'Nothing wrong with money as long as we remember it's food not God. You eat it, not worship it...' (chapter 13 p94) - Patricia Grace

I grew up amid two worlds, having close, continuous and frequent contact with each. These were two different and contrasting spheres that I inhabited, both full of life and vitality: my mother's Pākehā family and my father's Māori whānau. (chapter 2 p18)

This first part of the story is about two sisters, Ngarua and Maraenohonoho, who quarrelled over a canoe.

The old woman sang of a time gone ahead, and of those already walking ahead of her on the pathways. Her eyes were reddened as though they bled. And her songs, like the pathways, were interweavings of times and places and of all that breathed between earth and sky. And the pathways and the songs went into a time beyond the thumbing down of the eyelids. (The Stories, chapter 28 p180)