by David Hair
‘Where the hell have you been, you lazy little bitch? What gives you the right to piss off and leave the rest of us to clean up for Deano’s party? Do you live here on my charity or not?’ He half-dragged her towards the house. ‘Where were you? Who were you with?’
‘I was down by the lake! I was alone! Don’t hurt me! Please!’
At Jones’s cottage
Sunday
Mat woke early on Sunday, made a coffee for his mother and headed for Jones’s cottage, his mother’s instructions (‘Be home by three’) ringing in his ears. Mat hurried along the track. Yesterday afternoon, Jones had clammed up after seeing the vision-stone Horomatangi had brought. They had chatted, and Mat had gone over his magical exercises: fire, water, earth and air — the basics. They still left him dizzy, but he was getting better at them. He could now light fires, produce gusts of wind, and create any manner of small subtle effects. This break they were planning to work on the basics of mental communication. It was heady stuff, and he wished he had more time to devote to it. School work was such a drag compared with magic.
He ran up to the house, where Jones was smoking his pipe. ‘You’re late,’ the Welshman grumped. ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t send you off for an hour’s run as punishment.’
Mat hung his head a little. ‘Actually, I had a nightmare, and slept through my alarm. Not much of an excuse, huh?’
Jones frowned. ‘Actually, it’s a very good excuse. Dreams are important, laddie. I’ve told you that before. For folk like us, they can be the voice of the spirit world. Pay them mind, Mat. You can tell me about it later, after you show me where you’re up to with this.’ He threw a taiaha at Mat, who caught it deftly. ‘Show me what you’ve got, and make it good.’
Mat twirled the taiaha, and went into a crouch. He went through the preparatory movements while Jones settled back into his easy chair, and then leapt into a full routine. The taiaha swished and whistled about his head, and he began to perspire as he jabbed, swung, lunged and thrust in a crabbing dance back and forward. He finished with a shout and crouched, pulling a face with his tongue out, part in challenge, part panting like an overheated dog.
Jones got up, tapped out his pipe. He looked cross. ‘Well, laddie, that’s all well and good. No doubt your kapa haka teacher thinks you could be lead dancer in a feckin’ cultural party. But you’re supposed to be learning to fight, not twinkle-toe about like a prima feckin’ ballerina!’ He walked up, and tapped the taiaha. ‘Yer Maori had no metals, just stone, bone and wood. So they mostly used impact weapons, not edged ones. That thing you’re waving around like a rhythmic gymnast is a CLUB. It’s for bludgeoning people to death.’ He picked up a heavy basket-hilted sword. ‘So now you can show me if you’ve learned how to fight with it.’
Mat flushed as Jones lunged with a speed that belied his years. Mat beat the sword away and countered, but the blade was already snaking at his stomach, and he was forced to defend again. On the old man came, making the air sing as the blade chimed off the taiaha, sending little chips from the wooden blade. Mat fought desperately for a way to get control. Their two fighting styles were entirely different: the taiaha was a two-handed long-club, wielded like a samurai sword, whilst Jones’s heavy sword was from the musketeers’ era, a thin springy blade that searched for gaps but had enough weight to parry the heavier taiaha. Another thrust and then a feinted jab, and Mat found himself slipping in mud, landing heavily on his back, only just parrying an overhand cut that gouged the taiaha blade. The steel caught in the wood, and he kicked out, trying to tangle Jones’s legs, but the old man’s stance was strong. He wrenched his blade free and flicked it against Mat’s chest.
‘Ach!’ Mat looked up along the blade to Jones, his lined face a little flushed, frosty breath billowing from his mouth. ‘I’ll yield …’ Jones grinned, and Mat suddenly swung at his legs, ‘ … later!’
His blow connected with air, and then Jones’s foot came down on the taiaha, jamming it into the turf. He flicked his wrist and Mat had to flop to avoid being skewered. He lay in the wet grass, looking along the polished blade. ‘You’ll be yielding about now, then?’ Jones enquired, jabbing the tip of his sword into Mat’s chest.
‘Ow! Yes!’ He let go the taiaha and shoved the blade away. ‘That hurt!’
Jones stepped back, out of reach of another surprise blow, and brought the hilt of his sword to his lips in a mocking salute. ‘Not bad, laddie, you’re improving.’
Mat sat up and glared at the wet patch of grass. ‘If it wasn’t for that mud …’ He looked up at Jones accusingly. ‘It wasn’t muddy earlier in the fight! Did you … ?’ He made a ‘magical’ gesture, fluttering his fingers.
Jones grinned wolfishly. ‘Of course. You’d stopped noticing your footing. Easy enough to summon a little water and back you into it.’
‘That’s cheating!’
‘No laddie, it’s winning. All’s fair in love and war, don’t they say? Now, let’s see you with a patu.’ He retired to the balcony and exchanged Mat’s taiaha for a bone-carved, thin, sharp-edged hand club, a patu. It was light, a cutting weapon as much as a club. Mat moved with grace and made the air about him hiss, while Jones smoked his pipe. He made Mat stop and go over certain moves again until he was satisfied. Then he tossed Mat a heavy stone hand club, a mere, thicker and blunter, made to smash bone. Mat tired quickly using the heavier weapon.
Jones raised a hand. ‘That’s enough, lad. I think the taiaha will always be your main weapon. You’re small for a warrior, so you need to fight at a distance. Get in too close, and a big man will take you down through bulk alone.’
‘So I’ll need a gun, too, for that real fight-from-a-distance vibe?’ hinted Mat meaningfully. Firing the antique guns Jones owned was his favourite training.
‘Indeed. Come on out the back.’ Jones led Mat around the house, where his yard backed onto denser bush. He had evidently cleared the ivy that winter, as last time Mat had visited there had been a curtain of it falling over the back veranda. On the back-porch table lay a flintlock with a walnut-inlaid handle and embossed plates proclaiming it the workmanship of ‘Williams & Powell’ of Liverpool. Jones had a room in the stables full of old-style guns, all shining like new and perfectly maintained. Only antique guns worked in Aotearoa, which was curiously resistant to modern weaponry. ‘Show me,’ the Welshman grunted, leaning back and puffing his pipe.
Jones had Mat load the gun with black powder and a lead ball, then discharge it at an old keg thirty paces away, over and over, until the lawn was wreathed in sweet, acrid smoke. The recoil was wrist-breaking, and the gun became progressively heavier, but Mat was a fair shot, and soon the old keg was shattered.
Jones laid a hand on Mat’s shoulder. ‘Good, lad. But too slow. A good pistolier can fire a musket or a flintlock four times a minute. You’re not doing much better than two.’
Mat scowled, reproaching himself. ‘It’s the cleaning. I’m worried about leaving a spark in the barrel that’ll make it explode.’
‘That’s fine, lad. Care is good. But you’re not being deft enough. Here, I’ll show you.’ Jones picked up the flintlock, turned and fired. From then, his hands were a blur, as he ram-cleaned the barrel, recharged from the powder flask, inserted a ball and whirled. The last remnant of the barrel flew to pieces as the clearing reverberated.
Mat had been counting the seconds. ‘Seven! Wow!’
The old man shrugged. ‘It’s just practice, lad. And there are ways of using our powers to speed the process. When you’ve got the basics right, I’ll show you how.’ Jones tapped the embers from his pipe. ‘The real question with any weapon, lad, is: are you prepared to use it? In World War Two, the American military found that most soldiers didn’t even fire at the enemy. On old American Civil War battlefields they found muskets that had been loaded a dozen times or more and not discharged. Killing is abhorrent to most people.’
Mat frowned, struggling to reconcile this with movies and television and books. He had been in som
e deadly fights. Yet now he thought of it, he had never deliberately tried to kill, although sometimes those he fought had died. He wasn’t proud of that.
Jones refilled his pipe. ‘Remember Waikaremoana? You all just fought to survive.’
Mat nodded slowly.
Jones patted his arm. ‘It was training that got you through. And luck.’ He sighed and took the gun from Mat’s hands. ‘Let’s have some tea, and you can tell me about this dream of yours.’ He opened the back door with a strange smile on his face, as if harbouring an amusing secret. Mat looked at him, walked inside and gaped in surprise.
Cassandra Allen was sitting at Jones’s table, surrounded by a tangle of wires and boxes and gadgets, an open laptop beside her. ‘Cassandra?’
She looked up at him distractedly, her eyes flashing through her thick-rimmed glasses. Her mouth glittered with a full rail track of braces. She looked no less odd than last time he had seen her. Her hair was in a ‘Sideshow Bob’ pile of ginger semi-dreads, and her clothes appeared to have been stolen from Pippi Longstocking. ‘Hiya, Mat!’
She wasn’t supposed to be here until next week. ‘What’re you doing here?’
She grinned up at him with a wry smile. ‘Great to see you, too!’
He reddened. ‘Uh, yeah, sorry … hi!’
‘Dad decided at the last minute to come to Taupo early this year,’ Cassandra said. ‘I thought I’d bless Jones with my skills and genius.’
‘Apparently it’s an honour,’ Jones drawled.
‘Are you kidding? I normally wouldn’t go anywhere that doesn’t have full wi-fi access, an Xbox-360 and an espresso machine; you haven’t even got electricity! You bet it’s an honour!’
Jones just shrugged imperturbably. ‘I can wait ’til Aotearoa provides. I’m in no hurry.’
Cassandra sniffed, and turned back to Mat. ‘We only got in last night at about eleven.’ Since the adventures on the East Coast at New Year, Mat, Riki, Damian and Cass had contrived to spend at least a week together each school break, whether in Napier, Gisborne or here in Taupo. This time around the plan was for everyone to get together in the second week, once Riki had finished his taiaha class and Damian got back from a fencing tournament in the South Island.
‘How’d you actually get here?’ Mat asked curiously. Normally he had to bring his friends across to Aotearoa.
‘I hacked my way in,’ Cassandra laughed. Then she glanced up at Jones a little warily. ‘Actually, last time I kept an eye on the trail and figured out how you use that big kauri to get here. Three times widdershins! Nothing stays secret from me for long.’
That’s true enough, Mat reflected. Cassandra could take a person’s cellphone number and find out their history and secrets inside an hour. She was like a character from The Matrix, only without the fashion sense and the slo-mo kung-fu moves.
‘Whatcha doing?’ he asked as he sat at the table, while Jones put the kettle on the hob.
Cassandra looked down at the wires and clamps and screwdrivers, and nibbled her lip thoughtfully. ‘I’m trying to hook this place up with a telephone that links to the real world.’
Mat glanced at Jones. ‘Isn’t that, like … impossible?’
Cassandra gave a one-shouldered shrug. ‘Jones says you got a car to transition across without fritzing it out last year. There must be a way to do it.’
‘But even I don’t really know how I did it,’ Mat confessed. It had been Donna Kyle’s car, and he had somehow got it through a transition to Aotearoa without it missing or failing. It was something he had puzzled over with Jones, but they had not solved yet. ‘Ngatoro helped me with it. And maybe it was something to do with the car itself.’
She pursed her lips, her goldfish-bowl eyes thoughtful. ‘Anything doable is repeatable.’ She handed him a thing that looked like a spanner with a speedometer on it. ‘Grab the pincers and give me a current.’
He stared at her, feeling a little silly. ‘Huh?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘This is an ammeter. I thought boys knew stuff like this! Let’s see how much electricity you can create.’
Mat glanced at Jones. ‘Uh … I’ve never created electricity … Not consciously anyway.’
Cassandra fumbled in the pile of gadgets. ‘You don’t know electricity? I thought you were supposed to be some kind of apprentice wizard.’
‘I can do fire and water and stuff,’ he offered.
‘I want electricity!’ She handed him another wire attached to some kind of power pack. ‘Hold the metal clamp at the end.’
He grasped the metal clamp, and she twisted a knob on the power pack. He yelped. ‘Oww! You electrocuted me.’
She giggled. ‘It was only a few volts, Mat! Come on: duplicate it. Come on!’
Mat glanced at Jones, who nodded, his face curious. Mat closed his eyes, and tensed himself as Cassandra trickled electricity into his hand. He concentrated in the same way that he had for Jones when learning fire and water and the other elements. Time slowly passed, as he learnt the sensation, feeling it build and tingle and course through him. Cassandra murmured something about the level of volts, so that he could measure the levels of input and what he could deal with.
His concentration suddenly shattered, as a black-and-white dog bounded in the open back door, woofed happily, and leapt into his lap. There was a sudden crack, the dog’s fur shot up, and he spun, jerked and landed on the floor, wuffling indignantly. ‘What the hell?’ Godfrey the dog growled. He shook himself, while Jones, Mat and Cassandra struggled not to laugh, and failed. Mat doubled over, holding his stomach, while Cassandra vented her loud, horsey laugh that could clear restaurants. Even Jones chuckled.
‘Uh, sorry, God!’ Mat offered finally, wiping his eyes, while the little shape-shifter earthed sparks into the floor as he stood.
‘I should bloody think so,’ Godfrey muttered, lowering his tail and rubbing himself against Jones’s legs. ‘Don’t come near me again.’ God was ‘Godfrey Llewellyn III’, who, like Fitzy, was a turehu shape-shifter; only Mat supposed God wasn’t really a turehu because Jones had brought him from Wales, which probably made him a bogle or pooka or something similar from Celtic mythology. The dog settled in the corner and glared at Mat.
‘So I guess there is electricity between us after all,’ Cassandra observed slyly, making Mat blush.
Jones sat down with them, poured the tea, and then lit his pipe. ‘You’ll get lung cancer,’ warned Mat, to change the subject.
‘I’ve been smoking for centuries, boyo. Walter Raleigh himself lit my first pipe.’ Jones took another puff. ‘Come out the front, Mat, and tell me about this dream.’ He nodded apologetically to Cassandra. ‘I’m sure you don’t need to hear what teenage boys dream about.’
Cassandra wrinkled her nose. ‘Yeurch. Take him away!’
Mat and Jones took their tea to the front porch, which was now in sunshine. He plunged right in, no longer shy about such conversations. ‘I’ve been having bad dreams for weeks, now. They start in a familiar place, like home, or school, but I know something is wrong. There’s a girl …’ He stopped suddenly. ‘I saw her! Yesterday by the lake!’
Jones lifted his shaggy eyebrows. ‘You know her?’
Mat shook his head. ‘Never seen her before. In the dream, she’s running … not from me. I go after her, across a garden or park or whatever, and then suddenly she turns into Donna Kyle. She chases me. I hit a dead end, and she comes round the corner … then there’s a man behind her, in dark clothes. He looks kind of medieval … he calls out to her, she turns, and I wake.’
Jones tapped his finger on his pipe. ‘Mmmm … do you know the name “Asher Grieve”?’ Mat shook his head. ‘Asher was Puarata’s main rival for a long time, and then they formed an alliance. He used to flounce about in medieval attire, quoting Milton and Dante. Eventually Asher got above himself, and Puarata killed him. He was Donna Kyle’s father.’
It was hard to imagine that Donna Kyle had a father. There was something so hard and unfeeling about her tha
t she was scarcely human to Mat. ‘Why would I dream of him? I’ve never heard of him before.’
‘That’s the beauty of watching your dreams, laddie. If your mind is open, Aotearoa speaks to you. And right now, it’s sending you a warning that Donna Kyle is back, and that she hasn’t forgotten you. Although what it has to do with Asher Grieve I don’t know. She hated him passionately and had a hand in his downfall.’
That Donna Kyle would aid Puarata against her own father sounded entirely in character to Mat. The thought that she might be near was chilling. ‘Is this to do with Horomatangi’s message?’ he asked.
‘Perhaps. Between that and other information, I’m beginning to believe that the struggle amongst Puarata’s warlocks is renewing, and maybe coming here.’
‘Here?’ yelped Mat, sitting up.
‘Maybe. Calm down. You know that since Puarata fell, his warlocks have been fighting each other. At Waikaremoana, Bryce and Kyle’s alliance failed. Bryce has retreated south, and Kyle went into hiding. It all went quiet a few months ago. The American, Sebastian Venn, controls Puarata’s old base at Waikaremoana, and most of his real-world assets.’
Mat had heard of Venn, but not seen him. ‘What’s he like?’
Jones curled his lip. ‘Rich. Arrogant. Smug. He’s not a big talent magically, but he’s ruthless and resourceful. And his wife is some kind of ninja.’
‘Don’t tell Damian, he’s nuts on Asian swordswomen ever since seeing Kill Bill,’ Mat laughed. ‘But what about that tramp I saw in the stone? Who is he?’
‘I don’t know, but I have my suspicions.’
Mat peered out the window, half-expecting to see sinister shadows lurking. ‘What if they’re here for me?’
Jones shook his head. ‘It may be a blow to your fragile teenage ego, but you’re still a relatively small fish in this pond, despite Reinga and Waikaremoana. These warlocks have bigger fish to fry — each other.’
‘Then why are they all coming here?’
‘It’s not certain they are. I’ve not seen any of them.’ He blew a ragged smoke ring.
