Currents of Change

by Darian Smith

  Sara shut her eyes, feeling her cheeks flame hot. “Of course. Of course. Abigail could wake up and...God, I wasn’t thinking.” She shook her head. Stupid! She was so stupid.

  “It’s okay.” Nate said. “No big deal.”

  “I should go,” Sara said. She picked up her wine glass and gulped down the last of the liquid.

  “There’s really no need...”

  “It’s late and you have a daughter who will wake you up early tomorrow.” Somehow his being nice about it just made her embarrassment worse. She swooped in and gave him a peck on the cheek as she passed. “Thank you for everything. It was a wonderful night.”

  And before he could say or do anything else, she ran out into the darkness and all the way home.

  Chapter Sixteen

  20 June, 1835

  I think I’ve finally gotten my sea legs now. After two weeks, I feel like a salty sea-dog. The rest of the family are still feeling seasick when the wind is high, but I’ve been well for quite some time. Poor Father and Nan have it the worst. Jereth says I’m a natural with the elements.

  The ship is starting to smell somewhat now. Our cabins are very basic but they’re the best we could afford without looking suspicious. Nana and Jereth both agree that using the wrong sort of gold could get us thrown overboard. No captain likes to find his currency has turned to leaves.

  Our supply of fresh fruit and vegetables has expired so the rest of the journey will be dried meat, pickles and what potatoes survive the damp of the hold. Today’s dinner was stewed cabbage and salted beef. Not the most appetising of meals. I’ve offered to help the ship’s cook where I can. I think it’s best for a woman to be well liked by the crew if she can’t keep her distance and I’ve no intention of spending this entire voyage in my cabin.

  Jereth showed me a pod of dolphins this morning. They swam alongside the boat for almost an hour before vanishing beneath the waves. He really is quite handsome. I know there are stories about his people but I can’t help thinking Jereth is different. He has a kind face, I think. I have a feeling about him.

  “Don’t we all.” Sara rolled her eyes. “It always starts with the bloody feelings and next thing you know, your brain is out the window.” She sighed, screwed up her nose, and flipped over a few pages before forcing her brain back to the written words.

  29 June, 1835

  Wonderful day. Warm and sunny with just a few clouds. Jereth asked the ship’s cook for some food and made a picnic on the deck for us. The dolphins came back and we watched them together as the waves went by. Jereth had arranged for one of the sailors who has some little skill with the flute to play for us while we ate. I felt like a proper lady sailing a luxury barge down the river. It was wonderful.

  15 July 1835

  We will arrive in our new land of New Zealand in just a few days. I do not know what I will do when we are back on land and Jereth and I are back under the watchful eye of my family. The sailors have been so kind to us, protecting our love from prying eyes throughout the journey and allowing it to bloom. Jereth has given me a token of his intent. A beautiful ring crafted by his own hand. Even I, with my crude senses, know it is more than simple gemstones and promise. He has given me a great gift and I will treasure it always. For now, I can but keep it close to my heart until we have convinced both of our families to allow us to wed.

  “And you didn’t fuck it up by throwing yourself at him with his seven year old child in the next room? Well done.”

  Sara hurled the book onto the table. It hit the polished wood with a satisfying slap.

  Hard as she tried to bury her tumultuous thoughts and feelings in her efforts to follow the bidding of the ghost, it was impossible. It’d been more than a day since the incredibly awkward ending to what had started out as a lovely first date with Nate Adams. She hadn’t heard from him in that time, but, to be honest, she hadn’t expected to. He wasn’t working on Sunday so there was no need for Abigail to come over and no reason for him to come without his daughter being there.

  This being Monday, however, that reprieve was coming to an end.

  She felt incredibly stupid. Yet again. What was it about this man that had her making a fool of herself over and over in his presence? Had she been out of the dating world so long that she couldn’t read the signs anymore? One moment she was certain it wasn’t even a date, the next she’d thrown herself at the man. No wonder he was keeping his distance!

  She sighed. There was no point worrying about it now. Best to keep her mind occupied. Well, as occupied as she could manage.

  Whatever Bridget’s ghost had hoped to share with her via this diary, Sara was sure she hadn’t found it. Thus far it was simply the musings of a young girl on her way to a new country, falling in love on the boat. Lots of detail about the weather and the food and the various and fine qualities possessed by the young man known as Jereth, but very little that would indicate why the girl who wrote it would have wound up haunting this house.

  “What am I missing?” Sara asked the empty room. There was no answer.

  She sighed and glanced at her watch. The hands were still, the battery dead once more.

  “Dammit, Bridget,” she muttered. The realisation there was a ghost in the house had finally provided an explanation for all of the strange electrical problems she’d been having. Or perhaps the ghost was trying to give her a reason to talk to Nate again. Where else would she get a fresh battery in this small town?

  She pushed up from the table and paced the house. Whatever the time was, Abigail should have been here by now. Had Nate decided she was too crazy after all and kept his daughter back? Or worse, had something happened to the girl on the way here?

  She hurried to the window and peered out. The yard and the gravel road were empty. “Where is she?”

  Dizziness swept over her, like a splashing wave on a boat bow, overwhelming then gone. Sara gasped and stumbled. As the wave passed, she turned back to the room expecting to see the ghost. “Bridget?”

  A small glowing light spread out from the wall, oozing from one of the newly installed electrical sockets. It formed a buzzing orb, like the will-o’-the-wisp she’d followed into the bush days earlier. It hovered in the room over the couch for a long moment, then drifted toward the door.

  Almost without thinking, Sara took a few steps after it. “What is that? Bridget? Is Abigail okay?”

  The light pulsed and began moving faster.

  “Shit.” Sara followed it out onto the porch and watched it float around the side of the house, towards the bush. It followed the same path the earlier one had followed. The path that led to the circular pool.

  A jolt of panic ran through her. A pool of water. If Abigail had gone wandering in the bush, the little girl could easily have fallen in.

  She jumped the stairs and ran. Ahead of her, the will-o’-the-wisp vanished into the trees. Sara pelted after it as quickly as she could, leaping over small bushes and fallen logs as she went. Ferns and branches whipped at her body as she ran, but she ignored it.

  Up ahead, the glowing ball suddenly stopped dead.

  Sara slowed down as she approached it, puzzled. The ball gave a little hiccup and split apart into sparks that fell to the ground and vanished into the damp earth.

  As her ragged breath calmed she heard a voice up ahead. A woman’s voice, chanting in a sing-song rhythm.

  “What the hell?”

  She walked forward, peering through the trees and out into the clearing with the circular pool. Sure enough, there was Abigail. The little girl was safe and sound, sitting on the edge on one of the stones around the pool, cross legged.

  A woman stood over her, chanting words Sara couldn’t understand. She recognised the language as te reo maori, but not the vocabulary. Her knowledge was limited at best.

  The water in the pool glowed with phosphorescence, throwing swirling shadows across both adult and child. The tree in the centre quivered, leaves rustling.

  As Sara watched, the woman stopped her i
ncantation and the light in the water died. The tree became still. The woman turned to face Abi and Sara gasped as her face came into view. It was Moana.

  “Did you memorise the ripa that time?” Moana said.

  Abi shook her head, looking miserable.

  Moana grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her to her feet. “You need to learn it! What if something happened to me like what happened to your mother? You have to pay attention!”

  “It’s hard!” Abi squirmed. “Ow! Auntie, let go. I have to go to Sara’s house. Daddy said so. I’ll get in trouble.”

  Moana let go and Abi fell backward onto the grass. “With Sara here, we’re already in trouble.”

  “You certainly are,” Sara called out, striding into the clearing. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Moana’s eyes widened. “W-What are you doing here?”

  “It’s my property. What are you doing here? Aside from terrorising a little girl?”

  Moana tugged her jacked tighter around herself. “Leaving,” she said. As she passed Sara, she leaned in close. “I know what you are, O’Neill. My sister might be gone but I’m still here. I’ll do whatever needs to be done to stop you. Kauwaka.”

  And then she was gone, leaving Sara open mouthed and staring, Abigail at her feet.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It took almost twenty minutes to get Abigail sufficiently settled after her aunt’s tirade to make the journey back to the house. Even then, the little girl was strangely silent as they crossed the threshold. She dropped her pink backpack on the floor and wandered into the kitchen.

  Sara followed. “Abi? You okay?”

  “Yeah.” The little girl helped herself to a glass of water while Sara watched. Then she sat down at the table.

  Sara sat across from her. “Abi, what was your aunt doing in the bush?”

  “I don’t know.” Abigail shrugged and stared at her drink. “Auntie Moana doesn’t like you.”

  “I know. Do you know why?”

  “No.” She looked up, her dark brown eyes glistening. “I like you, though, Sara. You’re much nicer than Auntie Moana.”

  Sara struggled to muffle her chuckle. “Thank you. I like you too.” She pushed some scrap paper and coloured pencils across the table. “Maybe you could take these into the other room and draw me a picture of what you and your aunt were up to?”

  “Okay.” The little girl got down from the table, grabbed the drawing materials, and wandered into the hall.

  Sara sat back with a sigh. She replayed what she’d seen over and over in her mind. The chanting incantation, the glow in the water, the shivering tree. Moana’s insistence that Abigail learn the words and her vehement anger at Sara herself. This was more than a clash of personality or a proud townswoman’s dislike of an old building. This was...strange.

  “’I know what you are’,” she muttered, repeating some of Moana’s last words. “’Kauwaka.’ Where have I heard kauwaka before?”

  Her eyes fell on the journal. She sat upright. That was it! Fingers trembling, she flicked through the pages. It was toward the back. The first entry she’d read. Something the local iwi had said.

  The words jumped out at her from the page. “We were visited by the local Maori again today. This time they brought their Kuia. I think she’s a wise woman, much like Nan. She spoke about our work in the forest and told us they believe what we are doing is dangerous. She called Nan and I kauwaka, and said we were fooling with things that are sacred and should not be touched.”

  What the hell had Bridget and her Nan been doing in the forest?

  Sara set down the journal and picked up her smartphone. “Leave the damn battery alone this time, Bridget,” she muttered, and pressed the button. A sigh of relief softened her mouth as the screen lit up. She flicked to the browser and found an online Maori to English dictionary site. She typed in the word and hit search, holding her breath as the signal connected to the network.

  “Kauwaka,” she read. “Human medium of an atua or spirit.” She frowned. “Isn’t Atua God?”

  She typed the new word in to the search box and waited for the translation. A chill crept over her as she read the answer. “God, spirit, supernatural being...or demon.”

  Sara felt the hairs on her arms rise. She’d seen Bridget’s ghost. If Moana thought she was a medium, it could be due to that. But the journal said the Maori in her lifetime had called Bridget a kauwaka. There had been no ghost here then. Bridget had been alive.

  She read the definitions again, her heart pounding. Was she a human medium for a ghost? Or for something else?

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Sara! Sara!” It was a piercing call, full of a little girl’s panic and accompanied by the clatter of feet on the floorboards.

  Sara jumped, her adrenaline already on high alert. The urgency in Abigail’s voice stabbed into her like demon horns. “Abi? What’s wrong?”

  Abigail burst into the room, eyes wide. She scattered several coloured pencils in her wake and grasped Sara’s sleeve. “Come quick! I think he’s hurt.”

  “What? Who?”

  She followed the little girl up the hallway, toward the back of the house. They stopped when they reached the red stickered rooms that had been declared unsafe by the building inspectors.

  “He’s in there. Listen.”

  Sara waited, straining her ears. A scratching sound came from within the wall ahead. Then a plaintive meow.

  “See?” Abi’s eyes were wide and tearful. “It’s Oscar.”

  Sara felt her stomach sink. The meow came again. There was definitely a cat in the wall. She frowned. How the hell had the kitten gotten in? “Are you sure it’s Oscar, Abi? Did you see him? A lot of stray cats like to hang around here.”

  The little girl’s lip trembled. “No. But I can hear him, Sara. He’s always coming over to your house. He’s such a naughty cat.”

  “He is,” Sara muttered. “Don’t worry. He got himself in there. I’m sure he can get himself out.”

  But when Nate arrived to pick up his daughter that afternoon, it was obvious the cat was not going to find its way out for the wall. The meowing had become near constant yowls, punctuated by bursts of frantic scratching.

  “We have an issue,” Sara said as Nate arrived. “I need your help.”

  “I don’t think it’s structural,” said Nate after a quick read of the inspector’s report and checking of the wall. “We could knock a hole in it without too much trouble if you’re okay with that.”

  Sara nodded, her vision caught on the sobbing girl in the hallway. “Let’s do it. I was thinking of reworking a lot of this part of the house anyway. Let’s get him out.”

  Nate fetched a sledge hammer and a crowbar from his ute and together they attacked the wall. Chips of faded wallpaper and semi-rotted wood fell like hailstones, then Nate used the crowbar to pry away a big chunk of the wall and they peered inside.

  The cat was gone.

  Sara chewed her lip. “Do you think he found his way out or has he just crawled further back to get away from us?”

  Nate shrugged. “Got a torch?”

  Sara held up her phone, flicked on the flashlight app, and shone it into the hole. Beyond was a larger space than she’d expected. This section of the house was the intersection of three walls and had created a kind of alcove, sealed off from the house itself – like a cupboard space with no door to provide access. It smelled of dust and damp stone and was filled with cobwebs. There was no sign of Abi’s kitten but...

  “Are those stairs?” Nate peered over Sara’s shoulder.

  She angled the light. Sure enough, a spiral stone staircase circled downward. “It must lead to the basement. I knew there was one but I never found it.”

  Nate raised an eyebrow. “Shall we investigate?”

  Sara felt her lips twitch upward. “Let’s!”

  It didn’t take long to widen the hole enough to squeeze through it and, with Sara’s phone in torch mode still and Abigail given s
trict instructions to stay put, Nate and Sara made their way down the stairs, carefully testing each one before putting weight on it.

  The light from the phone threw shadows across the walls. The stairs were narrow, steep, and grey with dust and mouse droppings. The air was cool and smelled of stone and old damp wallpaper. Sara felt cobwebs cling to her hair as she descended. She tried not to think about the possibility of spiders crawling over her skin.

  She shook her head to shake them off.

  “You okay?” Nate’s voice was rich and comforting, like the first sip of coffee in the morning. It filled her with a warm glow.

  “Yeah.” Sara took a deep breath. “Hey, I’m sorry about the other night. I hope you weren’t offended by me...you know.”

  Nate chuckled. “Not at all. It was flattering. Although, that is twice now that you’ve basically sprinted out of my house when you visit. You’ll notice I don’t do that when I come over. I take my time and climb into dark dungeons with you and say goodbye and stuff.”

  She slapped his shoulder playfully. “Smart arse. I was embarrassed.”

  He flashed her a smile. “You don’t have to be. I like you. Quirks and all.”

  Sara was glad of the darkness that hid her flaming cheeks. “I like you too.”

  The stairs opened out into a wide area with a stone block floor. Chinks of light from crept in from the floorboards overhead, accenting more than mitigating the darkness.

  Sara held up her phone and the light bored into the shadow.

  “What the hell?” Nate whistled.

  The basement was a single room, almost the size of the entire house. Strange, stiff vines criss-crossed the entire room. They stuck out of the walls and ceiling, stabbing across the room in straight lines, like some kind of laser beam security grid with leaves. Some of them sliced all the way to the other side of the room and vanished into the opposing surface like giant spears. Others intersected, twisted around each other, then continued in a different direction.