by David Hair
She woke him some time later. His watch said 11.07 p.m. There was a fire going, and, amazingly, the smell of roasting meat. Mat blinked awake. Wiri was turning a large wood pigeon on a spit, and Kelly was feeding twigs onto the fire. They both grinned broadly when he yawned loudly and stretched.
‘You’re lucky you woke, otherwise you’d have missed out.’ Wiri gave a cheeky wink.
‘Yeah, darn it. Now we’ll have to share,’ put in Kelly.
Mat looked around for Fitzy, but Kelly told him the dog had gone off an hour ago. Mat looked closely at Wiri. If it wasn’t for his clothing, the warrior might have been any ordinary young Maori. He even spoke like one—although his way of speaking seemed slightly odd to Mat’s ears. It reminded him of the way his father spoke, rather than his school-mates. And there was something almost plummy about his accent, as if Wiri had learned English in England. Which had to be impossible.
Fat from the bird dripped into the fire and the delicious smell wafted into Mat’s nostrils. His mouth watered, and he reached out toward the food.
‘Not yet,’ laughed Wiri. ‘Give it a few more minutes, then we’ll eat.’
Wiri had laid a skilful fire—sheltered from wind and damp, and banked with slate rocks. He reached down beside him, and began to load a pile of white wriggling grubs onto the slate, where the heat the stones had absorbed caused the grubs to writhe.
Mat watched in horror. Kelly just shook her head, enjoying his reaction.
‘What are they?’
‘Huhu grubs. Good kai!’
The grubs began to sizzle.
Mat’s stomach contracted in his belly. ‘I…don’t think I’m that hungry.’
‘I’m not touching them either,’ said Kelly.
Wiri raised an eyebrow. ‘I guess you’ll have to starve then. I’m eating the bird.’
They both look aghast.
He laughed. ‘Just joking, eh! Though if we can’t get any grub—I mean food—soon, you might not have any choice!’
Mat hugged his empty stomach and tried not to look at the grubs.
In the end he tried one—he didn’t bite, just swallowed, once he was sure it was totally dead and totally cooked. Over-cooked, in Wiri’s opinion. Kelly had one too, but made the mistake of biting, and dry-retched it back up, which amused Wiri but spoiled Mat’s appetite completely. They had equal shares of the bird—Mat was curious that Wiri ate at all, but saved his questions for later. Wiri brought river water in Mat’s water-bottle and they emptied it in grateful swallows.
Throughout the meal, Mat and Kelly’s eyes scarcely left the warrior. Mat could hardly believe his eyes. I summoned this guy from a carved piece of bone! But, even allowing for the feather cloak, swirling body tattoos and moko, he seemed incredibly normal. His hair smelt of sweat and herbs. Dirt stained his skin, and a small stubble was shadowing his upper lip and chin. He looked around twenty, and the scar on his temple still looked painful. His fingernails were dirty and broken. He looked like any number of young Maori Mat had seen playing rugby, or hanging out around Napier…but not quite. He had an air of capability, a confident way of walking and talking, a calm cheerful look in his eye, that set him apart from anyone Mat had ever met. If he’d gone to high school, he would have been captain of the first fifteen. If he’d been on the streets, he would have owned them, not slunk around as if defeated by the Pakeha world. He reminded Mat of Maori All Blacks he’d seen interviewed on telly, confident young men who were winners.
He opened his mouth, trying to work out which question to spill out first. Kelly had the same look.
Wiri grinned at them. ‘Question time, is it? Who’s first?’
Mat thought for a moment. He didn’t know where to start. He looked at Kelly.
‘Me,’ she said. ‘Because I know absolutely nothing about what’s going on here. If I start, then Mat goes next, you’ll have the picture from our side, and you’ll know what to tell us. Because I think that, although you talk like us, and use some of our expressions, this isn’t familiar territory for you, is it? You had to ask me what year.’
Wiri nodded. ‘You are right. First thing though, is that we should make a promise. A promise that we are going to tell the truth, and the whole truth, no matter how strange.’ He spread his hands. ‘Because, believe me, some of what I have to say will be very strange.’
‘You’re telling me!’ exclaimed Kelly. ‘I’ve just had my car shot up by gangsters then been rescued by a Maori ninja who leaps out of thin air.’
‘You haven’t heard anything yet, wahine,’ replied Wiri.
The fire crackled, and they gazed into it for a few minutes. Kelly’s lips were moving noiselessly, as though she were rehearsing what she’d say. Finally, after a few tries, she began.
‘Well, I was in Napier this morning, and I’d jacked up to do some shows at the Eskdale Park Craft Fair. Over the radio they’d been running these Police notices, about some runaway part-Maori boy, but I’d not really given it much thought. I was down by the river getting some water when I saw a boy who fitted the description walking up the river bed. I’ve run away from home myself, so I thought I was as good a person as any to help someone like him, so I said hello.’
‘Nearly scared me off!’ put in Mat.
‘You’re lucky I wasn’t in my make-up!’ laughed Kelly. ‘Anyway, I got Mat to eat and chat. I was planning to see whether he needed to be talked into going home. But Mat said he was going to see his mother in Taupo, and that sounded fine to me. It’s where I was heading anyway, so I offered him a lift. Then, in the middle of my show, that blonde bitch showed up, trying to grab Mat. I helped out, got him away and, well, things were going good until they rammed us, and…you know the rest. My poor Beetle-Car!’
‘This woman, this Donna Kyle,’ said Wiri. ‘You were brave to come between her and Mat. Very brave. I know her and her type. One of Puarata’s acolytes. They are not the sort of people you cross lightly.’
‘Hard bitch! If I see her again I’ll smack her one!’ Kelly’s bottom lip stuck out defiantly.
‘Be careful of her. She may carry a gun, but she has worse weapons at her disposal.’
‘She still doesn’t scare me!’ maintained Kelly.
Wiri shook his head, chuckling.
When it was Mat’s turn, he told them about the conversation he overheard between his father and Puarata when he’d realised they were talking about Nanny Wai’s tiki. He tried to explain how he’d just known he should take the tiki before Puarata could get his hands on it. Wiri frowned, but Kelly exclaimed, ‘I know just what you mean!’ He managed to talk them through his father supporting Puarata without crying (Kelly came and put her arms around his shoulders), but he wept when he remembered Riki going down, and having to run.
When he spoke about the brutish warrior, Wiri grew tense and angry, and made him repeat his description of the chase. Finally he slapped his taiaha hard, but didn’t interrupt further. He smiled when Mat described Pania. Kelly started to scoff, but stopped at a gesture from Wiri. Mat described the swim across the Iron Pot, and the half-remembered dream of the soldiers helping him. He could clearly remember the long river walk, and the scenes at the fair, without losing his thread. But he found it really hard to describe the unreal moment when the tiki had somehow pulsed into life, and Wiri had suddenly appeared.
‘It was like finding the on-switch, or like waiting in the morning for Dad to start the car, and it won’t at first, but then you feel the engine kind of cough, and then it goes. It was also like when you’re painting and it’s a mess, and you do one line—and suddenly the whole thing takes shape. But it was also like…nah, I dunno.’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘It was like, really weird.’ He finished, feeling totally inadequate.
Wiri smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I don’t know anyone who could describe what you’re describing. You have to have felt it.’
‘Have you?’ asked Mat. ‘Felt that…power?’
Wiri twisted his mouth, his eyes reflective. ‘Not exactly, but somet
hing close.’ He leaned forward. ‘It’s late, but I think you’re both wide awake. Wide enough awake for a very strange story?’
Mat nodded. Since the food he’d felt much better, and he knew he needed to hear what Wiri had to say more than he would ever need anything else. Kelly was leaning forward, dark circles under her eyes, but her gaze bright.
‘OK. Please remember that some of this I didn’t find out til much later on, and that I don’t know everything. But some things about this story I know really well indeed. Remember too that I am Maori. We never had writing when I was born, and stories were handed down, and embellished shamelessly, from generation to generation. If my story starts to sound like a legend, well that is because it is legend, but it is also real…’
As Wiri began his story, Kelly and Mat sat listening, initially in semi-disbelief, but the conviction in Wiri’s voice was persuasive.
‘I was born into the Tainui tribe—a small sub-tribe called the Ngati Tautari, in the Waikato. Though Tainui, we were friendly to some of the Ngati Tuwharetoa around Taupo, and were mostly peaceful, and too small to notice. But the tribe no longer exists—at least not in this world…but that’s another story…’
He paused and looked momentarily sad, then shrugged and continued.
‘My father was chief, and our pa was—and still is—on a hill near the banks of the Waikato River, at a place we call Maungatautari. Yes, Mat, it is the same place Pania has advised you to go to. That is not a coincidence! And I must say I envy your meeting the girl of the reefs. You must tell me more of her. If only Wai-aroha could have met her! But I digress—what year was it? I have no real idea, but I think it must have been perhaps 1400 AD. But I don’t know, it is a guess. We did not have Pakeha calendars! Our lives were typical of the time. Not so pretty and noble as storytellers would tell it—but not so bad. We grew crops, and we hunted birds and we fished the river. We fought with our neighbours. We sang and had babies.
‘What was I like? Well, I was a chief’s son, so I had privilege. Others fed me. I only hunted to show off. I fought. I was arrogant, because no one had ever rubbed my nose in the dirt, not even my older brother. People said I was the finest warrior in Aotearoa. That was a song I loved to listen to.
‘By the time I had counted twenty summers—my current age—I had two wives and four children. My father loved me and my elder brother hated me. I couldn’t blame him. I lorded over him at every opportunity. He was a good man, nothing special, but I eclipsed him. Fate was not kind to him.
‘Life might have gone on like this. I would have become chief, and probably been killed in a raid on another tribe. The champions of the tribes used to watch out for each other—to kill a famous fighter in single combat was the greatest glory, and lots of men wanted to be the one who killed me. Who knows? But instead, two strangers came to Maungatautari. One was Puarata. He had all the trappings of a great tohunga, and came from the Ureweras. He had a warrior with him, a huge mountain of a man, with the manners of a pig. His name was Tupu.
‘They were received as guests should be. This hospitality was not so common as the storytellers would have it. We Maori like to talk about some sort of big, civilised, family that existed then, but in reality we were all living in armed camps, and meeting with strangers could be tense and deadly. But honour was also important. That year, we had more than enough kai, and my father wanted to impress this travelling tohunga, so they were welcomed generously.
‘But we soon felt uneasy around them. Tupu was a brute, but Puarata scared people. He had a hidden power that intimidated us all. I liked them no more than anyone. I disliked all tohunga then, even the good ones. I did not believe in their powers—it all looked like lies to control the gullible to me. But Puarata made my skin crawl. He was the first man I ever saw who warranted the term Tohunga Makutu or Black Tohunga. He could freeze bones with a glance.
‘As for Tupu—he was less than dung to me. But people esteemed him, because of his size. Women stroked his arms, exclaimed at how muscular he was. It was inevitable we would come to blows. All the men talked to him about me, told him I was our best warrior. They wanted to see a fight—they didn’t mind who won. If he died, well, he was a stranger, and they didn’t like the way our women looked at him. If I died, well, it was about time someone cut me down to size…But Puarata used the situation for his own advantage.
‘Our tohunga had recently died, and the tribe was nervous without a spiritual guide. Only I was pleased. Puarata told us that if his man won, he would stay, and his powers over earth and sky would give us protection. But if I won, he would leave us and return to the Ureweras, to grieve for his friend.
‘My father thought this fair—but it was a load of tutae! Tutae a tito! Because Puarata knew I could never kill Tupu. Why? Because Tupu was already dead!
‘We squared off. He was big, as you know Mat, but slow. I hit him, again and again. I couldn’t believe he didn’t go down. Eventually I became afraid, because there was no way he should have been still on his feet. But he just kept coming, and inevitably, he caught me. I broke a taiaha over his face, his nose was smashed—he should have been flat on his back, but he just spat blood and teeth, and grabbed my arm, and his massive mere smashed into my skull—here, on my left temple. The blow killed me instantly.’
Kelly and Mat looked at each other with open mouths. Wiri just smiled faintly and scratched the scar on his temple. ‘It was a long time ago,’ he said softly. ‘I’m used to what I am…not dead…not alive…somewhere in between.’
He rubbed his face, and then grinned. ‘So, here I am in front of you! I am dead, but I am alive! How can this be? Well, I have learned many things, and one is that some tohunga are more than charlatan-magicians or humble priests. Some, like Puarata, have powers we can only call makutu—sorcery, or magic, or whatever word best suits you. Puarata took my body. He put my skull inside a wooden carving of a man’s head, and set it above the village gate. He carved my shoulder blade into the tiki that hangs from Mat’s neck. The rest of me he gave to Tupu, who ate me, to gain my strength. I don’t know if he cooked me first…
‘You look horrified…well, so was I when Puarata first summoned me from the tiki. It was some time later, in secret. I couldn’t believe what had happened. But it was true. I was now a spirit, trapped in a piece of carved bone. In fact, I was just like Tupu. When I am out of the tiki, I am just like a normal man. But I cannot be killed—spirit animates me—spirit keeps me going when flesh would give out. Like the bullets that struck me this afternoon—I felt the pain, but they could not remove life when life is not sustained by breath and blood. If I am too damaged, then I return to the tiki. And the tiki itself is indestructible. As you’ve seen, I cannot touch it. In fact, only a tohunga, or a normal living man, can. I am like a genie, to be pulled out of the lamp by the tiki owner, a slave to his command. You might think you couldn’t control me, Mat, but the truth is you could—you just haven’t tried yet.
‘Puarata certainly controlled me, as he did Tupu, and as he soon controlled my village. He caused the wooden head containing my skull to make a horrible shrieking able to kill enemies who came near. Tupu and I he used to kill particular enemies. He enslaved everyone, even those who had cheered his victory. Finally, when all was ruined, he moved on, to the north, taking his Shrieking Head totem with him. Up there, he was finally defeated by another tohunga, Hakawau. That story has, in a garbled sort of way, made it into popular folklore. Hakawau returned to my village to help rebuild it, and it prospered. But Tupu and I were taken into the Ureweras by the fleeing Puarata.
‘We stayed there for centuries. Puarata moved among the Hauhau, and helped them fight the Pakeha invaders. I have fought alongside Te-Rauparaha, and Te Kooti, though neither man knew of Puarata’s true nature or they would have cast him out. Later, when all was lost, Puarata put on European clothing, and took us to Auckland. I was given the name Wiremu during my dealings with Europeans, which is a rendering of the English name William in Maori. Before that, Puarat
a had stripped me of my first name, and simply named me ‘Toa’. But in this new age he realised he had to adapt. He educated himself, and had me taught also, to better serve his purposes in moving among the Pakeha. Tupu was unteachable. He is still a beast and always will be. But I have attended university in Auckland, and at Massey in Palmerston North. I have lived a half-life, in and out of the tiki, for perhaps as many as six hundred years. I have learned a lot. I know more of the European settlers’ ways than even Puarata, I believe.
‘Because despite his knowledge and power, he has never learned anything but contempt for others. He hates Maori as much as he hates Pakeha. He hates women as well as men. He hates old people and children. And why? I barely know—and I have known him longer than all but one. All I can say is that to him, all others are cattle. Things to feast upon. What he calls friendship is just the fondness you or I might have for a pet or a prized possession. He has made me kill people he called friend, or even claimed to love, at a whim. He is the worst of all men.
‘And Tupu? He is still the same animal that first grunted into our village so long ago. Unkillable. Insane. A beast in human form. I might have still been his prisoner, but for a rare mistake by the Black Tohunga. In 1964 he went south, to Wellington. He was recruiting others of power—people like Donna Kyle, looking for people with imagination and anger, and that certain something he can see in others which marks them as potential sorcerers. I was his bodyguard, obedient to the letter—and only the letter. I had found that when he gave me instructions, I had to follow them exactly—but what he left out of his instructions gave me discretion. What he did not expressly forbid, he could not prevent me from doing.
‘He forgot to tell me not to fall in love. I met a Maori woman at an exhibition in the National Museum for promising young artists. The name she was using was Wilomina Stephenson, but that wasn’t her real name—it was the English name she used when trying to sell her work. In those days it was better not to be Maori. Her real name was Wai-aroha Terakatini.’