Taniwha's Tear (12 page)

Sassman shook his head impatiently. ‘No problems, man. Small thing, that.’ He sucked on his beer, then looked at Mat. ‘You’re sixteen, you say? Difficult age, as I recollect. How ’bout you tell me ’bout Puarata, if you wanna? Tell me how that went down.’

Mat tried to think carefully and dispassionately, but the alcohol, and the secondary smoke, and watching Lena dance…it was hard to stay focused, and remember how to be cautious. He started talking, telling Sassman about the bone tiki, and the flight from Puarata, and Wiri…after a while it all seemed to come out. At some point, Lena had come and sat beside him and he barely noticed. But it felt good to talk about it all. ‘And so this Jones is supposed to arrive any day, and help me out. But I can’t see what to do. I mean, this taniwha
has been stuck in the rock for hundreds of years, for heaven’s sake!’

Huh?
He shook his head, unaware of what he’d been saying for the last few minutes.

Sassman nodded to himself, staring at Mat. ‘Well, I think we can help you, my man. You see, this Jones, I know him. Good friend of mine. I’ll bring him here, so you can meet him. We can sort this thing out for you. Sure we can.’

Lena was looking at Mat with a strange expression. ‘Sassman told me about the “Other Side”, last night. Aotearoa. I never imagined it was even there.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘Isn’t this just like a dream? I feel like the princess in a fairy story.’

‘You are a princess, honey,’ Sassman drawled. He looked up at the stars. ‘Tomorrow or next day, I’ll bring Jones here, an’ we can sort all this out together.’ He nodded at Mat. ‘Don’ you worry, my man. Don’ you worry ’bout nothin’.’

Mat put his arms around Lena’s shoulders, and felt that all of his burdens had been lifted.

They found the others and worked their way closer to the stage, and as the first night ended, he found himself dancing and shouting amidst his small group, happy again. The cares and worries evaporated away; not entirely—they’d still be there tomorrow—but for now it was enough to put them aside and sing and dance.

Just as the last act signed off amidst deafening applause and began the milk-an-encore routine, he dared himself,
built up his nerves, and kissed Lena on the lips. She didn’t push him away. Her arms wrapped about him, and when she kissed him back, he felt a surge of euphoria. He caught Cassandra staring at them, her glasses reflecting the sky rockets exploding above. Then the band was back on, and they were all leaping to the last encore. Fireworks and laser lights shredded the darkness, and all about them, people cheered, even as they began to disperse into the night. The young and inexperienced were barely standing, being led off by friends with more staying power, and floodlights were coming on. Faces looked surreal in the stark white light, as they wound their way towards the paddocks full of cars, and the drive home.

By the time they were back in town, it was closer to dawn than to midnight. Rain was falling at last, blowing in from the sea in sheets, and making them all shiver. Dressed only in thin T-shirts and shorts, they were soaked and shaking, their minds befuddled by tiredness, alcohol and fading adrenalin. None of them was ready to go home, but had no idea what to do or where to go.

Lena let Mat wrap his arm about her for warmth, and they huddled by the clocktower on the main street, watching the last of the revellers disband. There were policemen about, stopping people and directing them homewards. A small group of Black Power guys were bullying some tourists until a pair of officers intervened, but the
joie de vivre
of the night had fled. Mat’s watch read 3.14 a.m. as they saw the gang members disperse,
and in a few seconds, the police were following the main body of them down Gladstone Road towards the south. Two men remained, men without gang patches on their leather jackets, who looked like bikers, huddled against a wall, trying to light a smoke in the damp wind.

‘Let’s go home,’ Mat suggested in a low voice. ‘We’ve still got two days of the show to go.’ He tried not to think that he also only had two days to work out what to do about the taniwha. Surely when Jones arrived, he would suggest something. Tomorrow, Sassman had promised him.

‘Look!’ hissed Lena, pointing. They followed her finger, to where a blonde woman was hurrying along, wrapped in a short raincoat with her legs bare beneath her short black dress. ‘It’s that woman, Donna Kyle!’

Mat felt a sudden chill. ‘We should go, before we’re seen.’

Riki gripped Mat’s arm. He pointed towards the two smokers. There was a flash of teeth as one of them sauntered out into the rain, towards the hurrying blonde woman. ‘Hey, chicky-babe,’ he called in a leering voice. ‘Got a light?’ She ignored him.

Mat pulled Lena into a shop doorway as Donna lifted her head, the others crowding in beside them. ‘Who’s she?’ Cassandra wanted to know.

‘The Wicked Witch of the West,’ Damien hissed back at her. Five sets of eyes stared as the second man followed his friend across the street to where Donna confronted his comrade.

‘Hey, bitch, I asked if you gotta light?’ the man demanded. The two men encircled the lone woman. Rain whipped down the road malevolently. A slash of light lit Donna’s face. Her eyes narrowed, and she turned and strode away from the clocktower intersection, towards the sea. The two men followed, like jackals circling wounded prey. They all vanished around the corner.

Mat let out a breath, only to suck it in again as Lena exclaimed. ‘Come on!’ and wrenched herself from his grip. ‘Let’s go!’ She darted out of the shelter of the shop door, and onto the street.

He stumbled after her. ‘No! It’s not safe!’

She threw him a scornful look. ‘Who needs “safe”? Are you coming?’

Uh oh…
He scurried after her, as she ran to the corner where Donna and the two men had vanished. He sensed the others reluctantly following, cursing under their breath. ‘This is stupid,’ Cassandra said quietly. Mat agreed wholeheartedly.

He caught up to Lena as she peered around the corner of the intersection. He grabbed her shoulder, and peered past her, to the two men and Donna Kyle, only some thirty metres away, at the head of an alley beside a Mitre 10 hardware store. The voice of the man who was doing the talking carried muddily through the rain and wind.

‘Hand over your purse, you ugly hag. Or we’ll wreck your face even worse than it already is. What happened, your man smack you one?’

Donna Kyle pulled off her raincoat and let it fall.
‘This is your last warning, fool.’ Her voice sounded like a thousand snakes hissing. ‘Back off, and I’ll let you go.’

‘Ha! Get you! Who do you think you are?’ The first man stepped closer and made a grab at Donna’s hands. She stepped backwards, out of sight down the alley, and then they heard the crunch of her shoes on gravel. The two men whooped and followed.

Lena ran after them. Mat cursed and followed, the others trailing behind them.

They reached the mouth of the alley, as they heard a female cry of pain, and some thing skidding across loose metal. A male voice growled in triumph, and as their eyes adjusted they saw a big shape, holding a smaller one who was backed up against the wall. The other attacker ran to the struggling pair.

‘Grab the purse!’ the first attacker snarled to his colleague.

‘Omigod,’ Lena gasped. She looked at Mat. ‘We have to help her!’

‘You don’t understand,’ Mat replied. The violence sickened him, but…‘She’ll—’

A scream echoed down the alley.

It came from the first man. He staggered backwards, his hands going to his throat. The other man backed away, his whimpering almost childlike as Donna whirled on him. Scarlet light kindled in her eyes, as her hands reached forward, dripping with blood from where her nails had pierced the windpipe of the first attacker. Like talons they flexed, and then her hand gestured, and the second
man was thrown backwards against the wall, the back of his head smacking wetly against the stonework. He slid down the wall, his frame slumping as his limbs lost their strength.

Mat pulled Lena out of sight at the head of the alley. ‘She wasn’t the one who needed help,’ he hissed. ‘Now let’s get out of here, before we get the same treatment!’

From some where a couple of blocks away, a siren shrieked. The others milled in confusion, but when Mat and Lena, hand in hand, broke into a run, they pelted after them. They ran down a service alley, behind a cluster of shops, and emerged a block away, still running. Mat tried to check behind them, but all he could hear were sirens blaring louder and louder.

They gathered in a shadowy office doorway beside the hotel. Cassandra was polishing her glasses, looking frightened but shoving Damien’s arm off when he tried to console her. Riki was peering back the way they had come, but there was no one following. The distant sirens had fallen silent, but not before one with the distinctive notes of an ambulance had come and gone.

Lena was leaning against the wall, staring at Mat. ‘They got what they deserved,’ she insisted, her voice almost triumphant. The arm beneath Mat’s hand was shaking.

Mat shook his head. ‘They might be dead.’

‘They deserve to be! You don’t understand what it’s like, to be a girl when men turn nasty!’ She burst from his
grip suddenly, and stormed out into the rain. There was a big green rubbish bag propped against the wall, full of refuse from the office block. She stabbed a finger at it and jerked her arm sideways. The rubbish bag flew backwards through the air to smack against the glass doors of the building and burst apart, spewing screwed-up white paper and plastic bags over the foyer.

‘That’s how she did it!’ Lena declared fiercely. ‘That’s how she whipped them!’

The boys and Cassandra stared.

T
he text from Sassman said:

‘Mat, could you turn your phone off while we’re eating, please?’ Colleen sounded strained and tired, the usual spark missing from her voice. But then as Mat had only woken up an hour ago, he couldn’t really say he was on top of the world, either.

‘Yeah, put the damn thing away,’ Tama growled, which Mat thought was rich, coming from him. But apparently it was vital that Tama was on call, whereas his messages were ‘trivial’.

He bit his lip, thumbed his phone to silent mode, and put it in his top pocket. He glanced at his watch: 1.22 p.m. He speared the last piece of potato on his plate, put it in his mouth, and wished this interminable meal was over. It wasn’t that it was a bad meal; in fact it was great. And the setting was lovely—the Bushmere Estate Vineyard. They were sat outdoors under the
restaurant’s shade-umbrellas, bathed in sunshine, the last vestiges of the over night rain having been swept away. The menu was mouth watering, and the temperature was comfortable, the rain having lowered the searing heat that had marked the last week. It should have been perfect, except it wasn’t.

It was just that he wanted to be any where but here. He wanted to be with Lena, to reassure himself that her fit of temper last night had been out of character. He wanted to be with Riki and Damien, so that he could laugh with someone and relieve his growing sense of tension. After lunch he could join them all at the festival. He wanted to be doing things, to be active, to subdue the ache that was growing with each passing day that he did nothing positive towards freeing the taniwha. Mostly, he wanted Jones to arrive and take control of every thing.

Mum and Dad had intercepted him before he could leave that morning, and announced that he had to come to lunch with them. He could go to the concert afterwards, they told him. So here he was, trying to wish time would speed up, and wishing the jollity was less forced.

He’d really thought Mum and Dad would solve their problems, after they had been pulled back together at Reinga in September. Instead the same old issues were still there. Mum hated the criminals and suspected criminals that were Dad’s stock and trade. Dad felt he was doing right, and that what he did was too important to abandon. He still thought he could buy his way out of
their problems with lavish lunches and dinners, expensive treats and gifts. It was as if they were talking to each other’s ghosts sometimes—they were still in love with the memories of each other that were no longer the people they now were. Neither seemed able to see it.

At least they weren’t dragging Mat into the discussions, and he was grateful for that. He had too much else going on in his head to cope with that as well.

His phone vibrated silently in his pocket. ‘Uh, I need to go to the toilet,’ he said immediately.

Colleen eyed him suspiciously, then shrugged, sighed and nodded in exaggerated slow motion.

He read the text in the bathroom. It was from Lena. He felt a shiver of excitement, and hurried back to the table.

‘Hey, um, can I go? A friend of mine has a car, and we can catch up later. Please?’

Tama and Colleen sighed in unison. ‘When we said we’d need time to ourselves, we didn’t mean the whole time,’ Tama grumbled reproachfully.

‘Is it this DJ person?’ Colleen asked waspishly. ‘I’m not sure I like the sound of him at all.’

‘Ah, no, it’s, er, Lena.’

Colleen’s mouth widened into a smile. ‘Oh, ’tis the girly, then. Well, that’s all right, I’m thinking.’ She poked his arm. ‘You go for it, son.’

Tama winked at him. Mat groaned and rolled his eyes, but fled before they had a chance to change their minds. He called Lena back quickly.

‘Hiya.’

‘Hi! You need rescue?’

‘Yeah. I’m at the Bushmere Estate on State Highway 2.’

‘I know it. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Meet you at the gates.’

He walked alone down the gravel drive, and leant against a power pole at the gate. They were several kilometres south of Gisborne, and a few kilometres inland. He could see Young Nick’s Head, the southern cape of Poverty Bay and the first land sighted by Cook’s crew, away to the south, its distinctive hill shape reminding Mat of a serrated bone club, browned with age. All about him were paddocks and vineyards, divided by the highway, where cars whipped past every half a minute or so. The scent of the drying grass carried to his nose, and cleared some of the fog from his head that the glass of wine he had been allowed had brought. A lonely hawk circled above, looking for field mice or road kill, and the sun fell in and out of the clouds every few minutes. It was ten minutes or so before the white pop-top BMW purred up.

He stared at Lena in shock. Her cornrows had completely gone, replaced by short, spiky, newly peroxided blonde hair. She preened. ‘You like? I did it this morning.’

It looked uncomfortably like Donna Kyle’s hair. He got in and peered, forced a grin. ‘Sure, you look great. How’d you get someone to cut it this morning?’

‘Ha! I did it myself. You have to cut cornrows out anyway, and I’d got tired of them. And I had some dye.
It’s a bit messy, but it’ll do till I get back to my usual stylist in Auckland.’ She primped in the rear-view mirror, frowned a little then shrugged. ‘It’ll do for now,’ she said again, more to herself this time. ‘Sassman said I’d look more sophisticated this way.’

Mat quelled a feeling of unease. When had she and the DJ talked about that? He refused to think about it, and leaning across, he pecked her on the cheek. ‘Where shall we go?’

She shrugged as she pulled out onto the high way again. ‘Don’t care. Just wanted to get out. Dad and Cassie’s father were talking business, and she was sleeping in, so it was the ideal time to split. Let’s go…um, this way…’

She drove along the highway towards the south for a couple of minutes, and then pulled onto a side road, where they roared down empty country roads, while Mat alternately watched the view, and watched her. She was in a summer dress of pale lemon, wearing bangles and a pendant of gold. She was even wearing lipstick and make-up. She looked closer to twenty than sixteen. The car stereo played some thing beaty that sounded like one of the bands they’d heard at the festival. Suddenly she braked, and turned down a side road, where a few farm-houses were clustered amidst the paddocks and trees. A little road sign said ‘Matawhero’, stirring some thing in Mat’s memory.

They purred up to a massive stockyard, dry and empty, just a maze of wood and metal fences and gates that covered several acres back from the road. Lena stopped
the car and for a few seconds the only sound was her car stereo blaring out over the fields. They were at a T-junction with a road heading towards another small group of buildings.

‘Let’s have a wander round,’ Lena said lightly. She got out, pulled the keys, and then waited for Mat with an outstretched hand. He took it and squeezed. ‘Thanks for coming.’

‘No problem,’ he replied.

She stopped and looked him in the face. She looked tired. ‘I’m sorry I got het up last night…er, this morning. I didn’t mean to wreck that rubbish bag. And we shouldn’t have chased that woman. You know more than I do about what’s going on, so I should have listened.’

He shrugged, wondering whether she was sincere. Her voice didn’t do ‘apologetic’ well. ‘No harm done. She didn’t see us, and no one got hurt.’

‘Huh, those two guys did,’ she said. ‘The radio news this morning said that two men were found in the centre city just after 3 a.m., and had been taken to hospital. It said they were in a “stable condition”, whatever that means.’ She pulled at his hand, and they wandered away from the car, towards the end of the stockyards. It felt good to be touching her, after his anxiety that morning.

‘I got a text from Sassman,’ he said. ‘Jones is in town, and they want to meet at three o’clock. That’s about an hour away and…oops! I’ve not called him back!’ He pulled out his phone, and pulled up the number, then called it.

‘Yo!’

‘Hi, this Mat Douglas.’

‘Hey, my man! You got my text, right? The boss-man is in town. Where are you, brother?’

‘At Matawhero, with Lena.’

‘Hey, you two crazy lovebirds still hangin’ out! That’s cool, man. Listen, we’re not too far from you right now, at a farm house. Matawhero was where we were going to suggest anyhow. I’ll come and find you. I’ll see you in half an hour or so, yeah? Okay, see you soon.’

Mat told Lena what Sassman had proposed. Then they walked on for a while, just looking at each other. At the end of the lane they found a little white timber church, set in a tiny garden. The stump of what once must have been a massive tree lay grey and gnarled, just inside the gate. A sign proclaimed that the church was the only building left standing in Matawhero after Te Kooti had attacked the settlement in 1868. Mat could remember some thing about it from school. They peered through the closed gate for a few minutes, then walked hand in hand back to the car.

‘I’m so glad to have met you,’ Lena said. ‘I thought I was alone in the world, and I knew so little about what I could and couldn’t do. I was beginning to feel like a freak, and I was terrified someone would lock me up. Now I know you, and Sassman, and this Jones guy will be able to give me some proper instruction into how to use my Gift. And there is a whole other world out there that I never even knew was there. It’s perfect.’

‘I’m glad too,’ replied Mat. ‘I knew I wasn’t the only one, but I didn’t know anyone my own age. And you know, it didn’t seem right to date someone who didn’t have the same gifts as me, you know? Because we wouldn’t be equals, and I’d probably have to hide things from them, and all that. But with you, I won’t have to hide anything.’

Lena squinted against the sun, staring into his eyes. ‘Don’t be too sure of that. People always hide things from others. Even people in love do that.’

‘Did you hear that on a soap opera?’ Mat teased.

‘No!’ Lena laughed reprovingly. Then she frowned. ‘But we’re not exactly equals, anyway. Sassman told me that I was a mouse, and he and you were more like cats, when it came to who was most powerful.’ Her mouth twitched angrily.

Mat felt a flicker of anger at Sassman. ‘What’d he say that for?’

Lena’s shoulders twitched. ‘To put me in my place.’ She clenched her jaw. ‘But he said there are ways to make yourself stronger. I’m going to find them out. Then we will all be equals.’

Mat felt a twinge of discomfort. ‘It’s not that important, you know. I don’t care whether I’m stronger or you are. Hoanga says that’s not even the point.’ He tried to remember what Hoanga had said, some thing about rivers and swimming, but he couldn’t get it right in his head enough to tell it properly. ‘I’m just so glad to have someone to share this with,’ he finished lamely.

Lena snorted. ‘You wouldn’t say that if you were the weak one. Sassman told me I had “flea-bite” power. The arrogant prick!’

Mat squeezed her hand. ‘I don’t know why he would say that.’ It didn’t sound like the affable American he’d met.

Lena shook her head. ‘Me neither. But he did say that sometimes there were ways to make yourself stronger, and when those opportunities come up, you have to grab them.’ She looked at Mat fiercely. ‘I’m going to seize them with both hands.’ Her vehemence was slightly unnerving. But then she laughed nervously, and was a teenage girl again.

They stared at each other, and then suddenly she pulled him into her arms and their lips met, and for a few minutes there was nothing else but her mouth, and the feel of her body against his, and a feeling that life was rushing by too fast, that if he could, he would freeze this instant for ever. A dizzying ripple of heat or electricity in the air washed through them, which for a second Mat thought was some thing to do with Lena’s kiss, but they both stumbled slightly, and blinked about them dizzily. Someone shouted in the distance, from further up the road. He was dimly aware of a strange rush of aromas and sounds, and then a child shouted and another screamed. They pulled apart, and looked about them.

There were two children, perhaps eight to ten years old, sprinting towards them down the road, clad in old settler-style clothes like Mat had bought in Turanga.
But the road was changed. No longer tarseal, it was just two muddy wheel ruts and a grassy centre ridge. The stockyards were gone, and the houses were now unpainted timber, with smaller dwellings gathered about them. The children were boys, barefoot. A crowd of Maori, brandishing a mixture of traditional weapons like mere and patu and taiaha, and others with muskets, were boiling down the road after them.

Lena turned and looked behind them, and gasped. Mat followed her look. The car was gone. Then he turned again, as the first of the Maori warriors reached the hindmost child, and swung his patu at the back of his head.

‘No!’ Mat thrust out a hand and shoved, the way he had seen Donna Kyle do it the previous night, the way Lena had attacked the rubbish bag. He felt a small wave of force well from him, an invisible force that warped the air as it punched into the chest of the warrior. The warrior staggered and fell backwards onto his haunches. The others paused, and then ran harder at them, but one lifted a musket to his eye and took aim.

‘Run!’ Mat shouted at the children. ‘Run!’ Then he realised just who the musket was aligning upon, and dived sideways. The gun cracked, a curiously hollow sound, and a puff of black smoke erupted as a lead ball zinged past his ear. Lena screamed, as the first child reached them, a young boy with a snub-nose and floppy mane of brown hair who clutched Lena’s thighs, shrieking in terror. The second redoubled his pace, and threw himself at Mat.
Mat grasped him, taking in the first of the warriors barely twenty yards away.

‘Lena, take my hand! I’ll take us back! Lena!’ But she was out of reach. ‘Run!’ he shouted at the two boys. ‘Run! The church!’ He jabbed a finger towards the sanctuary, which here in Aotearoa was sheltered beneath the sprawling branches of the tree beside the gate, right where the stump was in the real world.

He thrust the boy behind him, and faced the onrushing warrior. He was bare-chested, clad in breeches with bare feet. His thickly muscled torso was scarred with ridges and gouges to a frightening degree. A cross hung about his neck, and he ran with his left hand raised to heaven, and his right holding his weapon. His face was wide-eyed and filled with battle fervour. He shrieked as he leapt, bringing his stone patu down in a vicious overhead blow.