Guardian of the Dead

by Karen Healey

  Professor Gribaldi chaired the meeting, mostly by virtue of assuming that she would, though more than a few people looked disgruntled at that. This alliance was clearly a tenuous one. She called upon Mark to tell what he knew of the patupaiarehe plans. I’d thought that everyone had known that, but though several people nodded grimly, there was still a shocked whisper when he talked about the mass murder to come. I frowned when I noticed some of the guests eyeing the door. Or perhaps Mark, still standing within it as he spoke.

  But La Gribaldi was as much in command of this gathering as she was of any classroom, and she didn’t let the mutters grow.

  Instead, she nodded at the tall Asian man, who was sitting cross-legged under the kowhai tree. His black cat started from his lap when he rose, scampered a few alarmed steps away, and then sat down to wash her leg.

  ‘It is clear that we must fight,’ he began, fingers folded into his sleeves. ‘First, because this land is or is now our home and pride demands we protect it. Second, because these children of the mist have harmed those with whom some of us were honoured to share some bond, and honour requires that we avenge them. And third, because they seek to alter the laws of the manner of life and death permitted them by the first Gods of this place, and duty suggests we must prevent it. Will anyone dispute with these principles, as I have here outlaid them?’

  ‘Of course they won’t,’ one of the Fijian ladies said indulgently, snipping off a thread with her teeth. She was sewing new buttons onto an old flannel shirt. ‘You keep going, man.’

  He smiled at her. ‘So then, we proceed to what must be done. Their strategy is twofold. First, they wish to tear the hook from the fish that is the land, and so induce his death throes. Second, at the moment this occurs, and Grandmother Death sinks deeper into her slumber to protect the dead, they wish to wrest immortality from her, by sending their representative through that dangerous passage.’ He held up two fingers. ‘Therefore, should not our strategy be twofold also? I advise that the bulk of us wait at the end of the hook to prevent their magic and destroy their army. But when they attack, let a small party – perhaps one man – journey to the underworld and kill their representative there so that even in triumph, they will not succeed, and we have this last satisfaction to comfort us.’ He bowed slightly, and sat again. The cat leaped into his lap and consented to stroking.

  ‘That works,’ Professor Gribaldi said, nodding. ‘So who’s going underground?’

  ‘Who can go?’ Sand murmured. ‘We’re not all welcome, dear Smith. The entrance is all the way up north, and the journey to Cape Reinga is barred to the living, unless they know some cute little tricks.’ He looked around.

  ‘Not exactly my department,’ the pale priest said, with some irony, and a tall, brown-skinned woman at the back folded her arms under her breasts and shook her head, frowning.

  One of the bikers scratched his head. ‘We don’t know a lot of the old stuff,’ he admitted. ‘City magic’s more our line.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ the skinny Mori boy said. ‘My grandfather taught me the way.’

  ‘You might not come back,’ one of the bikers said, with cautious respect.

  The boy glared. ‘My grandfather taught me how,’ he repeated, and I realised why he’d seemed familiar. He’d been in the newspaper, standing proudly beside the murdered kaumatua in the family portrait that had illustrated one of the Eyeslasher stories. I felt a twinge of sympathy.

  ‘It’s a long journey,’ Mark said. ‘And dangerous, from the East Coast. But there’s another, safer route through the mists.’

  Mr Sand wriggled his fingers in the air. ‘All the heavens know I’m happy to let bygones be, dear boy,’ he began. ‘And it’s easy enough to open the way to the mists, once you know the trick.’ He smirked at that, eyeing Mark insolently. ‘But how can you propose it to be a safer route? Will you risk all on the chance of one of us journeying through them and coming out sane? You’re the only patupaiarehe here, and you can’t quite manage it yourself.’ He yawned behind his curled hand. ‘Well! Bygones.’

  Mark pulled the flax bag from under his shirt and tipped the contents into his palm. One of the little lights floating in the air rose to hover by his hand.

  Reka had packed the bag with more of her hair. Nestled in the fine red fibres were two greenstones the same size, each smooth and slightly ovoid, polished to the same dark sheen. They were beautiful, totally unflawed, and probably worth a fortune. But my other sight saw them as more than just gemstones. Power radiated from them to thrum against my bones.

  Everyone in the yard pulled away, then swayed closer, like trees in a gale.

  ‘It’s true that I don’t have the power of the mists anymore,’ Mark said clearly. ‘But my mother lent me her eyes, and through them her power, and with them I can navigate through the mists to the underworld’s entrance.’

  I remembered Reka’s sunglasses; the way she had looked directly at neither of us. My blood rushed in my ears like the ocean. She’d plucked out her own eyes to give her son the best chance she could. She was still terrible; she was ruthless and remorseless and almost entirely indifferent to the suffering of others. And she was the one who liked humans.

  ‘If it doesn’t work,’ the boy said, ‘if you can’t get through, or go crazy . . .’

  Mark nodded. ‘Then it’ll be up to you.’

  ‘The backup to the backup, eh?’ the boy said, and grinned. For a second I saw the same proud kid who’d stood barefoot beside his grandfather in the marae. Then the mirth was replaced with an expression of grim determination that he should have been way too young to produce.

  I was suddenly, breathlessly, sad for him. He should have been stressing about an algebra test or mooning over his best friend’s older sister. Not here, in my backyard, on the brink of a war.

  But I knew, ashamed as it made me, that I wasn’t going to be the one to turn him away.

  The meeting formally broke up, and smaller groups formed to talk through battle plans and strategies. I tried to talk to Mark, but he evaded me to instead engage the Mori boy in intense discussion. Backups of backups, I deduced, and tried to fulfil my duties as host by mingling.

  That didn’t work very well. People were polite, and some were even friendly, but much of the discussion wasn’t in English, and I couldn’t understand a lot of what was. I might have found it more interesting if I hadn’t been so tired. Instead I gazed over the yard to the bright city and dark ocean while Professor Gribaldi and Mr Sand argued about blood invocations and weather commands. Sand kept calling her Smith, which infuriated her so much he nearly won the argument. Perched in the magnolia tree, the Desi woman and the cat were staring intently at each other. Kneeling under the branches, one of the bikers unpacked the parts of a nasty-looking rifle from his black leather satchel and started to clean it.

  He saw me staring and grinned. ‘For hunting rabbits, eh?’

  I saw the patches on his jacket, swallowed hard, and gestured vaguely at the house. ‘I’d better put the food out.’

  He got up and waved to his mates. ‘I’ll give you a hand. Hey, bros, help the lady, eh?’

  In the end, they simply carried the laden kitchen table into the hall and out through the back door. The table was roughly three times wider than both doorways, and I didn’t see the doorframes widen or the table shrink; just, somehow, it got through.

  ‘Looks like a good feed,’ one of the bikers said. Try as I might, I wasn’t able to tell them apart. When I tried to pick an identifying feature for one, it seemed to belong to another.

  The food was universally fantastic. I tried the vegetable curry and some thick slices of rewana bread and managed to eat a bunch of grapes and nearly half a small circle of brie by myself. Mark eyed the table with longing, pressing his hand against his stomach, and then went back to his discussion with the boy with the moko. I wandered up to the pair, but they were speaking to each other in fast Mori and didn’t stop when I paused beside them. Mark gave me a distracted nod; the skinny
boy didn’t look at me at all.

  I took the hint and went back to try the mead.

  No one had told me it was alcoholic.

  Some time later, when things were pleasantly blurry, La Gribaldi came to me where I was sitting on the swing, swaying gently.

  ‘This stuff is great!’ I said enthusiastically. ‘It tastes like honey!’

  She smiled. ‘It does indeed. Ms Spencer, a moment’s conversation. What do you see when you look at the moon?’

  I looked at the sky. ‘The sad woman. Who can’t get back down.’

  ‘Quite so. That’s a strong story here. My father was Italian, and when we left Eritrea for Rome, he would sit outside and smoke and tell me stories: about his father’s farm; about the war; about the gods. My favourite was the myth of Selene, who drives the chariot of the moon. She loved many men, but she loved beautiful Endymion best, and begged the father of the gods to give him immortality. This was granted, but Endymion sleeps eternally. Selene treasures him still, and rises every night she can, so that she might kiss him with the beams of her light.

  ‘Now. Look.’

  I did. For a moment I saw it, the woman eagerly driving her silver chariot across the sky. The image wavered, and it was just the moon, a near-circle of white light; and then the anguished woman returned, clutching the tree on which she’d stubbed her toe.

  ‘It changes,’ I said, astonished.

  La Gribaldi laid her hand on my shoulder. I could feel the warmth radiating from her skin, like the heat stored in sun-baked earth. ‘Stories change us; they change the world. People are stories of themselves.’

  I squinted, my head spinning. ‘Like . . . history is written by the victors?’

  She nodded, looking sombre. ‘Or erased by them. Ms Spencer, the stories we know are real things. Especially for people like ourselves. Remember that.’

  ‘I will,’ I said. ‘Did your mother tell you stories?’

  ‘Of course. But I won’t tell them to you now.’

  ‘Okay. Are you sure you don’t want some mead?’

  She shook her head and moved away again. I swung back and forth, listening to the priest and the Fijian ladies murmuring over the rosary. I hadn’t heard it since Granny Spencer had died, but the familiar rhythm was soothing in my ears. From the bag in my bedroom, I could feel the mask humming along. It sounded lonely.

  I woke later that night, sunk into the soft mattress of my parents’ bed. La Gribaldi was standing looking out at the moon. I must have made a sound, because she turned around.

  ‘You’re safe, Eleanor,’ she said, and I went back to sleep, lulled by the mead and the far-off whisper of the sea.

  WHY DOES LOVE DO THIS TO ME?

  I’M GOING TO have a hangover, I thought, a good ten seconds before the pain hit.

  During those ten seconds, I managed to roll out of bed, stagger to the bathroom, and lift the toilet seat. The first spasm dropped me to my knees, and then I lost everything I’d eaten the day before. I hadn’t felt this wretched since Kevin’s birthday dinner in April, where we’d finished the long night of being polite to his parents and their friends by doing tequila shots in their enormous backyard. I spat and scowled into the spattered toilet bowl until I was sure that the nausea had abated.

  There were food smells and cooking noises from the kitchen. I didn’t really want witnesses to my humiliation, but I knew from experience that as bad as I felt, I was going to feel a lot worse if I didn’t rehydrate.

  I staggered in. ‘Kill me,’ I said before I remembered that this maybe wasn’t a smart thing to say in front of a magician of unknown origins.

  Professor Gribaldi looked up from the stove and forked another pancake onto the stack. ‘I warned you, Ms Spencer. My best mead, I said.’

  ‘You didn’t say it would do this,’ I protested, and turned on the tap. The water was so cold it pricked at my teeth, but I kept grimly slurping at it. ‘I’m the host. Is this even allowed to happen?’

  ‘Hah! I can’t harm you directly without breaking guest-right. No stabbing you while you sleep, for instance. But there’s nothing against indirect harm, or you harming yourself by drinking too much too quickly.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I protested weakly, although of course I’d worked it out when my head started spinning. But by then, it had just been so easy to keep drinking.

  La Gribaldi ignored that and set the plate of pancakes down beside me. My stomach made an embarrassing noise.

  ‘And in any case, it’s not all bad. You have the memory of the taste, and you will have heard some truths while you drank. The pain’s the price. Now eat.’ When I opened my mouth to protest she neatly poked a loaded forkful onto my tongue.

  I lunged for the sink, but my body was a lot smarter than I was and was already chewing. ‘This is great,’ I said, when I could speak again.

  She looked smug. ‘Whatever I make is made well.’

  My stomach quieted. My headache was suddenly less insistent. ‘Sit,’ she ordered, pushing the plate towards me. ‘Eat.’

  I did, with single-minded concentration, until my belly pressed against my jeans and I paused. ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘Down on the hook, preparing. I’m to take you there when you’re ready.’

  ‘Should I bring the mask?’

  She looked intently at me. ‘You have an affinity for items of power.’

  ‘Mark said that too.’

  ‘Bring it, then. But to use it to full effect, you must see your victim, and they must see you, and you must voice a command they can hear.’ She shook her head. ‘In battle, these conditions may be difficult to meet.’

  I frowned. ‘So what will I do? I’m not a street fighter.’

  ‘Mostly, you will be there, Ms Spencer. You are our host, and you were born here. For a number of them, having you endorse our efforts increases their strength.’

  I didn’t much like the idea of being a mascot. ‘Not you?’

  ‘Blood and land isn’t my way. I make things.’

  Like my little scrap of paper? MARK! BIBLE! DON’T FORGET! I’d made that in pain and only half-woken to my magic, and I was suddenly curious to see what I could do now. Maybe I could learn to do what she did. ‘Is that why Sand calls you Smith?’

  She was silent for a long time, stacking dishes in the sink and running water over them. The kitchen looked far too clean for a place that had hosted fifty-something people the night before.

  ‘I’m not a Smith,’ she said at last. ‘I was the apprentice of the last Smith, before he died. But I never made my masterpiece for his appraisal.’ She wiped her hands on her skirt, leaving dark water marks on the scarlet fabric. ‘Did you know the English settlers imported Scandinavian couples to New Zealand? They came across two dark oceans to a strange land on the edge of the world. And when the couples got here, they found that the New Zealand townspeople would keep the women here while their men cleared the forests to the south. Dannevirke is named after them. Danish work. The women weren’t quite hostages, but they weren’t quite free, either. In the cold nights without their men, they told the old stories to one another.’ She snorted. ‘Don’t look so confused, girl. They told the stories of one of my traditions, and it means I’m a little stronger here, that’s all. Then again, everything’s strong here, where Mui’s hook sinks in, and worlds collide.’

  I thought of the pale people of the mist. ‘The patupaiarehe too?’

  ‘Especially them.’

  I set my fork down. ‘Let’s go,’ I said, and stood, no longer hungry.

  La Gribaldi watched me, dark eyes smug.

  ‘What—’ I said, and then realised how easily I’d moved. I twisted and stretched, wide-eyed, and then thrust a hand up under my shirt to brush down my spine. My fingers moved easily across smooth skin. When I concentrated, I found five raised lines, barely noticeable, like scars from a wound that had been healed for years.

  I began to stammer out my thanks, then thought better of it. ‘Those were fantastic pancakes,’ I s
aid.

  La Gribaldi nodded. ‘You’ll need all your strength today,’ she said, and even that reminder couldn’t make me less grateful to be moving without pain.

  La Gribaldi’s Ford Explorer was a monolith of polished black steel and gleaming, tinted windows. It welcomed me with a warm brush across my skin, purring like a friendly cat. I sat straight in the leather seats, hands crossed neatly in my lap to prevent them from stroking the dashboard, the mask grumbling jealously in its handbag.

  La Gribaldi said a short word I didn’t recognise, and the car leapt into motion, rolling smoothly down the hill. She hadn’t put a key in the ignition, or her hands on the steering wheel. I flinched and she gave me an amused look.

  ‘She won’t crash, Ms Spencer.’

  ‘It just feels wrong,’ I said weakly, as the Explorer swung neatly around a corner and headed for the coast.

  At the south end of Hawkes Bay, jutting into the sea, was Cape Kidnappers. It was actually a little distance from Napier proper, closer to the small town of Havelock North. Small, craggy islands trailed off its edge in a wavering line out to sea and a few golden-headed gannets wheeled above the saddle of the cape, early-comers to the colony nesting season. The only way to get there was along the beach at low tide. As the Explorer headed down the shore, my double vision revealed once more the massive hook tearing at the fish’s flesh, under the deceptively calm water-kissed sand and green-topped white rock. When I swung my feet out of the car, I felt Mui’s hook register my presence as I might note a stray eyelash on my cheek.

  With the handbag under my arm, I wandered the beach, totally useless.

  The council were taking advantage of the daylight and digging in to protect the hook. Driftwood fires burned, and every now and then someone would grab a slice of something from a plastic bag and throw it on a grill. No one seemed to be eating much, but the air was smoky with the scent of roasting meat.