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‘Christine sent Sarah’s bible onto a woman in Dunedin. Her name was Lester, wasn’t it?’ Margaret asked Felicity.
Felicity nodded, recalling how perturbed Christine Young had been that the woman she’d sent the bible to hadn’t bothered responding. The height of rudeness Christine had been fond of saying. They’d all quite forgotten about it, Sarah and her disappearance fading into folklore. They even brushed Samuel’s parentage under the carpet, with Reverend Young and his wife quietly taking him in as their own, and no one new to town knew any different.
‘Did they say where he went?’ Fred asked.
‘Not that I remember,’ Colin said, trying to think if Greene had mentioned Price’s new posting. ‘He helped me send a letter to my mam, but I never had time to say thank you,’ Colin added. What he didn’t say was how slighted he still felt and wasn’t sure whether he even wanted to see Price again if he bumped into him.
The Goodbye
Once Colin parted ways with Felicity and the Sweeneys, despite the women imploring him to stay and Fred patting him awkwardly before, things hadn’t panned out as he’d hoped. Without their company, and coin, Colin soon found himself hungry, lonely and at the mercy of other more ruthless travellers — the road north was a boiling cesspit of thievery. Well kitted out, none of it was worth much, although there’d been plenty of nights when he’d woken to thieves rummaging through his meagre belongings looking for anything of value. He tried reminding himself that someone was always worse off when he woke to the furtive fumbles. Usually a choice curse was enough to see of most of the beggars, but he’d received several beatings from the more forthright thieves.
One such beating was how he found himself, without his pack or boots, coughing and shivering in the doorway of a random township he’d stumbled into late that night. His damaged lungs struggling to cope with the cold.
Booming thunder woke him from his uneasy slumber and he huddled into the doorframe and fat globules of rain hurled themselves at the earth, splashing up towards him. He was invisible to everyone in the rain except for the butcher across the road, throwing open his door.
‘Oi! Get away with you, boy,’ yelled the heavyset man in a bloodstained apron.
No one heard his bellowing or took any notice of his agitation, the thunder drowning out everything other than Colin’s racing heartbeat and laboured breathing. Colin ran, the man with the knife clearly not in the mood for polite discourse.
All around him were men in uniform, carrying rifles, jogging through the rain with important business plastered on their faces. And they looked scared, almost as scared as he was. The town smelt unusual — a heady scent of decay and life, of earth and man, foretelling the carnage mankind would inflict upon each other in the coming days, weeks, years and decades.
Colin tripped and stumbled as he ran from the butcher. The road chopped into pieces by the ghosts of feet marching past, the imprints of their boots a telling clue as to the vast numbers of men unleashed on the native population. These were the soldiers he’d considered joining, to further the glory of the Crown, but for some reason he ran into the forest, far beyond the imagined scent of destruction. He didn’t understand his decision. He’d come north for work, and if he wasn’t going to work in the gold mines, he could enlist as a soldier. Soldiering was an admirable profession - one which would make his mother proud. But the prospect of killing someone choked him.
After an hour of ducking and weaving through the trees, the impossibility of the situation overtook him and he sank to the ground beneath a giant Kauri tree. Here the earth was almost dry, the thick canopy shielding the undergrowth from the weather, which had moved further south as he’d fled the encampment by the mouth of Waikato river.
Tearing the fronds from a leafy fern, Colin made himself a bed of sorts at the foot of the tree, and pulled the remaining fronds over him. It wasn’t warm, but it was warmer than he’d been, and safer. He was so tired, ‘bone tired’ his mother was fond of saying. He wasn’t afraid of the dark, but if God saw fit to send a beast to devour him now, he would accept his fate.
The soft snuffles of something creeping nearby woke him. Colin lay still, eyes closed. When you were the prey, it was better to pretend not to notice the predator chasing you. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom of the forest floor, he had a unique view from the base of the tree. His jumbled dreams had been more real than he knew, for there in front of him was the most peculiar creature. At first glance it was a bird, but dull and indistinct in the filtered light, a bird armed with a terrible spear for a beak, with feet almost as large as his palms. It wasn’t interested in him, digging in the disturbed earth from when he’d made his bed of ferns. Colin knew it knew he was there, but it showed no fear of him.
A screaming echoed through the trees, and Colin scrambled up, ready to run from whatever madness approached, but then the mad bird thing lifted its head and screamed back. A girlish high-pitched scream caterwauled through the forest, answered by another, then another.
Expecting the camouflaged bird to take flight towards its mate, Colin had to jump back to avoid the bird running into the bush, hurdling fallen logs and skinny saplings struggling to thrive beneath the giants above them. In the blink of an eye the bird vanished, and the undergrowth resumed its silent form.
The autumn breeze snaked around Colin’s naked shoulders, making the chill a more immediate threat than his hunger. Nothing was familiar, but he ventured forward, following the erratic zig-zag path of the flightless bird.
Colin’s imagination played childish games with him with the darkening forest, summoning forth a bird standing as tall as a man, peering at him from deep within the gloom but then it vanished, crashing through the undergrowth, the sound making the dream more realistic. Then another bird, dressed as an English missionary, sang to him from the branch above, it’s clerical collar a stark white against its black feathery coat. Colin knew he was dreaming when he heard a baby cry, followed by a woman’s voice shushing it.
The surrounding forest grew blacker as his breathing became shallower, as he struggled to contend with the worsening cold, the exertion and the hunger. Colin staggered to a stop, resting his clammy forehead against the rough bark of the closest tree. The baby crying reminded him of his baby brother. He’d see him soon, him and Isaac and Mam. And what tales he could tell — stories of sea monsters and beautiful girls, wild beasts and flightless birds with swords instead of beaks. And then Colin Lloyd collapsed, his fall cushioned by old leaves and rotting logs, his body giving in to total fatigue.
Aroha Kepa shushed the babe tucked beneath her arm. The foul weather forcing them from the path to shelter from the needle-like hail, making it impossible for them to continue. She’d lost one child to illness born on the winter winds, and cursed herself for risking another, but she had no choice. To protect her baby, she’d spent hours hunched under the branches of a sturdy tree, sheltering her daughter with her body. Every inch of her ached from the unnatural position she’d maintained, her own comfort of no concern.
The babe cared nothing for the wind or the rain or the circumstances which lead them to shelter in the forest. The baby wanted feeding now, and was making it known, louder and louder. No amount of offering a knuckle to suckle satisfied her greedy cheeks, so Aroha unfurled herself from the cocoon of mother and child and offered the baby girl her breast, fearful that their days on the road had ended her milk supply. The baby fussed, refusing to latch on, frustrated at the delay and unnerved by the cold. Aroha offered her nipple again, and the babe latched on. She held her breath, only releasing it when she felt the milk let down within her breast.
Aroha readjusted her position at the base of a tree, her own stress melting away under the protection of Tāne — god of the forest. Soon she’d be with her iwi — her tribe, and the danger threatening them would diminish to nothing. Wiremu’s murder had left a void in her heart, but within the bosom of her iwi, the void’s sharp edges would soften, blurring until only a dull ache remained.
A great squawking crescendoed around them, as birds took to the air, interrupted from their own forest feasting. Aroha’s small knife was instantly in her hand, knowing that only man could disturb the birds of Tāne’s forest like that. She peered through the dark for any sign of threat, praying the babe would stay silent.
A laboured coughing reached her ears, as though whoever was out there was trying to be as quiet as she herself was. Aroha waited, her knuckles tightening around the horn hilt of the knife.
The undergrowth crackled, flushing another kiwi from the bush, but what followed next was not what Aroha was expecting. A young man materialised, his whole frame shivering as he rested against an immature tree, his eyes closed, dragging lungfuls of air into his wheezing chest, before sinking to his knees, and then onto his side, corpse-like in the gloom.
Aroha lowered the knife, still holding it loosely around the hilt, because it wasn’t just herself she was protecting.
The baby had fallen into a milk-drunk sleep, and with a practised hand she readjusted her daughter, pulling her top closed, her eyes never leaving the body in front of her.
Aroha nudged the man with her toe, his eyes flickering, his pale lips the colour of the sky on a summer day. Even in the shadows, she could see how cold he was, how ill-equipped.
The moonlight made Aroha appear almost ethereal as she pulled a blanket from her bag and covered the boy, eliciting an incoherent mumble, deeper than she’d expected. Perhaps he was older than he seemed?
Undecided on what to do now, she settled down to wait for the boy to wake, busying herself by lighting a meagre fire, one which was more smoke than fire in the damp undergrowth.
Although the fire was not her best work, its warmth still spread to the unconscious boy, quieting his unintelligible moaning. His shivering gradually stilled until he looked no different to any other man asleep in his bed at night. And when he woke, Aroha was ready for him.
“It’s okay, I won’t hurt you. How did you get here?” she asked, standing up with her knife in her hand.
His eyes followed the knife as she moved away, her movements slow and measured. He didn’t answer, so she tried again. Still nothing. Aroha could hear his teeth chattering and her heart softened. In the darkness, he looked no older than a child.
Colin’s eyes flicked from her face towards the fire and back again, and Aroha nodded, her fingers still holding the knife as he shuffled closer, holding his long-fingered hands out towards the flames until he was close enough for the heat to wrap itself around his frame.
Aroha sank onto her heels, her leather boots and thick woollen skirt protecting her legs from the damp of the ground. The bird life resumed its nocturnal activities, ignoring the interlopers. A rumble from the boy’s stomach startled both Aroha and an inquisitive weka — who’d crept closer to see what was going on before it went careering back into the bush in fright. Aroha smiled and rummaged in her bag again, leaving the dagger in her lap. She pulled out a cloth-wrapped package and laid it on the ground, revealing two mutton chops, and a cooked kumara — a sweet potato, the last of Aroha’s provisions. Just visible inside the top of the bag was the bundle of notes Aroha had rescued from her husband’s suit, the money from the sale of their flour mill. Tucking it into her pocket, Aroha never noticed the boy’s eyes widening as he spied the money.
Aroha offered the mutton chop to the boy who tore into it faster than a dog with a bone.
She leaned against the tree, the knife heavy in her lap and assessed her guest. Dried blood in his hairline and a half-swollen eye showed he’d been roughed up, and apart from being cold and hungry something must have happened for him to be in the bush alone. Aroha didn’t need any more complications than she already had, but this was someone’s child, scared and alone. He wouldn’t last long without her she thought, watching him devour the meat chop and eye up the remaining one. Aroha offered the sweet potato to the boy, re-wrapping the remaining chop for herself. She was okay for now but she’d need it tomorrow, and whilst she felt some measure of concern for the boy, she needed her strength for the baby.
‘Thank you,’ the boy said reaching for the potato, his unusual accent curling the words.
Aroha’s guard slipped. ‘Where are your family?’
The boy shook his head, his mouth full of potato.
‘No family?’ she tried again.
He shrugged, his eyes on the ground.
‘Are you on your own?’
At that, he nodded, tightening the blanket around his shoulders.
Although trees protected the trio, icy tentacles of rain slipped through as the heavens opened again. A crack of thunder above them made them jump, and the babe wailed. The forest lit up like a gypsy fairground.
‘Quick, under here with us,’ Aroha shouted above the thunder, backing into the thicker shrubs behind her.
The boy didn’t need a second invitation. He shot over to Aroha’s side, and together they rode out the clamouring noise and the apocalyptic lightning sending wave after wave of electrical power crashing to the earth, filling the air with a metallic scent washed clean by lashings of rain.
They slept as a curious trio, waking to the dawn chorus of a thousand different birds and an impressionist sky filled with every shade of pink and red and the palest of yellows.
The morning light proved that the boy was far from the youth Aroha had mistaken him to be. He was all but a man, taking his tentative first steps into adulthood. But his face was so different from what she’d imagined that all she could do was stare.
‘Sorry about last night—’ Colin began but Aroha held her finger to her lips as the birds launched themselves upwards, their calls piercing the dawn light.
Indistinct voices filtered through the foliage, branches cracked and muffled curses uttered.
Aroha adjusted the blanket, its mottled woollen fibres an effective camouflage in the undergrowth. She held her fingers to her lips again, long enough to ensure that Colin understood that he needed to be silent.
Sweat and leather overpowered the stagnating leaf rot as the soldiers scrabbled through the bush.
‘How the hell are we meant to know when they last seen?’ muttered one soldier to another, close enough for Colin to grab his ankle.
By pure chance, the question made his colleague fractionally change direction, keeping Aroha, Colin and the baby safe from discovery. As the man passed, he tripped over a rotting log.
‘Argh, Jesus Christ,’ he screamed as he tumbled over the tree trunk. It splintered under his weight. ‘Shit, shit, holy shit, look at these things. They’re on me. Get me up. Shit, hurry, get them off me, quick before they burrow into my skin.’
They did a ridiculous hopping-like dance brushing the writhing white worms from the fallen solder’s trousers.
‘Jesus, what do you think those are?’
‘No idea, but this…’ he said, crushing a fat grub under his heal, ‘is what those guys will get when they do them for treason,’ commented his friend.
‘They can’t hide for long.’
‘Bet they’ve gone bush.’
‘Nah, they’ve got those rifles to sell. They’ll have gone north, to Auckland. There’s no one to sell them to here.’
And as their voices faded away, Colin and Aroha held their breath a moment longer, until the only sound was of the men crashing through the bush far, far away.
‘I know where those rifles are,’ Aroha whispered into Colin’s ear.
He stared at her — the woman who’d fed and sheltered him, and couldn’t help shuddering as he remembered the knife she’d held on him before.
Aroha tried smilin
g as she interpreted his thoughts. ‘I don’t have them, but I overheard the men who took them, and I know where they’re taking them,’ she explained.
‘I don’t know about any rifles,’ Colin said. ‘But then I also never imagined myself hiding in forests. I should have stayed in Dunedin. Only God knows what I was thinking because I don’t. It’s been a hellish trip this far, and the last thing I want anything to do with is rifles or soldiers.’
‘Too late for that,’ Aroha replied. ‘There will be a war soon. And you won’t want to be anywhere near here then.’
‘I didn’t come here for a war, just for my brother, and the gold.’
Aroha laughed a long feminine laugh, one at odds with their situation.
‘War finds everyone. Where is your brother now?’
Colin shrugged. He was so close to the gold fields, the ones he’d heard stories about the whole road here. Tales of chunks of gold laying on the river bed. Men wearing nuggets round their necks and golden baubles on their knuckles as if they were nothing more than tin tokens from home. And he wanted part of that. Isaac never made it.
‘He was going to the goldfields. I’m going there.’ He didn’t need to share his life story with this stranger, his grief still too raw.
Hunger gnawed at Aroha. She needed to move on, despite the daylight. They’d dallied too long waiting for the sound of soldiers to disappear. ‘We’ve wasted too much time here, we should leave before they to do a proper search.’
Colin jumped up, dusting dirt from his trousers, toes poking through the holes in his stockinged feet. ‘I’m ready, hungry, but ready.’
Aroha, in the middle of loading the baby into the woven basket, froze. She hadn’t factored in this added complication and a thousand thoughts ran through her mind. Despite his skinny frame, he was a man, an Englishman, so he’d provide a level of security, and comfort. She couldn’t discount his cheery outlook and how he’d made her laugh, but knew nothing about him. He was barefoot and without a pack, or anything beneficial to them. She threw the basket onto her shoulders, wincing at the pain as the weight of the baby settled onto the raw wounds festering there.