The Lost Tohunga

by David Hair

  Mum hugged Dad, too, but it was brief and businesslike, a glorified handshake. Dad agreed to stay for lunch, and the two adults headed for the kitchen while he deposited his bag in a bedroom that still didn’t feel like it was his, with its cheery yellow curtains and sky-blue walls. He propped his practice taiaha in the corner and stared at an old easel and some paints by the window. A half-finished girl’s face stared back at him from the canvas: Lena, painted from memory. It wasn’t a bad likeness, but it didn’t express all he wanted to say about her. Recently they had been learning some Art History and he had tried out adding symbolism to the picture, little coded messages. A taniwha coiled in the waters in the background, and Lena’s finger was raised to her lips, urging silence. He regarded it for a while, until his parents called him for lunch.

  The table was awash with bowls of salads and tins of fish. Mum only ate fish and vegetables at the moment — no red meat. As usual they talked about Mat as if he wasn’t there. His father gave a rundown on Mat’s recent school test results. Mat was in his second-to-last year at high school, and had big NCEA exams in six weeks or so. ‘They’re doing mock exams in his first week back at school, so keep him focused,’ Dad told Mum.

  Mat rolled his eyes while Mum nodded firmly. ‘That means you’ll not be spending all your time at that Welshman’s place,’ she told Mat. ‘I’m expecting some good marks to justify those fees we’re paying.’

  ‘If he goes on to university, then the costs are only just beginning,’ said Tama. ‘The fees are going up more than ten per cent again next year. Those varsity heads are bigger crooks than most of my clients.’ He immediately coloured, clearly wishing he hadn’t put it quite that way.

  ‘I got pretty good marks mid-term,’ volunteered Mat, to head off the old ‘protecting criminals’ argument. It worked. They went back to picking over his results, which at least they agreed upon. Finally, it was time for Dad to go, and Mum shooed him off. They all hugged again awkwardly, then with a gentle surge the Mercedes was gone.

  That could’ve gone better, Mat reflected sadly. He noticed a pile of letters on the bench addressed to ‘Ms C O’Connor’. Mum was using her maiden name then. She had told him she would be doing that, but it didn’t feel real until you saw it written down.

  Mum frowned, and visibly put her ex-husband from her mind. She reached up and ruffled Mat’s hair. ‘Well, you’ve grown, to be sure. You’re taller than me. And handsome, too. You breaking those Napier girls’ hearts?’

  Mat grimaced. ‘Other way round, more like.’

  Colleen looked intrigued. ‘Really? Have you got a sweetheart then?’

  ‘We don’t have “sweethearts”, Mum. We’re not living in the ’fifties or ’sixties or whenever you last dated.’

  ‘Oh, that’s harsh, Matty. I wager I get as many dates as you do. More, probably, with you being at an all-male school, and under your dad’s thumb at home.’

  Mat grunted. ‘It’s like a prison camp sometimes.’

  ‘Well, after this year, you’ve only one to go, and then you’ll be off to university. You’ll have to leave home then. Which university do you want to go to? Victoria in Wellington, so you can stay with Wiri and Kelly and Fitzy?’

  ‘Hopefully. Wiri says that Wellington rocks.’ Just thinking of Wiri and Kelly brought a smile to his face. They had married in March at a Hawke’s Bay vineyard, announcing mid-ceremony that Kelly was already four months pregnant, which was kind of obvious when she arrived looking like a puffball. The baby was nearly due.

  ‘Come on, lad, let’s go for a walk down by the lake. You still haven’t told me about your sweetheart. Or whatever you want to call her.’

  They walked down to the lake, where holidaying children were shouting and running, and tourists were peering out across the water wondering how the sky could be so blue when the air was so cold. Southerlies in Taupo carried fresh mountain-top air, direct from the snowfields.

  The only unhappy faces were two Maori women, sitting beneath a tree, crying and hugging. The younger one looked strangely familiar to Mat, so much so that he caught himself staring. When she saw him watching her, she mouthed something rude and he looked away, feeling guilty.

  His mother pulled his arm. ‘Don’t stare, Matty. Whatever it is, it’s their problem, not yours.’

  They left the two women to their crisis, and bought an OJ and a coffee from a café on the edge of the shopping area, and took them down to the shore to sip. The lake’s surface was dark grey-green, small waves being whisked by the stinging wind into little white-tops. Gulls tacked their way across the wind like airborne yachts.

  Mum sipped her coffee appreciatively and smiled at him. ‘So, how’s my boy then?’

  He didn’t mean to tell her much, but as usual he ended up telling her everything. He was OK at school, and he was basically popular, but he felt like an outsider at times. He didn’t drink, smoke, attend church or play rugby. Cross all those off, and he felt like he had no common ground with anyone. Not when his mind was filled with Art and Aotearoa. Riki was still his best friend of course, and they were planning on getting together in the second week of these holidays, after Riki’s taiaha camp in Rotorua was over. But Riki also hung with the beer-and-dirty-jokes crowd, who treated Mat like he was a radical Mormon.

  ‘It’s like, everyone I know smokes and drinks,’ he found himself saying to his mum. ‘They’ve all got girlfriends, and spend all their time talking about them. Even the jerks have girlfriends. In fact, they get the girls before anyone else does. And the guys with cars can take their pick … Are all girls really that stupid?’ he grumped morosely.

  Mum smirked. ‘If you mean, is it stupid for girls to want to hang out with popular alpha males with visible wealth and status? Well, I wouldn’t call them stupid. Life is like that. In the animal kingdom—’

  ‘Mum, I’m not a chimpanzee! I just want to fit in.’

  ‘Well, you’re the one going off with that mystic Welsh weirdo, and spending all your time and money on art equipment and antique weaponry. Don’t you think you’re isolating yourself a little?’

  ‘If you saw the things I’ve seen in Aotearoa, you’d—’

  Mum flinched. ‘Matty, I have no desire at all to see that awful place ever again. This world is hard enough without going to another place that’s worse. I wish you could just put it aside. It’s not safe, and it’s taking you away from your family and friends.’

  Mat looked at her. Mum never spoke much about what had happened a year ago, about her kidnapping by Puarata, and what they had seen up at Cape Reinga. He sometimes thought she was trying very, very hard to forget it had ever happened. He couldn’t blame her. They fell into an awkward silence.

  Finally, Mat looked up and asked, ‘So, are you still seeing Neil?’ Dad always said attack was the best form of defence.

  It was Mum’s turn to colour. ‘Sometimes. No, not really. Sort of. Don’t you like him, then?’

  ‘He’s alright, if you like cars and rugby. He’s just kinda … ordinary.’

  ‘Well, ordinary is nice sometimes. And Taupo can be a bit of a man-desert, for sure.’

  ‘Why live here then?’

  ‘Well, life is not just about finding a fella, Matty. I like my job here; I’m Deputy Head at the school now. I like the skiing and the hot pools, and there are a whole bunch of us single women I’ve buddied up with. It’s close enough to Napier that I can see you regularly without bumping into your dad all the time.’ She looked at him frankly. ‘Your dad and I aren’t going to be getting back together again, Matty. You need to let it go. I’m happy enough. I like my life here.’

  It was distressing how matter-of-factly she said it. He felt a deep ache inside, and didn’t know what to say. His mum looked at him sadly, then gazed out over the water. ‘Look, Matty, there’s a big log floatin’ in the water out there.’

  He looked, and sure enough, a dark shape bobbed amidst the waves, perhaps fifty metres from shore. He let his eyes mist slightly, and refocused the way Jo
nes had taught him. Now he saw a serpentine shape sliding through the water. He blinked it away and shivered slightly.

  ‘They do say that there is a taniwha in the lake,’ said Mum, as if she were a mind-reader. ‘They say it appears like a big log floating in the water, and it’s seen before disasters.’ She glanced at him anxiously.

  ‘It’s just a log, Mum,’ he lied. ‘Probably washed in from the forests.’

  She smiled sadly, then reached over and pulled out his necklace. It was a greenstone pendant on a string cord. Really, it was two pendants, a Maori koru and an Irish knot, designed to fit together. He had carved them himself, from kauri, but in Aotearoa they had been transformed into pounamu, or greenstone. He had intended them as gifts for his parents, but they had seen the two pieces as implying they would be reconciling, so he had ended up with both the pendants after all. Maybe it was meant to be that way. It wasn’t a bad thing — together, they seemed to augment his abilities. Another pendant hung beside the koru–knot now: a tear-shaped piece of jade. The tear of a taniwha: Lena’s tear. It was cold and strange to touch.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be going off to see that Jones fella as usual, then?’ Mum asked, in disapproving tones.

  ‘Sure. He’s expecting me.’

  He watched her bite her lip, trying to find a reason for him not to go. Finally, she gave it up. ‘Well, best you go then, so you can be back in time for dinner. But you tell him from me that he’s to cut you some slack. It’s trying to live up to what he wants that’s setting you apart from your friends. A boy has to have some fun, too. You tell him that.’

  Mat left Mum and walked southeast along a muddy little shoreline path leading away from town. To his left, the holiday homes were coming alive as their families arrived. To his right, the dark shape of the log flowed through the water, closer and closer. He glanced over his shoulder to check he was alone, stopped and then drew out his koru–knot pendant.

  He closed his eyes, and shut out the smells of the lake, the distant traffic, and the chill touch of the wind. Inside himself he could feel a thin coil of verdant fire. He grasped it, visualized Aotearoa, the Ghost World that existed parallel to the real world, the place where legends lived and the dead went. It took seconds, as energy surged then left him shaking and perspiring. He opened his eyes, and looked about. The time-shares had vanished, replaced by verdant forest. The town had been replaced by a Maori pa and a collection of colonial houses. He exhaled with satisfaction, and then the lake boiled about his feet, and with a rush, a massive water-serpent towered over him, its teeth bared.

  ‘Kia ora, Horomatangi!’ he shouted, as a wave washed over his knees and made him stagger.

  The taniwha hissed, and its fishy breath hit Mat like a cold blast of steam. Massive filmy eyes took turns at regarding him as the serpent turned its head first one way then the other. Lake weed slid from its oily black flanks, and clung to the twisted folds and ridges of its massive skull. If a mythical dragon had mated with a massive eel, it might have resulted in this creature. But it was far more than a big fish. This was the lake-god, and the world seemed to bend around it. Mat could feel throbbing skeins of power that emanated from it. It was both in and of the water, bound to both worlds at once.

  Horomatangi lowered its head back into the water, half-submerged, one huge opalescent eye watching him. Its tongue flickered out. On it was a stone the size of a compact disc, grey slate washed smooth by the waters of the lake, presented as a gift. Mat reached cautiously into the taniwha’s mouth, between fangs the size of his hands, and took the stone. In the great reflecting eye, he saw an image flicker of Jones, and he nodded. Then a pulse of energy made him gasp, and the pale disc of stone seemed to fizz with light. Further images formed. A blonde woman with a scarred face and a tattooed chin: Donna Kyle! His heart beat faster. More images followed. A hollow-eyed tramp limping down a gravel road. A shape like a woman, composed entirely of birds. A giant pounamu stone that pulsed like a heartbeat. Then darkness. His vision cleared, and he stared up at the taniwha.

  Horomatangi reared again, towering above him, then swirled away into the depths with a mighty crash of water. Mat barely kept his footing, his clothes were sodden. He stared after the taniwha, hoping for more, but it was gone. He was left wet and shivering. He slopped back to the shoreline and sat on a tree stump, shivering.

  The face of the blonde woman still haunted his dreams. Donna Kyle, Puarata’s former apprentice. The last time he had seen her was an instant before the waters had swept him away in Waikaremoana. He had hoped she had drowned, but her sneering, cold-eyed face never left his nightmares. Why did she feature in the taniwha’s message?

  Standing, he began to run down the trail. Under the pallid sky, if seen out of the corner of the eye, the sun seemed to be a huge carved face — only the most obvious sign that he was in another world. He reached an old jetty, then turned up a short path through bush that thrummed with insects and birdsong, to an old wood cabin that lurked among towering kauri trees.

  ‘Jones! Jones!’

  An old man stepped from the front door, a bony figure with lank, grey hair and rough white stubble. He wore faded brown cotton pants of the sort worn by colonial settlers, and his checked shirt was stained and threadbare. A grin adorned a leathery face that had something of a wolf about it.

  ‘Mat! About time!’ Aethlyn Jones strode down the path and hugged Mat, his warm embrace reeking of pipe smoke. He still spoke with a Welsh burr, despite having left Wales two hundred years before, fleeing a Church-led purge of the remnants of druidism and witchcraft. Eventually, he had settled in Aotearoa. Since New Year, Mat had become ‘wizard’s apprentice’ to the old man. Which was fine, because he liked Jones hugely, whatever Mum thought.

  ‘Let’s be lookin’ at ye, laddie,’ Jones said, holding him out at arm’s length. ‘You smell like a swamp and you’re wet through. What on earth have you been doing?’

  Mat held up the stone disc. ‘I saw Horomatangi! He gave me this, for you!’

  Jones raised an eyebrow. ‘Well then, best I have a look.’

  On the day Puarata died …

  One year ago …

  Parukau

  In the seconds after Puarata fell at Cape Reinga, a dog on a dirt road near Hawera, far to the south, jerked to its feet and barked furiously. It was a bony, feverish creature with diseased yellow eyes, and belonged, if that was the right word, to Old Mac, a tramp steeped in his own filth. They had been together for seven years, and sometimes the old wanderer puzzled over how the dog still breathed. It smelt like week-dead road kill. Bare patches festered on its hide, it walked like a drunken sailor, and there was nothing healthy about it. Or its appetite — it ate carrion, bugs and whatever it could scavenge.

  ‘Lil’ bugger won’t last a week,’ Old Mac remembered thinking as he had kicked it away from his pack, all those years ago. But it had hung around, begging scraps, and he had been lonely. He had never even named the vile mutt. But they were well matched. Old Mac was no whitewashed saint. He had gone bush after attacking a nun in Levin back in ’83. By the time the case had gone cold, he had forgotten how to live in the normal world.

  The barking woke Mac, confused and bleary-eyed from the rot-gut he had been swilling. They were beneath a stand of pine, amidst the sheep shit but out of the rain. ‘Shut up, ya mangy bugger!’

  The dog turned and growled. Something flickered in its eye that had never been there before. Before Mac could move, the dog leapt on him, both forepaws on his chest. A weight like a boulder crushed him, emptying his lungs. ‘Get off me! Ya feckin’ … ugh … get off.’ His voice changed from threat to choking plea as the dog’s weight intensified. Its eyes seemed to grow. Mac went rigid with fright as a spiral of unlight poured from the dog’s mouth and coiled like a snake, a serpent made of smoke which poured into his mouth, choking his final words. He couldn’t speak, not even to beg. He tried, though. He writhed and twisted, but the dreadful thing on his chest neither moved nor relented. His heart hammered lik
e an overstressed engine, until the world fell away.

  The tramp sat up and stared at the dog lying cold and dead beside him. Although the tramp wasn’t Old Mac any more: he was Parukau. Parukau, first among Puarata’s servants, before the tohunga had imprisoned him in the body of that filthy mutt.

  But I’m free now … Puarata must be dead …

  Puarata dead! He could taste it! He was free! ‘FREE!’ he shouted aloud, his first words in over a century. He shouted for sheer joy, half his outpourings mere barking and gibberish, but he didn’t care.

  An hour later he was hobbling down an eastward road. Puarata’s fortress was in the Ureweras, and there was a very special place there, known to only one other being: himself — Parukau! A secret place they had made together, that they called Te Iho, ‘The Heart’. It was where the true power lay.

  I’ll be damned if I let someone else gain control of it. Quite literally damned.

  Kurangaituku

  When Puarata fell from the bluff at Cape Reinga, birds rose from the trees and streamed south, shrieking the news. Deep in the bush near Hamilton, hundreds of sparrows, pigeons, starlings, magpies, water birds, gulls, all manner of birds, began to swirl madly together, swarming like insects. They spun in tighter and tighter knots, blending in a blur until an observer would have sworn they were trying to form a shape: a blurred outline amidst the sight-defying movement appeared vaguely human.

  The birds flew closer still, their wings beating against each other, fouling each other’s flight, sending feathers flying as blood spattered the ground. Still they meshed closer, their calls deafening, until suddenly they turned inwards and with a sickening crunch collided, ramming into each other, breaking spines, rending bodies, shattering each other. The bloody mess collapsed in a heap of feathered, quivering, red-stained flesh.

  The mass of dead and dying seemed to dissolve, their last calls growing plaintive and thinner as each succumbed, and then the whole ghastly heap was still. It remained so for some minutes, as red fluids fed the roots of the trees. Then it quivered.