Magic and Makutu

by David Hair

  Evie shuddered.

  Donna leant back. ‘So, Everalda … to what do I owe this privilege?’

  Evie swallowed a lump in her throat, and collected her thoughts. ‘I’ve done a lot of tarot readings, and I know that there is a crisis coming. It’s almost here. Almost every card I draw is inverted, which indicates its opposite meaning, almost always bad. Inverted Tower. Inverted Empress. Only the really dangerous cards, like Devil and Death and the Ten of Swords remained the right way up.’

  Donna’s gaze remained flat. ‘I’m not a diviner, girl. Your words are just babble to me.’

  ‘It means something terrible is going to happen, unless someone prevents it.’ Evie spread her hands, recalling the spread of the cards. ‘The hero’s quest, for the renewal of the land, is coming. Mat has to go to Hine-nui-te-po, or Byron will claim her and another Puarata will be born.’

  That got Donna’s attention: Puarata had been her master, and her lover. She leant forward, listening properly now. ‘Go on.’

  ‘And the Treaty is … still lost.’ Evie didn’t risk telling Donna that it was burned: she didn’t trust her enough to reveal such a dangerous piece of information. ‘Without it, Kiki will claim it null and void and try to trigger war in Aotearoa, and maybe even in this world. And something else is coming … something catastrophic …’

  ‘What’s this to me?’

  Evie had anticipated such a response. She knew what a heartless woman her mother could be. ‘Byron’s been sniffing around my house, and my tarot parlour. He’s hunting me.’

  ‘Of course he is. You’re Puarata’s daughter. Out with the old, in with the new.’

  ‘And you’re content to let him win? And Kiki, too?’

  Donna’s lip curled, revealing the one perfect thing about her: her teeth. ‘Kiki? Don’t mention that ball of dung to me.’

  ‘Why not? He’s going to take everything you and my father had. He’s going to be bigger than either of you. Him and Byron. Soon you and Puarata will just be remembered as the midgets he slapped down as he rose. You’ll just be the carcasses he stepped over on the way to the throne. The losers in the game. If you’re remembered at all.’

  ‘So what? I’m already the loser. And your mighty father is dead.’ Donna’s voice still dripped sarcasm, but Evie could hear a stirring of frustrated fury. ‘Why should I care what happens after I’m gone?’

  ‘But you won’t be gone. You’ll be here, in a cage, right where Kiki can find you.’

  Donna licked her lips, as though they were suddenly dry. ‘He won’t get me alive.’

  ‘Really? How many times have you attempted suicide since February?’

  Donna’s eyes dropped.

  Evie pressed her advantage. ‘Mistress Screw knows what to look out for, doesn’t she? She’s stopped you four times so far this year. I know: I’m a seer, just like you wanted me to be! I know everything that happens.’

  ‘Then why can’t you fix your own fucking problems, instead of coming to me with them?’ Donna was leaning forward now, teeth bared.

  Evie saw Mistress Screw unfold her arms, her eyes narrowing. She put up a placating hand, and the burly guard paused, watching them intently. ‘Because I need what you are.’

  ‘You need “what I am”?’ Donna folded her arms stiffly. ‘So you are my daughter after all: a user of others. You want me to fight whatever Kiki has lined up, yes?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Your cards told you this? How does it feel to play God, daughter?’

  ‘I saw something in it for you,’ Evie said softly.

  ‘Really?’ Donna sneered. ‘Gold? Frankincense? Myrrh? Or a bucket of AB-negative? Come on: tempt me.’

  ‘I saw a chance of redemption.’

  Donna went still.

  ‘I saw that if you help me, there will be an opportunity for you to find peace.’

  Evie watched her mother’s fingers quiver. Her eyes had a sudden liquid glow to them. ‘Peace.’ Donna’s voice cracked a little. ‘What would you know about peace, girl?’

  ‘Not much,’ Evie replied, her own bitterness rising to the surface. ‘Not since my mother poked out my left eye, and left me with visions that drove me to the edge of insanity. But I take things a day at a time.’

  They stared into each other’s faces. Slowly, Evie drew the card from her pocket, and slid it across the table. Donna’s hand blurred, and her fingers locked on Evie’s. They were cold, and bony as a skeleton. Evie couldn’t pull away for fear that her own fingers would be broken. Donna’s grip was so icy it felt as though their skin would adhere. ‘Everalda,’ the witch whispered. ‘I can see your father in your face.’

  Evie shook her head. ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘You’re still in love with the Douglas boy, aren’t you?’

  Denying it was futile. Evie nodded once. Love seemed too mild a word, some days. She wanted to seize him, pin him down, and make him love her. That was on her worst days. On the good days, she was merely filled with a hopeless, soul-draining longing to see his face, his shy smile, and warm eyes. To be near his warmth and soak it up.

  Donna’s eyes were full of knowing contempt. ‘He’s too good for you, you know that? Too nice. Blood will out, and you’ve got mine. You’ll be the death of him.’

  Evie jerked her hand away, panting.

  Donna flipped over the card, studied it and frowned. ‘What is this?’ The reverse of the card was brown with Magic: The Gathering printed on it. She turned it over again and looked at the front. ‘A “Voltaic Key”? “Untap target artefact”?’ She shook her head. ‘What is the point of this rubbish?’

  ‘It’s a card from a game. Millions of people play it, all over the world. I’ve been experimenting with game cards: they’re not like tarot cards, which have centuries of genuine belief infused into them, but I can make some of the minor gaming cards do the things they can do in the game.’

  Donna read aloud the quote on the card: ‘The key did not work on a single lock, yet it opened many doors.’

  ‘It will open your cell door for you, if you press it to the lock.’

  Donna dropped the card as though it had burned her. ‘I don’t want this. Take it back.’

  Evie shook her head firmly. She needed her mother to have that key. ‘Keep it. You’ll know when you need to use it. Then come to me, as swiftly as you can.’ She stood.

  ‘You forget: I turned myself in. I want to be in here.’ Donna glared at her. ‘I’ll tear it in half.’

  ‘Please don’t. I’d only have to bring you another. Please, Mother.’

  They shared one last look, and then the bell rang. There was nothing else she could say. Part of her never wanted to see this woman again. She’d been a blight on her life. But another part wanted to heal her, somehow. She gave birth to me. But what’s that mean, in the end? What’s it worth?

  She had no idea. The last thing she saw of her mother was her livid white face as Mistress Screw manhandled her away. Leaving the prison was a dizzying feeling, like emerging from a long tunnel into fresh air. She hoped she’d never, ever have to visit one again.

  Clouds were rolling and tumbling above, and the wind smelt of the sea, borne up from Porirua Harbour. In theory she had a day to kill, before her flight home. But she suspected that she wouldn’t be taking that flight. Her last reading, performed just before she came here, had told her that time was running out.

  It’s all about to start …

  Dead Premiers

  Mat and Tama Douglas strode down the short path to the old Government Buildings, just as the rain started. They passed a black metal statue of New Zealand’s prime minister during the World War Two, Peter Fraser, a balding man in a raincoat, forever hurrying in the opposite direction. Tama’s grandfather had fought in the famous Maori Battalion, and Tama made a casual salute to the statue in passing. ‘Good man, that.’

  Mat hoped he’d still think so by the day’s end.

  It was Wednesday morning. Most of the Napier boys were
still at the universities, including Riki, but Mat had seen what he needed to, and the rest of the week was free time. Tama and Colleen were planning to drive back to Hawke’s Bay on Friday. Colleen wanted to do more thesis research, and she had promised to make a start on drawing up a mock Treaty. She’d just parted with them to go to the National Archives. Mat and Tama had a related errand, although he’d not actually fully briefed his father on the nature of it.

  Because I don’t want to freak him out completely.

  The old Government Buildings had been right on the shoreline when built, but were now several blocks inland, as more and more land had been reclaimed since their building in 1876. It was modelled on an Italian palace, but built in timber instead of stone. At the time that had been to save costs, the Government being sensitive to charges of being extravagant, but looking back it was a good thing: the timber stood up to earthquakes far better than stone or brick would have, and Wellington was built on a major fault-line. The result was one of the largest all-wood buildings in the world and, compared to the metal and glass of the Lambton Quay towers, the white-painted edifice before them was far more pleasing, at least to Mat’s eye.

  They passed plaques which proclaimed that this was the Victoria University Law Faculty. Tama patted them approvingly. ‘So, you do want to check out the Law Department?’ he said in a hopeful voice.

  Ah, not exactly.

  ‘I’ve managed to get us an appointment upstairs, Dad.’ It had taken some doing. After visiting Katherine Mansfield House the day before, he had left Mum in the café and made a clandestine trip to Aotearoa to set up this meeting. It was the first time in his life that he’d used his own name to open doors, trading on his victory over Puarata. It was an odd feeling that he wasn’t at all comfortable with.

  My name is Matiu Douglas. Yes, that one.

  He’d not been sure the steely-eyed bureaucrat at the desk would allow it, but he had, even at this short notice. The same man awaited them now, at the foot of the suspended spiral staircase. He was clad in an old-fashioned brown three-piece suit, with not a single hair out of place.

  ‘Mr Douglas?’ he enquired crisply as Tama looked about him. Law students were meandering past, looking at the bureaucrat and at Tama and Mat with vague curiosity, as if they sensed something out of place but couldn’t quite put their fingers on it.

  ‘Tama,’ Mat’s father replied, shaking hands with the official. ‘Mr …?’

  ‘Carlisle,’ the official said briskly, in tones that suggested that his name really didn’t matter. He glanced at Mat and nodded shortly, clearly offended that a mere youth could force an entire rescheduling of his day’s plans. ‘They’re waiting upstairs.’ He turned and strode up the stairs, sucking Tama and Mat along in his slipstream.

  Mat felt the shift into Aotearoa as they climbed, though he doubted his father did. Mr Carlisle clearly had a way of opening a gate. The shift was hard to discern, as the building had been beautifully preserved and so little changed. There was a faint dimming of illumination, and the smell changed faintly, from sterility to earthier aromas of leather and tobacco. They climbed past windows, and Mat glimpsed horse-drawn carriages in the courtyard below, which had been a fenced garden when they left. He didn’t think his father noticed.

  ‘It’s good of the dean to see us at this short notice,’ Tama commented to the official as they reached the top of the stairs and turned right, into a corridor running parallel to the front of the building.

  Carlisle raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. Instead he strode to a door on the right, in the centre of the building. ‘They will see you now, gentlemen.’ He held the door open.

  Tama and Mat entered, into a long, narrow room almost entirely filled with a wooden table that could have sat twelve. A sideboard contained a number of opened whisky bottles, in varying stages of emptiness, and several dozen cut-crystal glasses. Cigar smoke hung heavily in the air, which was dim as the curtains were half-closed and the windows grimy. Heat radiated from a cast-iron fireplace with a lion statuette on the mantelpiece above. Half a dozen men were clustered before it, sniggering like schoolboys behind a bike-shed.

  Tama stopped dead in his tracks, and his mouth fell open, as he found himself looking at a balding man in a perfectly cut black suit, who offered his hand. He looked younger than his statue outside.

  ‘Mr Douglas? We’re expecting you. I’m Peter Fraser.’

  If the former prime minister had puffed, he could have blown Tama over. Mat had to physically stop himself from convulsing in laughter at his father’s shock.

  Mat could only name these men because he’d checked them out online the previous evening. The biggest man, physically dominating the room, was Richard Seddon: he was built like a beer brewer, thick-waisted with a grey beard and thinning hair, and a bluff manner as he stepped forward and pumped Tama’s hand. ‘Good show in the trial up north,’ he told Tama. ‘Put one over Grey, eh?’ He chuckled, slapped Tama’s shoulder and poured him a whisky, then offered Mat a glass of water. He looked very much the ‘King Dick’ of repute, hearty and domineering.

  The others were more reserved. Michael Joseph Savage, the Labour prime minister famous for pulling New Zealand through the Depression of the 1930s, was an amiable-looking man, but cautious and appraising in his welcome. Joseph Ward, a burly man with a waxed moustache, looked openly disapproving, and John Ballance, a cautious, thoughtful politician from Seddon’s era, was toying with a chess set on the table and barely looked up. He seemed to be playing against himself. Robert Stout, whose beard reached halfway to his chest, seemed more interested in some ongoing tiff with Seddon than in greeting the visitors.

  Tama’s eyes left the gathering long enough to shoot a peeved look at Mat, then he recovered, accepted the whisky and sat at the table. Each man introduced himself, with little formality, but it was clear that they were keenly interested in what Tama and Mat might have to say, thanks to the briefing Mat had given the official yesterday.

  ‘These are the old Cabinet Rooms, from before the government got too damned big to run,’ Seddon commented. ‘Now they’re spread over half the damned city. My own Cabinet meetings were held here,’ he added proudly.

  Tama looked at him uncertainly. ‘Sir, I think I know where I am, but can you please explain this gathering’s purpose and authority?’

  Seddon guffawed. ‘I wish I could!’ He glanced around the room. ‘We’re the Dead Premiers of New Zealand, and we run the place. Or like to think we do. Truth be told, that cold fish Carlisle outside the door probably has more clout than we do, eh?’

  ‘Hardly,’ Ballance commented.

  ‘We have our place,’ Savage added, looking at Mat through his thick, rimless glasses, and giving a small smile. ‘Don’t give him the impression that he’s wasting his time coming to us, Dick.’

  ‘We’re what passes for Government at this end of the North Island,’ Fraser told them. ‘Us and all those other ghosts haunting Parliament in this world. Do you have any idea how many deceased MPs this country has? Hundreds of them! You can’t move for them over there,’ he said, flipping a thumb out the window towards the Parliament Buildings, dimly visible through the dirty glass. ‘Nothing at all gets done, so it’s left to us if a decision is required.’

  ‘That’s seldom enough,’ Seddon put in. ‘Mostly we just knock back Scotch, smoke Cubans and re-litigate the past.’ He slapped the table with a self-deprecating bark of laughter, then turned to Tama. ‘So, why do you wish to see us?’

  Tama went to speak, then stopped and glared at Mat. ‘Yes, son, why don’t you tell us why we’re here?’ he said pointedly.

  The Dead Premiers smiled, or didn’t, according to their varying senses of humour. They took their seats in a line facing Mat and Tama. Mat took a sip of water to wet his very dry throat, and launched into the little speech he’d been composing in his head all morning. ‘Sirs, we’ve come to you today because of the Treaty of Waitangi.’

  ‘Not that damned thing again,’ Seddon mutter
ed. ‘Hobson botched it: too vague, you see.’

  ‘Well, that’s one school of thought,’ Savage retorted, as several others burst into speech. ‘But—’

  ‘Gentlemen!’ Fraser chided them. ‘Young Master Douglas is here for our aid, not our personal views on the wording of the Treaty.’

  Mat gave him a grateful look, and went on. ‘As you will be aware, the original Treaty document was stolen from Waitangi in February, and was passed into the hands of a tohunga makutu named Kiki, and his apprentice, Byron Kikitoa.’

  ‘The missing league player,’ Seddon noted. Evidently he kept up-to-date with modern events. None of the others seemed to recognize the name. ‘Fine player.’

  ‘Only because he used makutu to help him,’ Mat replied.

  Seddon blinked, then wrinkled his nose. ‘I can’t abide a cheat,’ he growled, nodding to himself. ‘Go on, Master Douglas.’

  ‘Kiki believes that the destruction of the Treaty will reopen the racial wounds of this country, in both worlds. Others think the same. My master, Ngatoro-i-rangi, and others have been trying to regain it. In June we pursued it into the south, where we found that Kiki had traded the Treaty to John Bryce. We arrived too late to prevent Bryce from burning it.’

  The room fell silent. The six Dead Premiers looked from one to the other, the jocular mood of the room fading. This was evidently news to them, as Mat had hoped it would be, because he’d taken pains to ensure that as few people as possible knew that the Treaty had been destroyed. So far as he knew, even Kiki thought that Bryce held it intact, or at worst had hidden it.

  ‘It is burned, you say?’ Ballance asked, his fingers toying with the chess set. ‘Damn Bryce. He was one of Premier Hall’s men,’ he added disdainfully. ‘Not a true gentleman.’

  ‘You are the apprentice of Aethlyn Jones, yes?’ Stout asked. ‘Where is he in all this?’

  Mat swallowed. ‘He’s dead, sir. But Ngatoro-i-rangi is still teaching me.’ The circle of Adepts was small, as was that of the evil warlocks like Kiki. Their names were well-known in Aotearoa.