‘Well, Oma’s not here,’ I snap. ‘And I don’t know shit about holding the land together.’
I hang up before she switches to crying. Can’t handle it when ‘Whina cries.
Must get outside. Need to breathe.
The autumn light tasting of salt-diesel fuels me all the way to Earthquake Park. Anchorage’s fifty-year-old scars tug at my feet. You gotta live the place to let the gods seep into your flesh. Tepeyolltl, Namazu, El Diablo, Geb’s Laughter, Tuli; all fault lines have their malign alignment that is and is not the land, born in magma, the blood and breath which moves us on a cosmological scale. If I think about my part in that balance, it’ll break me more than E already has.
E. The one that rides the lines between the Pacific and Indo-Australian plates. Oma said E escaped Papatūānuku’s womb when the sky and land were pried apart at the beginning of All Things. Myth says Rūamoko, the son left in the womb, causes earthquakes with his restlessness, but I know the truth.
E’s a jerk.
My feet lighten from stomping down the old scars of the Great Alaskan 9.2 as the green tinged air works its magic. I breathe respect to Thunderbird and Whale. ‘Whina used to bring home artefacts from her digs. I search for the antithesis of earthquakes: the quiet, and truth in text books.
And ghosts. Because here comes one now, sitting by me on the park bench.
What people don’t know as they cling to their anthropomorphising is that there are no gods, just an endless string of women holding their land together with their fingertips. There’s some metaphor in my being able to see through their iridescent grey figures, but I’ve yet to find it amusing.
No use trying to engage them in conversation. I’ve tried. Always the silence. I’ve asked the questions: how to stop E? Did anyone write it down? Did you let anyone die? But there are never answers.
Senses taut for cop cars, footsteps, rumbles, I run fingers along the scars on the backs of my hands and forearms: this one from a bottle fight, that one from a fence when running from the cop who came to tell me Oma was dead, that one from putting my fist through a window after my failed first attempt at soothing the beast.
The ghost stares, eyes dark craters in the grey moon face framed by long shadow hair. There’s déjà vu in the angles of cheek, nose, and lips of my Aleutian cousin.
Another ghost melts out of the leaf-cut shade. Needling eyes stitch along my scars.
‘Two of you trying to scare me off?’ I laugh. ‘Darling, I’ve dealt with my aunty ‘Whina when she’s off her meds.’
A third ghost weaves out of the spaces between the grass and I’m on my feet like a six-plus is on its way.
‘Alright, that’s enough.’ Back away, hands up. They’re only ghosts, Hine. Breath and land. Oma never got to that part about the job before she was stupid enough to go warn ‘Whina and leave me all alone.
A fourth, fifth. Their edges glimmer in the lengthening light, wisp off each other into rope-like coils. My heart pounds as the wisps reach out to me. Wrench my hands out of their reach.
‘I’m not going back!’
The ground chuckles, barely a three pointer. Though each fault line is its own feel, there’s something familiar about this hiccup, a slippery hitch.
‘You’re not allowed to jump plates anymore,’ I tell the ground. ‘Look at the trouble you made in Yemen. Stick to destroying your own neighbourhood, you slimy little shit.’
It never hurts to remind the ground of its responsibilities.
The ghosts are flowing like water now. This is beyond the ordinary. One or two, yes. But this many?
They’re circling. Don’t scream, Hineahuone. That brings trouble and more questions, more useless meds, more hiding the sharp objects, more staring. More. More.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. How? I turned the damn thing off.
‘Whina’s voice, whispering ‘come home comehomecomehomehomehome.’
My teeth ache. Crying is for the weak. I couldn’t even do it at Oma’s funeral, the last time I stepped on a marae.
The evening has become the colour of the memories when I close my eyes at night. Too many of them now.
Turn. Take a deep breath. Dive through the tangling masses of grey nothing. Where I go, they can’t follow. We are tied to the fault lines we’re born upon. There are consequences for leaving.
Run Hine, run. It’s what you’re best at.
Been parked on the side street for longer than necessary. A Maori chick hunched in a car outside the marae entrance shouldn’t be too much of a problem, but you never know how snotty the neighbours might get in achingly white Christchurch. Don’t fancy doing the old dance with the cops this early in proceedings.
I can feel ‘Whina’s pull as sure as a magnet. I’d forgotten how comforting and threatening that could be. The pull has never been as strong as Oma’s but it grounds me.
I’d also forgotten how nice it was here. The trees and the creek. The Port Hills cradling the city, a disguise for the fault E chewed open in the 6.1. Ranginui’s face is grey, but he does not weep for joy or sorrow at my return.
The streets look so different. Broken, and smoothed out. Gaps make me lost and found. The pavement does everything it can to trip me up. There are huge art murals, seedlings of Valparaiso, San Francisco, Istanbul, Bogota. Art oozing out of wounds. It doesn’t look like home anymore. I like it.
I walk softly. E feels so distant, somewhere north, sleeping. Perhaps for a long time. Perhaps I have been shoved home by those damn ghosts for nothing. Perhaps this is not my fight anymore.
I’m knocking on the door at the kaumātua flats before I even know what I’m doing. ‘Whina’s there immediately as if she’d felt my footsteps.
‘Tēnā koe, Hineahuone,’ she breathes, too formal. She holds me at arm’s length for a good look, then presses in for a hongi which leaves me itchy.
‘Aunty,’ I grunt.
She looks behind me. Does she expect E to follow me up the steps? ‘You didn’t go ask for entrance to the marae from the kaumātua.’
I shrug. ‘Whina glares until I look down and blush. She mutters too fast under her breath in Te Reo. I’m well out of practise to catch what she’s saying.
‘How are you, aunty?’
‘Whina snorts. ‘Mad, so they tell me. Too many pills to take. Too much talking about my feelings.’
‘But it helps?’
Her grimace pulls free the fault lines between her eyes and around her mouth. These lines I remember well. Oma had them too.
‘Come in. Shoes off. Jug’s boiled.’
The flat is small but tidy and organized like a museum. The jetsam of ‘Whina’s old life is jammed in like a held breath. Photos of pottery, masks, mosaics, and figurines, all labelled to a fault—literally, the fault lines she found them on. Photos because she never took what wasn’t hers.
Small talk hovers like a sparrow as ‘Whina pours tea. I sip and shudder; bush tea, strong and fragrant like Oma used to make. ‘Whina follows my wistful gaze to the rēwena on the bench, and cuts off a hunk of the bread. It’s still warm and heavy, just like...
‘—Aka used to make.’
‘Eh?’
‘Aka. Your kuia. It’s her recipe.’
Scowl. ‘Her name was Oma.’
‘Whina laughs and the world tilts.
‘Kid, you were seven when Dhamar happened.’ She says it with such ease that the sudden burst of pain makes the tilting even worse. ‘Oma wasn’t her name, it was the thing she told you to do the most, even before you could walk. It stuck.’ She nods, and a strand of silver hair falls over one eye, doing nothing to alleviate the mad-woman look. ‘You don’t even remember what it means, do you bubs?’
‘Don’t call me that. I’m a grown woman.’
‘Coulda fooled me.’
I immediately assess the distance to the front door.
/>
‘Noho ki raro.’ ‘Whina pats the air gently with both hands. ‘You were always wound tight.’
‘Good survival technique.’
‘That’s why your kuia said it. “Oma, Hineahuone. Rere atu.”’ ‘Whina attempts to divine meaning from her tea. ‘Cops. Fists. Social workers. Boys. E. People who didn’t want to understand what it was to be whakawahine like you. She knew you’d have to run from them all at one time. But never yourself. You were so damn sure. Auē, I won’t forget the first time a pig brought you back.’ Her eyes glaze over. ‘Ha, those cop cars were black and white back then, like sheriff cars. You planted your little fists on your hips and shouted at her “I’m not a boy!”’
We laugh, and the ground tilts the other way and my scalp tingles. It’s a good memory, and a bad one too. Like a fracture speeding off from a fault, I can see what could have been: if ‘Whina hadn’t got lost to the trauma of seeing Oma die, got lost to the shit mental health system and pākehā judgment.
If I didn’t have to hold together the spine of the world until I was made ready.
I wait for a whisper from E—about monstrousness, about cowardliness—but there is nothing. The tea is good.
I feel the decades between us in the silence, the years I’ve been on the move since my first failed encounter with E. I hang my head, stare at the puckered pink-brown scars on my hands as ‘Whina wanders off talking about this and that. She talks about the aftershocks like they’re no big thing, like they didn’t undermine the heart and soul of the city though I know how well they did.
‘Aunty ‘Whina, why am I here?’ The words flow out of me before I even think of them. Stupid. ‘I don’t think E needs me anymore when they’ve got you.’
Her blue chin moko grows taut and the whites of her eyes show. ‘What did you call me?’
‘‘Whina, what I’ve always called you.’
She mutters in Te Reo. ‘That is not my name. The first rule is we name that which is proper. You should know this. Knowing a name means we understand its power. Like you. Hineahuone. Named after the one who was made, not born.’
Hearing my name, the land rocks a little. Ridiculous. I’m flesh and blood, like everyone. And unlike everyone.
‘Alright, Awhina then.’ I have no idea what it means.
I wait for her to answer my original question, but she stares at me like that is the only answer I’m going to get.
‘I see we’ve got work to do.’ Awhina slaps her hands on the kitchen table. ‘Where are my shoes?’
The world tilts again. I can’t keep up with Awhina’s broken thoughts.
Tea slops as I jump up after her, chasing her to the front door.
‘What do you mean by “work”? E seems restful. I’ve barely seen any ghosts since I’ve been back.’
I can hear the crackle of joints as Awhina snaps straight. ‘Ghosts?’
‘Yeah, you know. The wāhine of the land. Our ancestors. The ones who came before us. Our guides.’ Ice flushes from my heart round to my spine as Awhina stares me down. We’ve barely had a chance to say hello and we’re doing this?
Her moko tightens as she rolls her lips between her teeth. ‘I don’t know what Aka told you, but there’s no such thing as ghosts. Especially attached to us.’
The world rolls. I can’t keep up. It’s not E. It’s the mantle of my flesh about to slough off. No, this can’t be right. We have this bearing, this burden, and with it come those that must watch over us.
‘Maybe you don’t see them because—’ I stop as Awhina flares her nostrils. What was I going to say? Because she’s mad? Because she wasn’t powerful enough to stop E?
‘You’ve been so disconnected from your whakapapa, you only know of us through the eyes of others.’ Awhina speaks low. ‘You going to be hearing nose flutes and whirring pūrerehua next? And they say I’m insane. Ghosts.’ She mutters in Te Reo and this time I catch curse words. She stuffs torches and barley sugars in a backpack. ‘Pākehā magical shit.’
Bile sits high in my throat. Awhina must be pushing me because she’s mad I’ve been away so long. These women aren’t my imagination, they can’t be. Why the hell would I see them so clearly? They’ve been here since I failed to hold the Greendale and Hope Faults together. Ghosts clearly chased me out of Anchorage. Awhina is full of shit.
Or maybe I needed something to hold on to when I couldn’t hold on to the shaking ground. Manifestations of my guilt. Ha! Classic. Maybe the broken world is saner than I. Funny. I couldn’t find common ground with Awhina until now.
Awhina clamps her long, strong fingers on my shoulders. To hold me down? In place? ‘Girl, you’ve been gone far too long. That pokokōhua is a damn good liar, and you are a bit gullible.’
Head so hot, it’s going to split like it’s my own fault line. ‘Do you have anything nice to say to me, or ya gonna hound me right down into the ground?’
Awhina shoves a red and black bush jacket in my arms. ‘Yeah. I think you got it in ya to look E right in the eye and save the world if you want to, bubs. Now get cracking.’
The ground chuckles.
I blow into my hands. Wish I’d remembered gloves. ‘Why here?’
We’re not far from Arthur’s Pass, a tiny divot in E’s spine, far enough off the road that we won’t be seen. The air smells of dirt-cold and wet beech-dew. So many grey rocks. The mountains loom over, pressing me down.
‘This is where we found you,’ Awhina says, toeing at a grey rock.
‘What? You mean I was left in a river bed? What kind of person does that?’
Awhina pulls her own blue jacket around her ample frame. Her tattooed bottom lip trembles. ‘This is where Papatūānuku gave you to us.’
She doesn’t believe in ghosts, but she reckons the earth puked me up. Great. ‘Did you take your meds before we left?’
‘Shut up. You don’t know shit about what you’re supposed to be. You left before I had the chance to tell you anything.’
I settle on a boulder and fold my arms, shivering more at the cold than the slithery-rumble along the crack beneath us.
‘There was plenty of time between me leaving Aunty Di’s and the Greendale breaking,’ I say. ‘A good twenty years.’
‘You might have noticed I was in the hospital a lot and you were too busy being a librarian,’ Awhina spits back. She looks tired, older than she is, like standing by the whispering river is sucking out her will.
‘Okay okay.’ I waggle my hands by my buzzing head. ‘You found me here. If I wasn’t born—’ I make air quotes. ‘—then what am I made of?’
‘The earth. You come from Papatūānuku’s womb. Like E. But unlike E, you—we—were intentional.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Aka didn’t want to burden you with that truth on top of all you carried. She thought she had time.’
I turn away from the thought of Oma failing. ‘And Rūamoko’s got nothing to say about any of this?’
It’s supposed to be a joke, but Awhina nods.
‘He’s a lazy shit. Stays warm and tight in that womb. That’s why Papatūānuku gives us a good wahine every generation to look after the land.’
‘This is ridiculous.’ Ranginui’s face is even greyer this far up. It’s too early for snow, but you don’t know what the sky-father might do to cool tempers.
‘And yet, here we are.’ Awhina spreads her hands, pacing, slipping on loose rocks. If she wants to break her damn hip, go ahead. ‘You feel E. You feel us.’ She pounds a fist into her chest. ‘We’re not family of blood, but we’re made of the same land. We feel when Papatūānuku shares one of us. We feel the direction, like a magnetic pull.’
Pound my fists lightly into my temples. No such thing as ghosts. No such thing as family. No one ever spoke of my mother. I thought it was tapu, because she abandoned me. It’s ridiculous to contemplate I’m the daughte
r of a goddess.
‘But human beings have only been around for tens of thousands of years. The Earth is billions of years old. What kept the fault line in check before then?’
Awhina shrugs. ‘Maybe the tectonics slowed down. Maybe someone else took care of the place.’
I spread my hands. ‘Aliens.’
Awhina’s turn to ignore stupid things. ‘It all has to be oral history. Can’t write anything down. They’d lock the lot of us up.’ She barks a short laugh.
My days as a librarian were for nothing. Stare at my palms. The fault lines of my skin still look too fresh. ‘All this time staring at ghosts and I don’t know shit.’
‘There’s E. You still have each other. They can teach you.’
My laughter rings off stone. ‘I didn’t come all this way back to be treated like a fool, Awhina.’
Pebbles chuckle off each other. Awhina puts her arms out like she’s on a balance beam. Dammit. I didn’t even feel that one coming.
‘E must be near,’ Awhina whispers. I almost laugh at the seriousness in her voice, but I bite it back at the fear scrawled on her face.
‘Then we have no time for the basics.’
I take a knee. The stones are cold against my palms. There’s permeability to them, like my fingers want to sink deep into the spine of the island. Words forty-years old come rushing back in Oma’s cracked voice: let E come to you, then you have the upper hand. I wriggle my fingers, imagining I’m working my way into the scars, reopening old wounds.
I don’t like how easy it is to remember how to take hold of the land.
Awhina may have yelled, but the words are lost in a grinding rush. E weaves out of a nerve ending and pulls me under.
Rocks pressing against my chest and mind. Further down, the slow push of magma. The amniotic fluid of the land. Breathe, dammit. Breathe!
I burst into a place that is red-dark, pulsing with laughter slow as eons. I tumble to a surface where up-down physics can only be in my mind. A sheath of an achingly familiar iridescent is all that stands between the heat and the crushing reality of the mantle above.
Fearless Genre Warriors Page 4