by Baker Chris
First published in 2006 by Huia Publishers,
39 Pipitea Street, PO Box 17-335,
Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand.
www.huia.co.nz
ISBN: 978-1-86969-468-5
Copyright © Chris Baker 2006
Ebook production 2011 by meBooks
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.
National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Baker, Chris (Christopher Ian)
Shadow waters / Chris Baker.
ISBN 978-1-86969-468-5
NZ823.3—dc 22
Published with the assistance of
For Rose Galvin
Prologue
It was a good spot to lie in the sun. Protected on two sides by a brick wall with heat reflected by the white roughcast of the house, she was high enough to see anything coming. She felt safe there, secure. Now the days were warmer and the sun was climbing higher in the sky, she often brought her kittens – six of them this time – to nestle and knead in her soft fur, and to play with each other. They would leap and wrestle with ferocious squeaks. They stalked one another, and when they rose on their haunches to spring they sometimes fell over. A couple of them had real promise.
They hadn’t been Across the Road yet. That defnitely wasn’t safe. She hadn’t heard any Thunderscreeches for a long time, but that didn’t mean they weren’t waiting to come roaring out of the sun when she was halfway across. She didn’t trust them. Some of them were near the house. They smelled dead, but not in the way that real people did. Real people smelled bad for a while. You couldn’t even eat them. The smell of a dead Thunderscreech just faded away, especially in the winter when it rained a lot.
There was a hole in one of the doors into the house. That was probably a good thing because the door never opened any more, but she was able to get in and out of the hole whenever she wanted. The Snarlyterrors couldn’t get in there either, though sometimes they’d put their heads through and bark. They were stupid. They must know she’d be able to claw them bloody before they thought to pull their heads out backwards and escape. But they always tried to push in, even when they were stuck, and especially when she was raking their faces with her claws.
Inside the house she slept on the couch with her kittens.
Finally she was able to rest there. It had taken ages. Every time she’d started to relax she heard in her head the dreaded cry, ‘Get off the furniture!’ followed by something being hurled. Sometimes it had been soft and just gave her a fright. Sometimes it was hard, and hurt. But she’d had two lots of kittens on the couch, and it smelled of her now. And nobody had thrown anything.
Every day she checked her bowl in the kitchen, but there was never anything in it. No pieces of meat, none of those rattly, crunchy things. Why not? There were no food smells any more either. Maybe it had something to do with that. Anyway, there were plenty of birds. Lots of mice too. She ate them herself and gave them to her kittens to play with. There was never much left of them when they’d flnished. Just some feathers or a tail. They’d throw whatever it was up in the air, pretending it was still alive. They’d growl at each other while they were eating.
Things didn’t change much any more, not like when the two-leggers were around. They were always changing things, lighting flres, digging up the ground, cutting down trees, making funny noises at each other, noises that didn’t really mean anything. Their lives had never made sense. She wondered where they all were. Perhaps they’d gone off to look for food.
1
The Weather String
‘Here we go again!’ cried Kevin. Hoheria was just in time to catch him and lower him to the ground where he lay twitching in the grip of a dream.
‘This isn’t too much for him?’ said Roger who’d been digging sods while Kevin came behind breaking them up with feeble mattock blows. Hoheria was following, chopping Kevin’s efforts into a fine tilth and forming the soil into ridges and furrows ready for planting.
‘Another dream?’ asked Hoheria when Kevin regained consciousness.
He nodded. ‘I don’t know where they’re coming from but they’re driving me batshit. They’re full of these really nasty monsters with hāpuku heads and claws like lobsters.’ He shuddered. ‘I wish I knew what they were.’
Hoheria looked worried. ‘They sound like Ponaturi.’
‘Ponaturi? What’re they?’
‘Sea demons. And I’ve got no idea what they might be doing in your dreams.’ As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, she thought, and took a quick glance at Roger. The sight wasn’t reassuring. Even Kevin was wary of Roger.
He’s a nice guy, thought Hoheria. But he looks dangerous with his long hair and beard, his kilt and black bush-singlet, his bull’s scrotum sporran. He still makes me nervous.
Kevin struggled to his feet and stood swaying. Hoheria helped him to an old gum tree where they sat, leaning against the trunk.
An early spring sou’westerly chilled the South Canterbury air. Streaky clouds marked the pale sky. Roger peered at Kevin. ‘You okay, mate?’ Kevin nodded. Roger looked up and sniffed. ‘At least it’s dry,’ he said. ‘It probably isn’t going to rain.’ Roger was fascinated by the weather. He pronounced every morning on what the day held in store. This morning he’d mounted what he called a ‘weather string’ outside the back door. ‘If string is dry it’s going to rain,’ he’d printed neatly on the cardboard to which the ten-centimetre length of string was attached. ‘If string is wet it’s raining. If horizontal it’s blowing too.’ Kevin had laughed when he saw Roger’s handiwork. ‘I don’t know where we’d be without accurate, high-tech weather prediction,’ he’d said. ‘Traffic couldn’t run. People wouldn’t know whether or not to take their umbrellas.’
Roger had taken the opportunity for one of his rants. ‘There isn’t any bloody traffic. Not too many bloody people either,’ he’d concluded after a five-minute rave about the mutated calicivirus that two years before had wiped out nearly everyone, completely trashing the old society. Marianne, his partner, had heard him shouting, swearing and stamping his feet. Kevin and Hoheria could see she had her work cut out keeping Roger on the rails. ‘Steady on,’ she’d said. ‘It isn’t Kevin’s fault. Don’t take it out on him.’
Later, as they drank cups of limeflower tea and ate roasted barley biscuits, their backs against the mottled, peeling trunk of the old eucalypt, Roger was thoughtful. ‘It’s the Maeroero,’ he finally said. ‘That’s why we’re having to dig this paddock by hand.’
Hoheria looked mystified. ‘You mean those warty little guys in the dreams?’ she said. ‘The ones that lurk in the bushes? What’ve they got to do with anything?’ Her heart sank. And now Ponaturi. Where were they all coming from?
‘The Maeroero run the show now. Nature’s answer to technology.’
‘I still don’t get it.’
‘I was rebuilding a tractor so I could plough this paddock. When I started it up they went bananas. They wrecked my workshop and smashed the tractor to pieces.’ Roger shuddered. ‘They can get right in your head. Make you believe all sorts of shit.’
Hoheria looked at Kevin. ‘Is that right? Can they?’
‘They sure can,’ Kevin said. ‘Sean told me about them when we were riding south. That’s where he is now. Sorting something out with them.’ Kevin ate some more barley cake, washed it down with a swallow of tea, and continued. ‘He told me they were reject fairies, guarding the mauri of the place. I didn’t believe him at first. I thought he’d smoked too much dope. You know, lost a few of his marbles.’ He watched
a small group of starlings pecking insects from the freshly-dug soil. ‘But then I started having the dreams. You and I riding here with Sean, and then him riding on alone. Sean was really worried about meeting the Maeroero. He didn’t know what they wanted. I hope he’s okay.’ He thought for a moment. And now the Ponaturi. They’d best hurry up and find Sean. Maybe he’d have some answers.
Roger packed his pipe with home-grown tobacco and stood to whirl the fire-tin around his head so the rushing air would fan the charcoal into life and let him light a splinter of wood. His pipe ignited, he sat back down and inhaled a ruinous lungful. ‘Tell us about your trip,’ he said to Kevin. ‘Where did you meet up with Sean? How come you’re all together?’ He saw Hoheria flinch at the directness of his queries. ‘No newspapers, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘No telly, no radio. Nothing but talk about each other’s business.’ He gave a bitter chuckle. ‘And how much garden we need to dig to get through the year.’
‘Tell you tonight,’ Kevin said. ‘I’m okay now. We’d better carry on with the digging or we’ll never be finished.’
That night Marianne served up terotero. Hoheria, who had grown up with her grandparents near Ōtautahi, knew what it was. Kevin didn’t. He looked at the stuffed and boiled sheep’s stomach tied with string and sitting on a platter in the middle of the table, beeswax candlelight reflecting off the glossy leaves of the sprig of holly Marianne had attached to the top of the terotero, just for a laugh.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘It’s a local haggis,’ Roger said. ‘Blood pudding. Blood and guts.’ A delicious smell suddenly enveloped the gathering as he carved into the terotero. ‘You can have the first slice. It’ll help you heal.’ Kevin remembered Roger the previous evening butchering a sheep and saving the blood. He’d watched by the light of a candle while Roger sorted through the voluminous grassy guts, extracting organs, turning them inside out, washing them and tossing them into a bucket.
‘Old Chinese saying,’ Roger had said, his plaited beard tucked into his singlet. ‘If it has its back to the sun, you can eat it.’
Kevin tried an experimental nibble. It tasted even better than it smelled. Suddenly he was starving. He took a mouthful.
‘Careful,’ warned Hoheria. ‘It’s very rich. You haven’t been up and about for long. Your tummy mightn’t like it.’
Kevin smiled at her. ‘My tummy loves it,’ he said. ‘The rest of me as well.’ He helped himself to potatoes and winter spinach.
Marianne looked on approvingly. ‘You’ll be back to full strength in no time,’ she said.
After a dessert of preserved quince slices and creamy sheep’s milk they settled back with coffee made from roasted and ground dandelion root, sweetened with mānuka honey. Kevin patted his stomach. ‘I really enjoyed that. Thanks, and especially thanks heaps for looking after us.’
Roger lifted an eyebrow. ‘Even if awful things have happened I’m sure you two are being looked after. The Maeroero must have some plans for you.’
Kevin cleared his throat. ‘I don’t think it is them,’ he said. ‘I don’t trust the little buggers. They feel all wrong, somehow. I just can’t see them doing right by us.’ He looked around the table. ‘I know the Maeroero are in some of the dreams, but not all of them. Sean told me about this taniwha that’s looking after us. Tinirau, his name is. It’s probably him. I hope he’s taking care of Sean.’
‘There’re some taniwha in Lake Tekapo,’ said Marianne. ‘I camped there once in the Old Times and they talked to me. There’s one of them on the front of the house.’ Marianne had painted a serpentine beast that looked like a dragon with fins instead of wings.
Light from a half-moon shone through the window. The two candles flickered and etched dark lines on Roger’s face as he lit his pipe. Marianne sipped her coffee, and they listened to Kevin and Hoheria’s terrible story of the kidnapping by cannibal Skinz, the rape, the stabbing, and the murder.
Later that night Hoheria raised herself on one elbow and spoke to Kevin, his head and shoulders outlined in the moonlight. ‘You’re getting restless, aren’t you? How soon will you be able to move?’
‘Not long now,’ said Kevin. ‘I reckon two or three weeks and I should be okay.’ He pulled Hoheria to him. ‘You know what might speed things up?’
‘Don’t tell me. I’ll try to guess,’ she said, as she wrapped her legs around him, writhed and wriggled till she melted into his embrace and filled his senses with her sweet-smelling velvet softness. Kevin had a fleeting thought that the haggis had a heap of grunt, and next thing he was buried deep inside Hoheria, burning alive in her astonishing heat.
‘Nothing much wrong with you,’ said Hoheria later, when they were lying in one another’s arms, the sweat drying on their cooling bodies.
‘Nor you,’ said Kevin, his voice muffling as he buried his face in Hoheria’s glossy black hair and breathed deeply. A few seconds later he pulled away and looked at the young woman. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘What for?’
‘Sorry for bringing up all that stuff.’
‘Clayton,’ she mused. In the moonlight he saw her looking faraway. Then she focused on him and took his face in both hands.
‘Understand this, Kevin. I loved Clayton. I still love him. I always will. But he’s gone, and I’m with you. You’re warm and alive, I know you love me, and I love you too. I love you to pieces, more than I could ever tell you. But there’ll always be a place in my heart for Clayton.’
Kevin drew back and studied Hoheria, looking from one brown eye to the other. Finally he spoke. ‘You’ve got a big heart, girl. Plenty of room for all of us.’
Hoheria closed her eyes and relaxed into Kevin’s embrace, but when she opened them, Kevin’s eyes had rolled back in his head. She waited till he’d regained consciousness and spoke gently to him.
‘More dreams?’ she asked.
Kevin nodded. ‘Ponaturi. And boy, are they mean little fuckers.’
♦
Next day they finished the digging and planting and, as the last seedling went in the ground with a sprinkle of water from Roger’s jerrycan and a prayer from Hoheria, Kevin felt the restlessness hit him like a blast of Old Time heavy metal. He’d have to get moving, as soon as possible. He thought of Sean and his relentless, single-minded journey south. Riding through rain, riding when hungry. Riding when every scrap of common sense screamed stop! Wearing out horseshoes on the crumbling tarseal. Sleeping night after night on the ground beneath trees and sometimes in barns with soft hay for a mattress. And always the questions, where are we going? and when does this end?
But Kevin missed the movement. He missed sleeping in a different place every night and watching the stars wheel overhead, waking at first light to birdsong and the fresh, clean smells of a new day. He missed the sight of snow-covered mountains in the distance, and riding through native forest and pine plantations. He was starting to miss the adventures too. He laughed to himself at the number of times he’d sworn if he managed to get away he’d stay in one place and not go anywhere, not ever. Well, now he was in one place, and all he wanted to do was get travelling again.
Hoheria guessed his thoughts.
‘You’re ready to move, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘You’ve got the bug now.’ She laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I’m ready to move, too. I mean, I thought I could do without more adventures, but I need them now. And we’ve been here long enough.’ She looked at Kevin in the moonlight. ‘You’re nearly ready. Just a wee bit longer.’
2
Lacebark
Working for a few hours each day as the weather warmed, Kevin soon regained his strength. Every night they sat down to a full meal of what Roger cautiously referred to as ‘peasant food’.
‘He’s used to living by himself,’ Marianne said to the others. ‘If he didn’t have to kill his food before he ate it, he got it out of a can.’
Hoheria laughed. She and Kevin had been helping Roger and Marianne tutor Myfanwy, the youngest girl, as well as workin
g on the spring planting.
‘Don’t worry, mate,’ Hoheria said to Roger one day. ‘You’re all class.’ She suddenly turned serious. ‘Don’t worry about the Maeroero either. Just do what they say. They might be creepy, but they make sense.’ Hoheria thought back to her childhood with her grandparents on the outskirts of Ōtautahi. She had often been mystified by her grandfather’s instructions.
‘The right way isn’t always the easy way,’ he’d said. ‘At least it mightn’t seem like that at first. But in the end it’s easier to do things properly.’
Hoheria remembered learning about the phases of the moon, about companion planting, about composting and mulching and organic methods of gardening. She found Marianne and Roger keen to learn and, as she taught and advised, the lessons from the back-yard garden came flooding back.
‘It mightn’t make sense now, but you never know when it’ll come in handy,’ her grandfather was always saying as he passed on some piece of knowledge about pest control with garlic sprays, or planting African marigolds among the tomatoes.
‘They keep the possums away,’ he’d said.
‘There aren’t any possums around here.’
‘See what I mean.’
But once a possum had come, raiding the apple trees, taking one bite out of each piece of fruit. Her grandfather had trapped the animal and killed it. He’d then burned it and scattered the ashes around the fruit trees and the garden.
‘No more trouble from those fellas,’ he’d said. It was strong magic. Neighbours had suffered regular raids from possums living in the nearby council reserve, but for the rest of the year not a single possum had visited.
Daily Kevin’s mattock swings grew stronger. He was able to walk further and work longer. ‘Occupational therapy,’ said Roger. ‘That’s what they used to call it.’
Hoheria snorted. ‘He’ll get all the exercise he needs being useful around the place.’
Marianne told Roger that perhaps Hoheria was being a little hard on the young man. But she had to admit the regime was working, and inside a month Kevin was able to ride Sofa on short trips, and to keep up nearly a full day’s work beside Roger.