Kokopu Dreams

by Baker Chris

  ‘We’re a family, the three of us,’ she told Marianne. Kevin gave a weak thumbs-up from the bed. ‘I don’t know what happens next but I do know we need to stick with each other. Us three being together is like a second chance — even a third chance — and I don’t think we can afford to let it go. We mightn’t get another.’

  ‘I know you’re right,’ Sean said later when they were alone. ‘We need to stick together.’ Even as he spoke a sick and empty feeling was growing. How could he possibly move on by himself? How could he leave Kevin and Hoheria behind?

  ‘You have to go on ahead,’ Hoheria said. ‘The Maeroero told me last night. Scary, aren’t they? Scary and ugly. But as soon as we can, we’ll come after you. You shouldn’t be hard to find.’ She repeated Kevin’s words. ‘I mean, how many people do you know wearing an eyepatch?’

  Later that day, when Sean checked on Kevin, the young man spoke to him.

  ‘Sorry I doubted you,’ he said. Sean stopped in the doorway and turned back. This was a first.

  ‘Hoheria told me about the Maeroero,’ Kevin said. ‘Marianne too. I see what you mean.’ Sean walked back into the room and sat on the bed.

  ‘So you understand I have to leave?’ he said.

  ‘Sort of. But whatever it is you have to do, I’m with you all the way.’

  Sean smiled. ‘None of us have a clue what’s going to happen and I’ve been scared shitless. But it really helps knowing you believe. Thanks for that.’

  Five days later, relieved to see Kevin sitting up in bed feeding himself, the rents in his swanny sewn up, his saddlebags packed with manuka honey, roasted barley and dried meat, Sean saddled Bojay, mounted and rode off down the drive. Roger, Marianne and their family waved goodbye. Hoheria made no effort to wipe away her tears.

  ‘We’ll find you,’ she called. ‘We’ll start looking in the spring.’

  16

  ONCE AGAIN, Sean was alone. He’d left his family and friends behind. The emptiness was familiar, and so was the feeling of danger ahead, especially when the Maeroero’s arrows directed him inland through Burkes Pass. But to his relief he didn’t have to cross the Mackenzie Country, the place where the Fever started. At the top of the pass another arrow sent him down the Hakataramea Valley. The clear blue cloudless days and chilly nights, creeks full of eels and roadside groves of pines that gave good firewood and a soft bed of needles lent him comfort at least, as he tried to cope with the turmoil in his head. By the time he reached Kohurau, after crossing the Waitaki River on a narrow bridge that felt like it was a hundred years old, he imagined he was ready for whatever the future might bring.

  Sean spent the night at a place called Duntroon, near where the Maerewhenua River joined the Waitaki. He remembered the name ‘Maerewhenua’ from an Old Time dictionary of place names. ‘Land of the strange, wild people’, the dictionary had said, and when he saw the name on a signpost he was filled with alarm.

  He camped under a rock overhang, puzzled at first by the tatters of chain-mesh fencing that were all that remained of a protective cage around the overhang. But as he sat eating eel, unleavened bread and wild honey streaked with propolis, he noticed drawings on the walls illuminated by the firelight. Hunters wielded spears; moa, penguins and giant eels danced and slithered. The drawings were ancient, the place felt churchlike, and that night Sean dreamed again of a little village by the sea. In the morning his plans to follow the river down to the coast were changed yet again by an arrow in the road that sent him along the Maerewhenua River towards the Kakanui Mountains.

  At first he was riding along crumbling tarseal. Oak trees stood bare and bony in the early winter and fallen leaves littered the road. Then with a shimmer and a lurch he was on a narrow winding track threading his way between mahoe and kotukutuku. The day was warmer. Bright sunlight filtered through green leaves and Bojay’s hooves were silent on the spongy ground.

  What? Was he losing his marbles? Sean was just wondering what he might have accidentally eaten when he realised. The Maeroero. Of course. Then everything changed back. The leafy canopy vanished and tarseal scraps clattered underfoot. The temperature dropped. Sean started to breathe out. He was just beginning to relax when they were back in the trees, the tarseal gone. A few more steps — bony oaks — then ancient forest. The changes just kept coming. Sean was almost unhinged by the shifts, in and out of the trees, ducking branches and telling Hamu everything was okay, it wasn’t his fault, he was a good dog.

  Kukupa and brightly coloured kaka, like giant budgies, swooped about Sean as he rode through the trees. At first he couldn’t nail the feeling of familiarity, the sense of déjà vu. But then with a shock he realised he’d already seen the forest, in Cally’s paintings. The knowledge that somehow she’d been here before failed to reassure him.

  He rode all day like that, boiling the billy at what felt like midday. He did his best to flow with the changes — the bare oak branches turning as he watched into the leafy peeling bark limbs and tiny fuchsia dancers of the kotukutuku. It was almost night. He stopped for a meal of hastily gathered acorns by a set of shallow rapids, blackberry and gorse on the banks. When the scene changed to dark waters overhung by trees, a nightmare blackness began simultaneously in the pit of his stomach and in his head. He just couldn’t take any more strangeness. His vision swam and he passed out.

  The fire had burned low when he came to, lying in the frosty grass, Hamu’s whimpers in his ears. He felt like he was dreaming, the forest around him ghostly and unpleasant. A final flicker from the fire reminded him he was frozen so he struggled to his feet and started walking. Bojay followed on the well-marked trail that changed into a narrow gravel road as he climbed. His footsteps crunched when the leaves faded and he had to force himself to take each step.

  To Sean’s relief a half moon rose as they walked in the dark. At least it didn’t change and, after several hours of the shifts, he was finally able to anchor himself as the track threaded through forest one minute — mahoe tree trunks glowing pale in the cold light — and the next minute his boots echoing in clay-sided cuttings. Hamu killed a weasel on the gravel road, the thin and agonised screaming splintering like breaking glass in the night.

  As he climbed it grew colder. Finally he emerged at the top of the pass just as the moon came out from a bank of clouds. Sean looked out over a treeless landscape with deeply etched spurs and gullies and distant peaks. Ice glinted on the grass when he stopped on the roadside for a rest. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, he thought. Maybe he should have stayed below the pass.

  As he sat looking across the sea of hills below everything became darker. Another change, he thought, trees blotting out the moonlight, but it wasn’t. Clouds had covered the sky and sleet started blowing in his face, icy and penetrating. If he didn’t get moving he’d freeze. As he climbed to his feet everything flickered like another change. Maybe it’ll get warmer, he thought, but it started to snow. Get moving, he urged himself, this feels dangerous. He couldn’t stop shivering and Bojay trembled as the temperature dropped. The horse sheltered his head between Sean’s shoulder blades, butting him occasionally and almost sending him sprawling.

  The hypothermia-induced rapture crept up on Sean as he walked downhill. At first he didn’t see the snow-covered slopes on his left, the drops to his right.

  ‘Gotta keep going,’ he said to himself, repeating the phrase over and over. Before long he felt warm and safe. He slowed his pace and marvelled at gently rounded hills and inky gullies below the road.

  The snow was soft when he sat. Kevin would love this, he thought. Snowflakes melted on the sleeve of his swanny, clear in the moonlight. His clothes were wet. He didn’t care. He lay down to rest.

  Bojay and Hamu nudged at the inert shape, but Sean didn’t stir.

  Right on dawn a figure approached Sean’s body. Hamu looked on alarmed while he shook and slapped and finally slung Sean over Bojay who carried the unconscious traveller back to a hut at the Kyeburn Diggings.

  Sean woke w
rapped in blankets next to a stoked-up wood-stove, a pot of stew bubbling.

  ‘I’m Fairgo,’ said the guy. ‘Get yourself around this.’ He helped Sean drink something that fumed in a tin mug. It seared his throat and burned his stomach, and warmed him right through.

  ‘I was dreaming about eels,’ Fairgo said. ‘Flying eels. And suddenly I just had to be out on the road.’ He shook his head. ‘What’ve flying eels got to do with anything?’

  Fairgo was a thirtyish Pakeha man who’d been an unhappy electrician in Otepoti when the Fever took his mostly estranged family With nothing to keep him there, he’d driven off in pursuit of the magic he remembered from holidays with his kids, camped by a stream high in the Kakanui Mountains. He’d found the magic too, but it wasn’t as pleasant as he remembered. He was a prisoner, he told Sean, kept by strange little creatures as if he was some sort of exotic pet.

  ‘What’s with everything changing back and forth?’ Sean asked Fairgo when he had his strength back. Fairgo stopped muttering to himself while he cleaned two rabbits for a stew.

  ‘You mean the Changes?’ Fairgo said. ‘That’s the Maeroero playing with your head.’ He peeled the skin off a rabbit and quartered the carcass. ‘They use the Changes to keep me here.’

  ‘How do they manage that?’

  ‘In the beginning I tried to leave several times. I never got further than a couple of kilometres before they drove me crazy.’ He looked at Sean. ‘Beats me how you got right over the pass.’ Fairgo tossed the rabbit pieces into a pot. Sean could see him thinking while he started on the second rabbit.

  ‘Why would they want to deal to you?’ Fairgo chopped up onions and other vegetables for the stew and added them with salt and a jug of water while the pot sizzled on the woodstove. Delicious smells filled the hut.

  ‘Wouldn’t have a clue, mate.’

  ‘Those little buggers caused the Fever,’ Fairgo said. ‘They got sick of waiting for people to get it right.’ Sean looked at Fairgo, a sudden realisation rising in him.

  ‘They don’t want things to start up again,’ he said.

  ‘Probably not.’

  Sean jumped to his feet, his eyes wide. The past two years started making sense. No wonder everyone was puzzled, from Auntie Mihi to Poutu. No wonder nobody knew what the Maeroero wanted. They didn’t want anything, not for humans anyway. But what was he doing? And what about the dreams?

  That night he woke with a jolt and sat bolt upright under the possum-skin cover. Flying eels? He woke Fairgo on the other side of the hut.

  ‘Tell me about the Maeroero.’ Fairgo’s sleepiness vanished at the excitement in Sean’s voice. He thought for a few moments, then spoke.

  ‘They don’t like hurting things. One of them was eating an apple when he found half a worm. When he realised he’d eaten the other half he started crying. His mates had to help him away.’ Fairgo swung his feet onto the floor and used his flint and steel to light a candle. ‘But they don’t like humans much. They don’t trust us.’

  ‘Do they send you dreams?’

  ‘Never.’

  Tinirau. The taniwha. The Maeroero knew. They wanted to stop him. Sean felt the manaia twitching against his skin. Maybe they saw it as a threat. Perhaps they wanted it. He shook his head. Fairgo was speaking again.

  ‘You know, the little bastards aren’t all that smart. They’ve been studying me but I don’t think they’ve learned a lot. Whatever it is you’re doing, we should be able to figure a way.’

  Sean spent the next day working out a plan.

  ‘We’ll give them what they want,’ he told Fairgo. ‘I guess we’ll be seeing them soon enough.’

  It took him three days in Fairgo’s workshop to copy the manaia, shaping and finishing a piece of pig’s jawbone. They smashed some old bottles for coloured glass jewels and Sean wove a kiekie thong. He tied the new manaia around his neck and picked up the original.

  ‘If you like I’ll wear that,’ Fairgo said.

  ‘They’re here,’ Fairgo said. ‘It’s show time.’ He looked nervous. His hands shook.

  ‘Remember the rules,’ Sean said. ‘They can’t hurt you.’

  ‘Yes they can,’ Fairgo said. ‘They can turn my brains into scrambled eggs. Yours too. Don’t forget it.’

  Sean looked out the open door. Sitting on a log across the yard was a little being, about a metre high, with curly red hair and a high forehead, wearing the hide of some spotted animal. It was the same guy who’d laughed at him. It was Uruao.

  ‘Good luck,’ Sean heard behind him as he stepped out into the wintry sun.

  ‘Long time no see,’ Sean said. Uruao made a noise like a ship sinking, hissing and gurgling with interior explosions. Sean thought he heard ‘Tena koe’ in there somewhere. When Sean sat on another log Fairgo joined him.

  ‘Thanks for the dreams,’ Sean began. Uruao made a rocks-on-the-roof noise.

  ‘He’s saying ‘What dreams?" whispered Fairgo. Then Uruao started a cacophonous humming and to his surprise Sean recognised the tune, an old Peter Tosh song about living right.

  Uruao spoke, a lengthy statement that sounded like a quarry crusher. Sean didn’t understand a single word. Fairgo spoke softly in his ear.

  ‘He didn’t send you anything,’ he said. Uruao made more quarry-crusher noise.

  ‘The Maeroero want to know what the hell you think you’re doing.’ Uruao stood up, adjusted his pelt and held out a hand to Fairgo. He made a car-crash sound. Fairgo whispered again.

  ‘He wants an apple.’ Sean’s mental wheels spun.

  ‘They like apples,’ Fairgo said. ‘Give him one from the bowl on the table. Make a big deal of it.’

  Uruao took the apple, polished it on his hide, and bit into it. He grunted with pleasure. Soon he was down to the core. He popped it in his mouth and started chewing. He was just about to swallow when a thought struck him. Raising a cupped hand, he spat the mouthful into it. After carefully examining the masticated mess, he stirred it with a knobbly forefinger and extracted something that he flicked at Sean. It bounced off his eyepatch and landed in the dust. It was an apple pip. When Sean looked up Uruao was holding out his hand again. Another car-crash noise reverberated and this time Sean understood. He unhooked the manaia from round his neck and handed it to Uruao with a bow and a flourish.

  The Maeroero took the manaia and started to tuck it inside his robe. Then he stopped, sniffed at it and glared at Sean. A growling noise started and two more Maeroero appeared, one wearing a feather cloak and the other a plaid travel rug.

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Fairgo. Uruao hurled the manaia to the ground and Sean had the sudden shocking sense of something diving into his head and rummaging around, flinging thoughts and memories about like so much dirty washing. His eye rolled up till only the white was showing. He passed out and fell forward, Fairgo unconscious beside him.

  It was dusk when the two men came to and helped each other inside. Fairgo lit the stove and put the kettle on to boil. He felt beneath his jumper.

  ‘They got the manaia,’ he said. ‘We didn’t fool them for long.’

  Sean wanted to weep. All that way, all that trouble, the hopes and dreams of all those people. What now?

  He slumped on the stool by the woodstove. Fairgo gave a weak smile and went outside into the fading light, returning with a hand held out to Sean.

  ‘It’s a consolation prize,’ he said. ‘An apple pip and the manaia you made. How’s your head?’ Sean tucked the apple pip into his hatband and put the manaia in his pocket. Fairgo’s eyes were looking in different directions.

  ‘Never mind the scrambled eggs,’ Sean said. ‘I’ve got a major stir-fry in there. But at least we’re still alive.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Fairgo replied. ‘I suppose that’s better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘But not much.’

  A week later Sean left, riding aimlessly down to the Taieri Plains. He felt like he was running on empty. He’d lost everything. He wasn’t even able to console
Fairgo, who’d fallen back into prisoner mode, sitting by the stove all day and staring at nothing. Sean wasn’t even surprised when there were no changes.

  He found people on the Taieri. In a market at Outram he spent the last of his money on a bag of salt, some chickpeas and a packet of tobacco. The folk were lively and hospitable but Sean found the friendliness forced and offensive. He kept moving for something to do, completely without direction. He crossed the Taieri River and found himself in flat country with pines covering hills in the distance. Willows grew in the swampy places and starlings perched in the gum trees, calling to Sean as he rode by unseeing.

  Camped next to a lake with the unlikely name of Waihola, he sat by a driftwood fire, his head in his hands. Maybe he could just swim out into the nor’westerly chop and end it all. Something stirred in his pocket. Bugs, he thought. Could he even be bothered? Listlessly he slipped his hand in, expecting to find a beetle. But there was nothing, only the manaia he’d shaped in Fairgo’s workshop. He pulled it out, intending to throw it into the lake. The kiekie thong looked fresh and green. Coloured glass jewels glowed. He stared at it, and as he gazed laughter started in his head, quietly to begin with, then booming and irresistible. Slowly he got to his feet as the laughter crashed and surged like surf.

  ‘Hamu!’ he called, but the dog was right beside him, panting and eager. ‘Something’s happening!’ Bojay had stopped munching. He put his head up and whinnied. The laughter was outside Sean’s head now, pealing and echoing across the lake. A flock of geese took flight, honking loudly. Ducks flapped and pukeko burst from the raupo. A whirling mass of sparrows gathered. Sean stood on the sand, looking out at the lake, an unbelievable relief growing in him. He felt the manaia hot in his hand as the laughter slowly faded and birds wheeled and soared about him.