Cry of the Taniwha

by Des Hunt

  A lot of the objects were stuck onto their page: leaves, small feathers, pieces of eggshells, and bits of skin. It seemed that her collection had been well on its way before it was buried by the eruption.

  Matt spent some time thumbing through the book looking for clues as to how the box had ended up where it did. Of course there was nothing. Nobody had planned for it to be buried and lost for over a hundred-and-twenty years. But there was something that seemed rather strange. The last entry in the book was labelled Tree fern trunk, also known as ponga. The text read:

  This, along with the metal box, was a wonderful gift from Edward. 1 May 1886.

  Matt picked up the ponga candleholder to study it more closely. The wood had been polished to reveal the lines of brown against a tan background. This contrasted with the wax of the thick candle that fitted down the hole in the middle. While it was an interesting thing, it was also a misfit. None of the other objects had been processed in any way. It didn’t seem right that Mary had considered it part of a ‘Natural History’ collection.

  ‘Maybe I should keep it away from the other things,’ said Matt, with a smile. ‘Keep it for myself.’ And so the decision was made. He now had a memento: the candleholder would be his reminder of the discoveries made in the forest. The government need never know that the thing existed.

  Chapter 13

  First thing next morning, Matt revisited the forest to check the hole where the box had been found just in case there had been other stuff in it. There wasn’t. So he then began a systematic search of the whole area, hoping to find something that would satisfy the gang: some gold might be possible, but diamonds were unlikely. They could never be detected unless they were mounted in metal.

  There was nothing. However, he did find something of interest: past the stream and the heron’s tree, he found another clearing, closer to the main thermal area. Despite being surrounded by thick scrub, the middle was totally bare. Something was stopping the plants from growing, but what that might be was not at all obvious.

  As Matt looked around the place, Old Tani let out a cry. Matt looked up expecting to see the heron staring at him as usual. However, this time it was looking towards a nearby hill.

  ‘Craarrk,’ it said again.

  Matt followed the line of sight and saw that there was a lookout with a view down into the clearing and surrounding scrub. A person was leaning against the railings with binoculars aimed directly at Matt. While he was too far away to identify, the clothing suggested that he was probably a Dubexkay member. A shiver of fear ran down Matt’s body; it was a chilling reminder that he was now a slave to the gang.

  Immediately, Matt packed up the detector and left the area. There was probably nothing in the clearing anyway. He went back to the mud pool and stared at it for a while. If there ever was a great horde of jewels, then that’s probably where it was: sitting under the bubbling mud, in a place where it’d never be found.

  His thoughts were disturbed by a friendly voice calling out from the other side of the crater. ‘Hello, there!’

  He looked up and saw a woman. Alongside her was a man with a camera.

  ‘Are you Matt Logan?’ asked the woman.

  Matt nodded, unsure whether he should admit the fact.

  ‘Excellent!’ she replied, walking around the pool towards him. ‘Your grandmother said we’d find you here. We’re from the Rotorua Lakeland Times. We’d like to talk about the skeleton and all that gold you found.’

  Over the next half hour, Matt was quizzed about the discovery and how excited he must’ve been. He bumbled his way through, hoping he wasn’t making too big a fool of himself. Except for making no mention of Jackson, he tried to be honest with his answers. Yet the woman seemed to twist his words to get the story she wanted. When he told them that he hadn’t actually found the gold, she insisted that the gold would not’ve been found unless he’d used his metal detector, so he was really the discoverer, wasn’t he?

  After the interview, they re-enacted the event so that photos could be taken. It was all a bit artificial, but it seemed to be what they wanted. Matt was pleased when it was finally over and he could head back home.

  Jackson was sitting on the doorstep, waiting for him. The door was locked, indicating that Nan had gone out somewhere. Matt ignored the boy, unlocked the door, walked inside and started getting something to eat. Jackson soon followed. He sat at the table with his head in his hands, staring at nothing and looking thoroughly miserable.

  Matt almost smiled at the boy’s discomfit: served him right if things were going wrong with his life. Matt was still annoyed about how the Dubexkay had got involved. ‘Why’d you do it?’ he asked.

  ‘Do what?’ mumbled Jackson.

  ‘Involve Skulla and the rest of the gang.’

  ‘You wanted that box opened, didn’t you?’

  ‘Not by those gorillas.’

  Jackson looked up at Matt. ‘What are you moaning about? You’re not in as much trouble as I am.’

  Matt studied him, and realized that he’d been crying. ‘Did they beat you up again?’ Matt asked, gently.

  Jackson gave a little nod. ‘Diz,’ he said.

  ‘Why do you hang around with them if they’re going to beat you all the time?’

  Jackson’s chin came out. ‘If you wanna be a member, you gotta take the bash. Show them you’re tough.’

  Matt shook his head in disbelief. ‘Jackson, they don’t want you as a member of their gang. You’re too young for them. They just enjoy beating you up. They’re using you.’

  The chin came out further. ‘No, they’re not!’

  Matt kept quiet, sensing that there was little he could say that would change the boy’s mind.

  Jackson continued, ‘They’re gunna make me a member soon.’ Then he added, ‘I hope.’

  There was something about the way he said it that made Matt realize that this was what was upsetting Jackson. ‘What do you have to do?’ he asked, quietly.

  ‘Nuttin much. Just a job.’

  ‘Shoplifting?’

  ‘Nah,’ replied Jackson, as if shoplifting was kids’ stuff. ‘More than that.’

  ‘A robbery?’

  Jackson nodded. Then he looked up quickly. ‘But don’t you tell anyone or they’ll kill me.’

  ‘What do you have to do?’

  ‘Nuttin much. Just climb through a window.’

  Matt nodded: the gang was using Jackson because he was small. ‘When?’ he asked.

  ‘I dunno. Soon.’

  Matt shook his head. ‘Jackson, don’t do it. You’ll get into serious trouble.’

  ‘Nah. The feds can’t do anything to me. I’m too young.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Skulla.’

  ‘They’re just using you!’ shouted Matt. ‘Can’t you see that?’

  Jackson got to his feet and faced up to Matt. ‘No, they’re not. They’re not. You don’t understand.’ Tears started to form in his eyes. Then he ran. ‘You don’t understand,’ he repeated as he flew out the door. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘No,’ whispered Matt. ‘I don’t. And I doubt I ever will.’

  Matt returned to the forest in the afternoon, this time without the metal detector. He wanted to visit the redwood trees that had been planted sometime after the eruption. Hone said there were some great walks in amongst the huge trees.

  The redwoods were in a public park where people walked, jogged and mountain-biked. Matt found a track that had fewer people, and began photographing the trees and the grassy glades between them.

  As he worked, he couldn’t help but think about Jackson. Despite what the boy had done, Matt found that he liked him. He was a crazy mix of toughness and fragility: one minute bragging, the next crying. Hone’s plan to keep Jackson away from the gang clearly wasn’t working. Yet, while Matt hadn’t liked being given the job, he now wanted to help. He wanted to stop Jackson getting involved in the burglary. But what could he do? If only he knew the date of the job, th
en he would know how much time he had to sort things out. Jackson had said ‘soon’, but how long was that? A day, a week, two weeks, a month…what?

  His thoughts continued along this line as he walked between the giant trees. Every now and again a jogger would run past, or he would see some sunbathers in a sunny glade, but mostly he was by himself. After a while, he turned off onto a smaller track that was deeply rutted with bicycle tracks. The trees changed from redwoods to pines, and he wondered whether this might be the Taniwha Track that Hone had mentioned. He heard song-birds calling from high in the trees, and saw fantails flitting around in the undergrowth, but no signs of anything that might have been some form of the taniwha.

  Then the track dipped down towards a secluded pond surrounded by long grass. Partly hidden amongst the grass were a couple of lovers, so absorbed in each other that they didn’t notice that they were being spied upon. The spy was a man hiding behind a tree less than five metres from their nest. Matt smiled: maybe this guy was a form of the taniwha. He certainly looked weird enough. While Matt couldn’t see his face, the shape of his body indicated a youth rather than a man. His legs were long and skinny beneath a pair of really tight, short shorts. He wore a brightly coloured shirt covered in tropical island scenes. Above this was a full head of ginger hair, combed in a style that Matt had seen only in old movies. A taniwha from the nineteen-sixties, perhaps?

  Matt’s interest in the lovers increased as he got closer and realized that there was more flesh visible than there ought to be. So interested, that he stopped looking where he was going and tripped over an exposed root. He crashed to the ground with a loud cry of surprise. It took only a moment for him to sit up and discover that there were no injuries. By then, the lovers were scrambling to cover all their exposed parts, and the spy was running towards him, his eyes slitted and lips tight in anger.

  When he got close, he stood over Matt with fists clenched. ‘Moron!’ he shouted, his pimply face turning red. ‘It was just getting interesting. Why did you have to come along?’

  Matt got to his feet. He wasn’t scared of this gawky creep. ‘It’s a public park—I can be here! Anyway, you shouldn’t spy on other people.’

  The Gawk stared at him for a moment, before moving off the path to pull a bike from the undergrowth. The lovers were now fully clothed and preparing to leave. The male glared at The Gawk riding past. Then he helped his girlfriend up onto the path and started walking back the way Matt had come.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ said the male as he went by. ‘There’s some sick types in this world, aren’t there?’ The girl kept her eyes firmly fixed on the ground.

  After a while, Matt turned and followed them. The Gawk could have the rest of the track to himself. With any luck Matt’d never meet him again.

  Chapter 14

  It was mid-morning when Matt climbed out of bed the next day. He’d had trouble getting to sleep because of worrying; not so much about what had already happened, but about what might happen in the future, especially with Jackson and the burglary.

  Hone had left for work, leaving Nan baking in the kitchen. She gave Matt a big smile as he walked in. ‘Good morning, Matt. Have a look at the paper. You’re famous.’

  Matt looked at the newspaper on the table, expecting to see a small article on an inside page. Instead, he saw that most of the front page was devoted to the skeleton found in the forest. Right in the centre was a large photo of him scanning the ground with his metal detector. The article alongside made a big feature of the handcuffs and the gold coins, suggesting that it was a robbery gone wrong. The reporter had quotes from Dr Ian McMillan saying that the person had died during the eruption. From that, she proposed that the robber had been caught, but in the chaos of the eruption had somehow managed to escape. Then, when he was picking the locks of the handcuffs, he’d got buried by the steam explosion.

  ‘What do you think of that?’ asked Nan, proudly, putting a plate of food in front of him.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he replied.

  ‘OK? It’s more than OK: I think it’s great.’ Then she smiled at him. ‘But I suppose you have your photo in the paper every day.’

  Matt shrugged. Not every day, he thought. But it had happened before. Last time was when he had found the time capsule at school. That had led to a lot of teasing from some of the older students. Having your photograph in the paper was not always good news. Maybe this time would be the same.

  There was no sign of Jackson by the time Matt left the house. But Diz was around, waiting just along the road.

  ‘Where’s the diamonds, Bogan?’ he asked.

  Matt studied his shoes. ‘I’ll never find them,’ he complained. ‘We don’t even know that they’re there.’

  ‘You better find something ’cos Skulla’s getting angry.’ Without warning, Diz threw a fist at Matt’s face, stopping it just before it made contact. Then he laughed as Matt pulled back, raising his arm to protect himself. ‘That’s just a reminder of what’ll happen if you don’t. Now get to work before I start hitting you for real.’

  Matt didn’t need to be told twice. He scurried off in the direction of the forest, feeling Diz’s eyes watching him all the way.

  Before he’d got anywhere near the mud pool, Matt was aware that the newspaper publicity had changed things. There were cars parked on the grass by the netting fence, along with the sound of voices filtering through the trees.

  There were about a dozen people in the clearing. Some were gathered around the hole where the skeleton had been found; another lot were studying the plopping mud; two of them were waving metal detectors about.

  Matt wasn’t going to look for diamonds with all that lot about, so he went into the forest and skirted around the mud pool before crossing the stream and approaching the other clearing. For a while he stayed in the bushes, listening for voices. There were none, so he walked in and began scanning.

  In a way, he was just going through the motions. If the gang expected him to search for things, then that is what he would do. He glanced up to the lookout and saw that he was being spied on again. At least Diz would get the message that he was looking for things.

  After half an hour, he’d had enough. There was nothing, not even rubbish. It seemed like the clearing was clean. Then, just as he had that thought, the machine started squealing like a stuck pig. Matt dropped to his knees and began digging. It only took a moment of scraping and he had it: a coin of some sort.

  With growing excitement he rubbed it against his shirt, before holding it up to the light. It was definitely old. A bit of spit and another rub and he knew it was also gold. He could see the shield identical to the sovereign that Burty and Lew had shown him.

  ‘Old and gold. Old and gold,’ he chanted to himself, thrilled with the find. Now he would have a true memento of his find. The candleholder could go to the—

  A flash of light from the lookout made him look up. The watcher had binoculars trained on him, watching every move. His heart sank. There would be no golden memento. The gang would take it off him. Nothing he found was his anymore.

  He put the sovereign to one side and checked the ground once more with the detector. It squealed almost as loudly as it had before. A moment later, there were two sovereigns sitting on the ground. Then a while after that there were four. By the time the machine fell silent, Matt had a pile of nine sovereigns—more than two thousand dollars’ worth.

  As he packed up the detector, he wondered whether that would be enough to satisfy the gang. Probably not, but it might be enough for them to put off the robbery, which would give him longer to work out something for Jackson.

  Before he left for the day, his bowel—which had been competing with the natural smells of Whakarewarewa for the past hour—insisted that it be emptied. He went into the bushes. While he was enjoying the relief of the action, a movement in the clearing caught his eyes. Someone was there and they were right beside the sovereigns and the detector.

  By the time he’d finished and was able to mov
e out of the scrub, the person had the detector in his hands and was running towards the bushes on the other side.

  ‘Hey!’ yelled Matt. ‘Give that back!’

  There was no reply other than the breaking of branches as the thief crashed through the scrub. Matt raced after him. ‘Hey!’ he yelled again.

  The path that the thief had taken was easy to follow, but Matt sensed he was well behind. Soon they moved onto a formed track, which gave Matt a glimpse of the thief disappearing into the distance.

  The track went on and on, twisting in and out of the trees. All the time, the sounds coming from the front were getting more distant. If something didn’t happen, the thief would get clean away.

  Then they moved onto one of the forestry roads and Matt got a clear look at him. It was The Gawk, wearing the same short shorts and tropical shirt as the day before. He was now a thief as well as a spy.

  Unfortunately, The Gawk’s long legs gave him an advantage and the gap widened still more. Yet Matt figured that, sooner or later, the detector would slow him down, so he kept up the chase.

  It was all downhill for a while until they reached the flat near the back of the forest research centre. Now there were people about. ‘Stop him!’ yelled Matt. ‘Stop him! He’s stolen my detector.’

  While everyone turned and stared, no one made a move to help. Soon The Gawk was into the car park. He went straight for a bike that was leaning against a tree. For a moment he fumbled with a chain around the back wheel. Matt sprinted forward, thinking that this was his chance. ‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘Stop!’

  But The Gawk didn’t stop. Just as Matt was about to close in on him, he swung his leg over the seat and took off down the road.

  ‘Stop!’ screamed Matt. ‘Please stop!’ The Gawk didn’t even look back, and soon he was out of sight around a bend, leaving Matt holding his head in his hands, wondering what on earth he would do now.

  Back in the clearing, it took Matt only a moment to confirm what he had feared: the sovereigns had also been taken.