Coiled Snake (The Windstorm Series Book 2) (5 page)

“Five,” Paika shouts, “four, three, two, one!”

I pull out the gun and aim it at his chest. At the same time, he yanks on the leather thongs and simultaneously twirls both
patu
out to the side. Then he roars, and, muscles bulging, swings one paddle above his head, holds the other out in front of him, and charges. The ferocity of his face, the intensity of his scream, throws me off, and I stumble back a few paces. He barrels toward me. In a second, the club will bash in my head. I raise the firearm and squeeze the trigger.

I’m not sure what happens next; it’s over so fast. All I see is the whirling
patu
heading for my face. In a second, Paika’s plowed me over, grabbed me by the hair, and shoved the sharp edge of one of the clubs into my neck.

“Haiiii,” he booms. “Dead!”

After snarling in my face for almost a minute, he finally releases me, and I get up slowly, shaking.

“What do you think of the
patu
now, girl?” he asks.

“Impressive,” I grunt. “What happened?”

“You missed. Your aim was terrible.”

“Well, you scared me.”

“Exactly!” he crows. “Any bloke can shoot a gun—or try to shoot one. To be a true warrior, and defeat your enemy, you must discipline your mind and move with your spirit.”

“You mean learn to scare people?”

He shrugs. “That helps too. If it buys you time.”

“So what if I hadn’t been scared? I would have shot you.”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“Well, what if I had?”

He leans toward me. “If you had managed to shoot me, then you would be teaching me instead of the other way around.”

“If I had shot you,” I counter, “you’d be dead.”

He grins. “Don’t think so, love. I took precautions.” He ejects the clip from the gun. It’s empty.

“You cheated!”

“It’s called thinking ahead.”

“It’s called cheating.”

“If you had killed me, I wouldn’t be able to teach you how to be a warrior. So, I played it safe. Now, enough wasting time. Let’s get started.” He hands me a
patu
.

I give in, and we spend the rest of the day going through basic sequences with the club. With almost every move, he makes me roll my eyes, stick out my tongue, and yell. “Like a Komodo dragon,” he says, less than helpfully.

At first, I can’t do it, but then he tells me to think about something that makes me angry, to release that fury so I can connect to my spirit. I think about my parents, about the secrets they kept from me, and I roar. Soon, it starts to feel good, like I really am cleaning out my soul.

By the time the sun sets, my arms are on fire, and my throat is raw.

“We’ll stop here,” Paika says. “Tomorrow morning, I want you to get up early and run three miles before we begin again.”

I nod slowly. Three miles used to be a laughable distance, but I haven’t run that far in a while. I look up at the darkening sky. “Oh crap,” I say, “Miri told me to cook dinner.”

“And I was supposed to patch the roof,” he mutters. We look at each other and then race back to the house.

The light on the front step tells us we’re too late. “Remember what I taught you,” Paika whispers to me. “I might not live to teach you anything else.” Steeling ourselves, we enter the door.

The smell of cooking food greets our noses. We exchange glances and peek inside the kitchen. Miri has just served up battered cod, potatoes, and fresh fruit, and she’s waiting for us with arms folded.

“I see the roof isn’t patched,” she says.

“Yeah, the time got away from us, Mir,” Paika replies sheepishly. “But I’ll do it first thing in the morning. You have my word.”

Miri snorts and looks at me. “A big help you were.”

“Sorry,” I say, avoiding her gaze.

“You’re a hopeless lot,” Miri scolds. “I’ll let you eat, but you owe me a long list of chores tomorrow, do you hear?”

We nod quickly.

“Sit down. It’s getting cold.”

We do as she says.

“Beautiful meal, love,” Paika says, taking a mouthful of broccoli.

Miri ignores him and turns to me. “You’ll have to work on your war face,” she says. “You wouldn’t scare a kitten.”

“You saw us?” I ask, looking up from my potatoes.

“I saw something, all right. You’re teaching her all wrong, Paika. You’re treating her like she’s a boy.”

“It’s all the same,” he says.

“No, it’s not. Girls are just as strong, but they reach their strength in different ways. She needs to start with the inside.”

“What do you suggest?” he asks.

“
Waiata
.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Singing,” she says.

“I don’t sing.”

“That doesn’t matter. It’s about the words, what they do for you.”

“A woman’s voice is a powerful thing,” Paika adds, “because only her energy can unlock the pulse of life. Miri might be onto something.”

“What should I sing?” I ask.

“I’ll teach you something tomorrow.”

“Not until the chores are done,” Miri says.

“’Course,” Paika agrees quickly.

After dinner, Miri goes to bed, but Paika makes the two of us a cup of Milo, a warmed chocolate and malt drink, and sits with me in the kitchen.

“When you got to New Zealand, did you bring me straight here?” I ask, trying a sip. It’s good. Almost like hot chocolate, but not as sweet.

“Not quite,” Paika says. “We went to the council first, up north. They decided that you should come stay with your nana until a general meeting could be called
.
”

“What will happen then?”

“The tribe will vote on whether, you know … ” His voice trails off.

“They should kill me or not?”

Paika scratches his head. “More or less.”

I stare at my Milo.
Not as sweet as hot chocolate
, I think madly.

“Don’t fret, love,” Paika says. “I’ll speak for you again.”

I blink rapidly. “Is that what Miri meant when she said you saved my life?”

It’s his turn to stare at his Milo. “Maybe. I did vouch for you, which is why they didn’t kill you straight off. But she might have meant when I found you. You were a bloody mess, and I had to keep you under so you wouldn’t hurt yourself. Every time you woke up you tried to rip off your bandages or attack the person carrying you.”

“Carrying me? Someone carried me all the way here?”

“Mostly me, but a few of my mates helped out. I just strapped you to my back. It was no problem.”

I don’t know how to take this information. I try to picture myself unconscious and tied to Paika’s broad, tattooed back, but I can’t. “Why did you speak up for me?”

He shrugs. “I spent all that time getting you better. Didn’t want my hard work to go to waste.” He raises his mug to his mouth.

“How long did the trip take?” I ask.

He swallows. “A month or so, probably. We had to be careful, you know, getting out of Yakone territory.”

With those words, I’m suddenly reminded of whom I’m talking to, what he’s done. In my mind, I replay the way he disarmed me on the beach, drove the
patu
into my throat. How many Yakone did he kill?

“I think I’ll go to bed now,” I say, standing up.

“Right-o. Don’t forget to do that run in the morning.”

I nod and leave the room.

As I lie under my wool blankets, I stare out the glass doors at the clear, star-lit sky and wonder how much time I have left.

My bare feet make smacking noises as they pound the wet sand. The ground is cool beneath my skin. Soft. On my right, the ocean crashes in my ears, and on my left, Okarito’s famous birds cry in the jade forest.

I have no idea how far to run, nothing with which to measure my distance. But it doesn’t matter. I’m going to run until I drop. Or until the sentries shoot me.

Don’t go back
, my heart tells me as I charge along the beach
.

Where else would I go?

Just keep running. Get away.

I can’t. They’ll find me.

You aren’t a Rangi. You can’t become one. They’re animals. Remember what they did to the Yakone.

The Yakone didn’t want me either. They tried to kill me. At least Paika and Miri are protecting me.

It was a misunderstanding. Think about Rye, Lila, Jeremy. They wanted you, helped you. They’re your family.

Miri is my family. My real family. And Paika knew my parents.

No! Don’t let them deceive you. Don’t forget what they’ve done!

The Yakone killed my parents.

It’s a lie. They’re trying to trick you.

Why? What do they want from me?

My breath comes in hard gasps as I run even faster. My tired arms are beginning to protest, but I ignore them. What do they want from me? Why are they keeping me alive, teaching me to protect myself? What’s their game?

My foot catches on a stone, and I fall forward, tumbling across the wet beach. I roll over and lie on my back, stare up at the sky. The clouds today are longer and whiter than ever. They rise above me, doubling the size of the blue mountains, stretching into the heavens. I wonder if my parents are up there somewhere, watching me. Would they want me to stay with the Rangi or leave?

Do I even care what they’d think?

I stand up slowly. Sand clings to my clothes and skin, and I realize my legs are tingling. I probably shouldn’t have pushed them so hard.

I walk most of the way back, jogging the final stretch so Paika won’t accuse me of being lazy. I’m sure I ran more than his required three miles anyway, so it’s not like I cheated—not that he could say anything about cheating.

He’s waiting for me on the beach. In his hand is a
patu
, but it’s not made of bone like the ones we were using yesterday. It’s made of some kind of green stone.

“This is a
mere pounamu
,” Paika says when I get close. “Its name is Haunui-ā-Pāpārangi.
It has great
mana.
”

I reach out to feel it, and he jerks it away from me. “Don’t touch!” he snaps. “It’s
tapu
.”

“Translation please?” I sigh.

“This is very sacred,” he says slowly. “It belonged to one of my ancestors, a
Riki
.”

“So it’s sacred because it’s old?” I ask.

“It represents my
whakapapa
, my genealogy, so yes, that’s part of it. But like I told you, it has
mana
—how can I describe it? Spiritual power. An essence or energy that comes from the natural world. It’s a great honor for me to care for it.”

“Okay,” I say. “Why are you showing it to me?”

“Because you don’t understand yet what it means to be a warrior. It’s not just about fighting. It’s about connecting to yourself, to your ancestors, to the life force. Look.” He pulls off his tank top to reveal his tattooed chest. I cringe at the sight of the familiar pattern. “This,” he says, tracing the tattoo, “connects me to the rest of the tribe, to my brothers and sisters. It connects me to the world around me, to the wind. It helps make me whole. ‘There’s no such thing as a lone breeze,’ we like to say.

“And this”—he points to the tattoo on his face—“my
moko,
reminds me of my family who are no longer alive. It tells the story of my ancestors, ties me to them, just like the
mere.
”

“Why is that so important?” I say roughly.

“Family is everything,” Paika states. “It makes you who you are.”

“What if you don’t like who you are?”

“Then maybe you just don’t know yourself—or your family—yet.” He bends down and puts the jade
patu
inside a carved, wooden box.

Next to the
patu
, nestled in the velvet lining,
is an ornamented knife, its straight blade also made of jade. Iridescent shells are set in its handle, accenting the twists and turns carved into the bone. A feather, tied to the handle by a piece of rope, dangles from the end.

“Is that sacred too?” I ask.

Paika picks up the knife and slides his fingers over the handle lovingly. “Aye, that it is, love.” He sets the knife back in the box then closes the lid and places it carefully inside his duffel bag.

“Now,” he says, pulling out a plain bone club
and handing it to me. “Let’s pick up where we left off.”

We practice all morning, finally stopping for lunch. After eating some leftover cod, Paika lets me take a nap. My body is so drained I fall asleep instantly, and when he wakes me, an hour later, it seems like I only slept for ten minutes.

“Time to take care of those chores,” he says. “Don’t tell Miri we did lessons first. She’ll have our guts for garters.”

I spend the rest of the day cleaning floors, doing laundry, and weeding the garden while Paika patches the roof and repairs the fence. We manage to get everything done just before Miri returns. After we eat, I go straight to bed.

The next morning—and every morning for the next three weeks—I run on the beach. Afterward, Paika gives me a brief lecture about what it means to be a warrior.

“You have to take time to meditate,” he says. “Think about why you are taking up your weapon.”

“Why am I?” I ask.

“The reason is different for each person and each circumstance. Right now you are fighting to protect yourself. First Parents gave us our bodies. They are a gift. We must treasure them.”

“What if my goal is to kill other people?”

“There must be a purpose,” he says. “You might be defending your lands, your family, your
iwi
, or your honor.”

“And if I’m not defending one of those?”

“Then your fight is not consecrated, and you will be punished in the afterlife.”

I think about what Rye said about the Rangi, that they fought only to kill and would be punished when they died. I frown. I wonder what
he
was taught in his warrior training, but then Paika attacks me with a spear, and I stop thinking about Rye in order to block it.

Paika teaches me several songs—none of them in English—and makes me memorize them and chant them out loud when I’m sparring. He tells me they’re about focusing on a goal, unifying your thoughts.

“Move to the rhythm you’re creating,” he says, singing loudly, lunging and jabbing with each syllable. “
Tūtira mai katoa. Tātu e tātu e.
Let the music guide you, center you, ground you.”

He makes me swim in the ocean; he throws rocks into the water and tells me to retrieve them. Then he makes me throw the rocks myself, farther every time, and retrieve them again.

He makes me jump, do push-ups, try to knock him over. I lift things; I push things; I pull things. We practice all day, stopping only for lunch, until my entire body is stiff. Then I struggle to help with dinner or other chores before at last I’m free to sleep.

One day, Paika lets me take the afternoon off, and I walk to the kayak shop.

“Hullo!” John calls when I enter the shop. “Haven’t seen you in a while.” He runs a hand over his scarecrow hair.

“Is Jim here?”

“In the back.” He opens his mouth to say something, but I can’t quite hear what it is.

“Sorry?” I ask.

“Nuthin’.” A deep blush spreads over his pale cheeks, and he ducks behind one of the rows of kayaks.

Frowning, I walk to the back of the shop.

“Jim?” I call.

“Oy!” Jim steps out from behind a filing cabinet. “Kit!” he says when he sees me. “What a surprise.”

“Yeah, um, hey, sorry I haven’t been around. I wanted to come apologize and let you know I won’t be able to help out after all.”

“Did Miri spit the dummy?”

“I don’t know what that means,” I stammer.

“Sorry. Was Miri angry that I asked you to work for me?”

“No. We just have a guest staying with us right now.”

“That must be the man I’ve seen with you down on the beach,” Jim says, and as I wonder if he’s seen my Komodo dragon impressions, I feel a blush that rivals John’s color my face.

“Rellie of Miri’s?” Jim asks.

“More of a friend.”

“I see. Got a job, has he?” Jim asks.

“No … he’s on vacation.”

“Quite nice.” After a pause, he asks, “Do you want to take a rig out?”

“Can I?”

“Fine with me.”

“Thanks.”

As I’m leaving the office, I hear him mutter something under his breath. It sounds like, “A Māori on holiday. Fancy that.”

After a pleasant paddle through the lagoon, I return to the house and start making dinner.

The door slams as Paika comes inside. “What the
pueha
were you doing?” he asks.

“I was just at the lagoon,” I say, confused.

“You need to tell me when you’re going somewhere,” he says angrily. “If I don’t know where you are, I can’t protect you, can I?”

“I thought the staying stone told you where I was.”

“Only if I have the bloody counterpart, which I don’t.”

“You let me run on the beach by myself,” I argue, trying not to show how unnerved his answer makes me feel.

“But I know where you are, eh.”

“I guess,” I concede.

“Gizza here,” he says, gesturing at the knife I’m holding. I give it to him, and he starts carving up a mango with a fury.

Hoping to shift his anger away from me, I say, “Jim, the owner of the kayak shop, said something strange when I was talking to him. Something about Māori taking holidays.”

Paika rolls his eyes and spits into the sink, “
Pakeha
.”

“What does that mean?” I ask, remembering Miri called my dad that.

“Whites,” he says. “People who came to Aotearoa after the Māori. They’re always putting their nose in everyone else’s business, thinking they can tell us how we all should live.”

“But you aren’t Māori, are you? Miri said Rangi and Māori were different.”

“We are Māori and we aren’t,” Paika explains, visibly calming down. “Most of us look like Māori and our ancestors intermarried, but I don’t belong to a Māori
iwi
because my
iwi
is the Rangi
.
I just can’t tell regular people that, can I?”

“I guess not,” I reply.
So the Yakone are to the Native American tribes what the Rangi are to the Māori tribes.

“Here, let’s shell these peas,” he says.

We sit down next to each other at the table. While we work, our arms touch, and as I look down at his large bicep, I notice a tattoo that’s separate from the others, simpler too: three circles inside of each other. My eyes move onto the more complicated designs, trying to make sense of the pattern. Somehow the tattoos aren’t as repulsive as they used to be, and as I take in the image, I’m startled to realize that, beneath the design, our skin color is exactly the same.

I pull another pea out from the bowl, mind spinning. I think about how my father was a
pakeha
, a white man, and how the twins inherited his coloring. No one else in Williams looked like me. I was an outsider. And now, being here … I look like them, I’m acting like them.

What are you doing, Kit?

The next morning, Paika wakes me up early. “No run today,” he says. “We’re going for a drive.”

“Where?”

“You’ll see. Here, you’ll be needing this.” He tosses me a small key.

I stare at him. “You want me to take off the staying stone?”

“You don’t need me to do it for you, do you?”

“No, I mean—I thought I wasn’t allowed … ”

“Well, we can’t ruddy well leave the town with you wearing that thing, now can we? It’ll be our little secret. Hurry up and get dressed!”

When he leaves, I insert the key into a tiny hole at the bottom of the stone. With a click, the necklace comes apart.

My neck feels unnaturally light as I pull the staying stone away from my skin. I stare at the rock and chain dangling from my hand, the significance of this moment sinking in. This is it. The chance I’ve been waiting for. I can escape before Paika realizes I’m gone. Nothing’s stopping me from windwalking out of here.

Nothing.

I drop the necklace onto my bed and go outside to meet Paika. He’s standing by his motorcycle.