Things a Map Won't Show You

by Pam Macintyre

  Ikaw scowled.

  Abi regarded him with guilt-ridden eyes. ‘Mother was sleeping when I left. I swear it seemed her first proper sleep in days. But when I returned, I found the door open. I knew something was wrong. Then I saw her, lying face-down in the shallows of the Sound, in no more than knee-deep water.’

  Abi rested her chin on the edge of the canoe. Tears dripped into the lake.

  Ikaw’s brows were still knitted but when he spoke his voice was gentle. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘How do you know that? If I hadn’t left her, it wouldn’t have happened. Father thinks it is my fault. He never says it, but I know he does. He changed when she died.’

  ‘Your father is the one at fault! That greenstone he thieves is sacred to the gods.’

  ‘But there’s only one God.’

  ‘Maybe in your father’s country,’ Ikaw retorted. ‘But in this land, it is my father’s gods who reign. That pounamu, the greenstone, can only be found at the Sound, nowhere else. Long ago, Poutini, the spirit guardian of the greenstone, fell in love with Waitaiki, a beautiful northern island woman. But she was already married, so Poutini kidnapped her and fled south, to where the Ocean meets the Sound. Waitaiki sat weeping atop the cliffs for years. Her tears fell into the water and made the greenstone. That’s why the pounamu is almost blue there. We call it tangiwai – a sorrow that can never be healed.’ His expression was fierce. ‘Your father has brought the anger of the gods down on his family: first by stealing it and then by selling it.’

  Abi told herself that it was just a silly story. But the hairs on the backs of her arms were standing up. She could feel that Ikaw’s words were somehow right. True.

  When they arrived back at the stables, her face was glum.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Ikaw said. ‘Spring will come. I’m apprenticing to the smith when the snows melt. It won’t be long until I can afford to strike out on my own.’ He lowered his eyes, suddenly bashful. ‘And take a wife.’

  Abi stood on tiptoes to brush her lips against his. She fled before he could see her new tears. Ikaw watched until she was out of sight, a bewildered grin on his face as he touched his hand to his mouth.

  ‘But it’s true,’ Abi insisted, frustrated. She sat on her swag while her father staggered around the campfire, taking drags alternately from his pipe and hipflask. They had left the town, the lake and Ikaw behind two days ago, tonight striking camp at the eastern end of the Sound.

  ‘Every late winter the Sound has taken someone,’ she said. ‘It started with MacKinnon. And last time …’ She didn’t care about his reaction anymore, hot tears stung her eyes. ‘… last time it was mother.’

  When Kerr spoke, his voice was low and quiet. ‘Where did you hear this talk?’

  Abi stared into the forest, watching the shadows from the fire dance with the trees.

  ‘Abigail?’

  She swallowed. ‘From Ikaw. He said the gods are sad that the forests are being cut for the sheep and sawmills.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘But they’re mighty angry about you disturbing the greenstone, the tangiwai.’

  Kerr’s face contorted. He lurched towards her, arms outstretched.

  ‘No, Pa,’ she sobbed. ‘Please don’t!’

  His calloused fingers closed around her neck, crushing her windpipe and forcing gurgling noises from her throat. She batted and scratched at his arms but he was too strong. Oh Mother Mary, she prayed, have mercy on this foolish girl.

  A sharp pain slashed across her neck and she fell to the ground. She cowered in a gasping heap until Kerr grabbed her by the hair and yanked her to her feet. He shook the hei-matau in front of her eyes; the thong had been snapped in half. He was shouting but all she understood was ‘half-caste’ and ‘Devil boy’ as his spittle peppered her cheeks.

  With a final curse, he hurled the necklace over the Sound. It broke the surface with a plop, like a leaping kokopu fish in the night. Losing the charm made Abi’s stomach churn but it calmed her father. When he spoke, his voice was steady. ‘You will forget this heretic prattle.’

  Abi gaped at him.

  ‘D’you hear, girl? Answer me.’

  ‘Yes, Pa.’

  With wooden limbs she folded herself into her blanket, rolling her face away from the warmth of the fire and the chill of her father’s stare. But all she saw when she closed her eyes were copper curls, so like her own. They drifted in a mermaid’s halo around a corpse, Irish skin so pale it glowed in the dark embrace of the Sound. It was the Sound, Pa. I know it was the Sound.

  Her father refused to talk for the remainder of the trek home. He stayed only one night at the hut before saddling the pony and announcing he was striking across for McCarthy’s farm.

  Abi kept busy sweeping and dusting the cabin, scrubbing and oiling the floors. She mucked out the pony’s stable, tended the vegetable patch. When the sun set on her third day alone, she read the family Bible by candlelight. She missed her mother’s gentle guidance as she stumbled over the longer words.

  She woke to a knock at the door. The fire had burned down to barely smouldering embers and her cheek was wrinkled from sleeping on the Bible cover. On the front stoop, she found John McCarthy standing hat in hand, weathered features tight.

  ‘Miss Abigail! Thank the good Lord you’re safe.’

  Abi’s stomach lurched. She grabbed the doorframe. ‘What is it?’

  McCarthy wringed his hat. ‘I hate to bear sorrowful news, Miss Abigail.’ He began slowly but soon the words tumbled over each other. ‘Your father … some of my boys found him early yesterday morning, near the headwaters of the Sound. They pulled him out quick but he had already gone. Part of the forest had come away from the cliff and taken half the track. The pony must’ve gone in too. We couldn’t find the beast, nor any tracks. I’m so sorry, Miss Abigail. What with your mother and now this. So sorry.’

  McCarthy searched her face for a reaction, expecting more than he saw. ‘My Beth says I’m to bring you home to Hollyford with me. We’ll write to your uncle in Invercargill.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr McCarthy,’ Abi said. ‘But I’ll need time to pack up good and proper. My father would have wanted it.’

  ‘Aye, girl, I understand. I’m making a last try for town before the winter. I’ll fetch you on the return. Four, five days at most. But if the snows come …’

  ‘I know. You won’t be able to chance the pass. You needn’t worry for me, Mr McCarthy. My father taught me to take care of myself.’

  McCarthy hesitated a moment, then nodded. ‘I’m sure he did.’ He turned to his horse, pulling a rifle from the straps of his saddlebags. ‘Just in case,’ he said, handing the gun to Abi.

  She glanced at the inlaid stock. ‘This isn’t my father’s.’

  ‘No, Miss Abigail. It’s one of mine. We found Kerr’s but it was too banged up to warrant bringing home to you.’

  She mustered a wan smile. ‘Thank you.’

  He nodded, donned his hat and mounted his horse.

  Abi closed the door.

  She propped the rifle against the wall and sat on her father’s bed. No tears came. She wondered if that meant she was evil. McCarthy’s words echoed in her mind. Invercargill was so far away. Too far. She wouldn’t go. There was enough food to see her through the winter. In spring she would cross the pass to Te Anau. She’d work for her keep in the inn or seamstress for the tailor. It wouldn’t be so long until Ikaw would be his own man with a trade. They could make a new home.

  Strengthened by that thought, she resolved to pack away her father’s belongings. Her eyes came to rest on the heavy wooden trunk at the end of the bed. Her father had forbidden her to go near it since her mother passed. But he wasn’t here now, and it would serve the task perfectly.

  She forced the latch with the fire poker. From inside the chest, greenstone glinted up at her, splaying turquoise and azure rays around the room. More blue than green. Tangiwai. The sight triggered something in Abi, like snow melt overflowing a dam. A cry of grief and fury ripped
from her throat.

  Frantically, she gathered her skirts and filled them with the stone. As she ran outside, clouds began to roll in over the cliffs, cocooning the valley in grey. She dropped the stone at the shore and picked up a fist-sized chunk, flinging it over the Sound. It slapped into the water, spray arcing high in its wake. In went the next stone. And the next. Tears flowed. Her sobs echoed around the cliffs, returning to her ears as the ethereal weeping of a goddess, not a girl.

  She retrieved more from the trunk, finding a frenzied rhythm as she bent and threw, bent and threw, casting each translucent stone back to the water from which it came.

  The last lump of stone was a single slab that covered the bottom of the trunk, its blue-green gleam dull in the low light. Abi seized the trunk’s handle, dragging it across the floor and out over the mud. At the water’s edge she rocked the trunk with all her weight, building momentum as it teetered back and forth. It fell with unexpected abruptness, sending Abi flailing into the Sound. The sheer cold of the water forced the air from her lungs like a punch to the stomach. Drenched, she scrambled for dry land.

  Teeth chattering, arms crossed tight, she ran for the hut. Her soaked skirts clung and tangled, tripping her in mid-stride. Her forehead smacked down against a granite wedge on the valley floor. She lay motionless for a minute. With a low moan she touched her face. Her fingers came away wet and red. When the throbbing pain subsided enough, she pushed herself to her feet, struggling for balance. I have to get warm, she told herself. Now.

  Inside, the fire had gone out. She piled kindling and peat over the still-warm ashes and fumbled for the matches on the hearth. There were only two left. Striking the first, she held it to a twig, but it burned to her fingers too quickly. The second match coaxed a timid flame from the kindling before it too sputtered out. Desperate, Abi cast about, her vision swimming under a wave of dizziness. There must be more matches. Her father would never have let their supply dwindle so low. Hope flared when she spied the small box beside Kerr’s old chair, the one where he kept his pipe, tobacco and matches. It was empty.

  She pulled her blanket from her pallet and wrapped it around her. It wicked the moisture from her clothes but left her more clammy than warm. She tossed it aside and stripped off her blouse and skirts. Shivering uncontrollably, she climbed into her parents’ old bed and pulled the covers over her head. The familiar scents of tobacco and stale sweat filled her nostrils as she lost consciousness.

  By the time the dust motes appeared in the first sunbeams of morning, Abi had flung the blanket off her naked body. Maybe there won’t be a late winter after all, she thought. Maybe spring has come early. She sweated and dozed and dreamed through the day. She saw her parents, fingers entwined as they sat by the fire. Her father smiling and ruffling her hair after he’d won the pony at auction in Dunedin. Her mother twirling in the grass, hair the colour of autumn, a dryad from the fairytales she told. She heard her mother’s laughter tinkling like waterfalls as she swam in the Sound. The cool, calm water of the Sound.

  The sun had long escaped the valley when Abi woke again. She padded barefoot to the door. Outside, the mud felt deliciously cold between her toes, night air caressing her skin.

  Music floated on the mist, the pure call of wood flutes drew her to the shore. She stepped into the water. It cooled her feet and calves, soothed the prickling heat of her thighs.

  Wading out further, she tilted her face to the clouds. A lone piopio bird flew overhead, its baleful cry echoing around the cliffs.

  The water lapped against her ribs, embraced her chest, her neck.

  When the ripples subsided, the Sound was still.

  It began to snow.

  ‘The King of Qin sent troops to attack the state of Yen … The Crown Prince of Yen was killed … Five years later [in 221 BC] the King of Qin ruled the whole world.’

  ‘The new Qin Emperor had 120,000 noble households from all over the country removed to his capital … The bells, drums and beautiful girls of the other states filled his halls.’

  Excerpts from Ancient Chinese historical records

  ‘Yen scum losers’ – that’s what our classmates called us. My older brother Ger was so angry he told my father he’d do anything but go back to school.

  When my father heard that, his hand fastened on the neck of the old bronze wine vessel. ‘They are Qin dogs,’ he said. He thumped the vessel down on the mat so the wine sloshed. ‘You are the royal family of Yen. They’ll know one day.’

  My father always talks as if we’re going back to Yen sometime and the world is going to give us honour and glory again. When I was little, I believed him. But now I have this thought that scuttles through my head, like a rat running for cover – how long is it going to take? Am I better off with a different plan?

  ‘I was thinking –’ I said. Ger kicked my ankle to shut me up.

  ‘You don’t need to think, Meng,’ our father said. ‘You are children. You will obey me. You will go and learn the rites and the poems, as befits the sons of a noble house.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But –’ I had an idea that I thought might please him. ‘I could become a merchant. They make a lot of money.’ Wealth means a lot to my father. I like money too. I like the weight of coins in my sleeve, and knowing exactly how many there are and what I can get with them. I prefer them to the heavy, greenish bronzes my father treasures. Money buys things that are right here. Not like the throne of Yen, which is way off in the north.

  My father went rigid. ‘Don’t you realise how rich our family is?’ he said. ‘You think the Emperor is grand?’ His voice got louder and louder. His anger bounced off the bare walls, like the useless wing beats of market geese against their cage. ‘I tell you, everything in his palaces is stolen! Stolen from Yen and all the other states he has no right to rule. He’s nothing but a bandit and a thief!’

  My cousin Crimson-Silk hovered in the doorway. Her eyes were wide and she had this shrinking look, as if she expected the house to fall on us. Somehow that look always made me want to stand up for her – to protect her against I don’t know what. It was too late to fight the past. Maybe it was the fear and dreariness strangling our lives now that I wanted to rip to shreds. Silk admitted to me once that what she hoped for was a kind husband and lots of happy children. I said I’d make our family rich and she could live with us forever, but she just looked at me oddly.

  Silk knelt in front of our father. Instead of meeting his eyes she watched his hands on the wine vessel.

  ‘Have you poured the morning sacrifice?’ she asked.

  He barely nodded, and waved her away.

  Silk picked the vessel up by its patterned handles. On her way out she signed urgently to us. ‘Tell him the slaves have ears, and they talk,’ she mouthed. ‘Remember what the Qin King can do.’

  Our family already knew what he could do. The year I was born, he ordered the death of Silk’s father, the Crown Prince of Yen. When I was still too young for school, but old enough to remember, the Qin Emperor marched thousands of noble families to his capital and stripped their palaces. We were one of them. We’ve been here ever since.

  ‘When you grow up, you will be a Yen prince, not a dirty dealer,’ said my father, and that ended the conversation.

  But me and my older brother Ger couldn’t wait until we grew up. We had to face our classmates every day. So Ger fought a couple of them, to show them we weren’t losers. I turned the rest into friends by doing trades – mostly for Yen knife coins. The coins were new to our classmates and they liked them. It’s true I took them from my father’s lacquer box, but what use were they to him? If you try using them as money in this city you get laughed at or beaten up. I didn’t touch his Qin coins, which are scarcer than smiles in our house.

  The Yen money got low too, after a while, and I had to think of other things.

  One morning, for a dare, when Silk gave me the good wine to take to my father, I waited until no one was looking. Then I emptied the wine into an ordinary jar and peed in t
he vessel instead. The pee was warm, yellowish and smelly, just like the wine. My father went and poured it, as usual, into the cups below the ancestor tablets. He never even realised.

  To prove I’d done it I had to take the real wine to school in the jar. I hurried towards the gate in our cracked wall, bent over the bulge in my jacket and trying to hold in my laughter. I didn’t expect my father to catch me. He didn’t usually notice what was going on around him.

  But it was Silk who stopped me. She used to hang about the gate, watching, when me and Ger went off to class. ‘What’s so funny?’ she asked.

  I grinned, and told her. I like telling her things that make her laugh. It gets her to look at me and her face lights up with a glow from inside, like a lantern. Silk is not exactly like a cousin. She is something more. Her skin has a sheen that catches light and shadow. It’s as if she’s made of something extremely expensive. The kind of thing we don’t have anymore, except for the bronze, I suppose.

  ‘That’ll bring bad luck!’ she said in a low voice, like the ancestors were listening. ‘Meng, you ought to grow up.’

  ‘Well, I’m trying,’ I said, standing over her. I was already five inches taller. Standing next to her I felt good, except when she told me off.

  It was too late to put the altar wine back anyway. I had another reason for taking it. I kept the jar under my coat all morning. I was planning to sell it at the market, and maybe then I’d have enough money to buy a secondhand knife.

  But after class, Ger twisted my arm behind my back and steered me away from the secondhand stalls. He hurried me down a side street into the clanging smoke of the armouries district. Ger liked to come here and watch. He stopped in front of a small workshop. The man behind the anvil was stripped to the waist. His skirt was so old you couldn’t tell what colour it was, but I knew by the way his thin hair was tied that he came from Yen. Like our father. The metalworker bowed respectfully at me and Ger, and offered us a mat to sit on.