In a tradition from Mangaia

Mangaia

Mangaia is the most southerly of the Cook Islands and the second largest, after Rarotonga.-Geography:...

 in the Cook Islands

Cook Islands

The Cook Islands is a self-governing parliamentary democracy in the South Pacific Ocean in free association with New Zealand...

, Ngaru (wave) was an ancient hero who lived in Avaiki

Avaiki

Avaiki is one of the many entities by which the people of Polynesia refer to their ancestral and spiritual homelands.-Samoa, Hawaii, Cook Islands:By no means certain, but certainly possible, is an origin in the large islands of Samoa, namely Savaii...

 (Hawaiki

Hawaiki

In Māori mythology, Hawaiki is the homeland of the Māori, the original home of the Māori, before they travelled across the sea to New Zealand...

). His mother was Vaiare and his grandfather, Moko

Moko

In the mythology of Mangaia in the Cook Islands, Moko is a wily character and grandfather of the heroic Ngaru. . Moko is a ruler or king of the lizards, and he orders his lizard subjects to climb into the basket of the sky demon Amai-te-rangi to spy on him...

 (the great lizard). His wife was the beautiful Tongatea. To prove his prowess, Ngaru conquered the monsters of the deep, descended to the underworld and returned to the land of the living where he subsequently defeated the sky fairies and Amai-te-rangi

Amai-te-rangi

In the mythology of Mangaia in the Cook Islands, Amai-te-rangi is a sky demon. One day the people of this world are surprised to see a large basket being lowered from the sky. Some, curious, climb into the basket and are quickly lifted up out of sight, never to return...

, a sky demon (Craig 1989:184, Gill 1876:225-250).