The Bone Tiki

by David Hair

  Big-Nose grunted. ‘Then do it.’

  Mat glared at him. ‘I don’t want you watching.’

  ‘Too bad. You ain’t leaving my sight, boy.’

  Damn! Mat turned away, and opened his breeches to use the toilet. What could he do? He tried to keep his head still as he scanned the bathroom with his eyes. But he couldn’t see the scissors, or anything he could use as a weapon. He looked down again in despair, staring into the rubbish bin, at the nail clippings that lay on the bottom, like little shards of bloodied bones. Like bones…

  A new plan jolted into his mind.

  He finished with the toilet, half-turned, then feigned nausea. He sank to his knees, and coughed into the toilet bowl. He felt Big-Nose take a step toward him, then snort in contempt. He made himself retch, and at the same time, shielded by his body he put his right hand into the rubbish bin, and picked up some nail clippings. He managed to get four, and slip them into a pocket, before Big-Nose hauled him to his feet.

  ‘Wash your face,’ he growled.

  Hoping desperately for a chance to pay Big-Nose back, Mat did as he was told, then allowed himself to be pushed down the hall, past two doors, and into a large room.

  It was an old-fashioned drawing-room, dominated by an impressive oak desk, clear of everything but an ink pot and quill stand. Behind the desk was a leather-bound chair. The floor had an Indian rug, patterned in maroon and black. A television sat in the corner to the left, and a stereo on a shelf above. Both were lifeless. Both walls were lined with books, some with old-fashioned bindings, others modern paperbacks. A line-up of glossy magazines was arranged on one shelf. There were two windows, both curtained and shut. The only light came from a chandelier high above the desk, lit with electric lamps.

  Donna sat at the desk in the leather chair, her battered visage gazing fixedly at the tiki in her hands. She had changed into modern clothes; a black blouse and jeans. ‘Leave him here, and wait outside,’ she ordered Big-Nose brusquely. He nodded, shoved Mat into the room, and closed the door.

  ‘Sit,’ ordered Donna. Mat shuffled timidly to the nearest chair. She sat again, and picked up the tiki, waving it at him. ‘How? How is it that a little rat like you can make this thing work, when I can’t, and I’ve dedicated my life to the occult? How is that?’

  Mat shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he answered truthfully.

  She leant forward. ‘Is there a secret word? A spell?’

  Mat shook his head.

  ‘Nothing? You’d better tell me, boy. Or it will go very badly for your friends.’

  Friends…maybe the others were still alive!

  Something must have showed on his face, because Donna scowled. ‘Don’t get too excited. The captain and the native are in a lock-up, and you’ll never see them again. The girl is here, though. Right here, where I can do whatever I want…and she definitely won’t like what I want to do to her.’

  Mat swallowed. He slipped his right hand into his pocket, to the small pile of nail clippings. He found the biggest one, and pressed it to his palm. ‘Why do you need to know?’ he asked in his firmest voice. ‘Aren’t you going to give it to Puarata?’

  ‘That’s none of your business!’ Donna snapped. ‘Just tell me how to use it.’

  Mat took a deep breath. For his plan to work, he needed Wiri to be out, but not controlled. It was a risk. He could be handing control of him to Donna forever, but he couldn’t think of another way…

  ‘Alright,’ he said, ‘but you have to show me Kelly first.’

  Donna glared at him. ‘Just do as you’re told, maggot!’

  Mat stared back defiantly. She slammed her fist onto the desk and hissed. ‘Corporal!’

  Big-Nose opened the door.

  ‘Bring me the girl!’

  While they waited, Donna went to the window to her right—Mat’s left—and opened it. He saw streetlights, and far in the distance, the lights of the Auckland harbour bridge. We’re back in the real world, he thought with a jolt. But what about the soldiers?

  Donna muttered to herself, and pulled the curtain, then opened the opposite one. Mat stared, at darkness lit only by a guttering gaslight, and a line of carriages winding past below, led by settlers with flaring torches. Aotearoa!

  His mind whirled. Somehow, Donna’s house existed in both worlds at once…and she could walk between them. He stirred excitedly, new plans forming, but first they had to find a way to escape. He looked at the desk. Donna held the tiki, but his wooden koru knot still lay on the desk. He bridled at the thought of Donna’s cold hands touching it.

  Big-Nose appeared at the door, dragging Kelly by the feet. She was tied up, her dress ripped and her legs grazed. He left her in the middle of the floor. Kelly looked up at Mat, her eyes round and frightened. There was a cream-coloured gag wrapped around her mouth. She tried to speak, but all that came out was furious hissing and grunting.

  ‘Leave us,’ Donna told Big-Nose. ‘Don’t touch her,’ she added to Mat.

  She stalked around the desk, holding the tiki in her bloodless hands.

  ‘She’s still alive and if you don’t want to see me correct that oversight, then you’d better do as you’re told. Now, tell me how to make this talisman work!’

  She stopped in front of Mat and glared down at him, her ruined face ablaze with a strange mix of fear and greed. She was much taller than him, and though skinny, he’d already felt her strength.

  Mat looked at Kelly, who shook her head.

  Mat tried to send her a reassuring look with his eyes, then looked back at Donna and nodded. ‘I could show you,’ he offered.

  Donna sneered. ‘No you won’t. I’m not stupid. Tell me.’

  Oh well, worth a try…

  ‘Come on! Puarata is coming. Here! And if you think you’re badly off with me, it will be so much worse with him.’

  Mat heard the fear in her voice. She was literally shaking, her voice becoming shrill.

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like to serve Puarata. You don’t know what he does to me. If you help me, I’ll set you free, set you both free. All your friends. But you have to help me.’

  Her battered face looked suddenly naked, and Mat could read everything about her: the greed for power over others, the desire for money and status and magic, that had led her to Puarata. He read her fall into his grasp, and her hopeless fear that now, there was nothing left but a life of eternal servitude to a pitiless master. And he read her desperate hope that by gaining mastery of the tiki, and the spirit of Wiri, somehow she might win freedom.

  He clenched his right hand into a fist within his pocket, and gouged the biggest nail clipping into the same cuts he’d opened when he last used the tiki. He felt a sting, and the flow of blood. He felt a pulse in his hand, and a slickness flooding his palm, bathing the nail clipping. ‘All you need to do is picture him, and call him by his name, Toa,’ he said to her. ‘And blood. You need your blood on the tiki.’

  Her eyes narrowed, and almost glowed. ‘Blood,’ she purred like a vampire. ‘Blood, of course it would be blood!’ She went around the desk, and opened a drawer. Mat closed his eyes, and concentrated on the nail clipping, and on Donna. He felt that same pale nimbus of light he had used to control Toa at the trial begin to form, but it was smaller, paler. He pulled the rest of the nail clippings into his palm, felt the light strengthen, and go questing outward.

  Donna was cutting her palm, with a silvery knife she’d drawn from a carved leather sheath in her desk drawer. She rubbed the welling blood onto the tiki, her face avid. ‘Toa,’ she crooned. ‘Toa…come to me.’

  Kelly was writhing on the floor, trying to reach Mat. He stepped away from her, so as not to lose concentration.

  His small pulse of power threaded unseen through the air, toward the chanting witch. He could feel the pressure of Donna’s chanting, and the swelling of the aura of the tiki as it prepared to release Wiri, but it was constrained by the fact that he, Mat, was the tiki’s wielder, not the witch. He could allow or refuse it to
happen. But for now he let her pour more energy into the working, let her drain herself. Finally, when he saw her skin go slick and her hands tremble, he released the power in the tiki.

  Donna cried out, a sighing, releasing exclamation almost sensual in its intensity, and she sagged against the desk. Wiri poured slowly from the tiki, a glow, a darkness, a solidifying shadow that painted itself on the air. He was in his feather cloak again, his eyes round and appalled. He flexed immediately to strike, but Donna was faster. She straightened, shrieking a torrent of guttural words. Cords of darkness leapt from the tiki, and wrapped about Wiri, catching his whistling taiaha, snagging his arms and legs. He toppled against the desk, crashing into it. Donna stood above him, her eyes triumphant, her face splitting into a leering, skull-like grin.

  ‘I’ve done it! I’ve done it!’

  Mat struck. Not a blow—it wasn’t violent. It was an infiltration. The nail clippings—these discarded pieces of Donna Kyle—gave him a path into her mind, and just for a second, he was inside her. Even as he felt the nail clippings flare and consume themselves in his hand, he slid past the exultation and the malice, past fleeting memories of a murdered father and a poisonous mother, past a dark, bestial creature that pinned her down in the darkness, to the spark of cold will. He slapped it, stunned it, and felt her howl in dread. Then the link was gone, and he staggered, drained and nauseous. His eyes flickered open.

  Donna’s face had gone momentarily slack, her eyes glazed and her hands limp. Her head turned slowly toward Mat, a look of disbelief on her face, and then she was struggling to regain control. It took her only a second to become aware, but she was already too late.

  The bonds of shadow fell from Wiri like a frayed spiderweb, and he swung the taiaha in a furious arc, bellowing a war cry. Donna’s arms came up to protect her face. The blade of the taiaha passed straight through the tiki to smash into her forearm, and break it with a hideous crack. She screamed and fell, sagging against the desk, fighting for balance. The tiki fell from limp fingers to clatter to the floor. She tried to rally even then, pain-glazed eyes searching the floor for the talisman, but a second blow smashed into the back of her head, slamming her forehead into the desk, and she slid limply to the floor.

  As Mat ran around the desk, he heard the door crash open behind him. He looked up as Big-Nose burst in, a gun in his hand. Others were coming behind him, led by the red-bearded officer who had overseen their capture.

  Wiri leapt the desk and soared to meet them, as Kelly rolled to one side.

  Mat reached under the desk and grabbed the tiki. Donna’s face was bloodied, and blood was seeping through the hair at the back of her head. He had no idea whether she was alive, and cared less. The tiki was warm in his hand, but cooling fast. He straightened to grab his koru knot, one eye on the fight at the door.

  Wiri slammed the point of the taiaha into Big-Nose’s belly, then caught him with a fist under the chin as he doubled over, a blow that made the big man fly backward, arms spreading and legs buckling. Another man came through, levelling a musket. Wiri’s taiaha blurred and knocked the barrel upward even as it fired, and then he kicked the soldier in the stomach. Even as the soldier doubled over, the taiaha cracked down on the back of his head and the soldier flopped limply to the floor. Wiri ducked low, as Red-beard, who had been calling orders from the hall, finally stepped through, his sabre slashing at Wiri’s throat.

  The fight was brief and lightning fast, the blows instinctive. Red-beard slashed twice, fierce slices that would have cut Wiri in two. He ducked the first, and parried the second on the taiaha. The sabre caught in the wooden shaft momentarily, just long enough for Wiri to wrench the taiaha’s pointed hilt around and spear the officer through the stomach. His eyes went round and flat like saucers, and he sagged backward against the door frame, a piteous moaning escaping his mouth. Mat gagged.

  Wiri stepped away, jerking the taiaha from Red-beard’s wound, his face grim. He snatched up Kelly in one movement, slung her over his shoulder fireman-style. Mat looped the koru knot and tiki over his neck and grabbed Donna’s knife and sheath. Then he pulled open the desk drawers, and had just found a bunch of keys, when he heard cars braking hard on the gravel outside, and flung open the curtain. Sleek black shapes slid to a stop on the driveway outside.

  ‘Puarata’s here!’ he yelled.

  Two black BMWs disgorged muscular, dark-suited men. One looked up and saw him, pointing and yelling even as he drew a gun. Mat leapt away, and ran to the other window. His heart sank. The garden was filling with constabulary, the fiery torches they were waving giving their faces a ruddy, demonic glow. He jerked back and ran to join the others at the door, as a bullet shattered the first window and lodged in the wall.

  ‘Out the back!’ he yelled.

  Wiri went first, carrying Kelly, who was struggling furiously. They ran down a corridor leading away from the front, to where it finished in a white door. Mat went last, and locked the heavy wooden door behind him. He shouted ‘Hello!’ along the corridor to his left as Wiri kicked open the white door and leapt through. Mat was about to follow when he heard a weak muffled call in reply. He tore along the corridor, even as windows smashed in the office. There was a door on the right, reinforced with metal, with a heavily barred peep-hole. He pulled it open—Manu and Spriggs were there, tied and gagged—Spriggs was unconscious but Manu was trying to yell around the gag. ‘Mnnhhh—gggrrn…’ His jaw worked frantically, his eyes bulging at the effort.

  Mat looked at the bunch of keys, trying to see which would fit, when the door at the end of the corridor opened, and a soldier stumbled through. Mat threw the keys into the cell then ran, yelping for Wiri.

  He tore around the corner, the soldier right on his back. Wiri was in the corridor holding his patu—the space was too narrow for the taiaha—and Mat ducked and rolled through his friend’s legs. The soldier roared around the corner behind him and met the full force of Wiri’s fist—as his legs splayed forward his head flew back and he slammed into the floor, already out cold. Wiri wrung his fist in pain as he backed up. There was hammering at the office door.

  The white door they had fled through wasn’t the back door, it led to a modern garage, with a gleaming red Toyota RAV4 four-wheel-drive. There was no other exit but the closed metal garage door. Mat whirled to snib the white door locked, then threw open the driver’s door, while Wiri tore at Kelly’s bonds.

  ‘There are no keys in the ignition,’ groaned Mat. Kelly pulled her hands free and tugged at her gag, while Wiri worked her feet free. She pulled it down to her chin, and yelled, ‘Don’t worry, I can start anything. Get my legs free, dammit!’ she screeched at Wiri. He tore the rope away and she leapt past Mat into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Nice wheels,’ snarled Kelly as she peered under the steering column. ‘Being a bitch obviously pays well.’

  Mat suddenly remembered how the two BMWs had spun across the driveway, blocking all exit that way. Maybe there would be enough of a gap to get past? But what if they were still trapped?

  ‘Come on, Mat, get in!’ yelled Kelly, as Wiri ran around to the passenger side. Kelly was bent under the steering wheel, pulling and fiddling with the wires to the ignition. Mat pushed a box against the door, when suddenly a musket ball blasted through the thin door and pinged off the four-wheel-drive. He yelped and backed toward the vehicle, his mind racing. Kelly swore at something, then sat back and pumped her right foot, twisting at the ignition with her right hand. The engine coughed, then roared to life, making the vehicle shudder powerfully.

  ‘Come on, get in!’ yelled Kelly, as she gunned the engine.

  Mat stared at the four-wheel-drive, consumed with a new thought.

  I could—

  ‘Come on!’ Kelly screamed. Wiri was already around at the passenger door, looking across at Mat, his anxiety plain.

  Mat threw open the door to the back seat, and leapt in, but his mind was racing ahead. He pulled his door shut, even as he gripped Donna’s knife and pulled it out.
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  Kelly revved the engine, while she sought the remote control to the garage door. Something slammed against the house door and it rattled, but the box held it shut. Mat opened the palm of his left hand, and slashed it with the knife, yelling as he did so. Wiri looked back at him anxiously. The garage door began to tilt upward. The engine roared. Voices shouted from the house. One sounded familiar, but he blocked that thought out, concentrating on what he was trying to do.

  Mat grabbed at the pendants about his neck with his right hand while smearing blood onto the car seat with his left.

  He felt the power he wanted surge from the talisman in his right hand, rush through his chest and out the other arm, to gush from the wound in his left hand. Blood stained the seat but he didn’t see it—what he saw was light. Power. Energy. It poured out of him, and flowed through the vehicle even as it began to roll forward, even as the gears worked, as Kelly cursed, and Wiri called to him. He threw his mind back, to the sensations he’d felt at Taupo, at the river when the coming of the taniwha had ripped a hole in reality and he’d fallen through, into Aotearoa. He reached for the essence of Aotearoa, his memories of the look of the sky, and the smell of the ferns and the earth, and the taste of the kumara, and the singing of the people of Maungatautari pa. He called wordlessly, inside his mind. And it heard him—he reached for it, and it pulled him, and he pulled at it, and suddenly he felt a burning incandescent connection, and he knew they were there…now.

  The RAV4 roared from the garage, and Kelly spun the wheel to follow the driveway right, realising too late she was accelerating straight into the two BMWs strung across the driveway. She opened her mouth to scream, even as Mat opened his eyes and sagged backward, completely drained, and incredibly peaceful.