by David Hair
Absolute relief swept through Mat, leaving him trembling at the knees.
He’d been lying in thick grass, with hills enclosing either side of the dell. The sun was newly up, shining down the valley and revealing a shadowy path that seemed to climb between two converging ridge lines. The shape of the land reminded him of something, but he wasn’t sure quite what, and his brain was still a little foggy. The air temperature was warm, the grass dewy, and so was his feather cloak. Ngatoro’s taiaha lay beside his hand.
Is this another test? I don’t think I can take another one.
But this situation felt different. For one thing, he could remember all of those sets of differing and contradictory memories he’d experienced in those bars, and he knew that none of them had really happened. And when he recalled the feats he’d performed to escape the creature in the well, he kindled fire on his fingertips, and knew that he had retained all that he had learned. Absurdly, his fingers were itching to paint, to demonstrate those other new skills, too, despite the situation. He felt mentally exhausted, but renewed, topped up on hope and energy. And Riki had made it, too.
Then his exhilaration died, as he remembered that in this quest there could be only one winner. He wished the old tohunga was wrong, but he knew in his heart that that was a forlorn hope. He glanced sideways at his friend, caught something wistful in his face. ‘So,’ he asked, only half-teasing, ‘who did you say you kissed?’
Riki coloured. ‘Uh … Aroha …’
Mat felt his eyebrows shoot up. ‘You what?’
Riki looked flustered, for once. ‘It’s like, uh, we spent a bit of time together, during the tests. She said that unlike the other contenders, she knew nothing about me. It was kind of awkward at first, but once I got her to laugh, we got on like a house on fire.’
She laughed? Mat had never seen Aroha laugh. Her face was born to frown and look serious. He couldn’t even imagine her smiling. But then Riki was the most charming guy he knew. ‘I thought you were still getting over Cassandra?’
Riki went even redder. ‘Yeah, but … It was like years passed, in the tests. Aroha told me that was an illusion, but I’ve lived so many lives this night, man. Cassandra seems like forever ago.’ He looked at Mat. ‘Same for you?’
‘Yeah.’ He thought back to those false memories, and the sad, desperate bars and the girls he adored — Kelly, Lena, Evie — all reduced to such shadows of themselves, in ways that seemed to be his fault. ‘Too many lives, way too many.’
Riki went on talking, more to himself than to Mat. ‘Aroha, man, she’s got this light inside her, inside all the darkness, and when you see it, it’s the most beautiful thing.’ He looked sideways at Mat. ‘I’m jealous, dude.’
There was something in Riki’s voice that made Mat look at him sideways, a shimmer of warning vibrating through him. ‘Are you?’
Riki raised a placating hand. ‘Bro, don’t worry. You think in some of those false lives, I didn’t see myself stab you in the back, and try to take her for myself? That happened, dude, in more of them than I’d care to admit. I’m ashamed it even occurred to me once, but … Anyway, I don’t have the gifts you have. I resented you for it for a while, especially when Damien died and you couldn’t save him, but then I got over it. None of us can be everything we want to be: not even you. Sure, you’ve got all this magic-zap, but you aren’t half as cool as I am,’ he added with a sly grin. ‘Way I see it, we just got to do the best we can with the hand we’ve been dealt.’
Mat felt a welling of emotion inside. ‘You know, I reckon you’re the best lesson of any of these tests.’
Riki smirked. ‘Yeah, let me just burst into a chorus of “Young, Gifted and Black” for your entertainment.’ Then he looked at Mat soberly. ‘Give Aroha a chance, man. That’s all I say. Give her a chance, and it’ll be everything you could want.’
Mat swallowed, nodded reluctantly. ‘You’ve seen sides of her I haven’t,’ he admitted. ‘But I can try.’
‘You should, mate. You really should.’ Riki’s voice took on a reflective quality. ‘You know, I used to think of you as my kid brother, man. You were like smaller and real sensitive, and guys picked on you and all. The number of fights I got into, protecting you. But now, past couple of years I’ve been trailing around after you like you’re the big brother.’
‘How do you feel about that?’ Mat asked tentatively.
‘I’m OK. Really. I haven’t always been, but it’s been mostly fine. Amazing, actually. How can I get hung up on jealousy when I’m seeing a whole other world? It’s been a gift, man. A total buzz.’
‘Even the bits where people are trying to kill us?’
‘Aw man, ’specially those,’ Riki grinned. ‘Thrills and spills, dude. It’s been awesome.’ He set his jaw. ‘But we’re reaching the end now, aren’t we? If we’re properly back together and this ain’t just another test?’
Mat shook his head. ‘I think this is as real as it gets, from now on.’ He stopped: ‘Hey, did you really have to tackle Jonah Lomu?’
Riki smiled broadly. ‘Yep. It was like I was playing opposite him, and he kept on running me over like he was pounding that English fullback into the dirt for that famous try. I’ve never been great on defence, so I just couldn’t stop him, and the crowd and my teamies and the coach were all on my case. And it hurt, man, like I got broken bones and bloodied-up and all.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I just remembered what my dad always said, to not be afraid and go in low and hard, and finally I nailed it. Brother can’t use his legs if you’ve got both his ankles wrapped up, even big Jonah. Same as anyone else.’
‘Awesome.’
‘I reckon,’ Riki smirked, then stood, twirling his taiaha. ‘I’m ready for anything, bro.’
Mat looked up at him, admiringly. I wish I was. ‘Thanks for coming, Riki. I couldn’t have made it without you. Just knowing you were in this too helped drive me on.’
‘Back at ya, Mat.’ Riki looked ahead. ‘So, onward?’
Mat nodded. ‘I suppose.’ He examined his gear, which all seemed basically intact. He particularly looked over the feather cloak, noting that Riki still wore his. ‘Hey, are these working now …?’
Riki shook his head. ‘Nah, sorry. They possibly give a bit more spring in your step when jumping, that’s all.’
Mat sighed. ‘Better than nothing. Hey, I’ve just woken up, so I’ve not had a look around. What have you seen?’
‘Well, I woke up about an hour ago, and I soon figured which way to go — it’s kind of obvious once you see it all. So yeah, I was coming up this path, when I found you asleep. You’re lucky it wasn’t Byron who found you, my man.’ He indicated the sloping path running up the valley. ‘It’s this way.’ He indicated the two ridges, which gently climbed to matching peaks. ‘I’m calling those two hilltops “The Knees”, if you catch my drift.’
Mat looked again, then sucked in a breath. Riki was right: it was as though they were climbing between the calves of some massive giant, who was lying on its back, half submerged in the earth. His imagination filled in the rest. In the legend Maui had passed within Hine-nui-te-po’s body …
He swallowed. ‘I guess we better go that way then.’
Riki touched his shoulder. ‘Yeah, cos look!’
He was staring back down the valley, towards what Mat could just about credit were giant feet, mired in a mountain range far away. But Riki was pointing to a closer spot, perhaps a kilometre below them. At first Mat saw nothing, but then a tiny dot burst from the woods, moving fast. His heart thudded. ‘Byron?’
‘Let’s check.’ Riki had pulled something from his pack.
Mat’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Binoculars?’
‘Hey, I was a boy scout too, briefly. It’s all in the preparation.’ Riki peered through the glasses, then handed them to Mat.
The lens revealed a youth Mat had never seen before, solid but fit, with pale skin and ginger dreadlocks. A Pakeha, or maybe part-Maori, heavily tattooe
d, wearing only a piupiu kilt and carrying a taiaha. He was powering up the slope, running freely. ‘Aroha said there were three others, apart from you and me.’
‘Yeah, she told me that, too,’ Riki said, his eyes misting over.
Mat was about to put the glasses down and suggest they run before this newcomer overtook them, when instead he gripped them tighter and stared.
The dreadlocked youth had suddenly stutter-stepped, stumbled and sprawled. There was now something jutting from his right thigh. An arrow. The young man staggered to his feet, as a dark shape erupted from the bushes beside him. In a flurry of blows, the newcomer dashed Dreadlocks’ taiaha aside with a savagely wielded patu, threw himself on top of his foe, and began to smash his skull in, the body beneath turning scarlet and losing definition.
Then the victor stood and roared, his triumph and fury echoing up the valley.
Byron Kikitoa.
Mat threw Riki the binoculars. ‘Mate, we have got to run like we have never run before.’
Destiny. That was what it felt like, a sound like a chorus of chanting worshippers powering Byron Kikitoa as he sat astride the shattered corpse, his skin slick with his enemy’s blood. He’d known this rival, knew he was strong, a protégé of a rival tohunga makutu. And now, just another stepping stone on the path to ultimate victory.
He’d already seen this moment, in those ghost-lives he’d been forced to endure. Some triumphant, some failures, but always bloody. Even those brief lives where he’d failed and been hunted down, there had been sweet moments: murdering those dearest to Douglas … claiming his other woman, the one-eyed seeress with the potent ancestry, and making her bear his child — yes, even the failures had been punctuated by small victories. But he would not fail. Not with so much at stake. Not when the summit of two worlds beckoned.
The hardest tests had been those in which he was confronted with the limitations of his power. Forced to deal with weakness. Nightmare struggles where it seemed that his foes were stronger than him. Lives where accident or injury had left him less than perfect. Blind or dumb or puny or impotent. Those had been hideous.
But I endured. That which does not destroy you will make you stronger.
He gazed down at his fallen enemy and cried out in victory, revelling in the moment.
Then his savage cry of triumph was cut short. A flash of light, like sunlight on glass, had flared from further up the valley. His newly honed senses told him what he sensed anyway: Matiu Douglas and his boyfriend, whatever his name was, were ahead of him.
How? For a moment his confidence wavered. Then he cleared his mind. The how didn’t matter. What mattered was running them down.
He leapt to his feet and stormed onwards, his mind calculating the distances and trajectories. As he saw Douglas and the other one begin to move, he guessed at their speed and recalculated. Douglas had picked up some extra pace from somewhere —we all will have learned something— but it would not be enough.
I’ll catch them— and I’ll slaughter them.
Drawing on the powers of earth, of wind, and the fiery blood inside him, Byron ran as he had never been able to before, even though he’d routinely outrun professional athletes even before this quest began. The slope was nothing to him, the exertion scarcely enough to make him pant. The other two makutu contenders were dead already; only Douglas and his skinny bum-buddy remained. With a sense of destiny powering him, Byron closed in on his prey.
As the valley narrowed between the two ridges —like thighs— Mat felt despair rise. Every glance behind told him that Byron Kikitoa was running them down relentlessly, far too swiftly for them to reach whatever awaited them when the path ended. They were running hard, and for the first time in his life, he was outpacing Riki, who had always been faster than him. For the first time his powers were in total synergy with his body.
I could make it if I was on my own …
He suppressed the thought with no difficulty. Riki was his friend, and there was no way he would leave him behind to Byron. He didn’t feel even the slightest rancour at the notion. We do this together or—
A new thought struck him, just as their destination came into sight, half a kilometre on. They both involuntarily slowed, staring ahead with wonder and unease.
The valley ended, as they had now come to realize it would, in high cliffs. Those closed in about a small stream that ended only a few metres away, in a deep, dark pool. The rocks were worn smooth by rain, bare of vegetation except for a few small trees. There was a mossy curtain at the point where the two cliffs met, two hundred metres away, and their eyes were drawn inevitably to a narrow, broken crack at the join, just wide enough, maybe, for a man to climb within. It glowed with a fiery energy, like molten lava, whose heat and steam he could feel even at this distance.
This is where Maui stood. This is what he saw …
‘It’s looks just like a … um,’ Riki muttered. ‘You know what.’ He looked profoundly uncomfortable. Then he took a deep breath, shrugged off his pack, and gripped his taiaha. ‘You go on. This is the last place where there is enough room to fight properly with a taiaha. I’ll slow the bastard down for you, give you time to get inside.’
Mat turned to him. ‘No. You can’t do that for me.’
‘It’s OK, man. I’ve already played out this scene, a dozen times. Most of those alternate dream-lives came down to this. I buy you time: it’s what the sidekick does in the end. He gives the hero the chance to win.’ He grimaced. ‘Sometimes I even hurt the bastard.’
Mat shook his own pack off. A thought that had struck him moments ago blossomed into intention. Ever since his dream encounters with Lena and Evie, this notion had been there: it was flawed, possibly fatally so. But it was better than all the other alternatives.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You go on. I’ll stay.’
Riki stared at him. ‘What?’
‘You go. I mean it. I’ve seen the possibilities here, and even if I do reach Aroha, it all ends in misery anyway. Mate, if you can find something in her to love then you deserve this chance, not me.’
‘But … I don’t understand. I can’t even get through that gap. We’ve been told all along that only a tohunga or a demigod has the power to go in there.’ He looked back. ‘Byron’s coming, man: he’s only minutes behind us.’
Mat reached into the nearest bush, a thin and spindly hinau, with only a few buds beginning to form, green and hard as stones. He selected one bud and let energy pulse slowly threw his hands. After a few seconds of concentration, a berry had formed in his fingers, small and dark. He plucked it, and stared into its heart. Although his mind’s eye kept showing him an image of Byron Kikitoa, storming towards them like a hurricane, he forced himself to concentrate, to see into the tiny fruit, and more than that, to see inside himself.
He had no idea what types of power Riki would need, so he put all that he had in the next act. Drawing on the recollection of the dream of Lena in the nightclub, and praying it wasn’t a lie, he did as she had said she had done.
I place all of my powers and knowledge of magic into this berry. Let it be so.
The berry in his hand began to glow, a deep resonant purplish blue.
Riki stared at the berry and then at Mat. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m giving my powers to you.’
‘What?’
‘I learned how during the tests.’ Sort of. ‘Listen, even if I do reach Aroha, it doesn’t work out. We just don’t have a connection. You can’t force what isn’t there. And the child that results — the world that results — is all wrong. It’s bleak and sad and lifeless. But you tell me you made her laugh! That’s more than I ever could. She’s waiting for you. You, not me.’
‘I can’t. We’ll fight him together, then—’
‘We’ll lose. He’s too strong, we both know that. I’ll slow him down at best. Please: eat this and go!’ Mat thrust the glowing berry into Riki’s hand. In the distance, Byron shouted a challenge. He was barely a minute away. ‘Take it
!’
Riki took the berry, his face a picture of misery. He brought the berry to his lips, and his eyes met Mat’s. ‘OK. Good luck, kemosabe.’ He bit the berry, and his eyes widened. He swallowed and stared. Mat could see the effect immediately, even as his own senses dimmed. A feeling like being drained of blood struck him, or turning slowly blind and deaf at once.
‘Wow, is this how you feel normally? This is amazing, bro.’ Riki gasped. He kindled flame on his fingertips, then doused it, eyes wide. He was literally bursting with light and energy. But they were out of time. Byron appeared over the final rise and tore toward them.
Riki straightened, gripping Mat’s shoulder. ‘Mat, I love you, mate. I will do what is right. And you: fight hard. And if you can: live.’
Mat looked back at him, feeling empty, hollowed-out … and utterly at peace with himself for the first time since the death of Puarata, more than two years ago. ‘Go.’
Riki lifted his clenched fist, touched it to Mat’s. ‘Bay boys go hard.’
‘Bay boys go hard,’ Mat replied automatically.
Riki blinked savagely, wiped his eyes then turned, and with dazzling speed tore away, up the final stretch of the valley toward the cleft.
‘Go hard, brother,’ Mat whispered after him. Then he gripped his taiaha and turned to face the onrushing Byron Kikitoa.
Hataitai ridge
Evie stood shivering behind a farm shed, just below the rim of the Hataitai ridge. Not far from her, Wiri was talking in urgent tones to Fitzy the turehu, who was in his dog form, trying to pick up Kiki’s scent. They were in Aotearoa, and the storm was finally passing. From her vantage, facing across the harbour, she could see white-headed waves streaming north. She was huddled in her jacket, grateful for its warmth, and even this small shelter. But she was far from comfortable, and filled with anxiety.
In modern New Zealand, Hataitai was a well-to-do suburb, but in Aotearoa this area was still largely farmland, with the encroaching urban housing still several hundred metres away in Melrose, overlooking Oriental Bay. She could only make the houses out as pale spots against the dark bulk of the hills. Closer to hand, there was a string of lights, lamps of the searchers spread out across the ridge: men of the Colonial Constabulary, clutching their muskets and searching the hilltop for a person they no doubt dreaded finding.