"... 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 there 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.

Next morning Maui prepared to set off in search of his parents. Before he left, he astonished his older brothers once again by making quite a speech. 'Now you stay here,' said little Maui, 'and you'll be hearing something of me after I am gone. It is because I love my parents so much that I am going off to look for them. Listen to me, and say whether the things I have been doing are remarkable or not. Changing into birds can only be done by someone who is skilled in magic, yet here I am, younger than all of you, and I have turned myself into all the birds of the forest, and now I am going to take the risk of growing old and losing my powers because of the great length of the journey to the place where I am going.'

'That might be so,' said his brothers, 'if you were going on some warlike expedition. But in fact you are only going to look for those parents whom we all love, and if you ever find them we shall all be happy. Our present sadness will be a thing of the past, and we shall spend our lives between this place and theirs, paying them happy visits. What is there to be afraid of?'

Little Maui went on, very serious. 'It is certainly a very good cause that leads me to undertake this journey, and when I reach the place I am going to, if I find everything agreeable, then I shall be pleased with it, and if I find it disagreeable, then I shall be disgusted with it.'

The brothers kept straight faces, and replied: 'What you say is exceedingly true, Maui. Depart then, on your yourney, with your great knowledge and your skill in magic.' Then their brother went a little way into the forest, and came back in the shape of a pigeon once more, with his sheeny back and his white breast and his bright red eye. His brothers were charmed, and there was nothing they could do but admire him, as he flew away.

Away flew Maui in his pigeon shape, with his brothers admiring him as he went. But as soon as he was out of sight he wheeled about, and flew to the clump of rushes that marked the place where his mother disappeared.

He came down, in his noisy pigeon way, and strutted about for a moment. Then he lifted the rushes. He flopped into the hole and replaced the clump behind him, and was gone. A few strokes of his wings took him to that other country, and soon he saw some people talking to one another on the grass beneath some trees. They were manapau trees, a kind that grows in that land and nowhere else.

Maui flew down to the tops of the trees and, without being noticed by any of the people, perched on a branch that enabled him to see them. Almost at once he recognized Taranga, sitting on the grass beside her husband, a man who by his dress and demeanor was plainly a chief. 'Aha,' he cooed to himself, 'there are my father and my mother just below me.' And soon he knew that he was not mistaken, for he heard their names when other members of the party spoke to them. He flopped down through the leaves and perched on the branch of a puriri tree thad had some berries on it. He turned his head this way and that, and tilted it on its side. Then he pecked off one of the berries and gently dropped it, and it hit his father's forehead.

'Was that a bird, that dropped that berry?' one of the party asked. But the father said No, it was only a berry that fell by chance. So Maui picked some more berries, and this time he threw them down quite hard, and they hit both the father and the mother and actually hurt them a little. Then everyone got up and walked round peering into the branches of the tree. The pigeon cooed, and everyone saw it.

Some went away and gathered stones, and all of them, chiefs and common people alike, began throwing stones up into the branches. They threw for a long time without hitting the pigeon once, but then a stone that was thrown by Maui's father struck him. It was Maui, of course, who decided that it should, for unless he had wished it, no stone could have struck him. It caught his left leg, and down he fell, fluttering through the branches to the ground. But when they ran to pick the bird up, it had turned into the shape of a young man ..."

(Maori Myths)