by David Hair
But are we right? Is this the place Kiki is coming to?
They’d come here as swiftly as they could, once they guessed at what was planned. Kiki is going to rouse the dead taniwha. That would cause damage enough, but Wiri believed it would also bring another taniwha here, the living one that dwelt in the straits. In this world, that will cause damage enough, but Wiri believes that our world will be endangered also.
The two worlds were linked, Wiri said. What impacted one, affected the other. So a massive taniwha being roused here in Aotearoa would cause devastation in the modern world, too. Earthquakes and tidal waves. Images of the earthquakes in Christchurch kept replaying in her mind, and translating themselves to Wellington. Buildings collapsing all through the city, steel and glass raining down, crushing people by the thousand … and then the waves sweeping in, like that awful tsunami in Japan.
They’d been up here an hour or more, and there was still no sign of the tohunga makutu, not since he’d last been seen at the old Government Buildings. Evie was wringing her hands in worry. At any moment disaster might strike. There had been no time to attempt any kind of mass evacuation, much less to use what contacts the Dead Premiers had to try to prepare the real world for such an event. They had to find Kiki, and soon.
‘Everalda?’ Wiri joined her, his handsome face anxious. The ‘moment’ they’d had at the library rushed back to haunt her, although now she couldn’t think what had come over her, and just the embarrassment remained. ‘Anything?’
Even her tarot skills were hampered here: it was too windy to spread the cards. She’d been improvising, separating the Major Arcana cards from her tarot and drawing them singly, trying to interpret them in the context of what was happening. Their news wasn’t good: The Tower, The Devil, Death and The Moon were constantly cropping up — cards that presaged major change. They frightened her.
‘Nothing, just this constant increase in the tension.’ Her blind eye was throbbing again, so much that it felt like it must surely be puffing up like a beach-ball, though touching it told her it wasn’t. ‘But—’ She stopped suddenly, then gripped the wall in fright. ‘Listen! Do you hear that?’
They both froze, staring out into the night, straining their ears. Trying to hear beneath the whistling of the wind, the crack of waves on the shore below, and the distant roll of the thunder. At first she thought she must have imagined it, conjured the sound from her fears, but then Wiri’s eyes widened, and she knew that he had heard it, too.
Music. Flute music, soft but sure, swirling about them in snatches, a simple four-note refrain that was wrapping itself around her, sinking into her skin. It had a nagging quality, tugging at her bones, urging her to stop and listen, to open her eyes—to wake up.
Oh no. He’s started.
‘Where’s it coming from?’ Wiri stepped away from the building, and stared out into the night. He looked about him wildly, as the winds snatched at the sound. ‘I can’t—!’ He threw her a look, made a gesture that probably meant ‘stay there’, and ran off into the night, shouting at the lines of men and their lanterns. She was left alone, feeling helpless and useless.
Then a hand gripped her arm, and she almost screamed.
‘You are Everalda.’
It was a statement, not a question. Evie nodded mutely, her heart still pounding.
The man who had appeared beside her was ancient but erect, a shock of white hair on his head, his face deep brown and lined with moko. His eyes were unflinching, full of the steel of lifetimes of self-discipline. She’d never met him before, but she knew him instinctively.
‘Ngatoro-i-rangi?’ she squeaked.
‘I need you,’ the old tohunga said in his iron voice. ‘Come.’ He didn’t move, though; not physically. He closed his eyes in concentration and energy pulsed, flooding over them both, and the world moved instead. She’d done this before with Mat, the shift between worlds, but this took much longer. Not, she sensed, because Ngatoro could not shift so swiftly, but the opposite: he had the strength to draw out the process. As the darkness shivered and shifted around them, he opened his eyes again, meeting hers.
‘You are looking in the wrong world, Everalda van Zelle. Kiki is in your world, playing his flute. We must confront him there.’
‘Shouldn’t we bring Wiri and the soldiers?’
He shook his head. ‘They would only get in the way. Kiki has begun, and only a magician like you or me can do what is needed now.’ He regarded her, frowning, as the hazy light about them shifted. She felt a sense of movement, as though they were moving not just between worlds, but also in location within their destination, something she’d not known to be possible. ‘When we emerge, we will be detected, and he will assail us immediately. Do you know how ancient tohunga fight, Everalda?’
She shook her head, her mouth going dry.
‘Kiki and I are almost invulnerable, but there are ways to kill even such as we. I will call upon Hine-nui-te-po, the Death Queen, to send her wairau — her spirit. It is a seldom-used spell, as it has great risk to the caster, but only such a spell can kill Kiki for good. The wairau will manifest as a being of simple and deadly efficiency, with only one purpose: to take the life of all present but the last survivor.’
Evie swallowed. ‘What will it look like?’
‘It is invisible to those without the power you or I have. A normal human would only see two old men babbling at each other, but you will see it clearly. A shape like a shadow. Whoever it touches will die. A death wairau can only be kept at bay through invocations, repeated every few seconds. It is a simple being, and cannot strike one who is praying to Hine-nui-te-po, whose spirit it was born of. But falter, or misspeak the incantation, and it is no longer repelled. The food in your belly will turn to poison, and your heart will stop.’
Evie remembered puzzling over old legends of mystical battles between tohunga that had made no sense to her, in which they fasted and chanted spells until one misspoke and died: no doubt the storyteller had not been able to perceive the deathwairau. She shuddered. ‘What can I do?’
He met her eyes. ‘I am old, Everalda. Far too old to face Kiki alone and prevail.’
‘But Wiri and the soldiers could—’
‘Get in our way, distract us both fatally, die uselessly, and add nothing to our chance of victory,’ the old tohunga replied flatly. He gripped her bicep. ‘I need you with me, to bear me up, and to take over if I fail. But know this: you will be as vulnerable as I.’ He gripped her tighter. ‘Will you do this, daughter of Puarata? Will you stand by me?’ There was something resonant in his words, as if this were a question he had been waiting a long time to ask.
There was no doubt in her mind: she was too far into this maze to back out now, and she would never run and hide, when hope remained. ‘Yes. I will.’
A brief smile creased his mouth. ‘Thank you, daughter of Puarata. I understand the sacrifices you are making, and the legacy you are fighting. Have faith in yourself, and we will prevail, child.’
She could hear the timbre of doubt in his words. The numbers don’t add … he says only one will survive … and there are two of us. But he’s trying anyway. Somehow, that he was willing to try gave her the courage to do the same.
‘These are the words you must repeat, child. I will be saying them in my tongue, but you may use your own: the death wairau will understand. You must say this: I am Everalda, a child of Hine-nui-te-po. Touch me not. That phrase will convince it not to harm you, but only for a few seconds before it forgets you have spoken and comes again. Then the phrase must be repeated. Say it aloud, now.’
She did so, hesitantly at first, then more fluently.
Ngatoro nodded approvingly. ‘With these words, you repel the spirit and send it back at Kiki. He must in turn send it against us again, or it will take him instead.’
She took that in. ‘OK, sounds simple.’
‘It will not be simple, child. The wairau will take forms to terrify you, and the stress of its regard would be enough t
o freeze a strong man’s tongue. But with courage, you will manage. Remember, Kiki is an old man also, like me. He cannot manage to sustain such forces for long, any more than I.’
She gulped. He squeezed her hand. ‘Courage, child. I am about to complete the journey.’
The night swirled around them, colours flashed, and they were suddenly standing in the middle of a football pitch, on flatlands with hills on two sides. A dimly seen changing room was on their right, goal posts dimly visible as the sky lightened. Dawn was coming, and the storm had almost gone, the last stinging drops of rain sleeting down about them. The ground was spongy, and the southerly slapped Evie’s skin as she blinked and looked about her.
The flute was louder here, and even as they got their bearings the ground suddenly heaved, shaking so much that Evie stumbled. For a panicked moment, it seemed they might be too late. Then Ngatoro shouted a challenge that rang out in the pre-dawn light. ‘Kiki Who Withers Trees! It is I, Ngatoro-i-rangi! Face me, or die!’
A dark, hunched shape stood in the centre of the football pitch, facing the hill to the north — the Hataitai ridge. It shifted, and a low hiss sounded. The flute music stopped abruptly, and so did the shaking of the ground, just when it seemed it might keep going.
‘Must I be confronted at every turn?’ Kiki’s voice rumbled across the pitch toward them. ‘Byron is coming, Ngatoro. You should be running and hiding!’
‘Better to die fighting than as a rat in a hole, Kiki my enemy.’ Ngatoro hammered his staff into the ground, and shouted aloud. Darkness swirled about them, and, just as Ngatoro had predicted, something formed in the air between them. It was darker than night, as if a tiny black hole in space had come into being, swirling and pulling at her, not physically, but in some way that her mind and her spirit could sense. The death wairau. She began to speak instantly:
‘I am Everalda, a child of Hine-nui-te-po. Touch me not. I am Everalda, a child of Hine-nui-te-po. Touch me not.’
Alongside her, Ngatoro also spoke, a stream of Maori words that mirrored her own flow. Almost immediately she heard some variant from Kiki, croaked into the night, sending the spirit back at them. For a few seconds everything seemed fine, but she could see the darkness bunching, the shape of it growing clearer. There were eyes, vile and ancient, studying her, crawling over her skin as tangibly as spider legs, and the air grew thinner. Her throat began to tighten as she babbled, desperately trying to avoid a slip, as the darkness began to flow toward all three protagonists at once.
‘I am Everalda, a child of Hine-nui-te-po. Touch me not.’
Ngatoro planted his feet, clinging to his staff, his voice strong, but she could sense him swaying slightly as the death spirit began to take form before him. Evie could not spare him even a glance, because a face was forming out of the darkness before her, with glittering eyes full of malice. Her father: Puarata.
He was speaking, hissing imprecations, accusing her of all manner of evils. She blanked him. She’d never known him, never wanted to. ‘I am Everalda, a child of Hine-nui-te-po. Touch me not.’ The darkness recoiled, snarling.
She pulled a card from her Major Arcana. The World, signifying success, completion, even eternal life. It hung in the air, and slowly turned to face Kiki and the death wairau.
The death spirit surged towards her again, wearing her mother’s face, pale and vengeful, spitting hatred and contempt. ‘Weakling! Betrayer! You know what you are! You sacrificed me for your ambitions!’
Donna died saving me. It was her choice to come. She lifted her head proudly at her memory. ‘I am Everalda, a child of Hine-nui-te-po. Touch me not.’
The wairau drew back again, snarling, hiding its face. When it came back next, it was as the first of her two brief love affairs, the man who had taken her virginity, then dumped her. But he’d meant little to her then, and less now. The second one, a British tourist, had meant more, but even then she had enough emotional distance that nothing the wairau said could get through.
Beside her she sensed strain in Ngatoro’s voice, could feel his hand on her shoulder shaking, uncontrollably. That threw more fear into her than anything the spirit had engendered so far. ‘I am Everalda, a child of Hine-nui-te-po. Touch me not.’
She drew The Star from her tarot deck and hung it in the air. Faith. Inspiration. The mixing of the past and future. It shone brightly above her. She felt the wairau recoil from it.
It tried mimicking her birth parents, barraging her with lines from old arguments, accusing her of all manner of false things. It even tried Mat, but she was reconciled even to his fate, now.
‘I am Everalda, a child of Hine-nui-te-po. Touch me not.’
She began to feel some degree of confidence.
Then beside her, Ngatoro coughed, his old form unable to take the strain of the contest any longer, and the phrase on his lips choked into silence.
Like a cobra striking, the wairau enveloped him, while the latest visage to confront her; that of Kelly, Wiri’s wife, accusing her of trying steal her husband, went silent and watched her with burning intensity, waiting for her to falter, too, in shock. She almost did, the words all but tripping, her mouth so dry she could barely speak.
‘I am Everalda, a child of Hine-nui-te-po. Touch me not.’
Beside her, the darkness receded from Ngatoro, who slumped then fell on his face, right at her feet. Her heart thudded so hard she thought she might be going into seizure. Her terror returned fivefold, as the wairau became Byron Kikitoa, telling her with hideous relish what he would do to her body and soul on his return to Earth. This time she couldn’t ignore the words, and for a few seconds was speaking her incantation by rote. And worse, through the darkness Kiki himself was advancing, forcing her to speak more swiftly as the wairau bounced between them, so that her invocation had to be renewed faster and faster and faster.
‘I am Everalda, a child of Hine-nui-te-po. Touch me not. I am Everalda, a child of Hine-nui-te-po. Touch me not …’
Something had to give, because she couldn’t keep this up much longer. With supreme concentration she kept speaking, as the wairau hunched over her, like a giant mantis or a spider, waiting to spring while assaulting her senses with a dreadful stench, hissing abuse at the way she looked and smelt and walked and dressed and anything else it could conceive of.
‘I am Everalda … a child of Hine-nui-te-po … Touch me not!’
She was on the edge of her endurance now, the stress wearing her down. In desperation she drew another card, knew it would be the final one she could manage. The terrifying thing was that her utmost concentration had to go into the incantation: she could spare nothing to guide her tarot.
She drew the card blind, completely ignorant of what she had brought into play.
It was Wheel of Fortune. The card of destiny, of luck, of unexpected gain — or loss.
Her words stumbled, and the wairau struck.
Death Goddess
Byron Kikitoa tossed aside his archery gear and his pack. He looked older and stronger, towering above Mat as he preened and flexed.
After a moment of thought, Mat elected to keep his feathercloak on, as it still bestowed a certain lightness of feet, even if it might hamper his fighting. Mobility, more than the ability to produce the full range of blows, might be what prolonged this fight, and give Riki the chance he needed. He threw one last glance over his shoulder at his friend’s shrinking form, haring along the path toward the cleft at the end of the valley, then faced his foe.
His mind was utterly free of doubt. This was the right thing to do. The only thing. He recalled something else Ngatoro had told him: ‘In the end, we are only caretakers, handing down this world to the next generation. We should seek only to enhance that legacy.’ That would be his goal. His sacrifice.
So, I really was just the sidekick after all.
Mat felt only amused pride in that.
He plucked a feather from his ragged cloak, and laid it on the ground before him. Words he’d learned by rote in Maori Studies,
a formal challenge to a guest arriving at a marae, poured from his lips. He threw himself into it; let his anger at Byron Kikitoa and Kiki and all they represented be translated into the passion of word and dance. The taiaha swirled in his grip, the rhythm laid down by slapping feet and smacking his hand against his thigh, each thrust with weapon and fist laying down the threat of death to any who came with dishonour in their hearts. When he finished, he was crouched over the feather, the peace offering, his head twisted sideways, with his tongue protruding, and his weapon gripped ready to give battle. He crabbed backwards, allowing Byron the right to take up the peace offering, knowing he wouldn’t.
Byron shed his own cloak, his expression steely, relentless. ‘I spit on your challenge, Douglas.’ His voice revealed his full contempt for tradition and protocol; he existed only for the kill. He slid his hands through the wrist bands of two bone patu. Their edges were as sharp as razor’s edges. He went into an elaborate tracery of movements, deft and deadly, an almost hypnotic display, then closed in. ‘Where’s your friend? Crying behind a boulder, unable to watch?’
Let him think that.
But Byron stopped and looked past Mat into the middle distance, towards the cleft. He saw Riki’s retreating form and sneered. ‘What’s that fool doing? Does he think to reach Aroha himself?’ Byron spat dismissively. ‘He has not the capacity.’
Let him think that, also.
Mat inched forward towards the swirling pattern of Byron’s weapons. Although he wished he could somehow prolong this, he needed to engage Byron’s attention fully, before he thought too hard about what Riki was doing.
So with a shout he leapt at his foe, sweeping his weapon sideways to crack against Byron’s right patu, then using the momentum of the blow to bring the taiaha back to high guard, and send it sweeping downwards towards Byron’s skull.