Cry of the Taniwha

by Des Hunt

  Chapter 6

  When Matt came out for breakfast, Hone had already been over to see Mere, arranging for Jackson to be brought over when she went to work. As yet, Jackson knew nothing about this because he was still asleep. Nobody was prepared to guess what his reaction might be.

  ‘I’ll be gone by then,’ Hone said to Nan. ‘If he doesn’t turn up by midday, check next door; and if he’s not there, give me a call.’ He turned to Matt. ‘And don’t take any nonsense from him. If you’re worried about what’s happening, leave him and come back here and tell Nan. If you can sort things out yourself, try and do so, but don’t put yourself at risk. Anything you can do to help will be appreciated.’

  Matt sat down and ate his breakfast in silence. He knew that Hone’s speech had been meant to reassure him, yet all it did was make him more nervous and think about things that could go wrong. Deep down, he wanted nothing to do with the boy.

  Jackson arrived an hour later. Even though the day was already sticky hot, he was wearing a hoodie with the hood up. His face was surly.

  ‘Have you had some breakfast?’ asked Nan.

  Jackson gave a grunt that could have been a yes.

  Nan ignored the rudeness and continued in her usual friendly way. ‘Well, just in case you get hungry, here’s a bacon-and-egg pie to go with you.’ She held out a large plastic box. Jackson could hardly do anything but take it.

  ‘I’ve got a bag we can put it in,’ said Matt. ‘I’ll go and get it.’

  When he got back, Jackson hadn’t moved. With a sigh, Matt took the box and put it in the bag with the rest of the gear. ‘Do you want to take that, while I take the detector?’

  Jackson shrugged, but took the bag from Matt and draped it over his shoulder. Matt picked up the detector, and headed out the door, leaving Jackson to stay standing or follow. After a brief delay, the boy followed.

  ‘Where’s the best place to start?’ asked Matt, more cheerfully than he felt.

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Hone suggested going into the forest, as mountain-bikers and runners might drop stuff.’

  Jackson gave no response.

  ‘What’s the best way?’

  Jackson raised his arm a little, indicating a path leading to the thermal area.

  Soon they were walking across the crater flat where Jackson had been bullied. The boy kept his eyes fixed firmly to the front.

  From there, the track led through scrub until it reached some trees, where it opened onto a large lawn fronting several buildings.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Matt.

  ‘Sumtin about the forest,’ replied Jackson. ‘Come this way.’ He led them around an empty building on to a track that skirted around a high netting fence. Inside, Matt could see rows and rows of small pine trees. A sign on the fence warning people to keep out had been tagged with Juzza and WXK.

  Matt pointed to the tag. ‘That yours?’

  Jackson’s chin came out, and he tilted his head. ‘Yeah,’ he said, proudly.

  ‘What’s WXK?’

  ‘That’s Skulla’s gang. Named it after the gang’s first house on the corner of Waitea and Kaimanawa streets. Dubexkay we call it. That’s the one I’m gunna join.’

  Matt thought back to the gang member with the skull tattoo. ‘Was Skulla one of those guys I saw you with yesterday morning?’

  Jackson’s eyes jerked around to stare at Matt. They showed both aggression and uncertainty. ‘Yeah. What of it?’

  Matt shrugged. ‘They just seemed a lot older than you, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m not joining any kids’ gang. Dubexkay are the meanest.’

  Yes, thought Matt, I bet they are. Out loud, he asked: ‘Why do you want to join a gang?’

  ‘Gangs rule, man. In the gang, you always got mates. You always got money. You always got women. In the gang, you’re somebody. Out of the gang, you’re nuttin.’

  What could Matt say to that? It was probably true. He certainly agreed with the mates bit. He’d only been away from his friends for three days and he already missed them.

  ‘What about the violence?’

  A flash of fear crossed Jackson’s face. ‘That doesn’t happen all the time.’

  ‘It happened yesterday.’

  ‘That was Diz. He’s always like that. That’s nuttin.’ His chin jutted out. ‘I can take it.’

  That wasn’t quite what Matt had witnessed. Still, if that’s what Jackson wanted to believe, then let him.

  Jackson turned away from the fence. ‘C’mon,’ he said, ‘and I’ll show you sumtin.’ He pushed his way into the manuka, and after scrambling through the brush for a couple of minutes they came to a grassy clearing. In the middle was a big explosion crater. There was a strong smell of sulphur, with a hint of steam rising from the pit. When Matt looked over the edge, he saw that it was a mud pool. Every so often there would be a plopping sound as a gas bubble burst to the surface.

  ‘Hone says this is the home of Kataore. He’s a taniwha,’ said Jackson.

  Matt laughed. ‘He was telling me about him yesterday. He said he was killed.’

  Jackson grunted. ‘Yeah, that’s what he told me. Then he said a bit of him survived and now lives down there. He’s always talking about taniwha. When I was little, he scared the crap out me with his stories.’

  Just then a loud croaking sound filled the air. Craarrk! Craarrk! Matt spun around. ‘What was that?’

  ‘That’s the cry of the taniwha. You hear it whenever you come near his home.’

  Craarrk! Craarrk! This time it was longer and louder. To Matt it sounded like the sort of noise you would’ve heard in a dinosaur swamp—perhaps from a pterodactyl flying overhead. It came again, and Matt realized why he’d thought of pterodactyls: the noise was coming from above the ground. He searched around and located the source. High in an old pine tree was a grey bird. Matt thought it might be a heron, because it had the same shape as the white herons he’d seen down the West Coast. But this was a smaller bird and the only white was around its face.

  ‘There’s the taniwha,’ he said, pointing it out to Jackson. ‘And look, it’s got a nest.’

  ‘Hone says that’s just one of his forms,’ said Jackson, smiling. ‘Sometimes he splits into two. Other times, he’s just one. And the nest is the place where he hides the things he steals.’

  Matt noted the smile and felt that the ice between them had broken. ‘What does he steal?’

  ‘All sorts of things. Whenever you find sumtin missing, that’ll be Old Tani.’

  ‘Must have a lot of stuff up there, then.’

  Again Jackson smiled. ‘Yeah. Maybe some has fallen down and been buried in the ground. Maybe there’s jools and stuff. We should take a look.’

  Matt looked around the area. It seemed as good a place as anywhere. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Let’s find Old Tani’s jewels.’

  Matt wore the headphones draped around his neck so that Jackson could also hear the sounds. He’d only been scanning for a few minutes when they got the first screech from the headphones. Jackson dug down with the trowel and found it was the tab off a beer can. He laughed. ‘Old Tani’s been on the booze.’

  They found five more tabs before the headphones gave a different sound. ‘Try there,’ said Matt. ‘But take it easy. Scraping away at it is best.’

  Jackson knelt down and scraped the plants away, revealing a dark surface of humus. A couple of centimetres below that, the colour changed to the grey-white sinter that was found all over Whakarewarewa, except this was powdery as if it had been ground up and dumped on top.

  After scraping for several more centimetres, Jackson stopped and looked up at Matt. ‘You sure sumtin’s there?’

  Matt stepped forward and wiped the sensor over the bare ground. Sure enough, it squealed just as it had before. ‘Yep! You just have to dig deeper.’

  A bit more scraping revealed deeper coloured material that was more granular. Then they ran into another humus layer, and there was the object: links of metal forming a ch
ain.

  Jackson leant over to pick it up.

  ‘Hold it!’ said Matt. ‘I want to photograph it.’ He pulled his camera out of the bag and took shots from three different angles. ‘OK, you can pick it up now.’

  That was much easier said than done. The moment Jackson pulled on the chain it fell to bits. ‘It’s just junk,’ he said.

  ‘There must be more than that to give the signal we got. Try scraping away on that side.’

  Three scrapes and a larger object was revealed, about the size and shape of an egg yolk. Jackson picked it up and they studied it together. The surface was black with tarnish. Jackson gave it a rub between his thumb and finger and a golden surface was uncovered. ‘Hey! It’s gold,’ he said, excitedly.

  Matt took it and rubbed it on his clothes, exposing a golden locket. ‘Yessss!’ he hissed. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ This was just the sort of thing he’d imagined finding when he was back in Dunedin.

  ‘See if it opens,’ suggested Jackson.

  Matt fiddled with the catch without any luck. ‘I’ve got some tools back at the house. We’ll open it when we get back.’ He dropped it into his pocket. ‘Let’s see if there’s more stuff around. Here, you have a go.’

  Jackson soon found some more stuff, but it was all rubbish, mostly bottle tops. Clearly people had used the place as a drinking area, probably quite recently.

  As they got closer to the old pine tree, the heron started croaking more frequently. ‘We don’t want to disturb it too much,’ said Matt. ‘Hone reckons you only find out what they’re really like when you harm them in some way.’

  Jackson didn’t reply. He was busy concentrating on the scanning. As he waved the sensor back and forth, his tongue did a similar movement across his lips. Matt looked at him and saw nothing of the surly boy who’d met him that morning. It looked like Hone’s idea was working. Maybe—

  There was a loud screech from the headphones. It sounded like a cat fight had broken out. Whatever the object was, it was under the tree, a few metres out from the trunk.

  Jackson looked up and grinned. ‘See! I can do better than you.’

  Matt was already on the ground scraping away the pine needles. Soon he had to scrape around roots. ‘The thing’s been here longer than the tree,’ he said without pausing.

  The sinter layer was thinner here, and soon he was into the darker granules. A moment later, the trowel clunked against something metallic. He took greater care from then on, until he had exposed a band of rusty iron.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Jackson.

  Matt scraped away some more and found that the metal band was wrapped around a root. He scraped under the root to confirm that it went all the way around. That’s when he saw the lock. ‘It looks like a handcuff of some sort,’ he said.

  ‘Somebody handcuffed the root?’ said Jackson. ‘Doubt it.’

  ‘No! The root’s grown through it.’

  ‘If it’s a handcuff, then there must be another side to it.’

  ‘There has to be more metal that this,’ said Matt. ‘Or the detector would not’ve made so much noise. He stretched under the root. ‘There’s a chain going down.’

  They looked at each other. A moment passed before Jackson put their thoughts into words: ‘Then what’s at the other end?’

  Just then, the heron let out the loudest croak yet. They both looked up. The bird’s long neck was extended so that it could peer through the branches down to them. ‘I think he’s starting to get upset,’ said Jackson, with a grin.

  ‘Well, he’s going to get a lot more upset before we’re finished, because we’re going to cut through those roots to find what’s underneath.’ Matt said it jokingly, yet there was a superstitious niggle at the back of his mind that said that digging any further might be a mistake. He didn’t believe in taniwha, but he did believe that at times things were best left the way they were; maybe this was one of them.

  Chapter 7

  Matt knew just the sort of tool they needed to cut the roots: a long-handled lopper. A pair of those could cut through a branch as big as his wrist. Unfortunately Hone didn’t have one, and Jackson’s mum had no tools at all. It looked like they would have to abandon the idea. Then Jackson said he had a cuzzie who worked in a hardware store, and they’d be able to get a big discount. So they headed off to town.

  As soon as they were on the main road, Jackson took off his hoodie and handed it to Matt. ‘Here, hold this while I get us a ride.’ He pulled his trousers up, until they weren’t hanging off his bum, and said, ‘You don’t want to look like one of the boyz or they don’t stop.’ He moved to the side of the road and held out his arm.

  The first five cars ignored him, but then a van pulled over. It already had four people in it, but somehow the two of them managed to squeeze in, and within five minutes they were outside the hardware store.

  Matt went to hand him back his hoodie, but Jackson shook his head. ‘You hold it. I’ll go in by myself.’

  ‘What about money?’ asked Matt.

  ‘This is on me.’

  Before Matt could object, Jackson was walking into the store. The security guard looked him up and down, but said nothing.

  Matt stood watching the shoppers come and go. Then Jackson reappeared. With his hands in his pockets, he sauntered past the security guard and off around the corner.

  ‘Don’t they have them?’ asked Matt when he caught him up.

  ‘Yeah!’

  ‘Are they too expensive?’

  ‘Nah! I got one.’

  ‘Where?’

  Jackson lifted the top of his T-shirt to reveal the cutting part. The thing was stuck down his trousers, one handle down each leg. He was holding onto them inside his pockets.

  ‘You stole it!’

  ‘Yeah. I said I could get a big discount.’ He smiled. ‘I got the five-finger discount.’

  Matt just stared at him.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Jackson. ‘Nobody saw me.’

  Still Matt stared. After a while he said, ‘We’ve got to take it back.’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘All right! I’m going to tell the security guard.’

  ‘Jeeze, man. Don’t be so stupid.’

  ‘We’re taking it back,’ said Matt firmly.

  ‘If we take it back, they’ll call the feds.’

  Matt thought for a while. ‘All right. We keep it hidden until we get in, and then you give it to me and I’ll pay for it. If we do it right, they’ll never know anything about it.’

  Jackson still wasn’t happy, but after a few more threats he agreed.

  The security guard looked at them more suspiciously when they reappeared at the entrance way. They walked past trying to look relaxed, and keeping their eyes firmly fixed to the front.

  As soon as they were in, they ducked down an aisle with high shelving on either side. Jackson was about to take out the loppers when the security guard turned in behind them. They froze as he walked slowly towards them.

  ‘Do you want some help?’ he asked.

  ‘No, thank you,’ replied Matt.

  ‘What’re you after?’

  ‘Long-handled loppers.’

  ‘Well you won’t find them along here. They’re over in the other corner, along with all the other garden tools.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Matt, moving off in the direction the guard was pointing. Jackson followed.

  At the end of the aisle, Matt turned and saw that the guard was still watching them. When they were out of view, Matt pushed Jackson against the shelving. ‘Get them out now,’ he ordered.

  Jackson recognized the urgency and quickly had the loppers out of his trousers.

  ‘Right! You head for the door while I pay for them.’ He then marched off, holding the loppers tightly against his body, hoping they were hidden from the guard, who was just turning the corner behind them.

  Matt tried to look relaxed as he walked over to the garden section. Yet he could feel the guard’s eyes boring into the back of his head. Any m
oment he expected a yell or a tap on the back.

  It didn’t come, and with some relief he reached the tools aisle and could start breathing easily again. He waited a while before walking out the other end and heading for the checkout counter, carrying the loppers for all to see.

  They ended up being on special and were much cheaper than Matt had anticipated. He paid with the cash card his dad had given him, and then headed for the door.

  The guard was waiting for him.

  ‘Can I see your docket please?’ asked the guard.

  Matt handed it over.

  After studying it for a while, the guard handed it back. He looked Matt in the eyes and said, ‘You did the right thing there, son.’ He nodded out the door in Jackson’s direction. ‘Let’s hope he’s learnt something from it, too. Enjoy the rest of your day.’

  Matt walked out into the sunshine, feeling like he’d just been released from prison. That had been the closest he’d ever come to committing a crime, and he hoped he never got any closer.

  When they returned to the pine tree, the heron was down on the ground feeding. It eyed them suspiciously for a bit, before taking off and flying to the other side of the mud pool to resume its meal.

  Using the loppers was not as easy as it looked. The idea was simple: grip the root with the beak-like cutters and close the handles. However, the force required was much more than one of them could provide. They pushed, wriggled and huffed for some minutes before the first cut was completed. After that they found that twisting the handles back and forth made a much quicker cut. They were then able to pull the root out from inside the metal ring.

  A moment’s digging alongside the chain uncovered the top of the other metal ring. Now there was no doubting that they were handcuffs. Yet they were still locked in place by roots.

  This time, they decided to clear as many roots as they could before they went any further. Matt was convinced that there was a lot more metal down there than just the handcuffs. The detector had screamed more than when he’d found the time capsule, and that was way bigger than a pair of old handcuffs.