by David Hair
He stared at her, searching her face, her eyes, her soul. But she was unreadable. I have no idea what you are going to do. He took a breath, and tried not to call it his last. He could practically feel Tuwai’s breath in his face, could feel the blow poised above him like Damocles’ sword.
Lena opened her mouth to speak, and everyone present held their breath.
20
Lena’s wish
Riki followed the Ponaturi out of the water and into the fog, trying not lose his balance, or make a splash, whilst going fast enough to keep the shadowy sea-fairies in sight in the gathering gloom. That the sun was still up he could only guess from the glow about the fogbank, but as he stepped ashore, he stepped out of the mist. He suddenly felt like a target. Scenes from D-Day movies filled his head, of carnage as men stepping ashore were butchered by machine guns. Damn Saving Private Ryan! He wished he’d never seen the bloody movie. I’ll never be jealous of Mat and his adventures again. If we get out of this…if…
He lost the Ponaturi in the fog as he stumbled ashore, and grabbed Damien’s shoulder. ‘Where are we, man?’ He looked for Cassandra, only exhaling as the girl’s silhouette emerged beside them.
‘Where are we?’ she asked. ‘And what’s that red light?’ She pointed at his chest, where a tiny red dot of light danced erratically.
It reminded him of a sniper movie…
‘Freeze!’ drawled a deep voice. A soldier stepped out of the mist. You could almost laugh; a musket with a laser sight. How American! Except the laser dot was pointing at his heart.
‘What you got, Jefferson?’ said another voice, higher pitched, a little scared and trying to hide it.
An electric torch nearly blinded Riki. ‘Kids!’ spat the first voice—Jefferson’s. ‘Jus’ some damned kids. Shall we kill ’em?’ He lowered the torch, allowing Riki to make out two bulky forms and their raised guns. Pallid shadows ghosted in behind them.
He held his breath, not flinching in case he betrayed his rescuers. Polished bone patu flashed in the remaining light. Cassandra blanched and looked away. The two soldiers crumpled.
Their Ponaturi guides stepped over the fallen foe, and put out their hands for rewards.
Riki tried not to look at the fallen soldiers as he fished out the chocolate, and broke off another row of chocolate. The price of their safety.
They crept along the shoreline, at the fringe of the mist, until they found a small shingled bay, where the rest of the Ponaturi were gathered. They could not have looked more alien as they turned, faces feral, at the sound of their approach. Jones, in the midst of them, cursed silently, his eyes blazing as he saw them. Even Godfrey, a dog again, looked cross.
The Welshman marched up to Riki, who was in the lead, and thrust his face at him. ‘What the HELL are you doing here?’ he hissed, almost beside himself with fury. ‘I told you to stay back! What do you think this is, a GAME?’ He clenched his fists. ‘I don’t have time for this! Now go back!’
Riki drew on every last shred of determination he had. He felt so scared he wanted to be sick, and the thought of more hand-to-hand fighting filled him with nausea. But Mat was out there! ‘Nope. Sorry, old man, we’re in on this.’
‘In it up to the eyeballs,’ Damien added. ‘Try stopping us.’
Cassandra flipped open her laptop. ‘What’s your plan?’ she enquired, as though the deal was already done. A piece fell out of her broken glasses. She had some thing black strapped to the top of her head; some sort of goggles, pushed up onto her brow so she could read. She looked down in annoyance at the laptop, and then returned her attention to Jones, her fingers on the keyboard, like a secretary poised to take dictation.
Jones looked about to burst into apoplexy. But suddenly, a pale blue-pink light peered above the hills to the east, and he whirled. ‘The moon! The moon is rising!’ he spun back towards the teens, and a thousand emotions warred on his face, then he cursed and spat. ‘We’re out of time! Damn you! Then follow me. But stay out of trouble!’
He threw them one last furious look, then stormed back into the knot of Ponaturi gathered about their leader, and he spat out a series of instructions. Piriniha nodded, then growled some thing that made his warriors smile ferally. They looked like the war-band of Tumatauenga, God of War. As one, they raised their weapons in a silent salute or prayer, and then they surged silently along the shore, as a wind slowly rose from the lake, shifting the mist onshore in a rolling wave.
‘So, no plan, huh?’ Cassandra whispered dryly. ‘Boys…’ She flipped the laptop shut with a sigh.
The three teens trailed after the spectral shapes of the Ponaturi war-party along the shore, and the fog swallowed them all.
They had just rounded a bend in the path when a Ponaturi loomed out of the fog, and seized Riki’s shoulder. The warrior put his fingers to his lips, and pointed ahead. They froze, then crept forward slowly. All about them were the other Ponaturi, crouched behind rocks and bushes, facing forward. To the right, the tiny waves of the lake broke against the rocky shore. That shoreline rose to their left, towards a stony lip. Below that lip, light flickered, the yellow-orange of firelight. Patrolling the lip were four men, powerfully built, their long muskets tipped by silvery bayonets. They were restless, looking here and about, but they were distracted too, by whatever was happening below them, where the light came from. They seemed oblivious to the gathering Ponaturi.
Suddenly, a voice rang out from within the fire-lit area below that rim. Mat’s voice.
‘Lena! Lena, this will destroy you! And Tuwai will kill me!’
They all stiffened, and Riki had to fight to prevent himself from sprinting out to the rim to see what was happening. He heard Cassandra and Damien gasp. Then Lena’s voice carried to them, but the words were too low to hear. Other voices replied in similar tones.
I have to go to Mat, was all Riki could think. He rose. Jones seized him, and pulled him back before he lunged into the open. ‘Shhh!’ the Welshman hissed, his whole weight holding Riki back. He was strong, weirdly strong for an old man. Fog billowed out, enveloping the sentries on the rim of the bowl. The Ponaturi rose like vampires from the grave, and became the fog itself.
Lena’s eyes locked on Mat, then flicked to Taylor. Mat glanced up at the soldier, and stiffened. Captain Taylor was gone. It was Tuwai that knelt above him, pinning him to the ground. His massive patu was raised for the killing blow.
Mat looked back at Lena, and saw her decide. Her words carried clear across the bowl—to John Bryce, waiting to assume control; to Donna Kyle above with her warriors; and to Mat, held beneath the guardian, waiting for the killing blow.
‘Let the taniwha become me.’
For an instant, every thing fell still. Bryce frowned, halfway through lifting the braid of hair in his hand. The soldiers looked at each other. It was DJ Sassman that broke the silence. ‘The girl said the wrong thing,’ he whispered. ‘She said the words wrong.’ He sounded puzzled. ‘Weren’t she s’posed to say it the other way round?’ His voice echoed oddly in the gloomy bowl of stone.
‘What have you done?’ Bryce demanded of Lena, his voice apprehensive.
Lena blinked, looking around her wildly, her whole posture changing. Where there had been the schooled posture of the fashion-conscious modern girl, now there was a hunched, wild thing, her arms and legs spreading as if to flee.
Donna Kyle’s harsh laughter rang from above. ‘You fool, Bryce. You left her a way out. You wanted a pliable girl in command of the taniwha. Instead you’ve just got a primitive savage inside the girl’s body. She’s useless to us now! This has all been for nothing, you imbecile!’
Mat barely heard her. He was staring up at Tuwai, who suddenly grinned down at him. ‘The tapu is lifted, poai. The taniwha is free…and so am I.’ His voice held fear and joy in equal measure. He stood, and pulled Mat to his feet. ‘Reinga is calling,’ he said, his head cocked. He handed Mat his patu, and then he was gone, his features fading back to those of Captain Taylor.
; They both blinked at each other in confusion. It was clear Taylor had some dim understanding of what had passed, but in the captain’s disciplined world, these things did not happen. Mat moved first, as Taylor’s bewildered gaze fell upon his own empty hand, and then Mat’s hand, his eyes going wide. Mat followed his gaze, to where Tuwai’s patu had transformed back into Taylor’s pistol.
He jabbed the weapon into Taylor’s face, and raised a finger of his left hand to his lips. The captain went very still. Mat walked slowly round him, trying not to draw attention. But no one was looking at him—all eyes were on Lena, and Bryce.
If Tuwai let me live, then the taniwha is free…but all that was to be seen at the centre of the hollow were Lena, and Bryce gaping stupidly at her.
Mat looked up past them, and sucked in his breath. Fog was rolling down the western wall of the bowl, the wall that kept the lake penned. On the lip of the wall, almost a part of the fog, were a line of savage-looking beings, pale-skinned, near-naked, with long black hair and feral faces, gazing down upon the events below. Amidst them, his disbelieving eyes picked out Riki, Damien and Cassandra. His heart leapt to his mouth.
He glanced at Donna Kyle and her warriors, then at Bryce’s men, but they were oblivious to the newcomers. All were still, poised, as if sucking in one last breath before diving into deep water. All were staring at Lena, and when he followed their gaze, he became as hypnotised as everyone else.
It was as if Lena were slowly turning to glass…no, water! All of the colour in her form was turning to empty transparent fluid. She moved, slowly, raising her arms, looking about her through her hands. She lifted her head, and then some thing laughed through her, channelled its girlish delight through her throat. Some thing old, and wild, and almost free.
Lena, perhaps on Ngatoro’s advice, had out-thought the warlocks. Instead of her soul entering the stone behemoth beneath her feet, she had called the soul trapped within that petrified form into her body. But that soul was NOT, as Donna Kyle supposed, just that of a primitive girl. Just as the body had transformed, so had the spirit animating it. The soul empowering Lena was now the soul of Haumapuhia, and it was both girl and taniwha—the animal-spirit of water and strength and terror, the guardian spirit, the vengeful protector, who might save or destroy.
Yes, she had out-thought them, but at what price…?
She had power now…but what had she lost? Her very self?
Bryce realised, too late, and snatched his gun from his belt. ‘Kill her!’ he bellowed. His men raised guns, but most aimed towards Donna Kyle, thinking her the target of his order. A few saw the white shapes on the western wall, and aimed that way. But most eyes remained on Lena, as she suddenly seemed to implode, a fountain that had been turned off, into water that flowed into the head of the giant stone taniwha.
The spell of stillness was broken, and everyone moved at once.
21
Out of the earth
One of the Ponaturi gestured, and Jones looked at Riki. He touched his lips with a finger, and then crept towards the rim. Riki followed, Damien and Cassandra a second behind him.
Cassandra pocketed her half-smashed glasses and lowered the black goggles over her eyes, making her look oddly insectoid. ‘Night-goggles,’ she murmured in reply to Riki’s questioning look. She pointed away into the darkness. ‘They went that way. Take my hand.’ She grabbed his in her bony grip, and he grabbed Damien, and they crept, hunched over double, through the grey gloom. Cassandra stopped suddenly, grabbed her backpack from Damien’s shoulders, and hefted it onto her own. ‘I’ll take it from here,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll just lose it.’
Suddenly, Ponaturi warriors were all about them. Cassandra gave a sudden whimper, and Riki clamped a hand over her mouth to prevent her from crying out. She had stepped on the prone form of a soldier, his eyes empty and unseeing. Riki held her shaking form close until she subsided, then pulled his hand away.
‘I’m okay,’ she breathed, though she didn’t sound it. She slid around the body, not looking at it, and he followed her, slithering on his belly over the stones until there was nothing in front of him, and he was staring down into a stone hollow, forty feet or more below.
‘Oh, crap,’ breathed Damien beside him.
To their right, a line of Hauhau warriors stood like sentinels about Donna Kyle, all of them looking down. To the left were a handful of Bryce’s men, the rest below in the bowl. They were all looking at Lena, and just as Riki registered her, she spoke aloud, her voice filling the hollow.
‘Let the taniwha become me.’
Huh?
She stood, with her arms raised as if crucified, and he could have sworn, though her face was turned away, that green light was radiating from her eyes. Bryce was a few feet from her, transfixed. Sassman was on the edge of the dell. Then he saw Mat, and wished again he had a gun. His friend was on his back, staring up towards them, then back at Lena. A lean officer was kneeling on his chest, and there was blood on Mat’s hand. He stared…and blinked…and shook his head.
For an instant, it seemed to Riki as if he had seen a Maori chief bending over Mat, inhabiting the same space as the soldier. He blinked again, and shook his head. No, he was an officer…
My eyes are going…He gripped his taiaha impotently, as Donna Kyle laughed, and her taunting voice filled the bowl. ‘You fool, Bryce. You left her a way out. You wanted a pliable girl in command of the taniwha. Instead you’ve just got a primitive savage inside the girl’s body. She’s useless to us now! This has all been for nothing, you imbecile!’ She opened her fist and let the braid of Lena’s hair scatter in the wind, tumbling strands of gold.
As she was talking, Riki noticed the soldier holding Mat pull him to his feet, and hand him his weapon. Mat immediately menaced him with it, then angled around his captive to watch Bryce and Lena. No one else had even seemed to notice. More weirdness.
Then it all got stranger. Lena seemed to change, as if she were turning into glass, her form slowly blurring and becoming translucent, as if she were made of water. He gripped the stone of the rim, scarcely daring to breathe. What the hell is going on?
Bryce raised his pistol, and yelled, ‘Kill her!’ and that was the tipping point. Guns came up on all sides—except theirs—and carnage erupted.
Riki kept his eyes on Lena, so he saw how she seemed to dissolve into the water, which then flowed upwards into the big black rock that lay in the middle of the pool below. He heard Cassandra give a little cry, and pull back from the rim, and then she was flipping open her laptop, which seemed the most stupid response to a gunfight ever. A volley rang out from the south rim, as Donna Kyle’s Maori fired down into the bowl. There were screams, and counter-flashes as Bryce’s men returned fire. The air shimmered about Bryce, and he remained untouched. Behind him, the man Mat was guarding seemed to jerk like a marionette on a string, and then collapse. Mat darted away towards the shadows down the slope. A movement caught Riki’s eye—DJ Sassman, following Mat, raising a gun.
‘Come on!’ he heard himself shout, as he sprang to his feet, and ran for the stairs.
Mat saw Donna’s arm rise and fall. Her men fired first, sending musket balls zipping into the bowl, as the rattle of their guns and the billowing smoke filled the hollow. Taylor spasmed and fell, blood erupting as if from bursting boils in three different parts of his back. None struck Mat behind him. Two other soldiers howled and fell, but Mat didn’t hesitate. He backed two steps, saw John Bryce fire at Donna Kyle while bullets pattered harmlessly about him, then he turned and ran downstream, desperately seeking cover.
He reached the edge of the eastern hollow as dozens of shouts came from all sides, and men leapt from above, screaming battle cries. Above it all he heard Riki’s voice, and turned in sudden fright for his friend’s safety. But before he could react, a dark shape loomed above him, and he found himself staring straight down the barrel of Sassman’s pistol.
The fog flowed down the western cliff and half the Ponaturi did the same, howling a
s they plummeted into the fray. The remainder flung themselves to the right, where Donna Kyle’s Hauhau were turning guns upon them. Riki glimpsed Jones and Godfrey going that way also, Jones firing a massive double-barrelled pistol that bucked in his hand, knocking two Hauhau off their feet just before they could fire, and then the sea-fairies were among the Hauhau, scything at their legs and bringing them down, darting onward. Then light flashed across the fog in the bowl, and what seemed to be a ghostly fire-demon leapt into the fog and roared.
Riki gaped, and then followed a beam of light back up the rim, to where a projector attached to Cassandra’s laptop was beaming the three-dimensional image. The roar of the flame-demon and the crack of its whip resounded through the bowl, and the rest of Bryce’s soldiers wasted their fire upon that image before they realised their mistake. By then, the Ponaturi were among them, with their dizzying speed and brutal bone weapons.
Riki grinned, then ran down the steps, calling for Mat. A soldier, kneeling and firing at Cassandra’s ‘demon’, cursed before turning at the sound of Riki’s voice. He was a professional; he didn’t see a teenager with an antique weapon—he saw an enemy. His musket whipped about to low guard, and the bayonet was thrust at the belly, already jerking about to disembowel.