The Taniwha

This story is also how the otaki river got made.

There was once a boy named Mike, he was rich in the heart and poor in money. One day he got given a bike for his birthday , and this is how the story began … 

One day Mike went on a bike ride to the river he was excited because his Mum said he could swim if he would like to, and of course he wanted to swim. When he got his boardshorts on he heard a noise in the water, he thought it was an eel so he wasn't scared. Because he caught lots of eels at his house, he had some bush and a little stream behind his house .

So he jumped right in the water, yoohoo. He did a massive manu it looked like a nuclear bomb exploding with water splashing everywhere, he did manos and bombs over and over again for about an hour. He was having a lot of fun but was getting tired and hungry. He decided it was time to go home.  He got dressed and got on his bike and rode home. When Mike got home his Mum was waiting for him and had cooked up some delicious eel, Mike licked his lips- yum. He loved eel. He thought it tasted like chicken.

After he ate his eel and chatted with his Mum about his swim and then he went to bed … when he woke up he put on his board shorts and yelled out to his Mum he was going to the river again,  he jumped onto his bike and off he rode. When he got there he saw a rabbit, he threw some rocks at it but he missed. He was a bit annoyed that he missed the rabbit but he remembered that he was at the river to swim not to hunt rabbits . He ran down to the water ready to manu in, when he saw a Taniwha it was green slick and slimy!!! He was so scared that he screamed , he screamed so loud that he scared it off. So he got on his bike and raced home as fast as his legs could pedal.

When he got home he raced inside and told his Mum he saw a Taniwha but she didn't believe him.

 Mike was upset his mum didn't believe him , So he went into the shack next to his house, he thought to himself i should hunt down that Taniwha and show my Mum it is real.

He grabbed his bow but it was old and needed fixing. He needed to fix the bow string first, so he got some hay string and started to plait the hay string into a strong bow string. When he finally finished plaiting he remembered that his arrows were broken too, so he went into the bush and looked for long straight sticks to make new arrows. He found about five long straight sticks then he went into his house and got his knife and started to carve some arrows out. By the time he carved all the arrows and put them in his quiver it was dark outside  so he ran inside and fell fast asleep…

When he woke up he remembered about the Taniwha hunt, it was all he could think about. So he put on his camo clothes , grabbed his bow and arrows and snuck down to the river on his bike. He was excited for the hunt. When he got there he couldn't see any sign of the Taniwha, he looked around for about an hour, he started to get bored from all this waiting around. Just as he was leaving he spotted the Taniwha out of the corner of his eye. He grabbed his bow and arrows and snuck to the edge of the river,  all of a sudden he got a cramp in his legs and he slipped and fell into the water right next to the Taniwha. But then something unexpected happened….

the Taniwha glided over and saved him by pushing him up to the surface for air. Mike had enough breath to swim back to the edge. He lay on the edge huffing and puffing from all the excitement and fear of what had happened. He jumped up and snapped his arrows because he didn't feel like killing the Taniwha now and he wanted to show it he wasn't going to hunt it now, because it had saved his life . so he jumped into the water to say thanks for saving my life.but when he got in there was no taniwha he looked for hours but he couldn't find it .So he went home disappointed that he couldn't say thanks . The next day he went to his creek and made it join up to the Taniwhas river so he dug and he dug and he dug until he finally saw the river then he started to make it deeper it got super deep almost as deep as his house!!. Then he filled it up with water . he waited for the taniwha it didn't take long for him to spot the taniwha coming up his stream so he got ready to say thanks for saving my life.. But then his dog smokey started to bark at the taniwha and the taniwha swam off’ the Taniwha was so scared that it swam all the way to the otaki forks …. To be continued