by J. F. Penn
"Quit sitting around, Henare," she whispered, sending her thoughts on the breeze, wishing them to him. "Meet me on the road to the north."
Her thoughts made the time pass quickly, and soon Lucy reached the highway. She thrust out her thumb as vehicles passed, headlights shining on the road ahead. Several rumbled past, faces peering out the side as they continued without stopping, packed full of fearful people.
Eventually, a Red Cross truck pulled over.
"We've space for you in here," the female driver called out.
Lucy ran over and pulled the door open. There were already four others squashed into the front seat, and the back of the truck was packed. The tang of sweat and the stink of blood and pus pervaded the air within. It was the smell of sickness. The smell of the near-dead. She got in.
"Thanks so much," Lucy said as the woman pulled into the traffic again.
"We're not leaving anyone behind," the driver said with gritted teeth. "We've lost enough tonight."
The truck was eerily silent, and the rocking movement soon sent Lucy into an exhausted sleep.
She woke as the fingers of dawn broke across the horizon. Lucy looked out the window to see the magnificence of the ocean before her. It was calm and flat. No one could have guessed the destruction it had wrought in the last twenty-four hours. The little town of Kaikoura lay ahead on the peninsula, but Lucy only had eyes for the sea.
This was one of the few places in the world where the deep waters were close to the shore. The upwelling from the Hikurangi Trench brought an abundance of marine life to feed here. Kaikoura came from the Maori words for 'meal of crayfish,' and it was here that people came to swim with dolphins and whales in the ocean, overlooked by the stunning Seaward Kaikoura mountains. The sun sparkled on the water, and Lucy longed to be out there.
The trials of real life slipped away when she was on the ocean and she sank into that sweet memory now. She remembered swimming from a boat out there, clad in a thick wetsuit with a weight belt to help her sink under. The cold permeated through it, chilling her skin. There'd been a moment when she had realized she floated above 3000 meters of water, her tiny body just a speck in the blue. She had looked down through the water with her dive mask and calmed her heartbeat. The blue stretched down in shades to black as she breathed deeply through the snorkel. There were whales here, dolphins … and sharks.
Then, Lucy had heard a flurry of clicks and high-pierced squeals as a pod of dusky dolphins surrounded her. They darted past, hundreds of them, their dark eyes fixed upon her. Lucy had grinned and started to sing through her snorkel, joy welling up inside her at this encounter. A mother brought her baby close, the little one inquisitive about this strange creature in their realm making funny noises. Lucy had felt a connection with these creatures, the part of her that was from the sea calling to them, wanting to swim as elegantly as they did, to dive down and then leap for joy into the air.
And then, all at once, they were gone, the pod moving on as fast as they had appeared. But the kinship she'd felt still warmed her inside.
"We're going onto Picton after a rest stop in Kaikoura," the driver said, noticing that Lucy was awake. "They can't take all the refugees. It's too small here, so we're moving on soon towards Wellington. I can take you all the way to the ferry if you like."
Lucy thought of what the Maori woman had said at the river last night. Was Amber here? She had to take the chance.
"I'll get out," she said. "Thanks for the ride, but I have to find my sister."
11
"I don't really have a brother," Ben said.
"Yeah, no shit." Gina laughed. "Ben and Jerry? You're a terrible liar. But if you want to go in the caves, I'm definitely coming with you. It's not safe down there at the best of times."
Ben sighed, shaking his head. "Are you sure?"
"Yup." She grinned. "So what’s in the caves anyway?"
Ben hesitated. "I don’t actually know."
"You don’t know? Hell, I always get mixed up with the wrong guys…"
Ben looked down at Gina. Her hazel eyes sparkled with humor in the torchlight. He wondered if he could trust her with the truth. The reality was that it didn't seem fair not to – Gina had no idea what she was signing up for with him. He had to try and explain, for her own sake.
"This will sound crazy, but there are these demons. More like gods perhaps, but demons too."
"Like monsters?" Gina frowned.
Ben nodded. "I saw one kill my grandfather, and I think the tidal wave and the earthquakes are related. I understand if you want to go back. I shouldn't have gotten you involved in this. But I have to go on."
Gina stepped closer to Ben and looked up into his eyes.
"And there’s a woman involved, right?"
"Yes. Lucy. It's comp –"
"Complicated. Yes, it always is," said Gina. "So why the ice caves?"
Ben pulled the talisman from his shirt and held it out so Gina could see. The bone figurine glowed in the reflected light from the glacier.
"I have to get this into the ice cave. Deliver it to someone or something."
"And that will save the world?"
"Maybe. I don’t know."
Ben tucked the talisman back into his shirt. Gina was silent for a moment, her head tilted to one side as she considered his words. Then she shrugged.
"It's definitely weird, but hey, I've done ayahuasca at Burning Man. I know there's more than a physical plane of existence. So I’m with you. As crazy as it is to deliver a talisman to a Tasmanian devil –"
"Maori god."
"Maori, Tasmanian. Whatever." Gina shrugged. "Let’s go before I change my mind." She took a step down the trail to the right and then turned back to him. "You coming?"
Ben smiled, and they walked on.
The path wound down the side of the ice towards a rocky cliff face. They descended in silence. The glacier glowed with blue light as if lit from within, so they turned off the flashlight as they walked closer. The path opened up as it reached the entry to a cave, a tunnel of ice into the depths of the glacier. Swirls of soft blue and violet twisted through the white. Ben exhaled and his breath froze in the air.
He stepped inside the entrance, then turned back to Gina.
"Last chance," he said.
She moved ahead of him into the cave. "How deep you think we have to go?"
Her voice bounced off the smooth walls of ice and came back to them in a warped whisper. A drip drip drip sound joined her echo. Ben thought of the tourists crushed under tons of ice here a few years back. The glacier was always moving, ebbing and flowing over millennia. Nothing was solid here, yet the talisman drew him inward.
"We have to go all the way," Ben said. "We should put on more layers."
They opened the packs and put on padded coats, then attached spikes to their shoes. Gina's lips were blue with cold, but her eyes shone with excitement.
Ben took several steps deeper into the cave and felt a sudden tightening in his chest. He inhaled, yet it felt as though he couldn’t get air deep enough into his lungs. He clutched at the wall as a haze of black smoke seeped from the ice, surrounding him.
The ice world shimmered. Gina seemed frozen in time, her form wavering as if she stood behind a waterfall. A cacophony hammered Ben's ears and he clutched at his skull in pain.
Then, suddenly it was silent. Ben stood in the middle of nothingness upon an invisible pedestal on a sea of black.
This is what the people hath wrought. Turn back.
The voice was the sharp edge of a knife, the dripping of blood, an ancient agony turned into sound.
As the sacrifice grows, my power increases. This is what must be.
His grandfather had told Ben many myths, but there was one that chilled his flesh to hear it spoken of. Whiro, god of darkness and embodiment of evil, lived in the underworld. He ate the bodies of the dead and gained their power. It was said that when Whiro became powerful enough, he would break free of the underworld, rise to the surfa
ce and consume the entire world. Whiro had taken his grandfather; now, he was here.
Anger rose within Ben. He would fight this demon with every breath left in his body. He grabbed the talisman and spoke a karakia of protection, the words taught to him by Tamati years ago. The dark creature in the smoke roared. As it sank its talons into his mind, Ben tried to scream, his mouth frozen open in pain as the world exploded into black.
A voice called to Ben in the darkness. He clung to the sound.
"Ben. Are you OK?"
He opened his eyes and saw Gina’s concerned face. She squatted next to him on the ice, shaking his shoulder.
"You passed out for a minute. Here. Drink some of this."
Ben emptied the plastic water bottle, gulping the liquid down as he tried to push aside his fear. Whiro wasn't done yet, he knew that for sure.
They were running out of time.
"We have to get going," Ben said. He pushed himself up the wall on shaky legs, but after a few steps they felt stronger again and he strode onward.
As he and Gina descended, the blues of the ice turned into a deeper purple, with lines of black racing through it. The angle of descent increased and the cave walls closed in until Ben could touch both sides with arms extended.
Then, it narrowed even further.
"We have to crawl," he said, trying not to think of the tons of ice above them, the crushing weight of all that ancient frozen ocean.
"Keep moving," Gina said from behind him. "And pray it doesn't get any narrower."
Ben knelt down and crawled in. After a few meters, his flashlight flickered and died.
His heart pounded with fear. He wanted to bolt.
Only the fact that Gina was behind him stopped him from scooting backwards. The darkness overwhelmed him and he gasped for breath, trying to calm his claustrophobia.
Then, he saw a speck of light. It glowed like a morning star, casting rays of white through the glacier like a promise. He crawled on, faster now as Gina hurried to keep up behind him.
The tunnel opened out into a large cave. Stalactites of crystalline ice hung from the curved ceiling, forming spiked pillars like a huge cathedral. Gina emerged from the tunnel.
"This is very cool," she said, spinning around. "Some random demon church in the middle of the ice. You sure know some awesome places, Ben."
The pendant burned on Ben's chest and he pulled it from his clothes. It was ice cold, and he felt drawn forward through the cave. At the far end, an altar of ice rose from the cave floor. A piercing blue thread of light wound through the air. The light touched the pendant, and it glowed with inner power, pulsing in his hand.
Ben followed the blue light to the altar. He took off the pendant and laid it on top. The ice around it burned away and water vapor evaporated into the air. The pendant sunk down until it rested on top of a box hidden within the altar itself. The box was a match to the one the pendant had been stored in. Ben reached in and pulled it out.
Gina came up to stand next to him.
"Open it," she whispered.
Ben shut his eyes and thought of his grandfather. If Tamati had been here, he would have known what to do. Now Ben would honor his final wishes.
He opened the box.
Inside, a sliver of dried wood about five centimeters long sat on a pile of woven flax. Ben reached in and touched it. His grandfather's words came to him over the years, tales of the great waka, canoes that the ancient warriors had paddled from Hawaiki, the ancestral homeland, back in the days when the gods had blessed Aotearoa. The waka represented the people, a promise of safety over the waters and a new home.
Ben sensed that this wasn't the end of the quest. Perhaps it was only the beginning.
He reached in and took out the shard. It had a pinhole at the top, so Ben untied the string of the bone talisman and added the waka piece to it. He retied the string and put it back around his neck.
"And I thought men couldn’t accessorize," Gina said.
Ben couldn't help but grin.
He slammed the box shut. The noise reverberated through the ice cave and the blue light around them dimmed.
A loud crack resounded in the cave and a crevasse began to open down the middle. Black smoke seeped out, consuming the light within the ice cave like a ravenous dog.
Whiro.
12
The Kaikoura rest stop car park was packed with vehicles of all kinds. There was none of the usual bustle from holiday-makers and tourists. There was only a bone-tired emptiness among those who leaned against their cars, faces fixed in survival mode. Two volunteers handed out bottles of water and boxes of rations from Red Cross vans. People took them in silence.
Everyone was heading north, away from the horror and devastation of the South Island. The majority of the population and infrastructure were in the north. The larger ports were north. There would be more help there.
Lucy wove through the crowd as she made her way towards what looked like some kind of administration tent. She heard snatches of conversation as she walked.
"I've heard the Aussies are rescuing people out of Wellington by boat. Maybe they'll take us, too."
"Thousands are dead in Dunedin. My cousin was there."
"Te Anau is completely buried."
"How could God let this happen to us?"
The last voice was desperate, pleading, unable to accept the reality of destruction. Lucy turned away, shutting her ears to hopelessness. She had to believe that Amber was still alive.
A ruddy-faced Maori woman shuffled lists in the administration tent, piles of paper stacked around her and a laptop on the table pinging messages every few seconds.
"I'm looking for my sister," Lucy said.
"Join the queue," the woman replied sharply. "Everyone's looking for someone, love." Then she looked up and caught sight of Lucy's pendant.
"That's unusual," the woman said, her eyes widening. "I've only seen that particular design once before … long ago." She came closer. "Who are you looking for again?"
"My sister, Amber Campion."
The woman turned to the laptop, typed in the name.
Nothing.
She grabbed the paper lists and scanned through them quickly.
Nothing.
The woman shook her head. "Sorry, no one by that name is registered as coming through here, but to be honest, we're just trying to keep a semblance of organization in the face of massive disaster. We're meant to track everyone but not everyone registers on their way north. I'm sorry."
Lucy turned to go, but the woman grabbed her arm.
"Wait," she said. "You probably don't want to hear this, but I know there's a parallel route in place." She sighed. "It's always this way in disasters. There's those who help others in need and deny their own comfort, and then there's those who take advantage, using the chaos as a smokescreen for their own gain. There's only so much we can do, especially as the police and the military are overwhelmed right now."
"Gangs?" Lucy said with a frown.
The woman nodded. "And worse. I've heard rumors of traffickers picking up children. They stop near here to refuel before heading to the port at Picton."
Lucy's eyes widened in horror, her mind filled with images of what could be happening to Amber right now.
"There now. I'm sure your sister isn't among them." The woman patted Lucy's arm. "But if you want to know more, go down to the Esplanade where the boats are. Keep that pendant out and proud and someone will help you."
Lucy touched the greenstone at her neck. "What's so special about it?" she asked, thinking of the old woman in the trees last night.
The administrator shook her head. "I can't say exactly, only that you will be helped."
Lucy walked out of the tent and headed down towards the Esplanade.
Rangi Anahera loved working the boats in Kaikoura, but it didn't exactly pay well. He did some jobs on the side, nothing too flash, and the money helped keep his mother and sisters going. He wasn't the best son, but at least
he sent money back to the whanau.
Now, he sat on the back of a truck keeping watch, having a smoke. The truck had arrived in the early hours from Christchurch. The driver looked Indonesian, maybe Malaysian. Some kind of Asian anyway, with a name like Sitona. He'd thrust a roll of dollars at the yard boss and gone inside the office. Rangi knew they were negotiating, and that nothing good was going down right now.
Part of him wondered what was in the truck.
Part of him did not want to know.
The trucks with scorpion badges came through often enough, and they were never good news. The driver had said it was important that no one look inside, and Rangi's boss had nodded in that peculiar way.
So he wouldn't look.
Rangi was used to guarding things. He was a big man, and proud of it. Maybe some of it was fat now, but most of it was still muscle, honed by years working the boats.
He took another hit from the joint and inhaled deeply, imagining the smoke filling him, pushing out the parts of him that were scared. He couldn't show his fear outwardly. The others would finish him for it.
When the earthquakes had hit, he had been out on one of the tourist boats, whale watching – or at least scanning the ocean for a plume of water from the blowhole of a surfacing whale. That was all the tourists saw, really. He didn't care. It was nice enough to spend the day scanning the ocean. The time passed quickly and he loved the sea breeze, being out there close to the sky as the shearwaters dove for fish.
Moments before it happened an albatross had swept in, gliding above the boat, its huge wings unwavering as it dipped down to look at the curious creatures snapping pictures. Rangi wished he could fly away like that bird and escape what he had become on land. Somehow the little jobs he had started doing years ago had morphed into things he knew were wrong now. The eyes of the Toroa, the wanderer, fixed upon him and he had felt convicted.
Then the wave came.
That terrible wave.