Guardian of the Dead

by Karen Healey

  It was the pebble charm, which turned flesh to stone.

  I watched Mark yank it free of his bracelet and balance the small grey stone in the hollow of my collarbone, fingers resting for a fluttering moment on my throat. Motionless as the rock I was becoming, I waited to die.

  But instead of pressing down, he tugged the flax bag out from under his shirt, hooked his free hand into the neckband of my jersey and shoved the bag under it. His mother’s eyes lay between my breasts, alive and horrible, and unhappy to be near me.

  He balanced over me on all fours and whispered into my ear. ‘If you can, get these to Matiu. Tell him to go.’

  I could no longer speak, but my eyes must have asked the question.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’ll wear off after I’m dead.’

  And then he was running into the fog, bright hair gleaming. The patupaiarehe shouted when they saw him, and he shouted something back, but whether it was ‘Come and get me!’ or ‘I love you,’ I couldn’t tell. Stone crept into my mind until I could feel nothing at all.

  Grateful, I slept.

  Lying on the cold hillside, my mind woke before my body did. There was one terrifying moment of being rock, and being aware I was rock, before the last of the charm faded and I could move.

  I jerked up, the skin on my hands fading from dark grey to splotchy pink. Reka’s legacy banged against my chest.

  I wasted no time in finding out if my legs could hold me, and scrambled down the slope on my hands and knees, pleading under my breath to a God I didn’t believe in. Somewhere, I knew the hope was useless. If it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have woken up.

  Mark lay a little further down the hill, a motionless, crumpled heap of blood and rags.

  My head rang with the suddenness of the silence. For that stretched moment I couldn’t hear the cries of the birds or the yells of the people fighting on the beach below. My vision narrowed to Mark and the bright smears of red that had been his face.

  I stood up. One part of me noted that I was remarkably steady as I sauntered down to sit beside him. I’d torn the knees of my jeans as I’d crawled, and blood seeped through one of the holes. It didn’t hurt. That was the weird thing. Nothing hurt at all.

  He’d flung up his arms, trying to protect his head. The charm bracelet was gone.

  ‘You should have learned to fight,’ I said vaguely, and bent to stroke a gore-soaked strand of hair. ‘I could have taught you.’ In the movies, you could close the eyelids of a dead man by passing one hand over his face. I had to pinch the skin of his right eyelid and tug, and even then it wouldn’t close all the way over the emptied eye socket.

  It looked like a picture taken by some jaded war photographer, or a special effect in a slasher film. It was too stark and awful to be real. This crumpled thing couldn’t be brave Mark, of the bright smile and dark-green eyes and unbearable burdens that he’d somehow managed to bear.

  ‘You lied to me,’ I said suddenly, and poked his shoulder. ‘On numerous occasions. Arsehole.’ Anger was good. If I could just stay angry . . .

  The bag under my shirt swung heavily forward at the movement and I remembered what he’d told me to do. ‘I have to get these to Matiu,’ I told Mark. ‘I’ll come back after that. Straight after.’

  My throat was starting to close up, but I took deep breaths and forced myself to my feet, hunching over the empty ache in my chest. The mask was whispering something, but I made a black handbag in my mind, and locked its voice away in there along with everything else that hurt too much to think about.

  A nimbus of sunset-pink light danced along the edge of the cliff, then an explosion of violet sparks burst into the air farther out to sea. When I got to the edge and peered down, I couldn’t see much of the fog-shrouded beach. The fires had been put out, but the mist swirled or lit up in strange colours, showing me flashes of hectic activity. I saw the bikers crouching by a pile of crumbling driftwood, reloading their guns, and Professor Gribaldi swinging a hammer with a head as big as my thigh, and the tall brown-skinned woman chanting, her voice clear and mournful over the din. I couldn’t see Matiu anywhere. Maybe he was dead. Maybe I was dead, and this was what happened after.

  The flashing mists revealed bodies on the beach, and many of them were the white and naked patupaiarehe. It looked like we were winning, but I didn’t know exactly what the patupaiarehe needed to do on the beach, or if they could do it in the middle of a battle. Matiu was right. I didn’t know anything.

  The familiar hot smell wrinkled my nose, so that I knew who was behind me before I turned.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Mark’s dead.’

  The words were too flat, too wrong. I tried to breathe them back in, but they were already set free.

  Mr Sand floated six inches off the ground, staring at my chest, where Reka’s eyes hung. It was the least lascivious thing I’d ever seen. ‘I know.’

  I touched the bag under my jersey. ‘I have to give these to Matiu. He knows the way.’

  ‘You could give them to me,’ Sand said. ‘I could give them to Matiu.’

  Something tugged at the corner of my mind. ‘Could,’ not ‘would’, and the mask and Reka’s eyes were both shrilling warnings at me. And what was he doing up here, and not down on the beach with the rest of the defenders? But he couldn’t hurt me. I was the host.

  I said the last part out loud without meaning to, and he shook his head, smiling slightly. ‘I can’t strike you, or poison you, or slit your throat,’ he said. ‘Nor may I steal from you, more’s the pity. But I can relocate you, and remove the advantage you give to those who rely on such things. Who knows? When this is done, I might even ask the patupairehe to fetch you for me. You won’t be sane, of course, but it would be a pity to let your potential go to waste.’ He sighed. ‘You should have kept running, you silly girl.’

  Far too slowly, I reached for the screaming mask. He caught my wrist before I could undo the handbag’s clasps and I stopped, every muscle rigid.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said, high and angry, like a child. ‘You’re on our side.’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ he said, and patted my cheek. ‘You are so funny. I’d have kept you if I could, I promise, you and poor little Mark. But bread for the starving, you know. There’ll be lots of bread today! Plenty of dead magicians, with their power floating free.’ He shivered, with all the lust that hadn’t been there when he’d stared at my chest. ‘But the real dealmaker was the death of the fish. They don’t want his power. And after that, I should be really . . . spectacular.’

  My head buzzed. He leaned forward and passed his palm in the air over Reka’s eyes. They blazed, glowing green through my jersey. He tilted his head at something behind me. ‘There we are.’

  I could feel the entrance open at my back, cold and wet and utterly alien.

  ‘In you go, dear,’ he said, and threw me, falling, into the mists.

  The psychic impact of entering the mists was peculiarly useful; it was so painful that I couldn’t stay shocked and stoic any more. I felt emotion return in a blazing rush, and cried out, sobbing a little at the clenching pain.

  Excellent: I was lost in a bizarre world inhabited by homicidal fairies, and just standing in it felt like stuffing my skull with steel wool, but at least I had gut-churning anguish to keep me entertained.

  Mark had betrayed me, and now he was dead, and I didn’t know which grieved me more. But Mr Sand had betrayed both of us, and he was very much alive.

  ‘I’m going to kill him,’ I said, and clung to the sound of my voice, hanging dead and flat in the wet air.

  It was a goal. Goals were good. This one only required I find my way to the entrance to the underworld, intercept and defeat whatever patupaiarehe were on their way there before they could get to the Goddess of Death, find my way home, and kill a very powerful and ancient magician.

  And I would have to do it by feel, because I could see nothing except myself. My surroundings, if there were any, were concealed in the shifting grey of the fo
g. I put my foot out to take the first step and felt nothing under it.

  ‘Oh, hell,’ I said, and burst into tears. They dripped down my cheeks, some comfort that I, at least, was real.

  There was a clinging, tearing pain like a dog bite, right over my heart. I reached up instinctively to beat away what attacked me, and touched the bag that held Reka’s eyes.

  They greeted the touch with a pain that flared up my spine, pooled at the base of my skull like lava, then abruptly disappeared. Knowledge arrived in my head: the power represented by Reka’s eyes could keep me alive here for a very long time.

  But I wouldn’t stay sane for anywhere near that long. ‘Inventory,’ I said, trying to control my panic. It helped to talk. ‘Two stone eyeballs. Two sneakers, damp and disgusting. One pair of jeans, ditto. One jersey. One handbag, evidence of Magda’s complete lack of taste.’ I stopped. I’d forgotten the mask. How had I forgotten the mask?

  I knew as soon I fumbled the flax bag open and tipped Reka’s eyes into the white bowl of the mask’s back. They hated each other, and both howled at me. But I was scared, and desperate with it.

  Reka’s eyes could guide me, but they hated me. The mask loved me, but couldn’t guide me. I had a mask with no eyes, eyes with no face, and a knack for making things.

  I braced the mask against my bleeding knee and fought to shove each greenstone into an empty eye socket.

  They struggled against me, then each other. The green orbs forced back against my fingers until I thought I would break my hands pressing them in. The mask slid on my jeans, somehow never collecting any of the mud that spattered them to smear its surface. The mask definitely wasn’t porcelain – porcelain would have shattered under our triple assault.

  I shouted something, high and wild, and pressed with the palms of both hands. The eyes went in with the sickening grind of stone on bone, and stayed there.

  I closed my own muddy blue eyes in my own plain, broad face and lifted the mask. It shifted and clung as I placed it against my skin, as if it meant to sink into me. When I lowered my hands, it stayed in place.

  ‘Show me the way,’ I said, half-plea, half-command, and opened my eyes.

  It was black – dusty black, not the mists’ grey. I thought that the mask had maimed me, that Reka’s eyes were punishing my presumption with blindness, and screamed.

  Then the spotlight came on, cold white on the stage’s black wooden boards.

  The panic subsided as my eyes adjusted. I was sitting in the Ngio Marsh Theatre, knees cramped against the seat in front. I could hear the rustling of the audience around me as they opened packets and rearranged coats. The performance was just about to begin.

  You bring your own mythology with you, Mark had said. I settled back, handbag tucked behind my feet.

  A small young woman dressed in gold with skin the colour of old porcelain stepped into the spotlight, and the audience hushed expectantly. Pushing shining black curtains of hair away from her perfect face, Iris Tsang raised her head. She was looking directly at me.

  ‘Enter, from the audience,’ she commanded.

  I could feel the focus of the audience shift to me, huge and cramped in the too-small seat. I tried to shrink back.

  ‘Enter, Ellie,’ Iris said, looking harassed.

  I stood up. The audience was audible on every side, but I saw and touched no one as I clambered down the rows. The orchestra pit was raised level with the last row of seats. I walked across it and stepped up onto the stage.

  Iris smiled and tapped her palms lightly together. Her gold dress glinted in the light.

  ‘I’ve gone mad,’ I told her. ‘The mists make people crazy. And I’m lost.’

  She shook her head, already fading into the dark. ‘You’re finding your way.’

  Then she left me there, all alone with the curious watchers just out of sight.

  ‘Hi, Ellie,’ Carrie said, stepping into the circle of light. ‘Teach me how to fight.’ She moved with far more competence than the real Carrie, and her first strike glanced off my cheekbone.

  ‘Hey!’ I said, and the second grazed my ribs. I hissed with the pain and circled back and away, feinting to the right.

  ‘I am not so low that my nails cannot reach unto your eyes,’ she snarled, and leapt, thrusting clawed hands towards my face.

  Behind her, Iris flung her arm around Carrie’s throat and yanked back. ‘That’s not your line,’ she said reproachfully, as Carrie sank down to slink around her on feet that resembled paws. ‘Why didn’t you ask for help, Ellie?’

  ‘I didn’t know you were there.’

  ‘I was here all the time. You were seeing someone else.’

  ‘Don’t come crying to me,’ Blake said, lowering himself from the fly floor. The rope he clung to ran up into the dark cavern of the stage roof, much vaster than the Ngio’s fly floor tower. The stage lights were the stars clothing Rangi, the sky father.

  Blake’s face was made up of patches, two brown buttons gleaming above a red satin nose. He turned lazy cartwheels around me, tapping out the syllables of his speech with hands and feet. ‘Se-xy El-lie Spen-cer.’

  ‘You’re not real,’ I said. ‘None of this is real. I’m using my own experiences to make sense of the mists, that’s all.’

  He spun on his heels and pointed at the back wall of the stage. ‘Real enough, Ellie. Look!’

  The painted backdrop was the same as in the real theatre – the arch painted in two halves, and the dense mass of ancient forest that sprawled over the rest of the canvas.

  Something glinted among the trees. I peered closer. A silver-haired woman was running smoothly down a fern-lined track, moonlight gleaming on her pale skin, on her dark, polished club. A long way up the track was a small, withered tree with burn-black branches hunching over a deep hole.

  Encircling her left wrist was a familiar charm bracelet.

  ‘Long road,’ Blake observed.

  I shouted and reached for Mark’s murderer. I meant to pluck her from the picture and twist her tiny body, but when I stretched out my hands, they were already stained with blood. Blake caught my wrists.

  ‘It’s your fault, Pandora,’ he said. ‘You failed. And even if you knew what to do, she’s too far ahead – you’ll never catch up.’

  ‘Iris,’ I cried. ‘Help me!’

  The house lights flared and Blake stumbled back into the shadows. Iris beamed from the lighting box.

  I leaned back into someone tall and solid. ‘Don’t forget you saved me, Ell,’ Kevin whispered in my ear. ‘You loved me enough to hold on.’ He gripped my shoulders. ‘And look. There’s a shortcut.’

  The orchestra pit lowered with a sickening rumble. The movement reverberated through my skull, as if something was shifting there. I stared into the depths where no light shone.

  ‘Give the old lady my regards,’ Kevin said.

  I spread my bloody hands like wings, and leaped.

  I landed hard, tough grass tearing at the soles of my bare feet. The mask was a mask again, the green eyes pressing cool against my closed eyelids, before it began to slide off my face. I fumbled to catch it one-handed and held it uncertainly. I’d somehow left the handbag behind.

  Also, apparently, my clothes.

  I hugged my bare torso and surveyed my surroundings. I was high on a cape, much like the one I’d left, but covered in scrub. Far below, a white, sandy beach stretched straight back to the horizon. It looked like any beach in winter, windblown and spare, but I saw also the long tail of the massive fish, and shuddered. On the cape a spring bubbled nearby, and at its very tip something wavered in my uncanny vision: sometimes it was a lighthouse; sometimes an ancient pohutukawa tree; and sometimes a grotto with steam drifting from its craggy mouth. Flickering images suggested other entrances, but those three were clear and strong.

  It was dusk here. How much time had I lost in the mists?

  There was a steady procession of people, as naked as I was, making their way up the slope; lamenting and wailing as they wal
ked toward the spring, calm and purposeful after they had bathed in it and drunk from the water. They moved to the tree – no, lighthouse – no, grotto – wavered, and were gone. If their journeys continued from there, I couldn’t see them.

  ‘I made it,’ I breathed. I had come safely through the mists to Cape Reinga, Cape Underworld, the leaping-off place of the spirit.

  I gripped the mask loosely, and entered the crush of bodies, heading for the stream.

  ‘Hey, girl!’ said the man beside me.

  I shrieked and leaped back into kicking distance, my free hand rising in a block.

  He flashed me a white grin, taking no offence, and I took in his ochre-smeared chest and the tattoos writhing down his impressive shoulders and arms. I hadn’t recognised him without his biker leathers.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. It was so inadequate, but it was all I could say. I didn’t know his name. Even now, I couldn’t tell which of the three he was.

  ‘Me too, eh.’ He glanced at the eyes in the mask I carried and suddenly straightened. ‘What are you doing here with those? We thought that Mark was going.’

  I cringed. ‘He died. I tried to find Matiu but—’ A sudden hope washed over me. ‘But you could go!’

  He stepped away from the proffered mask as if it was some venomous creature, eyes fierce in his weathered face. ‘You kidding me? You want to send me down there, dead and remembering forever? I’m not coming back, girl! I’m one of hers now.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be here! I don’t know what to do! It’s not meant to be me!’

  ‘Well, it’s not going to be me,’ he said definitely, and gave me a long look as we reached the stream. ‘Don’t drink the water.’

  I thought of the waters of Lethe, the river in Hades that made the dead forget the living. Was it something like that? ‘Why not?’

  ‘Jesus. You really don’t know anything. Here.’ He strode into the water, then wrapped his massive arms around my waist and lifted me across.

  I nodded my thanks, a little stiffly, and started walking.