Chi Chi lived in the highest nest of the tallest silk-cotton tree. She was so white that sleepy butterflies sometimes mistook her for a cloud.
On her first flying lesson, Mama showed her how to open her tail. Papa showed her how to lean into the wind.
Chi Chi showed them how to spin into a bush.
By sunset she could circle the tree and land without using Papa’s head as a cushion.
“The sky is large,” Mama warned. “Fly with us until you know the paths home.”
But at dawn Chi Chi woke before everyone else. Across the valley hung a rainbow, bright and low, with one end tucked behind the hills.
“I’ll only look,” she whispered.
She flew past the pond, over Tuku Tortoise’s rock and straight into the red band. Warm colour puffed around her like powder. She rolled through orange, slid down green and sneezed three times in blue.
When she popped out, every feather was a different colour.
Then the rainbow faded.
Chi Chi turned for home, but the hills all looked alike. She followed a river that curved the wrong way, circled a termite mound twice and landed on what she thought was Tuku’s rock.
The rock blinked. It was a buffalo.
At last she spotted the silk-cotton tree and wobbled onto the nest branch.
Mama stepped back. “Who are you?”
“It’s me!”
Papa peered at her purple tail and orange face. “Our Chi Chi is white.”
“I hate mashed figs, I sleep with one foot outside the nest, and Papa snores like a frog in a jar!”
Papa stopped peering. “That does sound like Chi Chi.”
Before they could decide, Tuku called from below. “I would recognise that triple sneeze anywhere.”
The colour would not brush off, so Tuku led them to a small rain cloud resting against the hill. Chi Chi flew into it. Cold drops drummed on her wings. Red streamed away, then orange, green and blue.
She burst from the other side, white again and laughing.
On the journey home, Mama flew on one side and Papa on the other. Chi Chi led them around the buffalo, over the pond and past the termite mound.
That evening the rainbow returned. Chi Chi leaned out of the nest.
“May I?” she asked.
Mama spread her wings. Papa yawned and followed.
The three birds raced towards the colours, with Tuku below shouting, “Bring back purple for my shell!”