by Various
“It’s okay,” I say. “We’re safe. Everything bad that was going to happen has happened.”
Callie nods. We step outside.
“What are you going to make for dinner?” she asks.
“How about spaghetti? Would you like that?”
She smiles. We hear a strange sound above us. It is like a muffled pop, like a champagne bottle being uncorked, only louder and farther away. We look up and see what appear to be snowflakes falling.
In Southern California?
I turn around. They are coming down from the sky, everywhere. In my panic, I trip on a planter curb in the parking lot. I fall and my groceries spill and scatter. The orange rolls away.
“Mom!” Callie turns to me and drops her bag.
“Run!” I shout. “I’ll be right behind you!”
I toss the keys to her. She catches them deftly and runs. I scramble to my feet and follow.
Callie races to our car at the end of the row. I run after her. She turns back to check on me and I motion for her to keep going.
“Don’t stop.”
Others in the parking lot are doing the same. Running for their lives. I almost bump into an old woman heading in the opposite direction. Up ahead, Callie has opened the door.
She climbs into the backseat and turns, holding out a hand to me. I run and put my foot on the step on the side of the SUV.
“We made it,” she says.
I smile and give her my left hand to pull me in. As she grabs it, we both look at my arm as a single spore floats down and lands on my skin.
• • •
The Spore, now.
He made it.
He found her, and she is beautiful. They are together.
Burrowing into her skin, he feels complete, his essence merging with hers.
Dan Rabarts became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “Waking the Taniwha” in Wily Writers Audible Fiction (Mar. 2013), edited by Angel Leigh McCoy.
Visit his website at dan.rabarts.com.
* * *
Short Story: “Waking the Taniwha” ••••
Short Story: “The Crooked Mile” ••••
WAKING THE TANIWHA
by Dan Rabarts
First published in Wily Writers Audible Fiction (Mar. 2013), edited by Angel Leigh McCoy
• • • •
Boulcott Farm Stockade, Hutt Valley, Wellington, January 1855
SUN LANCED off the airship’s fittings as it descended. Kent patted the report in his breast pocket, his lips moving silently:
“Welcome to Wellington, Mister Faulkner. Morgan Kent, from the Governor’s office, to brief you on the disappearance of the HMS Kestrel. I have prepared a report…”
Faulkner was a living legend, and his despatch to the colonies vindicated Kent’s suspicions about what had really happened to the Kestrel. This was no maritime misadventure. Faulkner’s arrival was proof that the taniwha truly existed, and that there was a future for a man like Morgan Kent in searching for such elusive beasts. Impress the suspenders off Howard Faulkner and Kent might find himself on a fast airship back to England and a life of hunting real monsters, not just the myths and lore which were his stock in trade as a Royal Ethnographer.
A dozen iron harpoons loosed from Waka-a-Rangi and slammed into the earth. Internal winches creaked, drawing the airship down. Faulkner had the good sense to trust the locals, Kent noted. Unlike the British, the flyboys of Ngati Poheke were not prone to crashing their dirigibles on the Auckland-Wellington passage. Poheke were wanderers, taking to the skies as readily as their ancestors had crossed the ocean to reach this lost paradise at the bottom of the South Pacific. And just as the Maori had adopted the settlers’ weapons and improved on their battle tactics, so too had they mastered their airships of brass and steam in ways that British pilots simply hadn’t. Mercenaries they may be, but they were worth their coin.
The groundcrew secured the dirigible and a gangway folded out. Faulkner appeared, his leather overcoat snapping like the wings of some giant raptor, white hair framing a weathered face beneath his wide-brimmed hat. At his belt hung knives and pepperpot pistols, as if prepared to find himself in the midst of battle at any moment. Maybe, Kent thought, he too should carry a pistol. Steeling himself, he crossed the field.
Faulkner strode across the paddock, brushing past Kent.
“Mister Faulkner? I am Morgan Grey…”
Faulkner didn’t stop. “You here for the bags?”
Kent hurried after, fumbling in his coat. “Ah, no, I’m with the Governor’s office. I’ve been sent to brief you regarding the Kestrel. I have a report…”
Faulkner jerked a thumb backwards. “Give me the quick version, or go help unload. I don’t much care for reports.”
Kent upped his pace.
“Well, in June the ship sailed north from Wellington with a hold full of munitions, supplies and spares for the troops fighting the Kingitanga in the Whanganui Valley, but it never arrived. Neither survivors nor wreckage have been found.”
Faulkner grunted. Kent pressed on.
“I made mention in my report of another incident, some years ago, when an elder tohunga disappeared during a battle with the Maori tribe Ngai Toaki. A reproduction of his portrait is in my report. This priest was reputed to have powers, sir.”
“You spinning me a fairy tale, son?”
Kent swallowed hard. “No, sir. Legend has it that this tohunga, Ti Hariki, has the power to speak with taniwha. Taniwha are legendary monsters, guardians—”
Faulkner cut him off. “Taniwha are like any other monster, just what people make of them. I came here to find a missing ship, not to chase beasties which probably don’t exist. Understand?”
“With all due respect sir, I doubt the Home Office would have chosen to send a man of your repute to find a lost ship. They would have sent a mariner, not… you.”
Faulkner glowered. “I don’t take your meaning, son.”
“I know your reputation, sir, as a hunter of things uncanny.” Not everyone believed the tales of Faulkner’s exploits, but Kent did. Kent needed to believe. “Sir, I believe that at the behest of Ngai Toaki the tohunga summoned a taniwha which swallowed the Kestrel whole. I can find no other explanation.”
“There’s always another explanation.” Faulkner growled. “I don’t know your game, Mister Kent, but it’d behoove you not to presume things you know nothing about.”
“Are you working for the Office of the Preternatural?”
The words fell from Kent’s mouth. He had meant to tell Faulkner about the Cruickshanks, the British engineers who had vanished some years earlier, how he wondered if their disappearance might somehow be related, and about the strange frequency with which farm machinery was stolen in raids on settlers’ plots. That was not what had come out. e had meantHe
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. There is no Office of the Preternatural. See that?” He gestured back at a young man lugging chests from the airship onto a wagon. “You could learn a lot about keeping your mouth shut and your eyes open from Young Master Sullivan. Now, for the love of Queen and Country, point me towards the nearest cold beer.”
• • •
Faulkner’s finger slid along the map, tracing a course between the North and South Islands’ coastlines. “I suspect that Ngai Toaki warriors lay in wait for the Kestrel at Kapiti Island and attacked as she hit the tide. They seized control and sailed her into these sounds in the South Island. Dozens of places in there to hide a ship, with plenty of deep water anchorage.” He arched an eyebrow at Kent. “Does that seem probable, Mister Kent, or do you still think a taniwha ate it?”
Kent grimaced. “It’s feasible. Ngai Toaki still hold the Manawatu River Gorge against Pakeha settlers, and they may yet have designs against the Navy.”
“Very well. Since we have the agreement of the local help, we’ll start with an aerial sweep.” He looked down the table to where Sullivan was worki
ng on a set of leather headgear bristling with polished lenses. “Prognosis?”
Sullivan squinted through a magnifying monocle at the component in his hand, all tiny gears and valves. “I’m getting a low-wave resonance which suggests there’s ultraphysical latency all around us, but nothing gives off energy like that. There might be an iron vein in the hillside throwing out the magnetic capacitors.”
“Calibrate the sensors. I don’t want to be flying blind.”
The air thumped with the drone of boiler-driven rotors. “Ornithopter’s incoming,” Kent said. “They’ll be bringing wounded.”
Faulkner looked up. “Where from?”
“The Ngai Toaki Pa in the Manawatu. The fighting’s been heavy there lately.”
“How coincidental.” Faulkner stood, shrugging into his overcoat. “Come on, Kent.”
Kent hurried to keep up as Faulkner strode from the barracks and across the airfield towards the stockade surgery. They hunkered against the downdraughts as ornithopters landed and departed again as quickly as their bloody cargo could be offloaded, their exhausts pumping steam.
The wounded were a mess of blood, smashed bone, and scorched flesh. Faulkner tapped one of the casualties on the collarbone as blood-stained orderlies hauled his stretcher towards the surgery. “Talk to me, man!”
The redcoat’s arm was missing, yet his accoutrements were not stained with smoke or shrapnel. Even Kent could tell that he had not lost his limb to cannon-fire. “I’m with the Governor’s office,” Kent said. “What happened?”
The man’s eyes rolled past him, through him. “Took… my… arm…” the soldier gasped, every word marking its ragged toll, “the… monster.”
The orderlies disappeared into the surgery.
Kent turned to see Faulkner, his countenance sour, wind snapping at his coat. “Now do you believe me?” he called, raising his voice to be heard over the roar of boilers and rotors.
Faulkner strode towards the surgery. Kent followed. “What more proof do you need? They’ve seen the taniwha. That’s why the Office sent you, because hunting monsters is what you do. We have to stop it, and Ti Hariki can help us. We must find him.”
Faulkner spun, looming over Kent. He suddenly seemed impossibly tall and infinitely more dangerous. “One day you’ll have to decide what believing in things you can’t prove is worth to you, lad,” he growled. “It’s a price that few are ready to pay. What are you willing to sacrifice to make your taniwha real?”
Faulkner left Kent in the blast of a descending ornithopter, his hair in his eyes and his stomach in his throat.
• • •
Waka-a-Rangi swept over bush broken by artillery emplacements and smouldering craters. Here in the shadow of the Ngai Toaki pa, the war for the bottom of the North Island was at its peak.
“Anything?” Faulkner stood behind Sullivan, who occupied the co-pilot’s seat. The headgear was strapped under his chin, brass and crystal lenses suspended over each eye.
Sullivan scanned side to side, his left hand working over a gauntlet on his right bedecked with brass dials and switches, each adjustment actuating minor changes to the headgear. “Heat signatures everywhere, mostly artillery impact and brushfire. I can’t identify anything on the electromagnetic or ultraphysical scales through this heat haze, though.”
Faulkner looked at Kent. “They say that this taniwha of yours came with a roar and tore down everything and everyone in its path; that it spat fire and smoke and cleaved men in two; and that any who saw it fled or went mad. Do you know what that sounds like to me, Mister Kent? Mass hysteria. A collective hallucination. I believe when we get to this fortress we will find not a monster but evidence of something rather mundane—a windborne opiate, or some manner of electromagnetic mind control as yet unseen in the Empire and unleashed on unwitting victims. Enough to drive a battalion to the brink of madness, so that the mere sight of warriors in their rage would conjure horror to the addled mind.”
“Those wounds were neither musket fire nor swords,” Kent said. “That was claws, or teeth.”
“Too clean for teeth. A word of advice, Kent: If you go looking for monsters in every shadow, it might pay to carry a lantern.”
“Sir!” Faulkner and Kent looked to Sullivan, and past him to the devastation which had befallen the Manawatu Gorge. Massive claw-shaped gouges had shredded the bushclad hillsides around the Ngai Toaki pa, the soil torn as deep as the rock beneath. Kent’s gaze followed the trail of destruction up the hillsides. Something monstrous had walked this earth.
Faulkner’s voice broke the suddenly brittle atmosphere. “What’s that? In that gully, between those trees.”
Sullivan snapped through several lenses. “It would appear to be a mast, sir.”
“Let’s go have a look, shall we?”
• • •
“Congratulations, sir, you found your missing ship.”
Waka-a-Rangi hovered above the land-bound hulk. Everyone on board could see her decks, her shredded sails, her bloodstains.
“Are you still convinced that she was swallowed by a sea serpent, Mister Kent?” Faulkner jibed.
“Well,” Kent grated, “something carried it here, miles from the sea. Something with teeth bigger than a man, evidently. Look at the holes in the timber!”
“Kaore, e hoa,” laughed Matara from the pilot’s chair. “That’s harpoons did that, maybe five or six airships to lift her, but airships all the same.”
“Ngati Poheke would do that?”
Matara shrugged. “For the right price.”
Faulkner nodded. “So, why pluck a ship from the sea and abandon it in the hills?”
“It wasn’t just abandoned,” Sullivan interjected, nozzles hissing and gears whirring as different lenses flipped over his eyes. “She’s been stripped; weapons, rigging, navigation equipment, everything.”
“The taniwha’s path comes right through here,” Kent muttered. He gripped the seat, taking long slow breaths.
“Matara?” Faulkner said.
“Aye?”
“Follow its tracks.”
“Kapai.” Rotors thundered, and the dirigible ascended.
“All well, Mister Kent?”
“What can we do that an entire battalion of soldiers and militia couldn’t? This airship is unarmed.”
Faulkner grinned, a cold expression that looked out of place on his gaunt features. “Well, Mister Kent, isn’t it lucky we have a monster-hunter along?”
Kent retreated to a porthole and scanned the swathe of destruction as it flowed south. Vaguely, he heard Sullivan and Faulkner talking.
“And what of the ultraphysical registers? Any resonances? Harmonic distortions?”
“Nothing we’re familiar with, which isn’t to say there’s not something there that we can’t see.”
“None of the spikes we recorded at the Loch, then?”
“No, sir. Nothing like it.”
Kent stared, his stomach sinking at the sight of a world slashed open like a kumara patch in harvest season. Faulkner had disregarded even the possibility that a taniwha may truly have awoken. Yet what else could cause such destruction, on such an unprecedented scale? Nothing made by the hand of man, certainly. Then he spotted figures slipping between the trees below. “Sullivan, can you see those people? There? Maori warriors, a couple helping an older man along…”
Sullivan looked, dials switching as he searched for the figures. “Yes.”
“May I?” He gestured at the byzantine headgear.
Faulkner reached into his coat and instead passed Kent a battered spyglass.
Disappointed, Kent raised the telescope. He peered down the treeline to the small warparty in the bush. The older man had turned to face the airship. “That’s Ti Hariki” Kent pointed, “I recognise the moko tattooed on his cheeks. He must have been imprisoned by the Ngai Toaki and escaped in the wake of the battle.” He lowered the spyglass. “Mister Faulkner, there’s something out there which you can’t explain, and this man might be
the only one who can communicate with it. I suggest you pick him up.”
Faulkner regarded Kent. “This is the man you say can speak with the taniwha? The only one who could have brought the monster to life, if this is what it truly is? Consider carefully before you answer, Mister Kent. Consider what it’s worth to you.”
Kent’s bowels clenched. If he was right, he would earn the hunter’s respect, and perhaps a recommendation to the Office of the Preternatural. If he was wrong…
“Either Ti Hariki was a prisoner of Ngai Toaki and he will be willing to help us defeat the taniwha, or he is responsible for dozens of British deaths, and we bring him to justice.”
Faulkner was silent a moment, weighing Kent with his eyes. “Captain Matara, please be so good as to drop a ladder.”
Kent sucked down a breath as winches hissed beneath him, still locked in Faulkner’s gaze.
“I hope you know how to finish what you start, Kent. Nothing I hate more than a man who can’t do what needs to be done.”
He left the words hanging, like a corpse in the wind.
• • •
“It is no taniwha,” Hariki declared, folding his arms across his chest.
“So what is it?” Faulkner pressed.
“Tekotekonui. A blasphemy against the atua,” Hariki snarled, “a thing of metal and steam and blade. They built it from things stolen or traded, to bring death and terror to the Pakeha.”
Kent edged forward, concealing his disappointment at the revelation. “E koro, they say you have the power to speak with taniwha. How have you kept your secret from Ngai Toaki for so long?”
Hariki huffed. “My secret cannot be taught or taken from me. I was born with it, and when I die another will be born to it. None can force me to use it against my will, for the taniwha would know.”
“So you claim to have this power, but have never used it to wake a monster?” Faulkner interjected.
Hariki’s withering gaze turned on Faulkner. “No wise man would wake a sleeping taniwha. I have never used my powers to wake, only to soothe the beasts back to sleep when they stir. There is much power in calming, in control, in peace. Wake a taniwha, and nothing can contain it.”