by M. D. Massey
“Still got these,” I said with a yawn. “If you can take them, I’ll tell you what happened. My side of the story, anyway.”
Tāwhere looked like he might take me up on it, then he grinned, flashing a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. “I’m just giving you grief, kid. Relax.”
“Grief, you reckon? As if looking at that ugly mug of yours isn’t grief enough.”
The bat god glowered at me. “I’ll not have you speak to me that way, boy.”
“I’ll speak to you any way I like. Since you seem set on insulting me, I don’t see anything wrong in taking a similar tone. By the way, your face looks like a bag of hammered assholes.”
Tāwhere’s face contorted with rage, and he let out a screech that sent a spike of agony through my skull. I shook it off just in time to see him launch himself across the room at me, his leather jacket morphing into a pair of bat-like wings.
It was the reaction I’d hoped for, and I was ready for it. Being a spirit now, I’d not be able to interact with stuff around me in the real world. But here in the underworld, I was as substantial as everything here. And as Tāwhere flew at me, I grabbed a pool cue from the wall, holding it with my right hand at the butt and my left near the center.
The bat-faced god thought I would swing it at him, but instead I used it as a spear, shoving the narrow end of it into his mouth and out the back of his head. Then I pivoted, letting Tāwhere’s body pass me as I thrust the tip of the pool cue into the wall of Miru’s parlor. Since his brainstem was damaged, all Tāwhere could do is dangle there, looking furious and choking on his own blood.
I turned to Mutu. “You want to know how I lost my moko?”
The shadowy god hissed. “No. Ssss-alright. I’m good.”
Miru uncrossed his arms and stood. “Well, that settles that. I appreciate that you didn’t smash the place up.”
I shrugged. “I felt bad about the last time. Didn’t want to do a repeat and hack you off more.”
The death god rubbed his chin as he looked at me. “Hmm, you’ve matured somewhat since I saw you last.” He considered me for a moment. “You may pass through my realm, but I won’t give you any assistance. Whiro and I have always been on good terms, so I won’t interfere in whatever he has planned for you. Still, I don’t see any reason to anger your mother, either.”
“I appreciate it, Miru.”
The death god smiled with little warmth. “Oh, don’t thank me yet. The path to your mother’s realm is hardly clear. Just because I’m not standing in your way doesn’t mean something else won’t.” He tilted his head as if listening to a voice coming from far, far away. “I’ve business to attend. Please, see yourself out.”
Miru vanished in a puff of sulphur and smoke, leaving me to exchange an awkward silence with his guests.
Mutu broke the silence with a hiss. “Anyone up for another game? Winner gets Tāwhere’s jacket.”
25
I declined Mutu’s offer. Playing games of chance or skill with gods, even minor gods, was always a bad idea. Mākutu, the incarnation of witchcraft herself, also demurred. Just as well. Would’ve been awkward if she hadn’t, and I worried more about offending her than playing against Mutu.
Rather than go through the bar again, I decided to sneak out the back door of the place. As I did, I stopped by the kitchen to grab a sharp knife from the rack. Obviously, I hadn’t arrived in the underworld armed, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a blade on me. Plus, I could use it to carve a taiaha or a tewhatewha just as soon as I found some wood to work with.
Once I was outside, I took a moment to find my bearings. I had a long way to go before I could get back to my mum’s house. First, I had to get through Uranga-o-te-Rā, where Rohe lived—a right nasty character if ever there was one. Likes to devour souls and practices black magic. She was once Maui’s wife, and doesn’t care for me since my mum killed her husband.
Maui. What an idiot that guy was.
Once I got past Rohe, I’d be in Whiro’s territory. Of course, Whiro had it in for me. Or rather, for my corpse, which hopefully was headed to New Zealand on a plane with Colin at the moment. Time was weird in the underworld just like it was in Underhill, so who the hell knew how long I’d been down here? Still, time tended to move more slowly here, so I figured Colin would have my body waiting for me long before I made it to Te Reinga.
No doubt, Whiro had left some surprises for me—things to hinder my passage through his realm. I imagined they would involve monsters, demons, and the like. Fun times. Nothing like a good fight to get a spirit ready to re-enter the world of the living.
After I’d determined the correct direction to Rohe’s realm, I headed for a twisted path that led off into the distance. The path soon began to gain elevation as I neared the mountains that marked the boundary between Miru’s lands and Rohe’s. Just when I’d made it to the foothills, I rounded a large boulder to find Mākutu waiting for me, her pale white skin and fiery red hair providing a stark contrast to the ledge of lava rock she sat upon.
She is attractive, I’ll give her that. But poison often comes wrapped in pretty paper.
I stopped and waited, since she was sitting directly along the path and kind of in my way. Not that I couldn’t have squeezed by her, but I didn’t care to get that close without knowing what she was on about.
I nodded in her direction. “Goddess of witchcraft, huh?”
“Just a practitioner of the arts. No more, no less. As are you, I see. You and I are not so very different, Hemi Waara.”
She smiled, displaying perfect white teeth that set off her dark, tattooed lips. The tattoos on my shoulders and arms tingled as they activated, and I suddenly noticed her moko dancing patterns on her chin as she spoke. Witchcraft. She was using magic to make her words sound sweeter to my ears. Tricky, tricky.
“Hey now, there’s no need for that,” I said. “I can hear you just fine without the spell craft.”
Mākutu’s eyes widened slightly, and her cheeks flushed a bit. Interesting. “Apologies. It’s merely a habit,” she said. “Purely unintentional.”
I crossed my arms and scratched an itch that wasn’t there. “Uh huh. Why don’t you tell me why you’re here and what you want from me? I’ve got somewhere to be, so make it quick.”
The witch raised her hands, showing me her palms. “I bear you no ill will, warrior. Certainly I don’t care to suffer the wrath of your mother, and I’d not underestimate your own skill and power either.”
I yawned and rubbed my nose. “You already did, but go on.”
Her expression darkened for a moment, but then she smiled again and her displeasure vanished. “As you know, you’ll have to face Rohe, which I’m sure you’ll manage. However, Whiro has left a powerful taniwha guarding the path through his realm. That one will not let you pass so easily as Miru did.”
“A taniwha, eh? I take it the path leads through a lake or over a river of some sort?”
She nodded. “It does.”
“And am I to assume that’s the only way through Whiro’s realm?”
Mākutu nodded again. “You’re smarter than you look.”
“I hate water monsters.” I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck, exhaling heavily. “Alright, what’s your game, witch?”
She smiled like someone who knew they’d just gotten the better end of a deal. “It’s simple. I help you defeat the taniwha, and when you get back to the realm of humans, you help me get there as well.”
I waved my hands back and forth. “Nah, get lost. No way in hell I’m unleashing you on the people of Earth. Who knows what mischief you’d cause, or who you’d hurt once you got there? Besides, we have enough trouble with the fae who’re there already.”
The goddess of witchcraft pursed her lips in a pout and tsked. “Now, Hemi, really—what sort of trouble could be caused by little old me?”
“The black sorcery kind, that’s what. You know my mum still has a thing for humans, right? And that she doesn’t take kindly to god
s and monsters who want to hurt them? I’d say if you want to stay off her bad side, you should abandon whatever plans you have to cause trouble for her people.”
“Who says I’m going to cause trouble for her people? Or anyone, for that matter?” She stretched, striking an intentionally sexual pose. “I’m simply tired of living down here, and I’d like to experience modern life on Earth for a change. Maybe enjoy a little peace and quiet, get a nice little place of my own in the city. Can’t a girl dream, after all?”
“And which city might that be?”
“Does it matter?” She swept her arms in a broad circle around her. “I just want to get out of here.”
I grunted and scratched my head. Like most fae, she couldn’t lie—but she wasn’t exactly telling the truth, either. Still, I was alone in hostile territory, I had no weapons to speak of, and I’d soon have to face off with a goddess of no small power and a water monster the size of a Whataburger. My mum likely had no idea I was here, since she would be upstairs waiting for Colin to deliver my body. Maori gods didn’t normally like to travel far from their seat of power, and Mum was no exception.
Nope, no help was coming.
“Alright, tell me what I get out of all this.”
A broad smile split her face, but her bright blue eyes were serpent’s slits as she spoke. “Why, Hemi, I’m going to help you get your ta moko back.”
26
We were climbing down the other side of the mountain range, a surprisingly hard thing to do considering that I was a spirit. The trail was rocky and steep, the footing treacherous, and the drop below daunting, since we were more or less descending a cliff face. Recent events had made me leery of heights, so I took my time picking my way down the path despite the witch’s impatience.
“I could just fly us down, you know,” Mākutu said as she hopped, goat-like, from one ledge and outcropping to another.
“I know, you told me. And I said if you could do that, why not simply portal me to my mum’s lands?”
“As I explained, I can’t.”
“You said, but you didn’t explain,” I grunted, sliding off a ledge on my stomach. I hung by my fingertips and dropped the five feet or so to the next narrow landing. “Saying what isn’t the same as saying why. And avoiding the latter is dissembling, in my book.”
“Let’s just say I was punished and leave it at that,” she muttered saltily.
“I take it that’s why you need my help getting to Earth. Figures.”
She stared at me from her perch, squatting on a rocky spire that had split from the cliffside, the tip no bigger than the palm of my hand. By rights, she should have fallen long ago. I presumed she was using magic to ease her descent. I refused to rely on black sorcery for such a menial task.
“Yes, that’s why,” she spat. “Now, could we just drop it? Anyway, we’re here.”
She leapt off the cliff, and I tried to avoid noticing her shapely figure as she slowly floated to the ground thirty feet below. Although the fae were known to be supernaturally attractive, she was a sorceress. Meaning, it could all be a glamour.
Besides, I had no business being attracted to an evil goddess. I watched her float to the ground just the same, if only to ensure she made it there safely. Then, I clambered the rest of the way down. When I arrived at the bottom, I found her sitting on a boulder, ankle crossed over one knee and slumped with her chin propped on one hand.
“If you’d have let me use my magic to help, we’d have arrived hours ago,” she groused.
I wiped my hands on my trousers. “Eh, I’d rather do things the old-fashioned way. Although, you’d think as a spirit I’d be able to fly or something.”
She hung her head, cracking her neck from side to side before standing up and stretching languidly. “Doesn’t work that way. If anything, it’s harder here for spirits than it is for living creatures.”
“Huh. Wonder why that is?”
She looked at me as if I were purposely being dense, which I was. “Because the gods like to punish mortals, that’s why. This isn’t heaven, after all.”
I ignored her snappy retort and her attitude. It was beneath a man to waste energy making another person’s problems your own. Mākutu wasn’t unhappy because of what had been done to her; she was unhappy because of who she was. No one could fool with black sorcery for long and not succumb to the cloud of misery that surrounded it. And Mākutu was black sorcery, through and through—that much was clear.
However, I was beginning to think she wasn’t evil. That might seem like a contradiction, since I said before that black magic is purely evil. But I got the feeling that she’d once sought power as a means to an end, and ended up being consumed by it. Perhaps I was right and perhaps not. But if so, she wouldn’t be the first human or faery to experience a dark transfiguration born from magic. Nor would she be the first to ascend to godhood for it… or descend, in her case.
Still, even if she wasn’t purely evil, she couldn’t be trusted.
I looked off into the distance, where the black night of Miru’s lands gave way to the gray twilight of Rohe’s realm. “You’re right, we’re here.” I turned to address her directly. “Are you going to help with Rohe?”
The witch shook her head once. “No, you won’t require my assistance with her. She fears you, although she won’t say it. She’ll send another to deal with you, that you can be certain of—so be ready. When you need me, I’ll be there.”
Mākutu then disappeared in a cloud of sooty ash and poisonous gas.
“As expected,” I whispered.
The gods never liked to get their hands dirty, if they could help it. That was why they so often chose to act through intermediaries. Avatars. Demigods. Sorcerers. Champions. Or any other puppet they could manipulate. I’d learned not to trust the gods while living among them. It had been a hard lesson.
Dealing with Rohe wouldn’t be easy. I was in her lands, and she was a notoriously foul-tempered goddess. Once a beautiful woman, her ugly husband Maui had tricked her into trading faces with him. After it was done, he’d refused to trade back. What a prick, eh?
In shame and anger, she’d retreated to the underworld and started devouring souls, probably in hopes of finding a face as beautiful as her own once was. I know it doesn’t make sense, but she’s one of the gods, after all. They don’t have to make sense—no one has to make sense when they have that much power.
Off in the distance, a flock of ravens circled in the air where smoke rose from a large gray wharepuni, or sleeping house. I figured that was where I’d find Rohe. I could try to avoid her, sure—but chances were good she already knew I was here.
“Stuff it. Might as well get this over with.”
I spotted a path in the rocks and rubble of the foothills, and headed for the smoke and ravens.
27
The wharepuni was immense, a fact that became clear the closer I got to it. Even stranger, the place was made of stone, built from gray basalt in the traditional style of my people. Which was weird, because the Maori weren’t known to build their homes from stone. Wood, yes—rocks, not so much.
I had pretty sharp vision, being a demigod and all, so I searched the building carefully for clues regarding how it was constructed. You never knew when a bit of knowledge or insight might come in handy, and it paid to be observant around gods. I didn’t see a seam or joint in the entire wharepuni. It was as if it had been carved from a single, giant piece of rock—just the sort of thing a god or goddess would do to show off.
The front door was enormous, easily half-again my height. It stood open just a crack, perhaps to let light in because the interior was dark as night. I detected no movement from the sleeping house, nor from the sparse trees and vegetation around the place. It could have been a dead thing, abandoned and long disused, except for the smoke coming from the chimney.
“Hello the house!” I called.
Silence.
“I said—”
“I heard you the first time!” came the
shrill reply. “Knew you were out there since you left the mountains with that sorceress. Not that she’d show her face around here.”
“I presume I’m speaking with Rohe, the goddess of the underworld and ruler of this realm?”
She cackled. It was a low, mean sound. “A goddess of the underworld, you mean. Not the goddess. Couldn’t upset your dear old mum, now could you, son of Hine-nui-te-pō? Tell me, is she still as fair as she was the day she fucked her own father? And do the teeth in her twat still gnash together at the memory of my husband’s passage?”
I gritted my teeth, capping my temper for the moment. When folks spoke ill of my mother, it got under my skin. Besides my dad, my mum’s the only person who ever stood up for me, even in the face of her current husband’s fury. Well, her and Colin.
Avoiding a fight with Rohe was tops on my list at the moment, because the longer it took me to get back to my body, the longer it would take to recover. Still, I wasn’t about to let her comments go unanswered.
“She’s as fair as the day her father raped her, yes. You know that gods never age, as you also know that legend about how she killed Maui is made up. He tried to gain immortality by aping Tāne’s trespass, and Mum isn’t one to suffer the same indignity twice.”
“You lie!” the voice screeched from inside the wharepuni. “Maui might’ve been a lying trickster, but he was no rapist. He only sought to take what should have rightfully been his as a birthright, had not Makeatutara fucked it up.”
Was being the key word in that exchange. As a demigod, Maui might have come back from a simple death. But when a goddess of the underworld kills you, you tend to stay dead. Which is why you don’t want to get on Mum’s bad side.
And why I didn’t want to be on Rohe’s bad side, either.
I extended my hands in an attempt to calm her. “Now, now. We could argue all day and night and still not agree on this matter, but that will get us nowhere. I mean no disrespect, and only wish to pass through your lands peacefully and be done with it. So I ask you, Rohe—may I pass?”
