by David Hair
Evan laughed, then he gasped and tore at a dart that had flown from the window and gouged his neck. A thin white face, a blowpipe in its mouth, peered in, eyes lit with triumph. Evan’s eyes bulged, and he staggered. But he recovered enough to chant a phrase, and the whole room seemed to shiver. The kitchen faded slowly.
But before it did, she saw Arama Heke stagger as pallid shapes flew at him out of the darkness. He vanished beneath naked white bodies that spilled over him, scrawny little nightmare figures that ripped at him with teeth and nails. His face was the last thing she saw, his mouth open, as his skin split and his insides bubbled out. Then the blood-spattered room where she had felt so safe those last few days faded from view, to be replaced by a bewildering press of people, gunfire, and shouting. A ghastly pale thing flew at them, then vanished when Evan shot it with one of those old pistols. Cars revved, doors slammed. Then it all fell away.
Hine woke in Ko’s arms, in Evan’s lounge. Ko looked totally bewildered. Ronnie and Brutal were slamming clothing into bags, while Deano was loading loot from Jones’s house — old guns and barrels from the shed — into the boot of the car. Evan was snarling at them, keeping them moving. They were leaving, going somewhere. All she wanted to do was crawl into a hole and pull something over the top. The face of Arama Heke as he was being torn apart would not leave her.
She wrapped her arms around Brandi, tried to stop the scared child from crying, and in doing so found something to deflect her own rising panic. Evan moved like a stoned dope addict, clearly still affected by the poison on the blowpipe dart, but when his eyes crept over her, she felt utter dread.
‘Hush,’ she whispered to Brandi and herself, shutting her eyes. ‘Hush, it’s all okay,’ she repeated, although she knew nothing would be okay ever again.
It seemed to take hours, but by dawn they were all in Deano’s car, driving north towards Rotorua.
Mat crept up the front lawn, but the house was silent. Fog from the lake had trapped the reek of gunpowder and violence. A small black-and-white shape lay in the hallway, the rug black and wet. The little body was cold. Mat extended his senses and sensed the lump of silver in the turehu’s heart. The attackers had known what they were facing. Godfrey was gone, forever.
The lounge was undisturbed and so was Jones’s room. No-one had plundered the house. The only room with anything out of the ordinary in it was the kitchen. He lit the lamp, picked it up, and looked about him. His heart was hammering, but he told himself to be calm. Observe. See what was to be seen. He squatted over a ravaged corpse, a man, half-eaten where he lay. The tipua goblins lay around him.
Beyond him, on the back porch, another six men lay. Three had gunshot wounds and another had been stabbed. They had all been ripped at by teeth and claws. Small piles of tipua lay about them. He walked further out, raising the lantern. More gang men, more goblins. The men had been outnumbered, he surmised, but they had fought desperately. And died horribly. What they had been doing at Jones’s cottage he didn’t know. But he could guess … two parties, the bikers coming first, the goblins second. An ambush, the hunters becoming prey.
Jones’s shed had been raided and all the old guns were missing, bar a few that had been right at the back. There was no sign of Jones and Hine. But there was a pool of blood soaked into the turf outside the back door, and Jones’s favourite weapons lay there. The air crackled with the afterburn of some magical energy, but he had no idea what had been done. He crouched there, fighting tears, trying to sense what he could of what had happened. It took time, and he was close to exhaustion, but he managed. A blurred vision struck him behind the eyes, of Jones falling, and then … nothing …
He opened his eyes, as the air quivered, a silent roar of power. The bloody ground boiled and the grass somehow drank the blood away. He reached out, trying to sense what was happening, and for an instant it seemed he saw Jones above him, bound to a tree, with creepers covering his body, piercing his skin, pumping his own blood back into his veins. Then it was gone.
My God, what was that?
He backed away, unsure whether to be reassured or frightened. He shifted to the real world, found himself in the back yard of an empty time-share, utterly still. The grass was torn up, and he smelt blood, but someone had removed all the bodies. He flickered back to Aotearoa again, and sagged to his knees.
Eventually he found the strength to act. He found a shovel and buried Godfrey, trying not to think about that mischievous, fun-loving and wise little spirit. The other corpses could rot forever, as far as he was concerned.
Godfrey, I hope you soar and find a new place where you can wait for us all to join you.
Eventually, he went back inside — and then he saw it, smeared blood on the side of a cupboard: R – O – T – O …
He knelt and tentatively reached out with his senses, tried to catch the after-images of what had happened. He saw flashes … Hine, writing in blood … Rotorua, surely. The vision faded. Rotorua.
I will find you and protect you, Hine, he promised her. I’ll find you.
He stopped for a moment, and put his remaining strength into a call, a silent plea for help. Ngatoro, can you hear me?
There was a faint stirring, and then a voice, distant but clear. Mat?
Ngatoro! We’ve been attacked! I don’t know where Jones is, but he’s hurt! Hine’s gone! She’s an avatar of Hinemoa. It was Parukau … he paused … or maybe Donna Kyle.
He thought he felt the old tohunga groan. Parukau? Beware of him. Be very careful …
What do I do? Jones might be alive: I don’t know where to find him. Please, help me!
I will … try … Mat … be careful— The link with the old tohunga, so tenuous already, suddenly snapped.
Mat rubbed at his face. He felt shattered, bewildered. But there was so much to do. He straightened, and threw himself into what had to be done.
He dragged the bodies outside and mopped the floor. He took Jones’s sword and pistols, and some powder and shot from a stash in the cellar. He boarded the broken windows and locked the door, in case someone came. Then he walked away, not looking back, not wanting his last memories of the place to be like this. As soon as he knew it was out of sight, he broke into a run.
It took no time to convince Mum that he had to go to Rotorua. He had to find Hine and protect her. There was no-one else. She cried and held him, but didn’t try to change his mind. He put his and Jones’s weapons into a sports bag with a few changes of clothes. He phoned the police anonymously and told them he had seen the missing girl, Hine Horatai, in Rotorua. Maybe it would make life difficult for her abductors. Then he collapsed onto the sofa, and stared at the ceiling.
‘Mat?’ Cassandra slipped into the lounge, where he was sleeping. They were at Sue’s house, and the night noises were all wrong. Whenever he closed his eyes he saw some horrible tipua, or that ghastly patupaiarehe, crawling towards him.
‘Hi,’ he murmured. Cass was still in those leathers, and looked alien; too ‘everyday’ to be the real her.
She knelt on the floor, leaning over him. ‘I want to come, too. Jones is my friend.’
‘Then stay here and find him.’ He hadn’t meant it to come out so brusquely. He reached out and grabbed her bony shoulder. ‘He’s here somewhere, Cass. It’s a puzzle. And you’re the best person at puzzles I know.’
He thought she would argue, but she didn’t. ‘Okay. But I’ll be on call. Any time, day or night.’ She put her hand on his chest, bent over him and kissed his cheek. She smelt of Mum’s perfumes.
He wanted to pull her close, but his imagination kept suggesting what might be happening to Hine and he felt like throwing up. ‘Sorry,’ he said, unsure what for. Cassandra just nodded, stood reluctantly, and tiptoed to the door. ‘It’s weird,’ he said to her back. ‘Your clothes, I mean. You look strange.’ He didn’t know why he said it, it was the least important thing that had happened that night, but his mouth just kept babbling.
‘I was supposed to look normal,’ she sai
d, slightly tartly.
‘Sorry.’ He felt numb and stupid. ‘I’m tired.’
She nodded, and slipped away without another word. For a moment he wished she had stayed. But sleep stole in and snuffed out his candle. He dreamt of Jones, caught up in the arms of a giant tree, his face slowly turning to bark, his eyes to knots in the wood.
Rotorua
Thursday
The Rotorua bus left at twenty to eleven. Mat had slept until after eight, when the unfamiliar house noises broke through his exhaustion. He’d called Wiri and Kelly, a short and anxious conversation. They were in Wellington, five hours’ drive from Taupo and further from Rotorua.
‘Wiri is going to drive up,’ he told Mum at the breakfast table. ‘I’ve asked him to call past on the way through, and check on things. They’ll have left by now. The last text I had said they would be in Taupo by two.’ He wished he had thought to call last night, but his brain hadn’t been working too well.
At the bus terminal, Mum pulled him into a fervent hug, and Cassandra — still in Mum’s old leathers as she had not yet gone home — hugged him, too. He realized as he let Cass go what it was that he didn’t like about her new look: with it, she was no longer ‘one of the boys’ or ‘kinda kooky’ she no longer had a pigeonhole, and he didn’t know how to react to her. He didn’t have the energy to explore that just now. ‘Take care,’ he whispered in her ear.
‘I wish I could have the police lock you up, to keep you out of this,’ said his mother in a shaky voice. ‘Don’t you do anything stupid, Matiu Douglas. And come home.’ He nodded obediently. ‘I love you, Mat.’
‘Love you, too. Gotta go, Mum! Bye!’ He boarded the bus, and waved until they were both out of sight, then pulled up the hood of the tracksuit top, and wrapped himself in thought. He pushed the violence of last night from his mind, and picked up his cellphone. He texted Riki, letting him know that he was coming. He felt he ought to be making plans, but he was too exhausted to think. Instead he closed his eyes, and let it all fall away for a while.
He jerked awake when another passenger tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Hey, mate, wake up. We’re here.’ The bus was pulling to a halt in a parking space off the main street. He could smell Rotorua’s sulphurous tang in the air. Rain was falling in a light mist.
Rotorua is around eighty kilometres north of Taupo, built on the south shores of the largest of a cluster of lakes. The skin of the Earth is thin here. Hot mud pools and geysers bubble and gush through the rock. ‘Roto-Vegas’ the locals sometimes call it, for its tourist-trap culture. There are replica Maori villages and nightly kapa haka displays, theme parks where visitors can view the geysers and hot pools, and lots of hotels. Rotorua has a long history, by New Zealand standards. Whakarewarewa has been a pa site from the fourteenth century, growing into the fortress of Te Puia. Europeans did not arrive until the 1820s, when traders and missionaries established stations. European settlement changed Rotorua drastically, as the Europeans brought guns, cloth, alcohol and the trappings of the British Empire. Rotorua became a spa town, a tourist destination even then.
Mat had been here before, of course, but not since he had learned of Aotearoa, and how to move between the worlds. He knew no-one here. The Maori of Rotorua are sub-tribes of the Te Arawa, whereas Mat was Ngati Kahungunu on his father’s side and that wasn’t going to help. These distinctions are important, especially in Aotearoa.
And if Parukau was here, maybe other warlocks were too: John Bryce. Donna Kyle. Sebastian Venn. Who knew which others? I’ve got to find Hine. But how …?
He walked down Tutanekai Street, the taiaha jutting from his sports bag attracting a few looks, and turned into the main shopping area, where cafés, pubs and souvenir shops serviced the tourist market. Foreign faces and languages were everywhere. It felt strange, as if he had wandered onto a tourism infomercial set. He found a café and lunched while trying to make a plan. First up, he needed a place to stay. Wiri might know people here, but they would date back to his servitude to Puarata, and be of no use now. Wiri had texted him to let him know that he had left Wellington at about nine in the morning. They wouldn’t be here until mid-afternoon. Kelly was coming, too. Mat guessed Wiri wasn’t too happy about that. Weren’t pregnant women supposed to be confined to bed or something?
After eating, he walked down to the lake and booked into a big hotel, one that looked out over the lake to Mokoia Island, a dim shadow in the misty rain. Mat thought about Hine, and what Jones had said about her. Why had she been kidnapped? Was it mere vindictiveness or was she significant in ways they didn’t realize?
The hotel staff seemed anxious that a teenager staying alone might trash his room or try to slip out without paying, because they seemed at pains to lecture him on behaviour, and to get payment in advance. Mum had credited his account so he had plenty of funds. The room was pleasantly nondescript. Mat had just laid his stuff down when his cellphone rang.
‘Hi, Riki,’ he answered, trying to keep his voice light. ‘Are you on the island?’
‘Yeah, man! Cold and wet! Your text said you’re coming to Roto-Vegas? How come? Your mum sick of you already?’
‘I wish it was just that, man.’
Riki was silent for a second, and his voice became sombre. ‘Wassup?’
Mat quickly told him about the attacks on Mum’s and Jones’s houses, Jones’s disappearance and the kidnapping of Hine. ‘I think … I hope … that Jones might be alive. But I can’t reach him … and I think Hine is important somehow. I’m going to try and find her anyway, and get her back. I can’t just let some bastard run off with her.’
‘I’ll be there by two o’clock, dude.’
‘You don’t have to. We’re just looking round at this stage, and—’
‘Are you kidding? Jones is my mate! You, too. Anyone that comes at you guys is comin’ at me. Simple. I’ll get my stuff together and grab the next ferry to the city from this here island.’
‘You’re on Mokoia Island, the place Hinemoa swims to in the legend, right?’
Riki paused. ‘Yeah. Why?’
‘Oh, just reminding myself.’
Riki grunted. ‘Huh. Anyways, dude, I’ll be on the next ferry, so you meet me on the lakefront a bit after two, and we’ll work out what to do.’
Mat sat on one of the lakefront benches, watching a sleek white powerboat glide through the other watercraft and pull in alongside the jetty. Riki, a long sports bag over his shoulder, was already at the railing of the boat. Tall and stringy with wild hair, his normally laughing face had a hard and serious edge that Mat hadn’t seen since that night at Waikaremoana. He leapt to the dock as soon as the boat touched the dock, to the annoyance of the ferrymen, strode up to Mat and threw his arms around him. ‘Mat. Good to see you, bro. Any news?’
It felt so good to see Riki that Mat almost forgot his guilt at dragging him into danger. ‘No. But I’ve got an idea. We’ve got to keep things moving. Wiri is on the way. He’ll be here any time now.’
Riki chewed his lip. ‘Sure, what’s the plan? And have you called Damian?’
Mat shook his head. ‘No. He’s in the South Island at that tournament. I feel bad enough dragging you into this.’
Riki shook his head. ‘Dame’ll be gutted if we don’t call him, man.’
Mat shook his head. ‘Don’t, please. This could get much worse than Waikaremoana. But I promise I’ll talk to Wiri about it.’ Riki looked mollified for now. Mat’s anxiety for Hine and Jones dissipated a little — just to have Riki here to talk to was great — but there was work to be done. Although part of him wanted to wait until Wiri got here, he had a horrible feeling that every minute could be crucial.
They made small talk as they hurried back to the hotel, but then Mat got down to business: ‘I’ve got a plan to try and find Hine.’ He rummaged in his bag. ‘We need something of hers.’
Riki raised his eyebrows. ‘Got anything? A heart-shaped locket she gave you, perhaps?’ he added slyly.
‘No! She went to Jo
nes’s with just a few bits of clothing … and this!’ Mat held up a small metal disc on a ribbon. ‘Swimming medal. It’s dated 2006 and she’s kept it. I found it in the room she was using. I think it’ll do the trick.’
Riki looked doubtful. ‘A swimming medal? What’s special about that?’
‘Well, when she talked about her swimming she was really proud. And … well, she’s an avatar.’
Riki snorted. ‘She’s a seven-metre-tall blue alien?’
‘The blue aliens were Na’vi, it was the—’ Mat peered at Riki, who was winking at him. ‘Dork, why did I call you in again?’
‘To cheer yourself up. So, she’s an avatar: what does that mean in the mysterious and spooky world of Mat Douglas, Apprentice Wizard?’
Mat exhaled, seeking the right words. ‘In Aotearoa, it refers to people who are born in our world, but are like legendary people reborn. Kind of.’
‘You’re lucky I don’t already know you’re nuts … A real person, but also legendary?’
‘Yeah. See, Hine is the avatar of Hinemoa, from the Hinemoa and Tutanekai story. Her fate is tied up with water. Or so Jones reckons.’
‘Jones is a very strange man,’ Riki observed. ‘Okay, what do we do?’
Mat frowned. ‘I think I’ll need to concentrate on it. I haven’t done this before, but I know the theory. Can you give me some privacy?’
Riki got up. ‘Sure.’ He threw his sports bag on the second bed, and stretched. ‘Man, they worked us hard these last few days at the taiaha camp. Got some good new moves, though. Anyhow, I’ll go take a shower.’
Mat barely heard the shower, or Riki’s clattering around. He just sat, cradling the medal, and let his mind reach out, focused on the face of the girl he had known for only a short time but to whom he felt so close. She’s not for you: Jones’s words echoed in his mind. He knew that, but it wouldn’t stop him trying to save her, though. Hine! Hine! Can you hear me? I’m here, here in Rotorua. Where are you?