautiful than the birds you showed us last time.' What made him look so splendid now was that he was wearing the belt and skirt he had stolen from his mother that morning. The thing that looked so white across the pigeon's breast was his mother's belt. He also had the sheen of her skirt, that was made of burnished hair from the tail of a dog, and it was the fastening of her belt that made the beautiful feathers at his throat. This is how the wood pigeon got its handsome looks.

Maui now perched on the branch of a tree near his brothers, and there, just like a real kereru, he sat quite still in one place. He did not hop from bough to bough like other birds, but sat ther cooing to himself. Which made his brothers coin our proverb, 'The stupid pigeon sits on one bough and does not hop from place to place.' And they went away, and left him to change his shape again."

(Antony Alpers, Maori Myths and Tribal Legends.)