The Māui Cycle is the shared body of traditional stories, told across the islands of Polynesia, about Māui, a clever demigod and trickster hero. In tellings from Hawai'i and Aotearoa (New Zealand) to Tahiti, Tonga, and Samoa, he fishes islands up from the sea, slows the sun to lengthen the day, and brings fire to humankind. The stories were carried for centuries by memory and performance rather than writing, so they differ from island to island, and most of what we can now read was recorded only in the nineteenth century.
Māui seemed to have no limits. Whatever stood in the way of human life, he found a trick to beat it, and the stories pile marvel on marvel until the hero looks unstoppable. Then comes the last adventure. Māui set out to win people the greatest gift of all, an escape from death, so that no one would ever have to die. It was the one prize his cunning could not seize. He failed, and was killed in the attempt. That failure, the old tellings say, is the reason human beings are still mortal. The trickster who could master the sun and the sea met the single thing he could not outwit.