by Tee Morris
*****
Lachlan edged forward, finding in the fog a surface of timber beneath his feet, and taut ropes in his hands, stretching out to either side of the narrow swing-bridge hidden in the waterfall’s spray. Lachlan stepped onto the bridge as it swayed slick beneath him, the flax ropes’ smooth weave slippery in his grasp.
He considered what he had established so far which was, he deduced, that the old man knew Frank Ascot—knew him well indeed—and that the elder had either guessed or already knew exactly what the navy deserter had taken from the safety of Auckland’s Bankhouse, and that he was quite pleased with how things were developing. Ascot was a bushman, a British Navy deserter who had fled his vessel for the forests and kainga of the Maori, adopting the culture of any tribe willing to take him in. In return for this sanctuary, a pakeha among the Maori might sometimes return to the city streets where he could blend in, do things and go places that the Maori could not; though why anyone would want to live like this, in the cold and the damp and the mud, not a teapot in sight, was quite beyond Lachlan King.
It stood to reason, then, that the tohunga would be Ascot’s ally in the Bankhouse theft, and would be unwilling to give him up. Lachlan’s options were running thin, and demanded another tactic. If the old man wished to play games, then Lachlan could play games too. He had been playing them for a long time.
Yet, despite himself, Lachlan could not help but feel a grudging and somewhat ironic respect for his quarry. Ascot had found a place where he could fit in. A place where he was respected. Lachlan had run too, long ago, but had never found that place where he could simply be, could just belong. He may have fled his father’s rod, but Lachlan was a man like any other, made of little more than blood and fog, and was not so difficult to bend with words, be they threats or orders. Frances Ascot was a free man, in ways Lachlan King had never been, could never be.
Across the river and its mists the tohunga waited, an unfathomable, secret smile on his lips. “Haere mai. Best we don’t keep the rangatira waiting all day.”
The track began to climb steeply up the side of the cliff and they ascended, up and up, as the waterfall came down, the mists embracing them as Papatuanuku would take her powerful children into her arms.