Maui slowing the sun

At a Glance

• Central figures: Maui-tikitiki-a-Taranga, the trickster-hero and youngest of five brothers; his grandmother Murirangawhenua, whose jawbone becomes the weapon; and Tama-nui-te-rā, the sun.
• Setting: Pan-Polynesian tradition - the Maui cycle is shared across Polynesia with regional variations. This telling draws principally from Maori tradition, set in Aotearoa and at the eastern pit where the sun rises.
• The turn: Maui persuades his reluctant brothers to help him ambush the sun at the edge of the world, using ropes braided from green flax to bind it.
• The outcome: Maui beats the sun with the enchanted jawbone of Murirangawhenua until it agrees to travel slowly across the sky, giving people enough daylight to work, cook, and live.
• The legacy: The longer days of summer and the measured pace of the sun’s crossing, which Polynesians attributed to Maui’s victory at the pit of the dawn.

The days were too short. Women could not finish scraping bark for cloth before the light failed. Men hauled in fish and found the sun already dropping while the catch still lay wet on the sand. Children ran out to play and were called back almost at once. Fires had to be lit before anyone was ready for evening, and the cooked food went cold in the dark because there had not been time to eat it while it was warm.

Maui watched this. He sat by the cooking pit with his brothers and said the sun was lazy - or worse, spiteful. It ran across the sky so fast that no one could finish anything. His brothers told him to be quiet and eat.

The Brothers and the Flax

Maui did not eat. He told his brothers they were going to catch the sun.

His eldest brother laughed. The second brother shook his head. The third and fourth brothers said nothing, which in that family meant they were afraid. Maui said it did not matter whether they were afraid. He needed them to hold the ropes.

He sent them to cut green flax - not the old brown flax that had dried in the wind, but the living green stalks still full of water. Green flax does not burn easily. Maui knew that when they got close to the sun the heat would be terrible, and any rope made of dry fiber would catch fire and snap. They cut armloads of it and sat in a circle braiding. Maui showed them how to plait the cords thick, doubling and redoubling, twisting until the ropes were as fat as a man’s wrist. They made long loops at the ends - nooses wide enough to drop over a limb of light.

When the ropes were finished, Maui went to his grandmother Murirangawhenua. She was very old. She had seen the sun run fast across the sky for longer than anyone. Maui asked for her jawbone - the lower jaw, still strong, curved like a club. She gave it to him. In some tellings she was already dead and he took it from her body. In others she pulled it from her own face and handed it over, because she loved him and because she too was tired of the short days. Either way, Maui had the jawbone, and it carried her mana in it.

The Pit of the Dawn

Maui and his brothers traveled east. They walked a long time - past the settlements, past the planted fields, past the edge of the land anyone used, into country where the ground was scorched and the air tasted of hot stone. They came to the place where the sun climbs out of its pit each morning. The pit was enormous. Heat rose from it in waves that bent the air. The rim of it glowed red before dawn.

Maui positioned his brothers around the pit’s edge, each one holding a rope with its noose laid open on the ground. He told them to hide behind rocks and clay walls they built up quickly. He told them not to look at the sun when it came. He told them to pull when he gave the word and not before.

They waited in the dark. The heat grew. The rocks around the pit began to tick and crack. Light seeped up from below - not the clean light of day but a molten orange, thick, the color of the inside of a fire. The brothers pressed themselves flat against the clay walls. Their skin dried and tightened. The flax ropes steamed but held.

Tama-nui-te-rā

The sun’s first limb came over the rim. It was not a gentle disc. It was a body - vast, blazing, with arms and legs of fire. Tama-nui-te-rā hauled himself up out of the pit the way a man climbs out of a hole in the ground, one arm reaching, then the other. He moved fast. He always moved fast. He had no interest in the people below and no reason to linger.

Maui shouted.

The brothers threw their nooses. The first loop caught the sun’s leading arm. The second caught a leg. The third and fourth ropes tangled around the body. Tama-nui-te-rā roared. He pulled. The brothers dug their heels into the scorched ground and held. The green flax smoked, turned brown at the edges, but did not snap.

Maui came out from behind the wall with the jawbone in both hands. He ran at the sun. The heat was beyond anything the stories can make you feel - his hair singed, his skin cracked, the air in his lungs burned going in and coming out. He swung the jawbone.

He hit the sun across the legs. He hit it across the arms. He hit it across the back. Each blow carried the mana of Murirangawhenua, and each blow landed with a sound like a tree splitting. Tama-nui-te-rā screamed and thrashed. The ropes held. The brothers held, though their hands bled and blistered where the flax cut into the skin.

The Bargain at the Rim

Maui did not stop hitting. He beat the sun until it could not pull free, until the great blazing limbs went slack against the ropes. The light dimmed to something a person could look at. The roaring became a voice.

Why are you doing this?

Maui told him. The days were too short. People could not work. People could not eat. People could not live properly because the sun crossed the sky too fast.

Tama-nui-te-rā said he had always moved at this pace. His father had moved at this pace. It was the way of the sun.

Maui raised the jawbone again.

The sun agreed. He would go slowly. He would cross the sky at a pace that gave people time to plant, to fish, to cook, to weave, to eat, to play, and to sleep when they were ready. In summer he would linger longer still. In winter he could go a little faster, because the land needed rest and darkness too, but never again as fast as before.

Maui lowered the jawbone. His brothers loosened the ropes. Tama-nui-te-rā rose - slowly now, wounded, dragging himself across the sky with the bruises of the jawbone on him. By the time he reached the western edge he had taken most of the day to get there.

The Walk Home

Maui and his brothers walked back. Their hands were raw. Maui’s arms ached from swinging. The jawbone was warm to the touch and stayed warm for a long time after.

Behind them the sun moved across the sky like a man walking through water - carefully, steadily, with no hurry. The women finished their weaving. The men dried their fish. The children played until they were tired and came in on their own. The fires were lit when people chose to light them, not when the dark forced their hand.

Maui said nothing about it when they got home. His brothers told the story. They always told the story. Maui sat by the cooking pit and ate, because for the first time there was enough daylight left to cook the food properly, and it was still warm.