Guardian of the Dead

by Karen Healey

  I groaned. ‘So now I’m notorious?’

  ‘You’re respected,’ he amended. ‘I would tell everyone that I helped you, just to get the street cred. But I really want the Rutherford Scholarship, and I don’t think aiding and abetting counts as good service to the school community.’ There was some urgent whispering on the other end of the line, and Kevin’s voice came back bemused. ‘Iris says, remember happy endings.’

  I grinned. ‘Tell her I miss her too.’

  ‘Have you two been talking behind my back?’

  I laughed at the indignation in his voice. ‘Yeah, you’ll want to get used to that. Look, Kevin . . . about the week you gave me to tell you what’s been going on.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said immediately. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’

  ‘No, I mean . . . Iris is going to tell you all about it tomorrow. And you’ll really wish she hadn’t. But try to keep an open mind, and I’ll demonstrate some of the more unbelievable bits if my parents ever let me out of their sight again.’

  ‘Cryptic,’ he noted.

  ‘You have no idea. Good luck for opening night. Break two legs.’ The show would go on. All the profits were going to the quake survivors’ benefit.

  ‘Wish you could be here. Love you, Ellie.’

  ‘Love you too.’

  I hung up, and realised that the mask had woken up again, humming at me from its hiding place in the back of the wardrobe. I was going to have to construct a better hiding place than a couple of old blankets; something that would protect the mask from the people who might be very happy to take possession of it, and something that would protect me from the mask. It was a living thing. I couldn’t just destroy it.

  But as long as I could feel it promising love and endless devotion, it was a very dangerous temptation.

  I told it go back to sleep with all the firmness I could muster, and walked into the living room. Hinemoana Simpson was arranging the new donated mattresses on the floor, trying to find a way to fit in our three new arrivals.

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ I said. I felt guilty every time I saw her, a reminder of what principles I’d compromised. True to my orders, she hadn’t called my parents, even after the quake; I’d had to do that myself, choking on the shame.

  She nodded, but it was her own nod: a judicious agreement, not a forced compliance. ‘Good idea. Clear your head.’

  ‘How’s David?’

  ‘Getting better,’ she said briefly, and I withdrew without asking more. Her son might never walk again. But when she wasn’t at the field hospital, she was here, organising volunteers and working, every minute, against the destruction that had nearly crushed the city.

  Nearly, but not quite.

  The last week had taught me a lot about courage. It was time to be brave – brave enough for this final thing. I snagged an apple from the pile on the kitchen table, and set off for the sea.

  On most other days, a teenage girl with as many bruises as I had walking past two police officers might have got a second look as they wondered where I’d received them. A week after the worst natural disaster in New Zealand’s human history, I got a distracted glance and a curt warning to stick to the middle of the street. Unstable buildings still crumbled irregularly, the sound of masonry hitting asphalt enough to startle me out of my dreams, sick and shivering on the living-room floor.

  I’d picked a beautiful day for this meeting. The air was drenched in the Napier winter light that saturated everything with bright colour – the white and yellow chunks of painted stone, the orange police tape, the enormous blue sky. Plastic bags and scraps of paper blew about. Every now and then there was something more horrible – photographs, torn pieces of clothing. I might have tried to ignore them once, but now I looked steadily at everything I saw, scratching absently at the needle mark in the crook of my arm. The nurse taking my blood donation hadn’t had much time to be gentle.

  I took my time wandering down Marine Parade, eating the apple and watching my feet as I negotiated the broken road. I was rehearsing questions and explanations in my head, hoping that I’d get a chance to use any of them.

  The bronze statue of Pania of the Reef had fallen off her stone plinth when the quake hit. Someone had lifted her back on, and left a black-lettered note scribbled on the back of a supermarket flier: ‘warning: Pania is wobbly!’ The ornament in her hair had snapped off and the formerly flowing locks were dented, but she gave the same head-tilted smile to the ocean. I touched her polished hand for luck and for courage, and walked out into the bay.

  The newly raised land was strewn with fish carcasses and white patches of salt. I pinched my nose shut, already regretting the apple. The tide was coming in. As I approached the sea, so slowly that it was almost imperceptible from moment to moment, mist began to gather. I waited until it hovered thickly before me, squared my shoulders, and walked into the heart of the fog.

  It was the first time I’d met Mark since his transformation. He sprawled in the shallows, his head planted on the wet sand, watching my approach with opalescent eyes. His scales were a glossy green, undimmed by algae or chipped by time. He didn’t have the enormous bulk of his grandfather. Only as long as a bus, I thought. Well, clearly that was all right then.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, through jagged teeth. His voice was the same.

  All of my carefully prepared speeches vanished. ‘Hi, yourself.’ I impulsively leaned in to touch his neck, as thick as my torso. He shivered under my hand, a sinuous writhe that shook water free in a clean-smelling spray. I let my hand drop away. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come here earlier. I’ve been volunteering at the Civil Defence centre at my old primary school. You know their motto?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘“Lay Well Thy Foundation.” ’ ‘Ironic,’ he said cautiously.

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The school’s still there. All of the kids made it.’

  ‘Do you— I mean—’

  ‘A lot of people lost everything,’ I said. ‘A lot of people died.’ My cousin Reeve had died in Whangarei, crushed under the roof of his apartment building. Two of my old high-school classmates had been killed driving home from hockey practice, and another was clinging to life with the fingernails of her remaining hand. I remembered them, and I grieved, and in the really bad times, the grief was needles in my throat.

  The needles were stabbing me now, making my voice hoarse. ‘I don’t think there are many people who didn’t lose someone.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mark said, very simply, and I let myself cry for a while, wrapping my arms around myself and wishing they were his.

  When I was done and wiping at my swollen eyes with my damp sleeve, he heaved himself a little further onto the sand, tail whipping up clouds of sand as he rose. ‘I need to tell you again. I’m so sorry I deceived you.’

  I looked up into the alien face, trying to read emotion from the enormous features. ‘It doesn’t— well, it does matter. But I don’t really care right now. Are you okay about . . . everything?’ I gestured at the length of him.

  He didn’t pretend not to understand. ‘I hated you,’ he said. ‘When I opened my eyes and realised I was breathing underwater, that I was a monster again, I couldn’t stand it. I had followed you the whole way, never saying a word, with my hands clamped together so I wouldn’t steady you when you stumbled. I stared at the back of your head for hours when all I had to do was reach out and touch your hair. And I came back to this. At least I’d looked human before.’

  I let out a shaky breath. ‘I’m noticing a lot of past tense.’

  His lips split to display the jagged array of teeth. After a second, I identified the gesture as a smile. ‘I kept remembering how you kept going. The muscles jump in your back when you climb over rocks, did you know? It was hard to hate you then.

  ‘And when I worked out that the curse had been broken, and I still wasn’t human, it was just funny. I laughed so hard I scared a school of tuna away.’

  My heart clenched. ‘What?’
<
br />   ‘Tuna. Big-arse fish, sharp teeth, very tasty.’

  ‘No! The curse! It’s broken?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It was meant to last until death, and I died.

  Does Sand know I’m back yet? I bet he’ll be pissed.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I said, and planted my fists on my hips, staring up into his glorious eyes. ‘Sand’s gone. I love you.’

  I tensed against the transformation that never came. Mark blinked at me, lipless mouth hanging open over those horrifying teeth.

  ‘I love you too, Ellie,’ he said, and something quivered under my breastbone, light and beautiful as a butterfly’s wings: the immense, ordinary magic of hope.

  ‘Oh, good,’ I said, and scrubbed at my wet cheeks. ‘After I’d gone to all that trouble, it’d be a shame if—’ ‘Shut up, Spencer.’

  I floundered into the cold water and leaned into his wet body. The scales were softer than they looked, slick and cool against my hands. ‘This is such a mess.’

  His laugh rippled right through him. ‘I think Reka’s a step ahead of us.’

  I jerked back from him. ‘She’s still here?’

  ‘No, she’s gone back. But she asked grandfather to visit, so that he can teach me how to take a human shape.’

  I let out my breath in an incredulous laugh and slid down his side to sit in the water, hissing as the cold salt water washed against my raw patches. Mark twisted his neck to watch me, and I felt the easy glide of his muscles against my back. He was stronger than me now. And still beautiful.

  He hesitated. ‘She’s matchmaking, you realise. She can’t take Kevin, and she knows she’ll have to fight to take anyone else. Maybe she’ll settle for grandchildren.’

  ‘Grandchildren? I’m seventeen!’

  ‘Her view, not mine.’ he said. ‘Anyway, the change takes a long time to learn.’

  I exhaled. ‘Well, I can’t exactly pose on a window-seat and wait for you. If my parents don’t make me stay in Napier and Mansfield doesn’t expel me, I’m thinking about doing Classics at Canterbury. Iris wants to direct A Winter’s Tale for February Orientation.’ I paused. ‘And La Gribaldi wants to give me some extracurricular tuition. She said I did a good job. Can I trust her?’

  He tilted his head. ‘You could do a lot worse. “You did a good job,” is Gribaldi-speak for, “You saved the day.”’

  ‘No,’ I said flatly. ‘Hine-nui-te-p did that.’

  Mark flicked the end of his tail. It tapered into delicate membranes that flashed greens and yellows through the sand. ‘What was she like?’

  My memories of the guardian of the dead were mostly mist by now. I’d been shocked and injured, and the mask had been whispering in my head. And I wasn’t sure if humans were supposed to remember the gods too clearly. But I remembered the fury of her breath, the anger in her eyes, the glad rush of Te-Ika-a-Mui to her embrace. I didn’t know if her guardianship extended to me, but if it did, I might see her again, one hopefully far-off day. It wasn’t an unwelcome thought. ‘She was beautiful. Beautiful, and scary, and strong.’

  ‘Sounds like this girl I know,’ he said, and didn’t even have the courtesy to pretend my mock-punch hurt.

  I rubbed my cheek against his neck. ‘Summer will be here in six months, and I’ll be home for Christmas. Lots of long, bright days. Barbecues. Walks on the beach.’

  There was guarded hope in his voice. ‘So I guess we’ll see what happens?’

  ‘I guess we will.’ I leaned against his cool weight and, smiling, closed my eyes.

  I was thinking about happy endings.

  AFTERWORD

  MORI MYTHOLOGY AND cosmology are infinitely richer and more complex than could be presented in this novel. The Polynesian peoples who settled New Zealand (also called Aotearoa, or Aotea) brought with them the faith, myths, and family legends of their origin lands. Over time, some of the original stories altered to accommodate New Zealand’s unique ecology, landscape, and culture, and some entirely new stories were created. Old, adapted, and new stories were handed down through artwork and oral storytelling for centuries, and some were eventually recorded by the new technology of writing brought by the European settlers, generally accompanied by translations and publicised to a mostly European audience. Especially in their earliest written recordings, these stories were often substantially altered in their translation for an English-reading audience, while being presented as ‘genuine’ Mori legends.

  Guardian of the Dead is obviously not a ‘genuine’ Mori legend, but because those original stories were adapted and the adaptations went unnoted for an uninformed audience, I think it’s important to point out where I have stuck to the translations and traditions I had available, and where I have, to the best of my knowledge, altered or extrapolated. (I also took some liberties with history and geography: most notably, Mansfield College does not exist, and there are no stone steps up the cliffs at Te-Kauae-o-Mui/Cape Kidnappers.) When Mark tells the legends of Papa-tuanuku, Rangi-nui, and their children, the deeds of Mui, the story of Hine-nui-te-p, and the story of Pania of the Reef, he is telling stories based on those popular translations. When Ellie goes through the library stacks looking for information on patupaiarehe, she finds a lot of what I did researching for this novel. However, Mark, Reka, and Mark’s grandfather, while representing real mythological creatures, are themselves invented, and I have wandered a little from the popular portrayals of patupaiarehe and taniwha.

  The legendary patupaiarehe (or turehu or tiramaka, or other names, depending on the region the story comes from) are sometimes depicted as dangerous kidnappers or otherworldly and threatening figures. They are also said to be attractive tricksters, or a shy and beautiful people who make excellent spouses for humans, provided certain requirements are met. For consistency of narrative, I have gone with the scarier versions, but the other stories exist. That the patupaiarehe have eyes of pounamu (greenstone) is my invention, and while they are often depicted as beautiful and persuasive, as far as I know, the idea that they can be magically so is another stretch on my part, although the power of the spoken or chanted word is emphasised in Mori culture. Eyes, and the head in general, are tapu (sacred) in the Mori tradition. Food is noa, or unsacred. To despoil the head or eyes, especially by associating them with food, is an act of grotesque disrespect for the previous owner, and eating portions of the head was considered a consumption of the knowledge and mana (power) of the dead.

  Although considered by many people to be purely mythological, taniwha are also said to be tangible physical and spiritual presences. Whether you believe this or not, taniwha have a real impact on New Zealand life; in 2002, for example, road works in the Waikato region were halted while transit authorities consulted with local Mori over the location of several taniwha near the route. In the stories, some taniwha can take many shapes to look like floating logs or driftwood, whales, eels, giant tuatara, or toothy water-serpents, and some taniwha are formerly dead humans, returned to protect their people and land. As far as I’m aware, the possibility of those taniwha taking their former human shape is my own twist on the tale, although other Mori monsters (such as the giant lizard-like ngarara) have demonstrated that ability. My descriptions of Mark and his grandfather are based on the more serpent-like taniwha depictions, especially bone and marae post carvings, which often show taniwha with sinuous curves and inset eyes of paua shell.

  If you’re interested in reading more about Mori mythology and cosmology, I especially recommend: Traditional Mori Stories: He Krero Mori (introduced and translated by Margaret Orbell) and The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mori Myth and Legend, also edited by Orbell; the Reed Book of Mori Mythology by A.W. Reed and Ross Calman; and Wahine Toa: Women of Mori Myth by Patricia Grace and Robyn Kahukiwa. If you’d like to read more young-adult fiction that draws on Mori mythology as inspiration for contemporary stories, Witi Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider and Joanna Orwin’s The Guardian of the Land are fantastic. Gaelyn Gordon’s Stonelight and the sequel Mindfire are contemporary f
antasy adventures that show the patupaiarehe in a much more positive light. Dylan Horrocks’s graphic novel Hicksville features Te Ika a Mui (very much alive) and is just generally wonderful. If you can get your hands on it, I also recommend the excellent television horror/drama series Mataku, where contemporary New Zealanders encounter the Mori supernatural – much of it is based on stories maintained in the oral tradition rather than those recorded in writing.

  Finally, I caution the reader against drawing parallels between the mythological constructs depicted here and contemporary Mori society. This novel is greatly indebted to Mori mythology and draws on some points of traditional Mori social and religious custom: it touches only very lightly on the diverse cultures, politics, and history of modern Mori life, and that only as seen through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old Pkeh woman, who is very far from being a reliable narrator.

  GLOSSARY

  New Zealand has three official languages: English, Mori, and New Zealand Sign Language. Mori is a language for study as a first or second language at many schools and tertiary institutions, but a number of Mori words are commonly understood, and are not unusual for even non-speakers (like Ellie) to use in everyday circumstances.

  If you want to learn more about the language, I recommend Krero Mori (http://www.korero.maori.nz/) as an excellent starting point.

  Haka: Traditional group dance, performed by men, women, or mixed groups, accompanied by chanted words. Many schools and institutions have their own official haka; the most well-known internationally is probably the one most often performed by the New Zealand rugby team before international matches.

  Hongi: A greeting where the noses are pressed against each other, signifying respect and welcome with the sharing of breath.

  Iwi: A Mori people, analogous to a tribe, usually made up of various hapu, or sub-tribes. Each iwi claims ancestry to one of the original waka (canoes) that carried the first settlers.