The Unknown Zone

by Phil Smith

  A dozen times we’d come upon forest villages or, among the dunes, tiny fishing camps whose residents had ventured forth with utmost caution, only to be smitten with rapidity by these brutes with wooden staves and blades of stone. Yet for the most part the brown corpses lay where they fell, the savages relishing instead the flesh of white men, or, in their tongue, kai tangata Pakeha. The eating of this Pakeha meat appeared to endow the eater with an elevation in status and power. They called this mana.

  At other such hamlets the inhabitants were absent, perhaps forewarned by sentries; in such instances the invaders looted their potato gardens and put their cottages, or whare, to the torch.

  Now on the thirty-first day we came in the late afternoon to the bank of a mighty river — the natives called it Taramakau — whose waters did run rough and thick with alluvium, so torrential was the rain.

  The usual raft of flax-stem bundles was built, larger this time, and stronger ropes plaited in readiness for the crossing. But such was the press of water and onset of darkness and rain that postponement was decreed.

  The mood of the natives was one of surliness and with food running low, I beheld our crisis imminent. At the same moment I saw an opportunity.

  ‘Flanagan,’ I whispered as our captors sheltered ’neath their rain-capes in the gloom and noshed lustily on pork-fish, ‘we’d best effect our flight tonight. For come the morrow they’ll feast on us, I’ll wager.’

  ‘Aye, to be sure,’ said he, nervously scanning the company around us. ‘The food’s near gone and they’re makin’ eyes at us. We’ll go together. What’s your scheme?’

  ‘I saw people over yonder, briefly, when we arrived,’ said I. ‘A Maori village must be nigh. We’ll loosen each other’s bonds when dark, then wait, and launch the raft when the storm is at its peak.’

  ‘You’ll have us throw ourselves upon the tempest?’ said Flanagan, wide-eyed, glancing towards the wild confluence of storm-tossed ocean and raging river. ‘You’d see us chance our lives in that?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said I, feeling less than confident myself. ‘We’ll take our odds in the flood. Better that than the cooking fire!’

  No moon appeared. We would have to feel our way across 50 yards of stones and sleeping bodies. When the rain’s roar did reach its zenith, when the troops hunched satisfied, fat and snoring ’neath their mats, we worked our way with exceeding stealth to the riverbank.

  The boy grabbed one side of the vessel and I sprang for the other; thus we dragged the craft over the shingle bank and pushed it into the flow, leaping aboard and throwing away the hauling lines as the current took hold.

  ‘Have courage!’ I cried to Flanagan, as well as to myself, because above the river’s roaring came the sound of rolling breakers. Anon we lurched headlong into a sea of remarkable ferocity. Out onto the bar. Upwards on the faces of monumental swells. Down again as breakers curled and crashed for what seemed an eternity, tearing apart eventually the reed-bundles and casting us to the mercy of the maelstrom.

  Never had I beheld waves of such indescribable potency, a sea so malevolent as to turn a saint to blasphemy. Time after time we were held beneath by thunderous churning rollers until our very lungs did scream for air and our tormented souls pleaded for deliverance.

  It was thanks to God and providence alone that the wind and waves carried us, near to drowning, into the shallows. Shouting with exultation we crawled, then lurched as drunkards onto a rain-drenched beach. Through knee-deep foam and banks of driftwood we made the high-tide line where we fell prostrate in grateful and exhausted supplication. No sooner had we lain thus when lightning flashed and in the glare I saw figures running towards us.

  ‘We’re done for now!’ whimpered Flanagan, hiding his arms around his head. We waited for the blows of their clubs. Instead they took our arms around their necks and helped us to their village in the thick forest behind the sand hills.

  A campfire inside their largest house took away our chill and we soon became objects of no small curiosity to scores of Maori folk, all of whom insisted upon pressing, in turn, their noses upon ours and uttering the words ‘Tena koe’ and ‘Kia ora’.

  They seemed preoccupied with my red hair and indeed, it was my perception that they had never seen a European before. I was wrong.

  To our astonishment, a bearded man of fair complexion and dignified manner entered the meeting-house. He wore a black robe with long sleeves, frayed around the hem and held at the middle by a belt of beads and a crucifix. His feet were clad in the woven flax sandals of the Maori people and he was obviously fluent in their language.

  ‘How do you do,’ he said, looking us over suspiciously but nevertheless extending his hand in gentlemanly fashion. ‘I see you’ve made yourselves at home. I’m Father Unsworth. These are the Ngati Wairangi people. Welcome to Paroa Village. I perceive you’ve perhaps seen better days!’

  ‘Indeed, Sir,’ I said, and we proceeded to outline our ordeal in detail, the priest periodically translating the tale to his parishioners who grew in number and consternation as our tidings spread.

  By our story’s end great alarm had gripped the gathering and they debated amongst themselves a course of action.

  ‘They’re divided over what to do,’ said Unsworth. ‘There’s no doubt as to the sense of your warning; indeed we’ve heard often of marauding and savagery by invaders well to the south. We never considered they’d come this far.’

  ‘There’s little time, Father,’ I said. ‘We took their boat but they’ll make another. By this time tomorrow there’ll be ought else but ashes of your fine village.’ The priest brought his hands together and raised his fingertips to his chin, as if to pray.

  ‘There is uncertainty,’ he said after a long pause. ‘One faction desires to flee forthwith and carry warning up the coast, while others seek to stay. They say we outnumber the enemy and can easily thwart their murderous intentions by strength and fortitude.’

  I looked at Flanagan and he at me.

  ‘I’m with those who say to flee,’ he said, turning towards the exit.

  ‘I’ll not stay to face the cooking fire either,’ I replied, for my appraisal of the gentle and ill-prepared forest folk stirred no confidence that they could resist their battle-hardened, flesh-eating foe upon the morrow.

  ‘Though we be weak and dispirited by our macabre experience, we’ll evacuate with those who plan to go,’ I said. ‘And you, Father?’

  A smile came to his lips. His eyes were smiling too. There was silence in the room when he spoke. ‘I am their minister,’ he said, ‘and they are my flock. Would that I could persuade all to flee, but since some choose to stay and fight, then my place is at their side. Are we not Christian soldiers? Are not the Angels of the Lord, the Heavenly host, encamped around about us, even as we speak?’

  ‘Aye, there’s no disputing that,’ said Flanagan, making the sign of the cross. ‘Even so we’ll pray His hand of mercy be upon us as well as thee when we part our ways tomorrow.’

  The remainder of the night brought hurried preparations of two kinds. The stayers, more than four score in number, assembled weapons and, in the pouring rain and flashing lightning, shored up their fortifications of sharpened stakes, then sending the women and children off before first light up the deep valley to hide in the bush.

  Meanwhile those who would be refugees assembled mats, weapons, and food packed in seaweed bladders and hollow gourds. I noticed how they took care to wrap numerous precious articles called taonga, which they had fashioned from the hard green stone referred to as pounamu.

  Unsworth gave me a letter addressed to his Cardinal in Ireland and instructed us to urge the villages along the way to ready themselves for an hostile incursion. We shook hands again, while those who were leaving sorrowfully embraced those staying.

  Thus in dawn’s dreary glow — for the storm had cleared somewhat — we took our melancholy leave, Flanagan and I clothed in thick rain-capes and flaxen sandals the people had given us, and sharing equa
lly the burden of supplies. About thirty in all, we made haste along the beach, walking below the high-water mark so that the tide obliterated our footprints from those who might follow.

  I saw clouds and clear sky reflected by the acres of wet sand ahead of us and thought of how the storms of life, as well as of nature, can inspire in us great fortitude. At the same time I felt guilt and remorse for abandoning those brave souls and their valiant pastor to certain death. Yet I dared not look back till the ocean’s haze safely shrouded the coast far behind and beyond.

  By mid-day we came upon the greatest of the rivers encountered thus far, a deep, swift waterway named Mawhera. Three villages, or pa, were in evidence; two, on our side, included a seasonal camp of dome-shaped nikau-thatch huts — whose inhabitants made it their industry to catch and preserve fish — and a more permanent, but apparently deserted, settlement in the lee of an escarpment.

  On the northern side, a formidable fighting-pa stood on high ground overlooking a long, low island. The river ran between two wooded arms of a great sandstone ridge, whose immense obtrusion divided the coastal plain from a broad river valley beyond.

  It was to the fighting-pa that we pressed the fisherfolk to carry us. Indeed, upon receipt of our grim instruction, they required little persuasion to leave their traps and nets. Boarding a substantial raft of totara logs, and accompanied by an assortment of smaller craft, we took up paddles and safely crossed to an island called Motu-tapu.

  The island bore a longhouse about thirty feet in length and twelve feet to the ridge. It was made of curved poles and lashed rafters thickly thatched with raupo reeds. In the centre, contained by stones, was a campfire whose flames I was astonished to find were fuelled by coal.

  Above the fireplace was a space in the roof three feet square which allowed the smoke to escape. Farther back, behind barriers of logs, a mass of dried grass and fern about a foot high covered the floor, providing a fine sleeping accommodation for weary travellers such as we. After little conversation, our contingent fell to grateful slumber.

  5

  The weta

  Resin oozes like toffee from the rupture in the branch. After five days the sagging mass of golden gum dangles like a thick, sticky stalactite. The piece grows slowly to the size of a banana before separating and falling to the forest floor.

  A giant weta, sensing a disturbance in the air, tenses his spiky legs and twirls his antennae urgently.

  Too late.

  The kauri gum slumps across the startled insect’s thorax, overwhelming the powerful, twitching creature with its sheer stickiness. More sap drips over the next few weeks as the tree’s storm-damaged limb begins to heal. By now the weta is totally encapsulated by the hardening resin. It stays that way while kauri forests flourish and decay, for the next twenty thousand years.

  In 1889, a bushman probing with his gum spear in a swamp on the Coromandel Peninsula finds a lump of hardened amber in the mire. He tosses it into the sugarbag pack strung over his shoulder and takes it back to his shanty in the bush. Over the next few days, while the rain thunders down, Tuapiro Ratana sits by his tiny fire and scrapes away at the chalky crust with his knife.

  A dark shape soon starts to appear.

  Using a circular motion with a bowl-shaped lump of pumice regularly immersed in a bucket of water, bushman Tua rhythmically abrades and rounds the surface, all the while quietly chanting his favourite waiata:

  ‘Karia e haere, kai kopi te waha o te pakiaka.’

  (Hasten not through the darkened forest lest you dash your foot against a tree root.)

  By the time the skies have cleared Tua has shaped the transparent mineral into a sphere the size of a rock melon. The piece still has to be fine-sanded, then polished with Brasso until it has the gloss of glass. He will do that next week.

  It will be a prized addition to his collection because even in its unfinished state, Tua can see the trapped weta inside the yellow mass, its antennae still twirled and intact.

  Hemi opened his eyes and sat upright.

  It was cool now. Darker too.

  For several seconds he stared straight ahead, unblinking, afraid of what he might see if he shifted his gaze. At first he thought he was down on the ground, then the reality of his fearful achievement unfolded within him. His head whirled with the vision of the gum-digger, and the weta’s beautiful, tragic plight still resonated in his mind.

  He stood up and parted the vegetation with his arms.

  He stared sleepily at the shape for several seconds before understanding what he was seeing. Concealed by leaves and branches was a hut. Its weathered roof and lichen-encrusted walls were made of split timber slabs, weathered to a silver gray. The structure was cleverly built around the massive column of the kauri’s trunk.

  Hemi pushed several paces through the ferns and stooped to enter the low doorway. It was dim but dry inside.

  There was only one room, its back wall formed by the tree trunk. The ceiling was lined with overlapping nikau fronds and from the rafter poles hung coils of rope. Two spades, an axe, a few gum spears, and a pack made out of a sugarbag and plaited flax hung from nails in the perimeter wall.

  The floor consisted of tanekaha poles, many of which had decayed and dropped away, so that through the gaps at one end Hemi could see straight down to the valley.

  A small bench and some shelves of adzed timber were attached to the tree wall using branches. On these sat several dark green bottles sealed with wax, nine Agee jars of preserved fruit, a rusty Bycroft Biscuits tin, a few books and magazines, and a chipped enamel plate and mug.

  A kerosene lamp with blackened glass hung from a wire, and a small fireplace had been formed out of slabs of rock and corrugated iron. The sooty remains of a billy and a yellow can of Bell Tea lay nearby.

  Watching from dark recesses were cave weta. Further back, their moist mandibles glinting, crouched brown spiders the size of mice, their webs stout enough to snare large moths.

  Hemi’s eyes became accustomed to the gloom.

  Before he knew what was happening, yet as if in slow motion, both his hands were on his face. He dropped to his knees, frozen, groaning with horror.

  On the bunk lay a skeleton.

  It was clad in the decayed remains of a red tartan shirt and baggy, woollen trousers.

  Its eye holes looked straight at Hemi.

  One of the arms hung from the edge of the bed, the other lay bent at the elbow across the exposed ribs. The finger bones covered something at the neck.

  Cobwebs clagged at Hemi’s face as he clawed his way shouting from the shack and bumped his head on the door frame.

  It was dark. There was nowhere to hide.

  And no one knew, or gave a stuff, where he was.

  He slumped, sobbing and trembling for some time until his anguish abated and he realised the futility of his self-pity.

  At this point he saw that in his panic he’d scrambled out onto a smooth, sloping branch with nothing between him and the ground sixty feet down. Instantly the nerves in his feet prickled like needles as his sweating hands slid slowly over the smoothness.

  A horribly enchanting idea engulfed him.

  There was no way he’d be able to get down the tree again.

  What was there to go back to even if he did?

  Why not end it all right now, without thinking about it another second?

  Why not escape the nightmare of agony and embarrassment his life had become?

  He sighed with resignation and relief, and relaxed his bear-hug on the branch. He started to slide. In his depressed state it seemed like a logical way out.

  ‘I’ll fall like a fantail feather,’ he told himself. ‘Baldy and them will be glad to be rid of me. I won’t feel a thing.’

  ‘Don’t you ever go near that Square Kauri!’ Atawhai had told him. ‘You’ll bring down the makutu on us!’

  He remembered, too, his own brave assertion when he forced his trembling hands against the giant tree a few hours earlier. ‘I am a man of st
rength and courage. I will avenge the loss of my mana.’

  The words gave him energy and his arms gripped the bough again. Gradually Hemi moved backwards along the branch to join the insects and the skeleton among the head branches.

  He saw that he had been weak and insipid.

  No wonder Tamatea mocked him.

  No wonder Baldy treated him like a dog.

  It was as if he’d been wearing a sign around his neck saying, ‘Kick me!’ Now he had found courage and confidence, the desire to live would propel him to safety and success.

  ‘I am a man …’ he repeated, with amazement and delight. ‘The boy who climbs trees has become a man!’

  In a Greys Tobacco tin on the shelf he found two boxes of waxed safety matches, and a packet of National Candles. He lit several of the candles, and in the flames he examined the contents of the hut more closely.

  A pocket knife, a galvanised iron bucket, a heap of crumpled clothing, a few faded pink copies of the Weekly News, and beneath the bunk lay six flax kits containing objects wrapped in newspaper.

  At the end of the bed were three pairs of spiked, tree-climbing boots. The leather uppers had long deteriorated but the serrated iron frames and toe-spikes, though rusty, were still firmly screwed to the hardwood soles. Next to the boots were several iron climbing picks with hooked handles, along with a tomahawk and a large coil of sisal rope.

  Here, if he could learn the technique, was a way to return to the ground.

  No longer fearful of the skeleton, Hemi drew closer.

  Candlelight flickered on the skull.

  The position of the arms suggested the man had died peacefully.