by Susan Firman
CHAPTER 4
It was Peter’s voice.
“Hello, Jenny. Feelin’ better?”
Jenette opened her eyes and looked around. No, she wasn’t in the dome any more; that was certain.
“Where am I?” She still felt drowsy and a little faint.
“Yer’re in the town hospital.”
“Why?”
She was bewildered. She couldn’t remember arriving. The last thing that had been in her mind was a strange, pulling sensation and the vision of the longboat. She tried to sit up, but slumped back on the pillows.
“Yer’ve had some sort’v turn or shock. Yer fainted,” Peter told her. “Several of uz brought you in here. I’m afraid I wasn’t much help . . . I only know yer first name ‘n’ that yer’re from New Zealand. Don’t worry. Yer’ll be fine.”
“Thanks.”
She attempted a smile.
“Look, I’ve got yer these,” he beamed as he produced a bunch of flowers from behind his back. “They’ll cheer yer up ‘n’ help yer get better.”
“Thanks! They’re great. Beautiful! Oh, Peter, you’re so good to me.” She sat in bed and looked at the flowers for some time. “They’re beautiful!” She looked back at Peter. “I don’t know what came over me. I’ve never done that before. I just don’t . . .”
The door opened and a nurse came into the room.
“Ah, good. I see the young lady is with us again.”
She was petite with a small round nose and lively blue eyes. Her English was remarkably good but she had a faint foreign accent Peter guessed could possibly have been Danish. She certainly was not originally from Norway.
“Look what Pater’s brought me.”
Jenette held the bunch of flowers towards the nurse. She leaned forward and smelt them.
“Lovely. Very nice.” The nurse turned to Peter. “Would you like to find a container for them?” she asked. “You can fill it from the wash-room. The nurse handed the bunch of flowers over to Peter. “We’re keeping you in here for a few days observation,” the nurse said as she re-arranged Jenette’s pillows. She withdrew a notebook from her pocket and thumbed through the pages. “Your friend here tells us you’re from New Zealand. That’s a long way from here.” Jenette nodded and the nurse continued on in her breezy manner, “I’ve heard it’s a lovely place.”
“Sorry to butt in,” said Peter who had the feeling he had been forgotten, “but whar did yer say I could find a container?”
“Oh, sorry. Go down the corridor and it’s the first door on your left. You’ll find containers for flowers in a cupboard there.”
Peter nodded and gave a ‘thumbs-up’ sign. The nurse waited until Peter with the flowers had left the room.
“Jenette Wilkingson?”
Jenette nodded.
“That’s right. ‘Jenette’ without an ‘a’.”
“We have noted that. We’ve contacted the place where you were staying so we have the details off your passport.” The nurse glanced at Jenette’s notes which hung on the foot of her bed. “You seem to have had some sort of nervous upset. We’ve run a few tests and they all came back fine. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.” She patted Jenette reassuringly on her arm. “Now, I’ve just got to ask you a few questions before your friend comes back.”
As Jenette gave the information to the nurse, she made jottings in her notebook. When Peter returned, with the flowers in a vase, Jenette was sitting up. A happy smile spread across her face.
“Good. Yer’re looking brighter every minute,” he quipped.
Peter put the vase on the small table beside her where she could easily see her flowers. Their fragrance was beginning to fill the air around her, a breath of spring inside even though it was so wintery outside.
“The nurse said I’ll be in here for a couple of days. I feel so stupid fainting like that.”
“Don’t worry about it. Cheer up, Jenny! Yer’ll soon be out as fit as a fiddle.”
Jenette was amused at his expression and the way he had said it and it made made her feel better already.
“Thanks, Peter.”
“Look, I’ll pop in each day ‘n’ yer - so don’t think yer’ve been forgotten!”
Jenette stayed in the small town hospital for two endless days, recuperating from her ordeal. Peter kept his word and arrived every visiting time as he had promised. But how time seemed to drag. Minutes crept into sluggish hours, the time between light off and lights on seemed stretched out of proportion. As visiting hour came closer, Jenette would lean back on her pillows, waiting, waiting, waiting. She felt like the family dog watching for the return of its owners - now she knew how Mischief, her own family’s dog must must have felt as he waited for the door of the shed to be unlocked every morning so that he could run free. Mum refused to have him inside as the kids always tried to smuggle him into their beds and then over the next week they would complain of all the flea bites across their tummies and down their legs.
Yes, thought Jenette, it really must be like this every morning for Mischief.
Jenette spent, what seemed like an indeterminable time waiting for the gong to signal visiting time. Until she heard that, there was nothing to do but wait! Look at the ceiling and wait. Look around the walls and wait. Be patient, she told herself but the time slowed down and dragged. It was a reluctant drag on her part. She wished for time to at least stay constant but unfortunately it didn’t and slowly, ever so slowly each minute ticked by. She couldn’t even read any of the magazines to while away the time. Except for an odd advertisement where there was an English word, she could understand nothing.
Jenette’s world at the moment revolved around the timepiece of the hospital - meals, temperature taking, bed making, the coming and going of the nurses. That was her existence. Only Peter’s visits broke the monotony of her day. He sat beside her bed and told her everything that had been going on beyond her hospital room.
Finally, she was allowed to leave. Peter arrived to accompany her out of the building and lead her back into a world where her time perception was now the same as everyone else’s. However, her joy was short lived for, as she and Peter left the hospital grounds, he gave her the bad news that his holiday had come to an end and that within three or four days, he had to catch a flight back to Birmingham Airport.
“There are things we could do together, if you promise me that yer won’t faint on me like that again.”
Peter had gathered some pamphlets for them to look over. For the following few days left, the pair went around together, enjoying each other’s company and coming to the realisation that their time together had been most worthwhile.
Just before he left for the ferry, Peter made sure he had given Jenette all his contact details - home address, phone number, where he worked and a list of names should she not find him straight away. He took note of her itinerary and her flight details and made her promise that she would phone him the minute she got to England.
“Come t’ Brum. Book a flight to Birmingham Airport, Jenette but don’t worry if yer can’t. Heathrow or Stansted’ll be fine. Just contact home and I’ll be there to pick yer up. I promise!”
She laughed.
“I believe you. I’ll promise to do that - when I’ve finished here. I was going on to England afterwards, anyway.”
“’An yer’ll have t’meet me mom. She’s a great cook. Yer’ll get on fine t’gether.”
“I’m sure I will. And if you ever get to New Zealand, you can meet Koro. He gets on with everyone, my koro does.”
Jenette accompanied Peter to the ferry terminal. She insisted on carrying his day bag for him as his large backpack appeared so weighty on his back. As the horn blew and the time for departure arrived, she handed over his bag. As Peter took it from her, her leaned forward and kissed her.
“See yer soon! Ter ra!”
Jenette waved goodbye to the receding vessel until it was only a speck moving out into the fjord. Her shoulder ached and her arm felt as if it were to drop off bu
t she did not care. She was happy and sad at the same time: happy that she’d met such a wonderful young man as Peter Norrich and sad that they’d had such a short time together.
Back in her room at the Inn, Jenette felt empty and lonely. She looked out of the window at the clearing sky. The mountain dominated the scene, broody and foreboding. It stood, silent and severe, austere in character, its snow-covered apex etched in sharp contrast to the pale icy-grey sky that was its backdrop. Jotenfjell, Mountain of Curses. The name fascinated her and she stood watching the low afternoon sun sink down behind her horizon.
As the sun sank from view, mountain and sky changed first to a deep gold-red and then to a deep blue-purple until both mountain and sky became one. Darkness descended, drawing its curtain across her view, and Jenette wondered how such a thing of beauty could have come by such a violent name. Mountain of Curses. Did that mountain have a personality of its own? Ruapehu. That, too, was a mountain, one from her own homeland, and even though it also looked harmless enough, and people played and skied over its slopes, deep down in its unseen core, a god slumbered, sometimes waking to rumble and shake the ground and to belch defiance to the humans who had violated his sacred domain. That mountain, which brought so much fun and excitement for those who went to seek out the snow, was also the culprit for death and destruction. Ruamoko, the god of earthquakes, continually awoke from his sleep in the depths of the earth and threw out ash and rocks on to the land and its people around him. He was someone to be wary of. Mountain of Curses! Maybe, it was the same. Maybe Mountain of Curses, too, had a sleeping giant deep inside. She recalled the warnings the guide had given, yet, surely if the weather stayed fine, just another look, just a little bit past the stones would not hurt. This was modern day Europe!
European mountains don’t have a tapu on them, do they? she wondered. No, mountains here in Europe are giant lumps of rock, nothing more. People have grown away from their intimate contact with the landscape. This is modern day Norway.
Dawn arrived. The sky was clear except for the faintest line of a cloud wisp that lay at the far end of the fjord where the sky kissed the sea. Expectation hung in the air. She was determined to get off to an early start. She remembered her bone pendant and remembered what Koro had said when he had given it to her.
“Let this be your moko. ‘Awhina’ means ‘help’ and so, Jenny-Girl, while you wear your moko, it will protect you. But remember, all taniwha have two sides to them - so treat this with respect.”
She secured the lizard-like pendant around her neck and tucked it inside the top of her thick blouse. Jenette hastily pulled on a woollen jumper and pulled it down over the top of her brightly coloured track suit. That amount of clothing should keep her warm.
“Behave yourselves while I’m gone!” she called back to the rabbits with droopy ears that hung on her wardrobe door. Funny how they seemed to grow on her - those marks upon the door - her own pet rabbits. They almost seemed real. She grabbed the fur-lined gloves she had bought in town, slung the useful teal-coloured airline bag over her right shoulder, and made a hurried exit out of her room.
The hallway was deserted. She had the stairs to herself. Even the receptionist had not yet come on duty. And while the rest of the world slept, Jenette opened the door and slipped outside. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear the early morning snow-plough churning its way through the snow piles which had started to melt as temperatures rose slightly above freezing. Snow slush squelched under her feet as she made her way across the road. She caught the early tram that shattered the sleeping stillness of the morning and then made her own way up the narrow road taken by the bus a few days before. It was hard going and the exercise made her puff. She reached the first large stone as the day fully awoke, glancing only briefly at its cold, grey surface. She decided to give it a closer look on her way back. What was it? The guide had said that it represented Stonehenge.
“What is Stonehenge?”
She found herself speaking aloud words that were carried like ascending coils of smoke, upwards, dissolving into the side of the mountain. It’s an interpretation of time. What did the guide say? This is a measurement of winter and summer solstice.
Jenette had a strong feeling that the stone monument somehow linked today with the past.
“The past of what?”
The past of the world. An ancient world. The observation of wandering planets: humans trying to understand their destiny. She paused for a while to catch her breath.
“What will my future be?” she asked aloud. Oh, come on, stupid, she thought. First sign of madness to talk to yourself. Stop it.
She turned back and looked down at the town. It was smaller than she thought. The houses did not appear to be real but like some child’s game that had been set up. The diminutive cars and trams reminded her of her brothers’ toys when they were little when they used to push them along the narrow wooden boards of the deck that surrounded their house. Jenette could almost see the boys, as they were now, coming back home in the coolness of a summer evening, a huge light-yellow sun lazily beginning to stretch itself out like a squashed grapefruit across the western sky, the boys dragging their dingy and fishing nets high above the water mark on a beach that extended so far into the distance that the blue and white shimmering sea became one with the distant dark-green rolling hills that seemed to hold the bay together. The boys were lucky most days with their catch - their bags bulging with smooth, shiny, elliptical fish and plastic buckets standing on the aluminium bottom of the boat, filled with dark-coloured pipi or round spiky kina that they had gathered among glossy, black rocks where only the boys knew where to look. What would they say if they could see her now, standing in this frozen wilderness on the side of a towering mountain? A world so far away; so different from the one she grew up in.
Jenette looked upwards at the rounded peak of the massive lump of rock towering high above. She felt an urgency. She was compelled to move on - there may be little time left before the clouds in the distance caught up with her. Only a short time. She checked her watch. It was nearing mid-day. She must hurry. She mustn’t waste precious time. She wondered what time it was at Stonehenge, and that thought made her even more determined to move upwards.
In another hour, she stood before the ‘sacrifice stone.’ This time, its cold mass terrified her. There it stood, awesome and silent. Jenette stood, transfixed, held as though some evil magic was trying to pull her into the interior of the rock. She trod the snow flat around the perimeter of the tetrahedron, her gloved fingers brushing aside the soft snow that had fallen over the past few days. She removed her gloves. What did it matter if her fingers should become numb with the cold? She had to touch the stone; she had to feel the runic script that had been forced deep into its surface so long ago. That etched sign, resembling an elongated dart, seemed to burn into her mind. What did the guide say it meant? This runic script, he said, stood for ‘transformation.’ That other one like the ‘less than’ sign she had used in maths at school, he said stood for ‘knowledge.’ A transformation of knowledge. Is that what it meant? She could not remember the rest.
The air was as cold as if she were in a freezer. She could feel her fingers going numb. She decided she would touch the stones until there was nothing more to feel. Only then would she put on her gloves.
The breath from her warm lungs hung, frozen, suspended for an indefinite moment in the freezing mountain air. She took out her flask from her Air New Zealand bag and drank its hot beverage. She ate one of the sandwiches she had brought for her lunch, and as she swallowed the food, a wave of guilt gushed through her body.
“It’s forbidden to eat anything in a tapu place!”
She could hear Koro’s voice - the words deliberate and full of warning. Koro had instructed all his grandchildren in the rules and laws of tapu. It was wrong to break tapu! Very wrong!
She began to wonder if this Mountain of Curses really did have some spiritual quality, too. Like some of the mountai
ns at home; like koro’s home mountain, the one that connected him and his tribe to the land and the ancestors.
I belong . . . , Koro would say. That was every time he looked up to his mountain, the mountain of his ancestors. Koro and his mountain were connected.
He walked in the sacred footsteps of those who had gone before him and, it was hoped that his own children and their children and their children after would continue to look up to their mountain and identify with the land from whence it had been born.
No, not here. Surely not. Not in Europe!
She forgot to pick up her bag and left it snuggling into the soft snow. With slow, deliberate steps, she began to climb further on. The fresh crust of virgin snow willingly yielded at each footfall, leaving but the slightest indentation.
She passed the ‘sacrifice stone’ and climbed closer towards the summit. The mountain seemed to lure her on. Her footprints were left as silent reminders that someone had passed the point where no one had been before.
Slowly and steadily she climbed; further upwards; up towards the unknown.
They who venture beyond this point, never return!
They who become lost, never to be seen again!
The voices within her mind seemed real, yet she heeded them not. She clasped her taniwha. That would protect her and give her the strength to go on. She thought of her family: of her parents and Koro, of her grandmother down south who had recently passed on and of her father’s grandparents who she did not yet know because they had lived on the other side of the world, and of everyone who had gone before. Before, until the very beginning when the children of Rangi, the sky parent, and Papa, the earth mother, had pushed upwards and separated their primeval parents for all time.
Evil mist spirits will appear and engulf you!
That’s only when the clouds hang low.
Beware the ghosts of all my victims!
Jenette hesitated. She had gone too far. She did not want to seek answers with the ancestors any more. She tried to turn. She tried to escape. Fear surged throughout her body and she tried to run away. But the mountain had snared her, like a bird in a tree trap, like the fat pigeon which had taken the bait. Slowly, but surely, she was drawn upwards, closer towards the thick, smothering cloud that covered the summit.
Jenette was alone in the frozen wilderness. Her lungs heaved as she was impelled to climb higher. Her eyes ached in their sockets as the white glare of untrodden snow blinded her. Her breath froze on her parted lips. She desperately fought to fill her lungs with gulps of thin, reedy air.
The cold now bit right in to the core of her body, feasting like some deranged hungry animal, tearing and ripping deep into her flesh. She was unaware of her numb limbs, her useless arms hanging like limp, wet washing on one of those foggy days when not even the wind could make an effort to rouse itself. Shivering was something only captured within her mind; a stranger with whom no physical recognition was now possible.
As in a trance, she climbed still higher. Soon, every fibre, every frozen muscle, everything would be changed to ice. A frozen corpse, stiff and unchanging, a body in ice only to be discovered at some distant instance like a capsule of time, to be studied and puzzled over when, at the final moment, the cold was prepared to release her.
Silence.
The deep snow muffled her footsteps. She shook, stumbled - but still her legs carried her on further upwards into that silent world.
Silence.
As soundless as the surface of Saturn. It seemed as though this was a Universe; pallid and as pale as death. No perspective, no dimension, no passing of time. It was as though she was divided from life by an unseen veil; a fine curtain of net that only stirred in time to her breathing. Like mist.
Silence.
Then, she gasped. Panic.
“Oh, no! Mist! It’s mist!”
The words hung, hushed and frozen on her blue lips. Spirits of the mist were descending; coming to claim their victim. Gradually, they enshrouded her caressing her body into a wintery embrace.
Sky and land became united once more. The mist clung with deathly quiescence. It curled with beckoning fingers, drawing her further into its bosom. She called to her ancestors.
“Awhinatia mai! Help me!” she wailed. “Please, please help me!”
The silence was now broken only by the wail of the wind; screaming winds, that like tortured souls, rushed around her, venting all their fury upon her frail human form. She swayed, bending like a tree in a storm. Her clothing ripped from her body with the ease of package paper torn from a gift. Howling tornado winds twisted their spiralling arms around her. Frosted blues and flashing golds spun in confusion like a crashing helicopter before her eyes.
“No! No! Let me live!”
A voice, reedy and faint within the tempest around her. She reeled! She felt herself falling! Her world thrown into chaos. Unbound energy feeding upon its victim. She found herself sinking into oblivion.
Darkness.
Flashes of intermittent light sparking into a moment of life. A pause. A suspension of time.
Exhaustion.
The frail form of a young woman lay, faintly breathing as the mists silently departed. A pale winter sun gently reached downwards, its melting rays serenely warming her battered body.