The Wind City

by Summer Wigmore

  “For someone who’s pretty damn atua,” she said, rubbing at her eyes, “I’m sure not all that great at seeing them.”

  “You need to know we’re there, before you see us,” Hinewai said. “That goes for humans and those raised as humans alike.” She rested a hand hesitantly on her friend’s shoulder. “Of course you can’t see this Cuba creature; you have no idea where they would be, or what they would look like.”

  Tony nodded. “That makes sense. Can you see any sign of him?”

  Hinewai tilted her head, looking. “There are a few weak things,” she said doubtfully. “Nothing of – ah, there’s a reasonably strong spirit, there,” she said, and she nodded towards a stupid-looking pool with metal scoops tipping water into it – humans made such strange things in the name of decoration, sometimes. “In the water. She is all bright colours.”

  Tony looked as well, and brightened. “Ooh! Okay, let’s ask her,” and she hurried forward. Hinewai stood behind and to one side of her, keeping a watchful eye.

  “Hey!” Tony chirped, leaning down towards the fountain. “Can I talk to you?”

  The girl in the water looked up at her. “I s’pose,” she said. “Are you the taniwha?”

  Tony beamed. “Yeah! That’s me.”

  The girl tilted her head. “What do you want,” she said, all flat.

  “I’m looking for someone named Cuba,” Tony said, and the girl… burst into tears.

  Hinewai stood there feeling awkward, but Tony cared, Tony always cared, and what’s more Tony was good at caring. She immediately flopped to the ground so she was eye-to-eye with the Bucket Fountain girl, and just sat there for a while, one arm resting comfortingly on the wall of the pool, as the girl cried, and Hinewai stood.

  “You’re,” the girl said, “you’re, you’re too late, why couldn’t you have been here – why couldn’t you have… ” She cried some more, her body shaking, her eyes bright with tears.

  “Māui,” Tony said, and she said it softly, but Hinewai could see her fist clench, her fingers lengthening into claws with anger.

  “I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know, it all happened so fast, there was a feeling like burning and it barely affected me, my area is just –” She gestured around the fountain. “But he, oh, Cuba, he used to dress up in his best clothes just to hang out with me, I… ” She sniffed. “Yes. It was Māui, I think. There was fire.”

  Tony nodded. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help,” she said. “I’ll do my best to avenge his death, if that helps. Though I know that’s little enough. I – I’m sorry for your loss. He took someone of mine, too.”

  The girl stared up at her. “You understand.”

  Tony nodded. There was ferocity in her face, and pain, and anger, and Hinewai shifted, uncomfortable. Tony hadn’t wanted to know of who Saint was truly, but Hinewai knew, she had smelled the fire on him, seen him talking to nowhere where Māui must’ve been. Maybe Saint was just a pawn – he was weak enough, fickle enough – but he was responsible all the same, and somehow Hinewai did not think that Tony would take this news well, would not be at all pleased to learn that the man she sought to kill was someone she –

  Loved, Hinewai’s mind supplied, all unwilling, and she clenched her teeth. It was possible. Humans fell in love so fast.

  Hinewai could go behind Tony’s back, and tell other atua instead, and they would wreak their own type of vengeance on Saint. But that was deceitful, and anyway it was as good as hurting him herself, and Tony had told her not to do that. Tony didn’t want her to hurt people. Tony cared.

  Hinewai stood torn and indecisive, and wished, for a moment, that she was back in her mountains, where the air was clean and cool and things made sense.

  “Hin,” Tony was saying, and Hinewai blinked and looked at her. Tony stood in front of her now, frowning a bit. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Uh, she can’t leave her fountain now that the street’s energy has been weakened, so she asked if we could – well, I’m not sure exactly, but she said that Cuba might not be quite dead yet, and she wants to say goodbye. She couldn’t reach him herself. She just… wants to say goodbye.” Tony’s eyes dropped.

  Thinking of her broken ponaturi boy, no doubt. “I’ll find him,” Hinewai said.

  The city spirit wasn’t more than a hundred metres away, crumpled on the ground. Hinewai did not think much of him, battered and bleeding as he was, the way he flickered in and out of existence. He was dying, to be fair. No one looked their best as they lay dying. But he was a foolish creature all the same, all plastic and paving stones.

  Hinewai pointed, and Tony, ever-so-gently, gathered the man up in her arms and walked back to where the fountain girl was waiting. She laid him on the ground, and the fountain girl reared up, leaning over the edge of the pool, staring down with wide frenzied eyes.

  “Cuba, Cuba, oh,” she said, sobbing, and to Hinewai’s surprise the city spirit tried to lift his cracked head.

  Perhaps he was trying to say something, but all that came out was static. Then his head flickered rapidly; it was a radio, and then a shoe, a plant, for a moment a screaming face. He vanished.

  The fountain tipua buried her face in her hands, and after a moment Tony stood up.

  “He’s a street spirit,” Hinewai said, uncertain of her place, but Tony didn’t seem to have words to comfort this girl and Hinewai knew she would wish to. “He will return, have no fear.”

  The fountain girl looked up. “He’ll come back, sure. Maybe. But it won’t be him. Not Cuba. Not my Cuba. I lived in this street for years and now he’ll be a stranger…”

  Tony leaned forward and kissed the girl’s cheek and whispered something that Hinewai was not close enough to hear, then stood up and left. Hinewai followed.

  “I told her again that we’d get revenge,” Tony said. She looked pale. “For everyone. Everyone. So many people dead or broken beyond repair and it’s all his fault… ” She clenched her hand into a fist again, and snapped her teeth. “I’m going to kill him.”

  “Yes,” Hinewai said. “Ah. Perhaps he can be negotiated with?”

  Tony stared at her all disbelieving, and barked out a laugh. “Really weird to hear that from you,” she said. “Still, maybe –”

  And then she doubled over, coughing, coughing.

  Hinewai looked at her in some confusion. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, it just – it hurts,” Tony said, wretchedly, and spat out blood, and Hinewai had only just started to be alarmed when she felt it, too. It hit her solidly, like a hammer to the gut, and she rested a hand against her chest. Her breath was coming short and ragged.

  “The Hikurangi’s gone,” she said, blankly. She hadn’t liked it particularly, or used it very much, preferring to face reality however harsh it was than cuddle up in pretence – but. It still hit hard.

  “What?” Tony said.

  “Burnt, I suspect. To judge by the agony of it, and how quickly it went.” There one moment, gone the next, like mist burnt away by sunlight. A sudden burning, like how the girl had described losing Cuba. There was little doubt who was behind this.

  Hinewai looked at Tony all frail and seeming almost human, in this moment, though the destruction of the safe place – so many hopes and hates and loves concentrated in it – would not have hit her so hard if she wasn’t a taniwha truly.

  “It was Saint, probably,” Hinewai added.

  That got Tony’s attention. Her eyes went wide like lamps, wider than human eyes could – she was channelling her taniwha aspect a little in her surprise. “Saint? Wha?” she said. “But he’s nice! Well I mean – not nice, he kind of… ”

  Hinewai said with some impatience, “He thinks the universe is his plaything, his to do whatever he likes with. And he acts as though he’s better than everyone else, but he doesn’t hold it against them, because they’re all very amusing and he’s a nice enough person not to mind.”

  “Yeah, that’s him exactly,” Tony said. “But, I mean – he
couldn’t hurt a fly! Maybe really confuse a fly, or play some sort of elaborate practical joke on it, but not hurt it, y’know?”

  Hinewai fidgeted. A deplorable habit. “He is the one who’s been killing the atua,” she said. “That counts as hurting, yes?”

  Tony sat down. “What?” she said, her voice very small. “I… Hin, how do you know that?”

  Hinewai shrugged. “Small things. He smelled of fire. I don’t know. Should I have told you?”

  “Yes!” Tony snapped. “Tell me things when you know them – for god’s sake, honesty is important.” She rubbed at her face.

  Hinewai sat beside her. “Honestly?” she said. “I want to rip his head from his body. I want to strip him of his skin inch by inch as he screams. He irks me.”

  “Hin!” Tony said. “Not okay!”

  Hinewai shrugged a little. “Well, I’m not going to,” she said.

  “Well that’s all right then!” Tony shook her head. “He irks you,” she said under her breath, chuckling without much mirth.

  “Because of the murdering,” Hinewai explained, “and because he is pretentious, and has stupid hair.” She frowned. “Why did you think I didn’t like him?”

  “Uhhh,” said Tony, scraping together a grin. “You don’t like anyone?”

  “I like you,” Hinewai said, and that, somehow, was what made Tony’s pained false smile melt into something smaller and softer and real.

  Hinewai was getting better at understanding what smiles were for. That one sent warmth right through her.

  “You’re doing the best you can,” Tony said.

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  They sat in silence for a while. People passed by, talking and laughing.

  “Saint,” Tony said again. She sounded almost wounded. “I can’t believe – him of all people. Argh. I mean I barely knew the guy, but I am just, I am just so fucking sick of the world turning itself all topsy-turvy. Everything keeps on changing, I’d barely got used to all this crap and now this.” She rubbed at her forehead. “… Hin.”

  Such a foolish nickname. It didn’t even make sense. Hine would work better. “Yes?” she said.

  “I’m a guardian, right?”

  “Among other things.”

  “Right,” said Tony, standing up, “then it’s about time for me to do some guarding,” and even as she spoke she was changing, twisting, stretching out and scaled-black and shining sinuous, lifting her head with solemn lamp-like eyes and opening her gaping chasm of a mouth to show all her teeth, obsidian-black and shining. Tony as a true taniwha was huge, with a greenish tint to her tough black hide. Hinewai’s people didn’t deal with taniwha often, but Tony was somewhat reminiscent of the land-dwelling ones she’d seen, similar in the spikes trailing down her back and in her powerful clawed feet; the main difference was the tail. Tony’s was fluked like the tail of a whale or some of the ponaturi, for ease in swimming.

  Hinewai had seen a land taniwha fighting a group of human warriors once, and it had taken dozens of them, a whole hunting party – they’d had to trick it and snare it with ropes until it tired; even bound, the taniwha had laid about it with its tail, breaking bones and sending warriors flying, and had swallowed one of the warriors whole when the unwise man came too close. Before that Hinewai had seen huge eagles flying, hunting, and when she was young she had been terrified by tales the older ones of her hapū told of lizards with sharp teeth, or huge basking beasts. She had never been more impressed or alarmed than when she stood in the trees watching as the great beast fought for its life.

  Tony was rather larger than that taniwha had been, and Hinewai was unafraid.

  “Hinewai,” Tony said in her human voice, strange when contrasted with the bulk and claws of her.

  “Yes?”

  “Come hunting with me?”

  Steffan went back to the Hikurangi café the next night and found it much changed.

  He stepped through the gap between pillars all unsuspecting, and then coughed and gagged, covered his mouth with his arm but still he choked on the stink of it.

  It was wretched. It was wasteland. He could barely breathe and he could barely see but he could see that there was all but nothing left; where there had been atua chatting and eating and laughing, where there had been fresh green vegetation draped over tables, now there was… nothing. Just ashes. He couldn’t even tell how far the ashes went, because he could barely see more than a few metres in front of him, the air was so clogged with death.

  Steffan stumbled back outside, into the real world; the light was too bright and he doubled over, retching and miserable, sick to his stomach. Māui? It must have been. He didn’t understand what was happening, and he hated not understanding. He curled up against the wall and just shook for a bit, and then he got out his laptop. But he couldn’t focus.

  “Understandable,” he said to himself, and it seemed important, so he said it again: “Perfectly understandable.” His voice was shaking. There had been bones there amongst the ashes.

  “You,” someone said in a voice like ice, and Steffan looked up. It was whatshisname, Ariki, the alarming man from yesterday. There was soot on his suit and – oh, God, his hands. For a brief mad second Steffan thought that it must’ve been him who burned down the Hikurangi.

  “Um, hi,” Steffan said, and he raised his hands like surrender. “I didn’t – I don’t take sides, I’m a scholar, I won’t… ” He was babbling and he hated himself for it.

  Ariki tilted his head and regarded him. Then he glanced at the space between pillars. There was no outward sign of the desecration of the Hikurangi, just a little smudge of ash on the ground. “Stupid little scholar boy. So you take notes? Would you deign to pass messages?”

  “No,” Steffan said, barely aware of what he was saying, and the fae man lifted him up by the throat, easily, and slammed him against the wall.

  “Yes,” Ariki said calmly, and then he grimaced and let go. Steffan fell to his knees, gasping, looking up. The charred skin of Ariki’s hands had cracked, and clearish fluid was leaking from the wounds.

  Ariki swore, odd lilting words spoken in a language Steffan didn’t recognise. “Weaving, then, singing,” Ariki said to himself, “have I really come to that?” and he looked at Steffan and his eyes went on forever and he sung something that made Steffan flinch and shudder and, yes, anything Ariki asked, he would do anything. Steffan knelt there staring up and his mind was as empty as the sky.

  Ariki stopped singing. “You will sit here and wait for the beastling, the taniwha girl,” he said. “Tell her that it seems this murderer was not a coward after all. And that I will seek revenge, regardless of whether she is too weak-hearted to do so. But if she wishes to, then the man who did this was –” And he pressed his mauled hand against Steffan’s head, almost into Steffan’s head, and put an image there. Steffan could see it clear as day, like it was burned into his eyelids: a man turning to face him, hands raised, silhouetted by the almost-real flames behind him.

  And then Ariki strode off, leaving Steffan swaying, staring after him. He was abruptly sick on the pavement, but he couldn’t move, he had to sit here and wait for the beastling, the taniwha girl, and tell her (it ran through his head, this, he could think of nothing else) that it seemed this murderer was not a coward after all, and that Ariki would seek revenge, regardless of whether she was too weak-hearted to, but that if she wished to then the man who did this was –

  “Saint?”

  He had never been a weaver.

  Not with flax, and not with music either; he could sing well enough, all his people could, but the dance of fingers over an instrument – no. There, true skill eluded him. He was still excellent, of course, but not the best there was, not by far. He had no love for it.

  He had never known what love was until the first time he held a taiaha.

  He’d hefted it in his hand, felt its weight, felt the intent of it; in that moment he knew everything it was, in awe, and was known in return.
>
  The first time he held a taiaha, he fell into the ancient forms, the quick-stepped parry and dance of it, and he performed every step perfectly, every single motion. Beyond perfectly. He was the taiaha and it was him, an extension of his limbs, his hand curved sure and sweet around it as he spun and stabbed and sung. It was a singing it was a weaving, it was dance, it was fight, it was everything, it was bloody and brutal and cleanly, elegantly perfect.

  He practiced, even though he had no need to.

  He found that he could dance with a patu too; he knew the motions of it, the swing and snap, he could crack bones clean as anything then reverse it to slash a delicate line in the flesh. He was deadly with a patu and deadlier with a mere and deadly with a knife and always, always with a taiaha, but, really, he was deadly with anything. He was a warrior born. He knew it deep down, in the way that trees know to grow towards the sky and children know to shout.

  He fought, for the joy of it, for blood spilled onto the earth, for fame within his hapū; Ariki they called him, half-mocking as all call-names were, but there was truth in it, there was respect raw and bloody and that was just how he liked it. When everything narrowed down to him and an opponent and the weight of a weapon in his hand – that was the most beautiful thing in the world, that was truth, that was living.

  He could never dance like that again. Not properly. Not truly. Never again make the music of a weapon moving through air and his body moving in perfect time with it. It was lost forever, like his hapū, like his everything.

  Ariki clenched his ruined hands, and sang. Knelt there drenched with blood, and wordless sung a song of sorrow. Wove it round with karakia and all the word-magic he knew. Wove it strong.

  He sung and sung and sung, ululating and wild. It was a mournful song, that one. It was a lament.

  It was a summons.

  This was one more insult than he could stand. A warrior had his pride, and this went beyond pride, even, into the ancient codes and cycles of revenge. So he sung. And he summoned. And it worked.