The Wind City

by Summer Wigmore

  Hinewai stopped singing, and Tony gasped and shuddered and wiped chilled sweat from her face. She patted herself down frantically, compulsively; she was fine, unhurt, there was nothing on her, she was perfectly human-shaped at the moment. The terror was still hanging about her head, making it hard to think, making it hard even to breathe.

  “And what exactly will you do to stop me?” asked Hinewai curiously. “You have power, but you do not have the knowing of how to use it. I am far stronger than you.”

  Tony wanted to run, run far far away, run somewhere where the ocean met the shore and life was simple.

  She didn’t.

  She met Hinewai’s eyes, and didn’t flinch, and didn’t let herself be enchanted. “Just because you have a power doesn’t mean you should use it. I’m not gonna say this again: Stop.”

  “And if I don’t?” Hinewai said. “What then, kindly coward child? You’ll turn taniwha and tear me to shreds?”

  “I could,” Tony said, still holding her eyes. Then she shrugged, careless. Grinned, hard and fierce, because when she’d first met Hinewai the other girl had thought smiles were a form of challenge. “But I don’t think I need to. Am I wrong?” Such a gamble, this, and her heart was pounding for entirely natural reasons now, because oh was this a risk. If she’d read this wrong…

  Hinewai looked at her, then hissed in irritation, and grasped the kōauau. Tony forced herself to stay still, even as Hinewai closed her eyes and blew into the flute, even as her fingers danced and the music swelled soft and breathy like wind. That music could mean anything, could do anything; Tony believed that, finally, firmly. Atua had powers people didn’t, and they were terrifying. Hinewai could get inside her head and turn her inside out, if she wanted to, twist everything that was Tony away and change it. That could be what she was doing right now.

  Smiles were a form of challenge. Fear would help not at all. And she’d always been good at laughing the worst of life away, so she smiled, smiled and stood her ground as the fae girl weaved her magic.

  Hinewai stopped playing. The music had been beautiful, some of the most amazing Tony had ever heard, but later when she tried to remember it she could only remember one line at a time; the rest faded away, like clutching at mist. “There,” Hinewai said, looking away all disdainful. “It’s off. Most of it, anyway.”

  Tony raised her eyebrows. “Most?” she said, trying to sound unimpressed when really she was just incredibly pleased, because Hinewai was being pouty and annoying and Tony? Tony didn’t feel particularly in love with her, or any more terrified than was reasonable.

  “Some strands were too interwoven,” Hinewai said, and then looked nervous. “I did the best I could! It was a strong singing, difficult to remove entirely. But you are free from the full grip of it now; it should be simple enough for you to untangle the last threads of it eventually. You are of strong will.”

  Tony nodded. “Right, good,” she said. “Thank you,” she added, because there was probably a certain way to do things, tradition or something like that. “I think that’s us done.” She turned, left.

  “Wait,” Hinewai called after her, and Tony turned. Hinewai looked confused. “‘Done’?”

  “Uh. Yeah?”

  Hinewai tilted her head. “Do you mean we are no longer friends?” she said, and Tony couldn’t speak for a second, because that was – wow that was – what?

  “Wow, because I’m totally gonna be your friend after you fuck around with my head,” Tony said. “No. No, we are really definitely not friends!”

  “But,” Hinewai said, looking lost. “I need you. I need your help. This is not my world! How am I supposed to understand it without you?”

  Tony gritted her teeth. “You knew what I was and you never even told me,” she said, calmly. “You never told me anything. You played my brain like it was a turntable, and you don’t even see why that’s wrong. Hinewai, I’m not going to fight you, because I think everyone has good in them and deserves to be treated fairly, even you, but we are not friends,” and then she left before Hinewai could protest any further, because the last thing she wanted was to feel sorry for this girl; Hinewai would probably take advantage of that to mess with her head again. She wouldn’t learn.

  When Tony got back into her own apartment she collapsed against the wall and shivered there for a while.

  She held up her fist, examined it, remembered how Whai had flown through the air at just a tap. She hit the wall, experimentally, and punched clean through it.

  Then she started giggling, shaking plaster off her fingers. Because. This new world was really scary, but it was also really neat. And that confrontation had been horrible, but –

  She’d won, was the thing.

  This new world was scary and dangerous and she could handle it, even without turning into a terrifying sea monster she could handle it! Just by being herself!

  Tony gave herself a congratulatory pat on the back, and then felt rather silly.

  It was dark now, but night was no obstacle to atua. She went to the ocean. Guardian, Ariki had said, and Whai too, and Hinewai; that meant there had to be truth in it. And. Well. She had to figure out what exactly she was before she could guard anything! Whai had had a point there, saying she should practice going taniwha. Though she didn’t know whether she wanted to do anything about Māui; didn’t even know what the threat was, yet. She’d figure it out.

  There were bars nearish the waterfront, bright lights shining, and then when you got to the actual ocean there were lights on the docks, too, casting ripples of gold onto the water. Tony shrugged off her duffel coat, and breathed in deep.

  Nothing happened.

  “Uh,” she ventured, feeling foolish. “Magical change go!”

  Nothing happened. Which. Well. Yeah, fair enough, she would’ve been vaguely appalled if it had. Okay. The first time this had happened had been when Whai got her all panicked and angry, so maybe that was the only way to turn into… wait. No. She was thinking about this wrong.

  Nothing was one thing only, Whai had said.

  Tony focused on herself, and looked past. She was herself, a youngish overly cheerful woman who’d struggled with her small business, who wore pink gumboots. She was herself, a little girl growing up on an inland orchard, painting waves onto her nails and dreaming of the sea. She was herself, of the ocean and of the land, a guardian and a terror; she was herself, glimmering eyes and sinew and muscle and tail and scale and tooth –

  And just like that she was, she was something bulky and ancient and huge, and for a second her small human mind was astonished at this, and then ancient instinct took over.

  She was a child of Tangaroa, and here was the sea.

  The taniwha slipped in smoothly, and then with a beat of its tail it was away and free. The ocean felt greasy against its skin, tainted, but achingly familiar all the same. The taniwha curled up to the surface, arched its back like a dolphin, flippered downward again to explore. Salt-sea-city home, and it nuzzled against the sea bed inquiringly, snapped up a fish and swallowed it down. It wanted company, a little; sometimes humans would call to it, and sometimes, if they were kind and good and clever, the taniwha would let them ride it, hollow its back for them to grip onto and show them the sea. Swimming fast and clever, nosing deep down and riding the currents; propelling itself rapidly up and out and then into the open air with the humans screeching their shock to the spray and the breeze and the sky.

  There was no company to be had, right now, no humans calling. Sometimes it would just watch them, skin-slip into a dolphin or a whale and swim beside with the silly humans still all-unknowing, but right now there was no one even to watch. The taniwha went to play with boats in the marina, instead, snapped its jaws on lines and nudged the freed hulks out into open harbour all untethered.

  It did this with one boat and approached the next, and noticed something drifting in the water, person-shaped; it went up to it, nuzzled it inquisitively, and the poor burned thing blinked open eyes as green as gl
ass and swatted at it weakly. The taniwha took no notice of this, still examining the thing, jagged teeth and skin burned beyond all recognition and –

  Bracelets still clinging to its charred wrist. Melted plastic twine fused with its skin.

  Whai, Tony thought, and she froze with aching pity for him, just for a second. She positioned herself beneath him and hollowed her back for him to grip onto, but he didn’t seem to have strength enough to grip, so she flipped around and, holding him in her jaw as gently as she could, swam slow and careful to the shore. He stirred vaguely in her grip, but didn’t say anything, which was… bad. Because this had to be hurting him, surely, and it was Whai, he’d never give up an opportunity to gripe.

  He was hurt. He was hurt very badly.

  She hauled them up on land – her feet were clawed, not flippered, good for being on land but too sharp, too clumsy; she cut into him as she tried to lay him out on the ground. He tried to sit up, and fell back, too weak.

  He croaked something, then coughed, coughed up something slimy and charred and red. “Sea-sister,” he said, hoarse, and managed a mocking little grin. Half of a grin. A lot of his face was burned, raw and red, inflamed, distorted. His hair was all burned away.

  She curled around him protectively. “Whai,” she said, and then was startled at the sound of it, her normal voice coming out of this draconic body – and oh, what was she thinking, being humanshaped would be much more helpful here. She changed back.

  “I think I’m dying,” Whai said thoughtfully, and she winced and cradled his head in her hands, because she couldn’t actually argue. He smelled like burnt meat, and looked it, as well.

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Tony whispered.

  Whai laughed, a chuckle that turned into a cough that turned into a hacking groan, and he spat up more charred bits of his own flesh and said, “It was him.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Māui,” Whai said, and Tony bit her lip and stared. Whai’s eyes slipped off her face, vague. He said again, insistently: “Māui. All ragey-burning and trickster, you could feel it. He was Māui sure enough, whether or not his fleshly self.” He spoke harsh and slow, every word an effort, every breath. “He’s hooked himself up to some tangata moron or he’s slaving ’im but he’s… it was, Māui, it, I just wanted to stop him,” almost a whine then, “he killed folk, I just, I wanted. Couldja kill him for me? Couldja do that for me, sea-sister?”

  “Okay,” Tony said, and she patted at his shoulder. He winced, and she winced as well, because there was nowhere to touch that wouldn’t hurt. “He… hurt you very badly.”

  Whai’s fingers plucked at the air, vague panicked twitches, weaving what wasn’t there. “Shoulda drowned him,” he said, regretful, “there was a second when I could’ve, I surprised him, I could’ve.” His voice turned dreamy. “There’s nothing like it, there truly ain’t, holding them under and then… ”

  “Hey. Hey.” Tony glared at him. Thinking hard, too, because he hadn’t died yet so maybe he wouldn’t. Probably he wouldn’t. She was worrying over nothing – he was atua, he was way hardier than normal folk. Still, she tried to rearrange him so that he was facing the sea. “None of that talk. You’re gonna be fine.” She paused, then added, “Sea-brother.”

  Whai grinned all dazed and bloodied. “So soft-hearted, so strong,” he said, his head falling back, limply, to rest on the ground. “Kill him for me, you gotta, you… ” And then his voice slipped away to nothing.

  “Whai?” Tony said.

  Whai said nothing, because he was dead.

  Cuba Street, clashing and colourful and loud, half a dozen different strains of busker music drifting through the air, coffee-smell joining it. Full of interesting little boutiques at the bottom, bars and cafés further up, then music shops and groceries and more cafés. The further up the gentle slope you go the older it gets, buildings with cramped external ladders leading to boarded-up windows. A lot of important things that happened in Wellington happened there; it’s where everyone is told to go, anyway, wander down beautiful Cuba Mall, the best place for pedestrians for shoppers for everyone, historic Cuba Street, absolutely positively Cuba.

  Steffan figured it was a good place to start. He paused to recover and to buy some basic supplies, and once he had, Cuba Street was where he went.

  Most of his research had turned up one thing: that the various spirits and mythical creatures of Māori foklore (‘atua’, collectively) were natural products of the land. The pale musical patupaiarehe (or tūrehu, or pakepakehā. Karitehe, korakorako, Tahurangi, heketoro. There was a wealth of names surrounding most everything, and he’d noted down each one.) inhabited the North Island and the maero (mohoao, maero, maeroero, or Te-aitanga-a-Hine-mate-ro) the harsher terrain of the South. There were spirits of places, or sometimes of important people or of no discernible origin at all, but – places, mainly, guardian taniwha of specific areas, multitudes of little fairy things that inhabited the woodland, so on so forth. They also often tended to be invisible (aringaro) and – he needed to stop thinking in so many layers. His mind was full enough of thoughts as it was.

  They often tended to be only visible to humans when they wanted to be, whether through excellent camouflage or use of magic he didn’t know. A combination of the two, perhaps. They were unlike some mythological beings in other cultures in that they didn’t seem to have any antipathy to civilisation; certainly the patupaiarehe liked skulking in their mountains and mists, but there were plenty of beings that took human husbands or wives or sought humans out – primarily to eat them, admittedly, but still. It was a little ridiculous expecting to find them in the city, but he figured it could actually be the best place to look. The theme was very much one of atua being of the land, belonging to it. The city, Steff thought, would’ve made its own spirits by now, surely, or older ones would’ve adapted to it, much as Māori culture had been knocked back by the harmful effects of colonisation but was now vibrant and growing, adapting with the times and to an extent shaping them. Atua would probably be like that.

  Also if he wanted to seek out forest, real forest thick with birds and such, he’d need to go to either Zealandia or the town belt, and he didn’t want to be that far from reliable wi-fi. Ridiculous, but there it was. He wondered if there were any internet spirits, and made a note to look into it.

  The almost everyday nature of the accounts of atua implied that they’d still be around in the modern day. But the man drained of blood indicated patupaiarehe – they did drink blood, in some of the stories, almost more vampiric than fae in that respect – and that didn’t quite make sense. He wondered what would drive such solitary creatures to instead stalk the city streets, how they would adapt, how city atua would handle things like sunlight and crowds.

  He wanted to know the answers to these questions, and he was confident that the atua would have them. He was just at a loss as to how to find them; what could he do? Wander up and down Cuba Street and other places, squinting at every stranger like they might be a creature in disguise? That was stupid, and stupid he wasn’t.

  In the end he shouldn’t have worried. It’d be harder not to see them, now.

  Atua were everywhere. Well, not everywhere, but maybe one in a hundred of the people he passed seemed to be. ‘Seemed to be’ because it was hard to distinguish them from humans, but even at a rough estimate… They were shadowy things lurking in the shade, mainly, not many seemed to like sunlight – but some did, and there were, things, walking the streets. It was disorienting and where could he even start? It should’ve been more disorienting than it was, though, which was the confusing part – how he’d never seen them before but at the same time felt instinctively like they belonged there. It was like something in the world or in his mind had shifted, like things had been turned on their head: yesterday there had only been humans here, and now there were atua as well. But at the same time it felt like they had always been there. It hurt his head.

  Steffan jingled the spare change in his pocket.
He had a place to start, at least.

  He found the busker in the same place he’d been last time, but he had an elegant teapot for a head now, and was playing the guitar. Steffan stopped awkwardly in front of him, and as an afterthought tossed a couple more coins into the hat.

  “There’s nothing surer, the rich get rich and the poor get poorer – cheers, mate – in the meantime, in between time, ain’t we got fun?” The creature stopped singing for the moment and deftly strummed chords, looking up at Steffan cheerfully. “Anything I can do for you? You got a request?”

  “Not the kind you’re meaning,” Steffan said. He cleared his throat self-consciously. Nearby, a woman tugged a schoolchild along; a frail goth girl and brawny man sat talking, both in full-length skirts. There were shoppers and stoners and everything was so normal and human, and here he was talking to a man with a teapot for a head, and no one even noticed. “Ah. I. This is going to sound ridiculous, but. Might you perhaps be an… atua?”