Taniwha's Tear (26 page)

‘Sure,’ they chorused.

‘Cool! You know, you guys are probably my first real friends.’

‘Shock me,’ drawled Damien. ‘It’s a date. Don’t bring Pepsi.’

‘It’s NOT a DATE,’ Cassandra replied briskly. ‘Hey, I’ve gotta go.’ She looked suddenly panicky. ‘The laptop! The goggles! The projector! All my gear! What do I tell Dad?’

‘Tell him it was all obsolete so you chucked it in the river,’ Riki suggested.

‘It WASN’T obsolete! It was state-of-the-art and on loan!’ Her voice filled with misery. ‘It took me weeks to load up all the add-ons and get the settings right, and—’

‘Yeah, whatever,’ Damien interrupted. ‘Think of the fun you’ll have doing it all again.’

Cassandra opened her mouth to snap something, then abruptly nodded. ‘Yeah, it will be fun!’ A broad smile slowly grew on her face. Suddenly she seized Damien and hugged him. ‘Hey, mate! Thanks for everything. It’s been weird, but then, so are you. Kinda fun though. You’re almost likeable.’

Damien went red, and awkwardly patted her back. ‘Sure, y’know, whatever.’

She hugged Riki, and then threw her arms around Mat. She felt bony, but warm and surprisingly nice. ‘I’m sorry about Lena,’ she murmured. ‘I never liked her and all, but…’ She trailed off, and backed away awkwardly. ‘See you all tomorrow. Let’s make it ten, and stick to it, cos we’ve all lost our mobiles, right?’

They watched her go in silence, unconsciously patting their pockets. She was right—the cellphones were all gone.

Jones cleared his throat. ‘She’s a fine girl, that,’ he observed, lighting his pipe. ‘Resourceful, brave, smart—more use than you lot.’ He chuckled. ‘And you mark my words…once her braces do their job, and she discovers contact lenses and Clearasil, and rounds out a little, you’ll not know her. You’ll be fighting for her regard, I fancy.’

Riki looked at Mat, and gave an ‘It’s possible’ shrug. Damien just laughed. ‘She’s already perfect, man.’

All Mat could think of was Lena, though. He felt utterly empty inside.

It must have showed, because Riki put an arm around his shoulder again. ‘Mate, don’t worry. I think it’s just that you’re a new type of superhero: one that never gets the girl, and needs his mates to pull his arse out of the fire.’

Damien chuckled, and Jones gave a small snort.

It took a while, but Mat slowly managed to smile.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Tama Douglas demanded as Mat entered the hotel suite. Then he saw the bruises. The worst had faded under Jones’ care, but Mat still looked like he’d been caught beneath a severe All Blacks rucking session. ‘Jeez, boy, what’s happened?’

Colleen gasped and flew to Mat, enveloping him in her arms. He could read in his mum’s eyes how she had spent the day—in terror that the world that had nearly taken
him in September had reached out again. There was no easy way to tell her that she was right.

Then Jones entered the room, Godfrey at his heels. Riki and Damien had left, heading for their own homes and no doubt equally terse welcomes.

Tama, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, took in the Welsh adept’s old-world attire, and Colleen gave a small frightened gasp. ‘Who the hell are you, Mister…?’

‘Jones. Aethlyn Jones. May I sit down?’ For the first time, the adept looked tired, as if he’d reached the end of his endurance. Mat wondered how long he’d been awake. ‘I’m sorry, Mister and Missus Douglas,’ the Welshman said. ‘Things happened yesterday and today that detained Mat for a time. I shall try and explain everything.’

Mat introduced Jones, and Tama and Colleen made him welcome with evident reluctance. They all talked, deep into the night. Jones did not tell them of Lena’s fate, but he told them enough to explain the dangers that Mat and his friends had faced. Tama at times paced, angry at not even being aware that his son was in danger, and Colleen clung to Mat as if scared even talking of such things would whisk him away again.

‘The key thing,’ Jones said on completion of his story, ‘is that you must allow Mat to train with me. Only an adept like myself can teach him what he needs, so that he can be safe from those like Bryce who would exploit him.’

‘No!’ Colleen replied immediately. ‘This world of yours is too dangerous for a boy. He must not go there again! Not ever!’ Her fingers dug into Mat’s arm.

‘It will reach out to him now whether he wills it or not, just as it did in the past few days,’ Jones replied implacably. ‘It is only by training that he will be able to resist its pull, and to be safest when it comes.’

Colleen wrapped her arms tighter about Mat’s shoulders. ‘Please, no. He must be allowed to step away.’ She looked at her estranged husband for support.

Tama stared at his son, as if not recognising him. Then his eyes turned inward. He looked at Colleen, shaking his head. ‘Colleen is right. He’s got to be protected. You must make that place blind to him. You must hide him!’

‘I don’t want to be hidden, Dad. I want to learn,’ Mat said quietly, a stone thrown into the pool of silence, spreading ripples of anxiety and fear in his parents’ faces. ‘Please. You promised me, remember? That IOU card? You said, “Anything I wanted”. Well, this is what I want.’ It felt cruel to twist his father’s promise in this way, but he felt that he was right.

Tama groaned, and propped his head in his right hand. The misery on his face reminded Mat of Maahu, who had wronged his daughter, and then laboured for centuries in recompense. He could see Tama’s thoughts written across his face—he had taken the side of Puarata against his own son, and had placed his son in mortal danger. He thought of all the grand gestures—extravagant gifts he didn’t want. They were like rivers for a stone taniwha. But eventually the river had led the girl to the sea. Not all gifts are merely gestures. Not if they are sincere, not if they come from the heart.

Tama took Colleen’s hands in his. ‘I promised him I would support him in anything he wanted to be, love,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘I promised.’

‘You made me promises too,’ she reproached, pulling her hands away.

Tama hung his head, then slowly lifted it. ‘Then I must right my wrongs, one at a time, as best I can.’ He looked at Mat. ‘You have my permission to learn from this man, if that is what you want.’

Mat nodded, his heart thumping.

Tama turned back to Colleen. ‘I want to honour my other promises too. If you will let me.’

Colleen shook her head, and stared into space, her features as miserable as Mat could ever remember seeing them. ‘If you’ve made peace with your son, then that is achievement enough, for now. But you know what else you must do, if you want to make peace with me as well.’ She stood up, her face pale. ‘I’m going to bed. And I’m going home tomorrow. I’m sorry, I can’t take all this.’ She ran from the room.

Jones and Godfrey left sometime afterwards, the Welshman shaking Mat’s hand solemnly. ‘Well done, Mat. Well done.’ Mat wasn’t sure whether he meant freeing the taniwha or securing the right to be trained. The old adept clapped him on the shoulder, and smiled one of those rare grins as he left.

Tama looked at Mat, his tired face streaked in shadows. Mat felt exhausted, and fully awake, and his mind churned
slowly, the pain on his mother’s face as she left the room almost too much to bear.

‘Mat,’ Tama rumbled eventually. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve not said so before, but I am truly, absolutely sorry. I swear, I will never let you down again.’

Mat nodded, and let his father embrace him. It felt good after so long, to have those big arms wrapped about him, as if he were tiny again, and that embrace was the whole world.

‘We’ll win your mother back, matey,’ Tama whispered. ‘You’ll see, we will.’

Mat nodded, wondering how that could ever happen.

A few days later, finally heading home, Mat and Tama stopped just out of Wairoa, at Café 287, a tiny road-stop just out of town, on a small hillside overlooking the main road south. On the other side of the road the Wairoa River rolled past, heading for the sea. He thought of Lena, as he did every minute. He’d not seen her since that night, nor his mother either. He and Riki and Damien and Cass had gamed and laughed and joked together, and he and Tama had talked. His fragility was easing.

Jones taught him for a few hours each morning, and that was good. He would go to Jones’ house next week, and spend the rest of the holidays with him. The old adept’s cottage was in Taupo-Aotearoa, not far from his mother’s house, as it happened. He had talked to his mother on the telephone, and she had agreed that he would stay with her whilst training. It felt like progress.

He left his father to drink coffee and scan the newspapers, and wandered across the road through a gap in the willows, and squatted beside the river. No taniwha glided by, and there was no old storyteller hunched in the shadows. No Ponaturi plied the river. Cars thrummed past a few metres behind him. Nothing untowards, nothing out of the ordinary.

But when he looked with his eyes
just so
, and listened
like that
, he heard strange bird song. He looked up and saw a greenish-black bird with orange cheeks, white trim on the tips of its long tail, and a long curved bill, peering down at him from a branch. Another, with a shorter bill, joined it. Huia. He waved to them, and they chirruped and flew away. He smiled slowly, and rested his back against the tree. Far in the distance, a long-dead farmer ploughed fields only his family and descendants recalled.

Two worlds. Mat felt their hands on him, pulling him this way and that. There was no clear path through either. There was no safety, and no rewards except for those he found within himself and others.

It was Hoanga’s river; Lena had sought to drink it, and almost drowned. Bryce and Kyle had sought to channel it, and been swept away. He himself had been manipulated in his ignorance, and had almost become fuel for others’ desires. The only way left was to learn to master the art of swimming, to tame the river with knowledge of what it was and respect for what it could do. If Ngatoro had chosen him, as Kauariki hinted, because he was of two
worlds, Aotearoa and New Zealand, Maori and European, then he had to embrace them both.

He gripped the tear and koru-knot pendant, and said a quick prayer for Lena, to whatever gods had ears in Aotearoa. He dipped his finger in the river, and tasted the water—it was clean and pure. Then he rose again, closed his eyes and ears to the ghostlands, and went back to the café to join his father.

There are a few Maori words used in this story. Most are explained in the text, but here they are with a definition.

Aotearoa: the traditional Maori name for New Zealand, though it did not assume wide usage until the Europeans arrived. It roughly translates to ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’. In the story I have used the word to signify the ‘ghostland’ of New Zealand mythology, history and spirits.

Haere ra: ‘Farewell’.

Haka: a traditional Maori dance. We mostly associate it with the war-dance (a sub-type of the haka called a peruperu) performed by warriors as a challenge to enemies prior to battle, though a haka can also be performed in celebration or to entertain, and not just by men. Different tribes had their own haka. The one used in the text of
The Bone Tiki
is the one currently used by the All Blacks before test matches, known as Ka Mate, attributed to the famous warleader of the Ngati Toa, Te Rauparaha.

Hapu: part of a tribe, comprising a number of family groups (whanau).

Hauhau: a militant branch of the Pai Marire, a Maori religion that fused Christian and traditional beliefs. They were strong on the East Cape of the North Island, fighting the British in the 1860s for the return of their land, and became infamous for the slaying of a reverend in 1865. This set them as ‘bogey-men’ in the colonial settlers’ psyche, with the result that they became synonymous with cannibalism and savagery.

Hongi: a traditional Maori greeting, where the two participants rub noses. They are thereby symbolically ‘sharing breath’, and the visitor becomes one of the people of the tribe for their stay. The god Tane is said to have created woman by moulding her from clay and then breathing into her nostrils, and thereby gifting her life.

Iwi: tribe or race of people.

Kai: food.

Karani-mama: grandmother (an adaptation from English).

Kawa: protocol, especially that of the local marae. This covers who may speak and who may not, who is welcome, etc.

Kehua: one of the many terms for fairy or goblin in Maori mythology. For the purposes of this story, ‘kehua’ denotes spirit-goblins that can animate earth or wood, appearing as clay-like goblin creatures. Only ninety centimetres (three feet) tall, they are more mischievous than evil, but might be enslaved by a tohunga makutu for evil purposes.

Kia ora: a universal greeting that can mean ‘Hello’ or ‘Thanks’ or even ‘Good health’ or ‘Best wishes’.

Korerorero: a chat or discussion.

Koru: a carved spiral pattern based upon the unfolding fern frond. It symbolises new life, growth, strength and peace. The koru is a common motif of Maori art.

Makutu: evil magic.

Mana: can mean prestige, or charisma, or honour, or dignity, or all of these virtues, and encompasses the personal qualities of leadership and pre-eminence within a tribe and people.

Maori: the Maori are a Polynesian race that settled New Zealand, probably from around 800 years ago (the timing is unknown and somewhat controversial). They settled primarily the North
Island of New Zealand, and on adapting to the cooler lands, thrived and multiplied until the coming of the Europeans after Cook’s journeys in the late 1700s. The 1800s saw increasing European settlement and conflict, until Europeans dominated numerically, and colonised the country.

Maoritanga: the culture of the Maori people.

Marae: the central place of a Maori community. In a pre-European settlement, it was the central area of a village, and contained the meeting halls and central courtyard where social gatherings and events would occur. In the modern world, a marae is often in the countryside, and will contain a meeting hall and lawn outside for gatherings on special occasions, and for the funerals of noted community members.

Mere: a traditional Maori club, which could come in many forms, and be made from stone, bone or wood. The term patu also means club. For the purposes of this story, I have used the word ‘mere’ to denote blunt, heavy clubs, which would be used to bludgeon an enemy. I have used ‘patu’ to denote lighter, edged clubs, which would slash an enemy.

Moa: a flightless bird of New Zealand, extinct before Europeans arrived, though some say there
might yet be some in the wilds of Fiordland in the South Island…

Moko: a traditional Maori tattoo. The Maori have a strong tradition of tattooing, and this can cover much of the body, including the face. The patterns and motifs are strongly traditional, and the carving of them was a very painful ordeal, and part of the rites of passage of a young man or woman of rank—the more moko one had, the more mana, or rank, was implied.

Pa: a fortified village. Normally found on a hill-top, encircled with several rows of wooden palisades, and once guns became a factor, also entrenched.

Pakeha: a Maori term for foreigners that has come to represent the European-descended people of New Zealand (primarily British, but also Continental Europeans, mostly German, Dutch and Scandinavian).

Patu: a club—see ‘mere’ above.

Poai: Maori term for ‘boy’.

Pohoi: an earring—these might be made of stone or bone, or even cured hides of birds. A pohoi of a rare bird like the huia was highly prized.

Ponaturi: one of the many terms for fairy or goblin in Maori mythology. For the purposes of this story, the ‘Ponaturi’ are pale-skinned, man-like sea-fairies who prowl the coasts, occasionally glimpsed by men.

Pounamu: greenstone—a jade found in New Zealand, often used for the most precious ornaments.

Ruanuku: a wizard; as in ‘tohunga ruanuku’.

Taiaha: the traditional Maori long-club. A taiaha looked a little like a spear, with a carved point, but this was deceptive. It was not a spear, and never thrown. In fact the ‘point’ was the handle, and the thick haft of the weapon was the striking part. It was used more like a two-handed sword, and had a tradition of fighting moves associated with it. The point end was used in combat, however, often to apply the
coup de grâce
to a stunned opponent.

Taniwha: a taniwha is generally seen as a protective spirit, associated with (especially) waterways, but also with other natural landmarks like caves and hills. They commonly appear in tales as giant lizard-like creatures, or massive serpents. They are also associated with great white sharks (mako-taniwha).

They are sometimes hostile, sometimes protectors of a village or place.

Tapu: sacred. The term could apply to a place or a person or a thing. To break a tapu—by entering a place without the appropriate ritual actions, for example—was to court misfortune, and to pollute oneself spiritually.

Tikanga-Maori: Maori customs.

Tiki (or ‘hei-tiki’): a tiki is a carving of a primal human form, usually male. They are worn as a neck pendant, and can be made from wood, bone or stone. They can have a great deal of cultural significance and mana, and be treasured artefacts passed down through the generations.

Tipua: one of the many terms for fairy or goblin in Maori mythology. For the purposes of this story, ‘tipua’ denotes 120-centimetre-tall (four-foot-tall), pale/greenish-skinned, hairless, ‘classic’ goblins, with pointed ears and sharp teeth and hostile to humans, living in savage woodland tribes. They are cannibalistic and aggressive, the backbone of the forces of evil tohunga in Aotearoa.

Tipuna-tane: grandfather.

Toa: a warrior.

Tohunga: a Maori priest or wise man (they were always male), similar to a druid or shaman. The tohunga preserved tales, legends and genealogies, and were the cultural repositories of their people. They were also looked to for guidance in astrology and as intercessors with the gods, and appear in legends as powerful ‘wizards’ with magical powers, some good and some evil. The term can also cover experts in skilled traditional fields like carving, navigation and canoe-making. The term ‘tohunga makutu’ denotes a tohunga who uses black magic. The term ‘tohunga wairua’ denotes a tohunga who is spiritual.

Tuatara: a native lizard of New Zealand, in fact a relic of the dinosaur era, typically up to one metre (three feet) long from head to tail. They are associated with boundaries in folklore, and women were forbidden to eat them. They were held to be found at the boundaries of tapu places.

Turehu: one of the many terms for fairy or goblin in Maori mythology. For the purposes of this story, ‘turehu’ denotes shape-shifting creatures, who appear goblinesque in their natural form. They are mischievous, and might be dangerous if antagonised, but friendly if respected.

Waka: a Maori canoe, generally built on a large scale, for which the hull has been carved from a single tree trunk. Waka ranged in size from small unadorned river and fishing vessels to forty-metre war-canoes used by war-parties for water travel.

Whare: a house. The meeting house at the centre of a marae is generally termed the ‘whare runanga’, and will be adorned with traditional carvings at the entrance and inside.

Please note that there are subtle variations of Maori in different regions of New Zealand. The words used above are from P.M. Ryan’s
Dictionary of Modern Maori
(Heinemann, 4th Edition, 1994).