No Man's Land

by A. J. Fitzwater

  He was looking hard at Tea. What? Grant? No, he was a nice boy, and useful in her letters back to Mum, but, no!

  “You harness up Clarissa, I’ll get the sled and tools,” Grant said, veering off to the shed. Orders never sounded like orders from him.

  Tea dragged her feet.

  “You have a problem with that, girl?” MacGregor barked. A murmur came from the washroom, but he ploughed on. “Ol’ Clarissa smell a bit too much for your delicate sensibilities, is it? We can always send you back home to Mummy if you like.”

  “No, sir. I mean, the smell is fine, sir. I was—” Tea bit her lip. She’d almost gone too far, her tiredness making her tone slip.

  “What is it, girl?”

  Tell him, Robbie said somewhere in the back of her mind. “I was going to read.”

  “Read what?” MacGregor scoffed. “There were no letters for you in the post.”

  “No sir, I—”

  That strange Virginia Woolf book Carmel and Alison had been giggling over all week teased at her mind. She’d tried to read it once before, but Mum had thrown it on the fire before she’d even read it a quarter of the way through. Grandad had been incandescent in his silent rage at the waste.

  “The tractor manual, sir,” Grant pitched in, halfway across the yard. Do mules have as good hearing as dogs? “I lent her the manual because I was going to teach her how to repair the tractor.”

  “Huh.” MacGregor scratched his chin. He sized Grant up with that slow rake-over that still made Tea shiver. “All those technical terms might be a bit much for you, girl. But go ahead, try if you want.”

  With that he went back inside to his cup of tea. Her mouth dry, Tea wished she could have another, too.

  Mrs MacGregor lingered a little longer on the veranda, watching them until they dipped below the hillock into the second paddock. Tea didn’t need to look. The air did the shivering thing again as Mrs MacGregor moved it with her eyeballs and breath.

  They were almost at the break along the creek, near the charcoal remains of the fire, before Tea could find her words again.

  “Why did you do that?” came out in a rush, not at all the accusations and interrogations she had planned.

  “I didn’t lie to Mr MacGregor.” Grant sounded as even as always, though he gave a little cough. “There is a tractor manual in your future.”

  “Stop it!”

  Clarissa, nodding between them, thudded to a stop. Tea swore the Clydesdale sized them up. Would the placid old beast take Grant’s side because of his equine-ness?

  “Stop what?” Grant dragged the bag of tools off the sled. He could usually heft it fine, but it was the end of the day.

  A very strange and trying day.

  “Doing—” Tea waved a hand around. “Whatever it is you’re doing. Pretending you’re this.”

  “I’m not pretending anything,” Grant said, laying out wire, hammer, nails. “I’m the same person I was yesterday.”

  “No, you’re not!”

  The heat flared up in Tea’s head again. The hiss, one she now associated with the eels rushing and scraping against each other in a mad liquid dance, stretched her nerves further; a strange pulling of the breath from her lungs, a squeeze into the cracks of her mind, swirling instinct and her better intent into a whirl she didn’t know how to contain. If Mum saw her now, there’d be a swift clip around the ear.

  Anger is a man’s place, this is a man’s job. Grant and Izzy are trying to make me angry, make me into something I’m not!

  Grant straightened and sighed, scratching under the rim of his hat. “Tea, come here.”

  “Why? So you can turn me into a horse too? Or a dog?” She put the sheer size of Clarissa between them again.

  “No. I need you to hold this wire so I can staple it into the post.”

  “Oh.”

  *

  Prickle-sweet pine. Manure, settling dank and loamy at the back of the throat; the hardness of sheep pellets and oozing delight of cows’ paddies. Sluggish ditches with worlds below thick water. The lick of green-yellow-sunshine grass-hay. Flea dip hard and high in the nose. Smooth-chewy lanolin over everything.

  And her. The scent of her. Something old, and something new to this old place. Like the other one but deep-warm, sunshine on salt-sea-sand driftwood charcoal, the scent the river left in its wake a long time ago. The scent of what an eel thinks.

  Whaiwhaiā.

  Barely contained.

  A lick of the chops, to wipe such a scent all over the face. To dig the nose in it, roll in it. Want to become a part of it. Take it all inside.

  Tap tap tap. That is the hammer.

  Is Clarissa one too? That is the voice, rough-sweet, smooth as river running over rocks.

  One what? That is the other voice, round and long, a voice that waits.

  Like you.

  No. A laugh, a bray. We do get on well because of commonalities.

  Common come on come one commonalities. Come all.

  Like Izzy and the dogs.

  Ears up, nose to the wind. Scent the dirt under fingernails, whisper from the creek, sweat. Come on.

  Yes. Like you and all animals.

  Yes yes. They like.

  Taste-scent the hurt-fear how it rattles her skin and seizes her bones. Tiptoe around the deeper buried wild fruit that could over-ripen if not watched. Shake off the scrape-touch of the water reaching out for her. For her. Swallow jealousy.

  What do you mean?

  Watch your step there, the bank gets slippery under the ferns. I mean, the dogs, they like you. The chooks don’t fight you or run away. The horses are placid around you, even the boss’s Kingly. The sheep fair walk up and drop their fleeces for you.

  That’s silly!

  You’ve never been on a farm before, have you?

  Well, no? Woah there, Clarissa. Good girl.

  Sunlight side-eyeing dust slanting up from the grass. Beyond, taste-scent of loam offering up the depth of its knowledge, a wealth of a thousand years. Ponga, flax, lemonwood, manakura, macrocarpa, and all the delicate morsels that make it their home. The fast-scent of feathers bob above, out of reach.

  Bring her forward a bit more so the sled’s hard up. Thanks.

  Wait, what’s that?

  The traps. So, the dogs and horses, it usually takes them weeks to trust a new hand. You had them at first glance. Unh, this one’s bogged down. Give me a hand, will you?

  Slick mineral lick and longness of weed. Meaty rub against mud water stone air. The eels they come, they come when they should be away, away. Squirm squirm.

  Yuck! Now my boot is wet!

  It’s alright. If you’ve oiled them properly, they should be waterproof. Ever had a pet?

  No, Mum didn’t like pets. Said they were bad for Grandad’s lungs.

  Hmm. Is your Grandad alright while you’re on service?

  He … he passed. Just before the war.

  I’m sorry.

  Taste-scent of thick red, salt, hot meat, sweat. The mix is wrong, twists in ways that can’t be unravelled. The air, it calls, close. Even at this distance she tastes she tastes she …

  Oh God! No! Let it out, stop it, put it back! No!

  Auē. The wages of skin, they must be addressed.

  *

  The inky water let go its grip on the weed-draped cage. Blunt at one end and tapered with an inset cone at the other. Tea had never seen its like before, but instantly knew the death it brought.

  Thick, rough whispers brushed her fingers as she hauled at the trap, some slapping like blame, others arching around in infinite coils of comfort.

  A wet nose brushed her shoulder, then became hot breath against her ear whispering human words she couldn’t – didn’t want to – make out.

  “It’s not moving,” Tea wept. “We have to send i
t back!”

  Back to where she did not know. She should have known, what with the boss’s talk of traps in the water, and memories of awful boys with sharp sticks and damp bags who tried to frighten her with oily eel faces, their bulbous lips and gnawing teeth. But to Tea they hadn’t been ugly or scary. They simply belonged to the water, and the water belonged to them.

  Larger hands engulfed hers, guiding her fingers to the hinges. Hunched in the mud, weeping, Tea cradled the dead eel in her hands. It was heavy, long, old, textured like fine sand. The coolness of it a reckoning, not the resistance that had sat ugly and coiled within her for so long. A resistance that nipped (unladylike), thrashed (loud), pushed and squirmed (not marriage material).

  Unhuman.

  The hand, again, gentle rough between her shoulder blades, a familiar comfort that hadn’t been replaced since Grandad left.

  A murmur-hiss of meaningless words, assurance from above and below the water.

  We want the same want. We flow. Body here. Body in us. Body water beyond.

  “They can’t have them.” Tea’s voice hitched. Her tears mingled with the soft flowing creek, as was their right. She stroked the flaccid whiskers of the dead eel, but it wasn’t creepy. It was skin she should know. “There’s food enough. When we are hungry we are for our people.” She knew she didn’t mean human. “We can take each other inside when the time has come. Our hunger is ours. We will give willingly.”

  “We’ll give it back, then. Tell Mr MacGregor the traps were empty.”

  Izzy’s voice. Where had she come from? Her swoon lifting, Tea flinched away. Izzy must have come as her canine self. Don’t look! A shiver coursed along Tea’s skin at the glimpse of naked flesh.

  “Yes,” Tea murmured, holding the dead eel close, mindless of the slime and mud. “Give it back. That will do.”

  “Go on, then,” Izzy urged, her bare arms wafting into view.

  The sound rose in Tea’s mind, the resistance now cut through. She made a hsk hsk hsk in the back of her throat, and the water roiled a welcome.

  She lowered her hands in the water and sandy skin coiled around her wrists and fingers, flesh more pliant than she expected from their sinuous lengths. Mouths formed bubbles of surprise. Teeth gripped their companion, tearing and pulling it under, a grand feast. The same teeth nipped her fingertips but did not pierce. A thanks, a welcome, a commitment. Respect returned.

  “Izz, look.”

  Tea brought her hands up into the almost-gone light dappling through the trees. Her tan skin melded at the wrists with thick, oily, black-green leather, the webs between her fingers elongated. Rubbing her hands together produced an approximation of the hiss that had held her all week. She closed her eyes. It felt like submerging her hands in the damp sand on a beach or running the fingertips across a thousand blades – one grain or tip would be an irritant or cut her, but all together the sensation made her vital, a spun strand of something bigger than herself.

  When she opened her eyes again, the eel skin was gone, and her hands were normal. No, not normal. Just human. This is the new normal now.

  “What am I?” Tea whispered, all the fight drained from her.

  The eels thrashed around their meal, snapping the water with their tails. It sounded like gunshots in a far-off place.

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” Izzy said softly. “We only want to help you understand. Become the best you.”

  “You’re one of us now,” Grant said, patting the patient Clarissa. The horse blinked.

  Using the long fern fronds to her best advantage, Izzy was careful not to come into Tea’s full view. Tea caught a glimpse of warm brown curves that made her curve in a little on her own.

  They’d better move. The boss expected two, not three to return. How would Izzy get back to the cottage in this state? The water whispered reassurance; of course, she’d had a lot of practice.

  “We three are tipua. We find strength in our animal forms. Our strength is whaiwhaiā. But you, Tea, are different. While Grant and I have forms that speak of the solidness of land, yours comes from the movement and change of water. You are taniwha.”

  The first two Māori words didn’t mean anything, but the third spoke of something deep that had always been waiting. Tea wanted to flinch away, but the pressure of the water pressed her towards it. She caressed its sandpaper hide, the oily length of it. Here she was, in all her terrible glory.

  Monster.

  5.

  Tea drowsed, letting Morgan carry her through the hissing, crackling day. The sun lulled her into a tranquillity that hadn’t washed over her for weeks, months, years. She could almost forget a war was going on outside these hills. Or inside her skin.

  She cracked an eyelid. Nothing but dogs huffing and shimmy-ing around her ankles, sheep, brown grass, rocks protruding like bleached bones, and Izzy rocking gently in her saddle.

  “How far now to the upper pasture?”

  Izzy squinted at the sun. “Get out the map and compass. You tell me.”

  Tea frowned at the map. That tone of voice from Mum or Mr MacGregor put her back up immediately, but from Izzy, it made Tea dig deeper for the competence she expected from her.

  A fly settled in her neck sweat, and she wriggled her shoulders to flick it off. No. It wasn’t a fly, it was Izzy’s contemplation. Why did she look at her like that?

  Izzy jogged her horse, Carmine, over and reached to lay a tanned hand on the map, then pointed at a rock formation. “See that? That’s there.”

  Tea measured it out with her fingers. Her hands were the same peachy sun-brown they had been when she left the farm that morning. No leathery scales creeping up her wrists, turning her into something she was not.

  “Another four hours?”

  “Sounds about right.”

  Tea licked her upper lip, and the tiny ripple of moisture grabbed her. Proximity to blood that moved like hers pulled her along without thought, poking along the rough edges of Izzy.

  Izzy jumped and grinned at her, then reined Carmine around to whistle up a dog to chase down a wandering sheep. Tea tipped down her floppy hat to hide her blush and folded away the map.

  That was careless. Everyone deserves their secrets.

  That had sounded like Robbie’s voice. She sometimes thought in his voice; what would Robbie do? But now, he sounded so close. This was the first time the voice had come through since that night at the creek. But how, with him so far away? When it had happened before, she always thought it was him whispering in another room or, when he wasn’t around, her imagination.

  Morgan grumbled, thirsty.

  Tea shook up her canteen, shaking away the strange thoughts about her brother in her brain. “It’s so dry out here.”

  “Then find us some water,” Izzy called back.

  “The next creek isn’t until the mustering hut.”

  Izzy threw a look back over her shoulder Tea found hard to read. “What are you waiting for? The world is made up of water. Your body is water. Blood, piss, and everything else.”

  “Izzy!” Tea laughed. She’d never heard a girl swear before she came to the farm. So bad and so good at the same time.

  Izzy pulled Carmine to a halt and waited for Tea to catch up. “If you’re serious about your tipua, then you have to learn to work with it. I learned quick I couldn’t ramble through life hoping it would all just happen. I didn’t want to become a dog or show my real skin in the wrong situation.”

  Tea’s neck prickled and shoulders tensed, a familiar reaction to criticism. Izzy was right, however. It was too dangerous to be herself.

  “But I don’t know what to do.” Tea pulled Morgan around to bring a line of sheep back into place.

  “You’ve got us. Me and Grant.”

  Tea flinched at the idea, but let it settle over her like the hot air.

  Izzy kept on. “Grant, he�
��s best with the ground beneath his feet. Me, I think it’s the night air. For you, it’s what happens when you touch the water. Those eels came to you. They’re usually vicious little buggers, but they want to know you.”

  Tea took a deep breath. Earth, air, water. The elements. Did that make Robbie the fourth one, fire? “Alright. I’ll try again.”

  “Good girl.” It didn’t sound condescending the way Mum or Mr MacGregor would say it.

  Her eyelids lowered, sun-struck peach filtered through to show Tea shadows of the world moving around her. She focused on her skin and the sweat there, Morgan’s tail a-whisk on the back of her legs. She let her hearing reach out to the cicadas creaking in the gorse bushes, their symphony growing louder as Tea imagined stroking her fingers through the water in the air.

  Hissssssss.

  Water nearby, slithering under the air’s breath. Tea reached out to it, trying to pull on it, but something stuck in her chest, the hot day pulling the air from her lungs.

  It was. Right. There. At the tip. Of her fingers. Whaiwhaiā. Burning cool as the water in the creek. A heat shimmer. But that block. An invisible shield. White as bone, white as the rocks.

  HisssssSSth.

  The wriggle of sound taunted her flesh, tapping against her skull. The morning heat bristled. Wide as the open fields, high as the looming mountains. Points on a map, openings on her skin. Find the cracks in the veneer, the joins where she was herself and eelself. Long breath in through the nose. Open mouth. Stick tongue out. Lick the air. Suck in the taste-scent of skin, fur, dirt, wool … Izzy. Pulling down. Deep with each breath. Skin opening thirsty mouths. Teasing edge brushing fingertips, jaw, lips …

  No. Tea shifted in her saddle, thighs taut. Stop reaching that way.

  Hssssthssss.

  Rocks. Earth. Grant might find his solidity in them, but to Tea’s expanded senses they vibrated ever so gently, like the water was waiting, drowsing in its trap.