by Tihema Baker
Koro believed in a taniwha named Taukere, who lived in the waters of Pohe Bay.
He is beautiful and magnificent, shaped like an eel with tāmoko on his face and big brown eyes that you could get lost in! Oh, and he has so much power, moko! Ko Pohe te tangata o te taonga, engari ko tōna whatumanawa, ko tōna mana hauora, nō raro!
Koro was a tattoo-faced man who limped from place to place, mumbling riddles and always wearing the same paru pants and shirt. His greatest pride was his pounamu. He claimed that it once belonged to Hongi Hika, a great warrior and ancestor of the Ngāpuhi tribe.
Do you know how matakite this taonga is, moko?
He shared his hoha stories with anyone who listened, always warning them in his child-like voice: This is a true story, too, so those taringas of yours better not be painted on!
Many listened, but no one really believed him.
Two weeks ago, on his eightieth birthday, Koro’s heart failed him. He collapsed in front of the television while watching the 6 o’clock news. He died instantly.
‘Hey pōrangi boy!’ somebody calls out to me.
One of the Paki boys is peering out from behind the toetoe grass. I should have known it was one of them, because I could smell mimi. The paru Pakis, we call them.
‘Hey Kōwhai, come over here!’ I yell.
I make sure my best poker face is intact as Kōwhai shuffles his way closer, his hands stiff in his pockets. His face is now only inches away from mine.
‘What’s brown and smells like mimi?’
I don’t even get to finish the joke. His bottom lip drops, and he runs off in tears.
‘That wasn’t very nice, you know, Niko!’
That severe tone belongs to Shianne Henare. What does she want? I pretend that the bark at my feet is more interesting then her dumb voice.
‘It’s not like he’s the only one that thinks you’re pōrangi. He just said what everyone’s thinking!’
If she was trying to make me feel worse, it was working. Especially coming from her. I walk faster this time.
‘Hey egg, where are you going? I didn’t say I think you’re pōrangi … I believe you.’
She believes me. Her words impede my legs from going any further. Warmth emanates from her olive skin as her almond eyes look directly into mine. Her round face looks extra pretty today.
‘Well,’ Shianne grins, as she pushes her brown hair, which looks like strands of weave, behind her ear.
‘Tell me about this taniwha then, eh!’
She brings me back to reality fast and I feel the panic settle in. It is the same panicky feeling I get when Mrs May asks where my homework is.
‘I, I … don’t know.’
‘People are saying that you tried to kill yourself …’ Her voice fades when she sees my shocked reaction. She quickly clears her throat and lowers her pitch to almost a whisper.
‘I mean, your koro was really the only one who believed in the taniwha, and you know what everyone said about him … did the taniwha really save you?’
Her eyebrows are raised as she waits for my reaction. I don’t know how to explain it to her. I nod.
‘Have you seen him since?’
Panicky feeling again.
‘No.’
‘Oh …’ She sighs, then her eyes widen. ‘I should push you in the river from the bridge and see what happens!’
She bursts into a fit of dark laughter. I don’t think she’s joking.
‘Nemind yours!’
Before I can argue though, she grabs my hand unexpectedly and starts running.
‘Where are we going?’ I shout, but of course, she ignores me.
Endorphins make their way to my feet, allowing them to pound the gravel with brutal force. The gravel is tormenting them, but I am too entranced by our hands intertwined, and the feeling of the unknown. We are moving so fast that I don’t feel my pounamu slip off my neck. I break free from her hand and stop to pick it up.
‘Why did you bring me here?’
I wait for him to limp over, one hand clutching his walking stick and the other gripping that damn chipped mug that Aunty Rangi always threw out. Somehow, that cup always found its way back into his hand.
That you, moko? Koro can’t see you, moko!
He would chuckle, even when nothing was funny, and his eyes would squint even though the sun was nowhere to be seen.
His La-Z-Boy chair is still there, swinging melancholy with the harmonious purr of the wind.
Shianne scampers up the stairs and onto the deck like an excited puppy. ‘What are you afraid of, the boogie monster? Come on!’
‘I can’t.’
She stops reluctantly by the door, and shakes her head.
‘Don’t be an egg, Niko! You have to come in here one day.’
I wake up trembling to the sound of Mum wailing. I have only ever heard that loud, shrill cry once before. Nana’s tangi. My door bursts open. I don’t want to hear it. It is cousin Tumehe. Go away Tu! Go away! Please, no.
It’s Koro, Niko.
Are you listening?
Niko! It’s Koro.
He’s dead.
Shianne takes a deep breath.
‘If your koro believed in taniwha then there might be some clues in his whare that can help us prove he’s real. I mean, if he’s actually real …’
‘He is!’ I exclaim, before seeing the smirk on her face. She is winding me up.
‘Alright then, egg.’
The familiar smell of tobacco and old people greets me as soon as I walk through the front door. The house looks exactly the same, and yet it doesn’t. The photos scattered around the walls and on the shelves are now hanging limp, and look uncomfortable. The couch he spent his last moments on sits miserable and aching. Everything is dusty and feels unruly.
It is difficult watching her rummage through my koro’s things, but also strangely satisfying. Her eyebrows are furrowed and her lips pursed with absolute concentration. She blinks her eyes dramatically as she inspects Koro’s cigar pipe. Bloody hell, Koro, you egg! You knew you weren’t supposed to be smoking.
‘Hurry up then!’ She directs me towards Koro’s bookcase.
‘Check each book thoroughly for any clues!’
I laugh in my head at her delusional words. My koro was a great man, but he was no Indiana Jones. Even so, I examine Koro’s grimy books as if they held the answers to a murder mystery. I even shake each one just to make sure no secret, encrypted letter falls out. As predicted, nothing. I am certain my eyeballs are going to fall out of my face from frustration.
‘What’s that?’ Shianne is looking over my shoulder and pointing to something. Wondrous colours and illustrations peek out from behind the bookshelf. I pull it out.
The title reads Taming the Taniwha, by Tim Tipene.
The drawing is of a little boy facing a green taniwha.
Shianne snatches the book from my grasp and starts skimming through the pages.
‘This isn’t actually about a taniwha,’ I try to explain to her, but she reads it aloud anyway, each word radiating an emotion that sends a jittery breeze down my back and all the way to my toes.
When she reads the last paragraph, everything suddenly becomes clear.
When James went home, Papa put a pounamu around his neck.
‘This is for taming your first taniwha, Tama,’ he said.
We arrive just before sunset. The quietness of the town is reflected in the stillness of the river; lonely and isolated. The river is usually a muddy brown colour, but today, the water’s surface is glimmering green, reflecting from the soft light spearing from above. I feel strange.
Shianne gives me an encouraging nod, so I begin.
‘Taukere, guardian of the sea.
I thank you for saving my life and looking after me.
I give you this koha to say thank you.
He hōnore
He korōria ki te Atua
He maungārongo ki te whenua
He whakaaro pai ki ngā tāngat
a katoa
Āmine.’
My whole body is shaking, and only now I realise that I am crying. I quickly wipe away the tears because I feel Shianne creep up beside me. I untie the pounamu from around my neck and heave it into the water.
Murmur, burble, splash! The current ripples and flows dangerously, grousing at my interruption. Crudely, carelessly and with a chilling satisfaction, the pounamu is swallowed by the waterway.
The water may be seething with anger, but the giant logs are still logs. They don’t magically grow eyes and reveal themselves to be a taniwha. There is no monstrous Taukere with tāmoko all over his scaly face jumping out from the water. Nothing.
Shianne nuzzles her nose in to my shoulder.
‘Sorry Niko,’ she whispers softly into my ear.
I stagger back at the sound of hissing and splashing.
The gritty water is rising, and something is vaulting into the air. It is about a metre long, and has a large mouth filled with white, sharp teeth. Squirming and wriggling, it is bounded by the current and negligently tossed into the air. It lands on the bank, splattering and swivelling for a good two minutes. It pauses, before spitting out what looks like stones and rock, covered in mud and river debris. The eel is still fidgeting about on the bank, so I gently prod it back into the river with my foot. I notice that the river is now luminous and calm again.
Underneath all that debris and mud, I see it. It sparkles in the light, unaffected by the jaws of the eel, and undefeated by the murderous river. As I look closer, I realise it isn’t mine. No, mine was slender and very ordinary – something that we all made at kura. This one, with its cosmic power and energy, commands my attention. Its rare koru patterns and timeless glow remind me of why it is so important. Why it is so special to me.
It belonged to my koro.
The Kūmara Box
Anahera Korohina-Bowen
It’s still there in its own place – Nanny’s kūmara box. The rest of the house has long been home to fat possums and stray cows, having been abandoned after Nanny died and Pāpā, reluctantly, agreed to move in with us.
Mum had coerced Pāpā to move into town to live with us, because soon after Nanny passed, he’d suffered a stroke, and the left side of his body wouldn’t always listen to his brain when he wanted his body to do things. He’d swear at himself – something Nanny did as well – words I’d never heard anyone else use, like ‘Ko te pihang!’ or ‘Pokokōhua te purari mate nei!’
Although he loves us wholeheartedly, moving into town with us was hard for my pāpā. The light in his eyes has almost gone out, from what I can see. He hates being away from his beloved coastal home, which he’d built with his own hands. He and his cousins had hauled the wood over from Easter Island by barge, and Pāpā’s bullocks Darkie and Smiler had carted it all into the valley. With some of the left-over wood, Pāpā had made Nanny’s kūmara box. Hers was probably the only kauri kūmara box in the valley.
Pāpā has asked me to take him home for a visit. Five hours’ drive to Te Araroa, and another two to cover the 7 kilometres left to reach our destination – because we have to call in to have a cuppa tea with Pāpā Henry, and again further down the road with Aunty Rito, who tells us to come back and stay the night with her. We promise her we will before we head off. We make one more stop at the family urupā by the sea, and I note several more gravestones have been added since Pāpā lived in the valley. Despite his weak left side, Pāpā kneels down beside Nanny’s and talks lovingly to her photo.
When we get to the house, we are both quiet and pensive. The water tank and carved mantlepieces have long gone, probably to needy homes in the valley. The coloured glass panels in the front door have been smashed, but here still, in the corner of the kitchen, beside the broken green-flecked coal range, the kūmara box remains.
As Pāpā hobbles off into the garden, I walk over to the corner. Without moving it, I sit down on the kūmara box, as the tortured memory of what I did to my nanny floods back like it was yesterday.
‘Auē e moko! Did you move the box?’ Nanny had asked me, as she lay in pain on the floor. What could I say? Would she understand I was just trying to reach the matches up above the coal range on the shelf so that I could light the tilly lamp?
It had been getting quite dark, and Pāpā still hadn’t arrived home from work. He usually lit the tilly, but lately he’d been letting me watch how he prepared it. He’d remove the cap and the glass cover, tie on a new mantle, pump the primer and then strike a match and carefully place it under the silken mantle, which made a kind of hissing sound when it caught alight. Then he’d replace the glass and cap and pump the primer some more, until the mantle gave off a beautiful glow.
He’d been showing me how to do it because he and his work gang had started building the new bridge over the nearby Orutua River, and he’d said some afternoons he might get home late. I didn’t like the dark, and the tilly lamp shining through the dark at night was always reassuring, its light so bright and cosy.
Just like Nanny and Pāpā’s little whare. Even though power had never been connected to the house, I’d always known it to be bright and cosy. Everything had its place; Nanny kept her home spic and span. Nanny’s kūmara box, painted pink, was just the right height for her to sit on to peel the kūmara, parareka or spuds and pumpkin for our tea. I knew that it belonged in the corner beside the coal range next to the pine cones and paper.
But when the shadows had begun to creep across the room towards me that afternoon, I had placed the kūmara box in front of the coal range to stand on it to grab the box of matches. I’d been so excited about the prospect of lighting the tilly lamp by myself at ten years of age that I didn’t think about the kūmara box being in the wrong place, until I heard my nanny fall on the floor a few minutes later. I’d forgotten to put that pink kūmara box back in its corner.
‘Yes, Nanny, it was me. I left it there. I’m sorry, Nanny,’ I confessed, as angry tears welled up my eyes. I was angry at myself. In my head I growled myself for being so thoughtless and forgetful.
Nanny had also growled, but out loud and not at me. She was growling at her disease. ‘Pokokōhua, te purari mate huka nei!’
She would curse her diabetes. She’d talk to it, moan at it, and sometimes, when she sent me outside with the scraps and peelings to feed the pigs, she’d have a good cry to it. I knew not to go back inside right then, even though I wanted to ask her what was wrong.
I didn’t even realise that the diabetes had made her blind. I had always thought the white spots in her eyes were sparks of God shining through her. She’d look at me, her eyes full of love. She’d smile and say ‘Taku ngākau, taku mōkai whakaepa.’ She knew so well how to get around her whare and exactly where everything was – except for when mokopuna like me forgot to put things back in their proper place. It was then I realised she couldn’t see.
It must’ve been like a kēhua, her diabetes – this ghostly thing that haunted my nanny. I remember wishing this kēhua would take its hands away from my nanny’s eyes. Hadn’t it had enough of that game? I’d wanted it to give up its cruel game and go and play somewhere else.
She had crawled over to the couch, still growling at her diabetes for making her fall over the kūmara box. I could only stand there growling silently at myself.
‘Moko, tīkina atu te peihana me te wai.’ A basin and some water. Yes, I could do that without hurting anyone. I remember that Nanny was very particular about the basins. The one in the kitchen was for the kai and dishes, but we had to use a different one for washing our face and clothes. That one lived in the bathroom. Like Nanny, I had to feel around under the sink to find it. I filled it to about halfway with water. Nanny called for me to bring the disinfectant too.
I can still remember that Jeyes Fluid smell. Its acrid strength would fill up the whole room. While Nanny was washing the bleeding bump on her leg, I’d sat down beside her on the couch with tears falling silently down my face. My nanny’s soft voice had reassured me she
was fine and I was not to worry.
So even though I didn’t like the dark, I decided not to light the tilly lamp that day with Pāpā. I would stay there looking at the world through my nanny’s eyes, seeing it from her point of view. I had vowed never again to move that kūmara box from its rightful place. I had just let Nanny’s kēhua play peek-a-boo with my wet eyes that night until Pāpā got home.
His tokotoko on the verandah draws me back to the present. Here we are, some ten years later, back at the house, and it’s getting dark. But there’s no tilly lamp to shed its reassuring light on us. No doubt Pāpā has been taking his own memory trip through the years since we arrived. He has some mint leaves in his hand, which he gives to me to take to the car. It’s time to head back to aunty Rito’s for the night. As I get up to leave, I notice Pāpā’s eyes light up. His face breaks into a beaming smile as he bends down, and with that gammy left hand of his, he picks up Nanny’s old pink kūmara box and carries it out to the car.
Ahikā
Arihia Latham
She could taste the metallic wash of blood in her mouth. A groan echoed in the air, and for a moment, Tia thought it was her own. Her head was jostled by the sound.
‘Tia.’
‘Hmmm?’
‘Tia, we have to get out of here. They’ll catch us.’
Tia felt her head roll to the side and then hit the floor with a gentle thump. The thing that writhed and spoke to her had been holding her head in the soft cloud of a dream. Now the floor was a very clear message of reality. Pain started somewhere and everywhere. It consumed her thoughts as it licked and burned at her nerve endings, the sparks sending a feral wail from her mouth.
‘Tia! Shut it. I can’t see anything. Where is your body?’
But Tia could only whimper. She realised quickly that breathing felt harder now. That something was on top of her chest. She started clawing at the concrete beneath her. She bit her lips to stop the wails that begged to come out. The sensations were welling up beneath her skin, they were shooting along the cracks that held her nerves. The heat of pain was moving its way methodically toward her fingertips. She scratched them harder against the rough ground.