The Bone Tiki

by David Hair

  She led him through a break in the traffic to the palm trees on the median, then they darted over to the seaward side of the Parade, and found themselves in a playground.

  They struck the Parade just to the south of the tourist attractions, went under an arch commemorating the turn of the millennium and down to the shoreline, where breakers crashed onto the shore, and hissed through the gravel. The beach was stony—small grey pieces of shingle worn smooth by the pounding waves scrunched underfoot. A chill wind blew off the water, redolent with salt and spray. Mat’s jacket became damp and stiff and his back began to sweat where the kitbag pressed against him. The girl walked alongside, her hair tousled by the sea breeze, her lips forming a wordless melody. He could see her teeth shining, reflecting the fairy lights of the Parade. Two boys throwing stones into the water stopped and gazed at her as they passed. Ahead the lights of the Soundshell gleamed, and beyond that, the port. Window and street lights on Bluff Hill loomed further back, like a huge burial mound.

  ‘Did you know that warrior guy?’ Mat asked, eventually.

  The girl didn’t answer.

  ‘Because,’ said Mat, ‘it was weird, him running off like that, when he’d caught me and…’ He pulled out the tiki and waved it at the girl. ‘Have you seen this before?’

  She stopped, reached out, but stopped short of touching it, and her soft brown eyes grew sad.

  ‘No. But I think it is very special…I think you should look after it carefully, Matiu Douglas.’

  Mat flushed, and put the tiki around his neck, and knotted the cord, then slipped it beside his pendant inside his T-shirt. He looked at the girl curiously. ‘I don’t remember your name.’

  She laughed, a tinkling sound. ‘That’s because I haven’t told you.’ She held out her right hand, just as she had after she’d scared the warrior away. This time, Mat took it in his. ‘My name is Pania.’

  ‘Pania…like the girl in the reef?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh…cool.’

  She laughed. ‘Where are you going, Mat?’

  ‘I…um…I need to get to Taupo…but I don’t know how…I was heading for the station, but that’s too far away now. And these people are…’

  ‘Chasing you? Don’t worry, I’ll help.’ She seemed to consider. ‘They will have thought of the station by now. Your best chance is to go to friends.’

  Mat tried to think of someone who would help, but anyone he could think of would probably tell his father where he was. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed that Tama was everywhere, knew everyone he knew…

  ‘I don’t know anyone else I can go to.’

  She grinned. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll find new friends you haven’t even met yet.’

  Just then, a whispering began again in his head…Mat…Mat… a cold shiver rippled over his skin.

  Pania frowned and hissed, ‘Shush,’ and the whispering stopped.

  He stared at her. ‘How did you…’

  She looked back at him. ‘How did I what?’

  ‘Errr, nothing.’ He tried to think some more, but it was hard. This girl was so…distracting.

  ‘Well,’ said Pania eventually, ‘if you can’t think of anyone, perhaps you should hitch-hike to Taupo tomorrow. As long as you’re careful, you’ll be OK.’

  Perhaps if he slept on the beach, and then in the morning walked to the north side of town and got a ride…he could be in Taupo before midday. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  Pania looked thoughtful, while making circles in the gravel with her right shoe. Eventually she said, ‘I think if we walk round the port together, and you walk far enough tonight, come morning you can get a lift before they figure what you’re doing, and you’ll be ahead of them.’

  He thought for a while. ‘I guess so. I could go round the port, and cross the bridge at the Iron Pot, then go out along Westshore Beach.’

  Pania nodded. ‘If I were you, I’d go as far as the Esk River, then cut inland, and try and get a ride from in the Esk Valley. It’s probably further than they’ll think you can do, which is good. And you’ll be off the roads, where they’ll be looking for you.’

  The walk around the Bluff Hill to the Iron Pot would take at least an hour, then it was about ten kilometres along the beach from Westshore to Bay View, and then a couple of kilometres inland to the Esk Valley. ‘I don’t know if I can get that far in one night.’

  ‘You could, but you’d be dead on your feet come dawn. If you sleep somewhere along the way, you could walk most of it in the daylight and get a ride around mid-morning.’

  ‘Which makes it more likely they’ll spot me if they’re watching that far north…could I sleep at your place?’ He blushed as he asked.

  Pania laughed. ‘Not possible, sorry. I don’t have a car either, before you ask.’

  ‘I guess it’s walking then,’ he sighed.

  ‘Yeah, I guess it is. Come on. When we get to the Soundshell, I’ll slip into town and get something for you to eat.’

  They walked on, and once they were just past the Soundshell, Pania led Mat back up from the beach, and sat him in the glow of an illuminated fountain. Every few seconds the fountain’s pattern, and the colour of the lights, would change, sending a watery curtain of crystals dancing merrily into the air. Deep red, a luminescent green and a rich purple each played for half a minute then changed to another colour. Mat had been here many times before, with Mum and Dad, eating fish’n’chips and watching the water play. Pania led him to a seat beside a bronze statue of a beautiful, bare-breasted Maori girl, reclining on a rock. The statue of Pania of the Reef.

  ‘Wait here, and you’ll be safe,’ she smiled. ‘My namesake will guard you,’ she added with a laugh, then skipped away toward the city lights.

  Mat’s eyes followed her until she was out of sight. There were couples wandering past, gazing at the fountain. A hundred metres south was the Soundshell, where kids on skateboards, who should have been home by now, were zooming around. The fairy lights in the pines waved in a gentle sea breeze. He looked at the statue. There was a plaque on the rock. He read it idly.

  Pania of the Reef

  An old Maori legend tells how Pania, lured by the siren voices of the sea people, swam out to meet them. When she endeavoured to return to her lover, she was transformed into the reef which now lies beyond Napier Breakwater.

  To perpetuate the legend the thirty thousand club presented this statue to the city—1954.

  He thought the girl looked a bit like the statue. For a moment he imagined that…but, nah, she’ll go to Napier Girls High and watch dumb telly programmes like any other girl…still, weird, though.

  Pania returned with a burger and milkshake each. They took them down to the beach, and ate and slurped as they walked beside the waves.

  ‘What school do you go to? Girls High?’ he asked between mouthfuls.

  Pania shook her head. ‘No. Do you go to Boys High?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He told her about school all the long trudge around the port lands—about art, and what he liked doing, and even about his parents. It felt odd, to be talking to someone about everyday things after such a strange day. He never got around to asking Pania about herself; she always seemed to answer his questions with questions of her own. Behind the port, they had to return to the road, and cross the bottom of Bluff Hill. Empty seashore north of the port gave way to a park where teens still played on the swings and shouted to each other, though it was gone nine o’clock. The air was getting colder, and Mat was shivering.

  ‘You should change into a dry T-shirt,’ Pania advised, so they stopped at the toilets in the playground, and he went inside the Mens, went to the toilet and changed. When he emerged, Pania was talking to a tough-looking Maori man, but she said something that made him laugh, and he wandered off chuckling to himself. Then off they went again, past the Iron Pot shops, and around the fishing-boat docks.

  The Iron Pot is an inlet area north of Napier Hill. Fishing boats come and go, and the yacht
club marina is further along the channel. Warehouses line the south side of the channel, most renovated into pubs and restaurants looking out over the water. On the north side, around one hundred and forty metres away, stood well-lit waterfront properties at Perfume Point, at the south end of Westshore. Mat walked with Pania past the restaurants, with tables of laughing people. The smell of food and drink carried from the open windows.

  Mat was feeling tired. He glanced at his watch—it was after nine o’clock, and he’d been walking or running since he fled home a couple of hours ago. Pania still stepped lightly as if at any moment she might break into a dance. They walked through the playground on the verge of the seashore, where groups of teens huddled about the play equipment, smoking. They went around into the old port area, where the fishing boats still tied up, passed an old wooden building that had once been Napier’s Customhouse, and rounded a bend that took them right to the wharves. The sea gleamed darkly before them, one or two metres below. Across the water, maybe 90 metres, were houses; to their left, a marina, and beyond that, half a kilometre away, the bridge they had to cross.

  Mat knew his way around this area fairly well. Once the inlet reached the marina, the water flowed under the bridge, and then broadened into a wide tidal estuary, behind Westshore and Pandora. The bridge carried the only road north, which then curled in behind Westshore, out to the airport, then Bay View. Beyond that, it forked, offering either the trek over the ranges to Taupo, or the twisting road up the East Cape to Wairoa and Gisborne.

  They trudged on, with a tingle of apprehension. Anyone going north would cross the bridge—they had little choice—and if Puarata had guessed where he was bound, the bridge would be guarded.

  By the time they were within a few hundred metres of the bridge, Mat could see his worst fears had been realised.

  They stopped in the shadows. A black car was parked on the near side of the bridge, and a dark-haired man in a suit was pacing beside it, hunched a little, holding one hand to his head—as if he was talking on a cellphone. He finished, straightened, and stood on the corner of the bridge, staring at the cars that passed, heading north.

  ‘How am I going to get across? He’ll stop me, as soon as he sees me.’

  Mat and Pania had slipped down to the water’s edge. Across the inlet, barely 90 metres away, was the north shore of the Iron Pot. But the man on the bridge had a complete view of the entire inlet and the bridge.

  Pania frowned slightly, running her fingers through the gravel. ‘We could go back, cut inland and go around the inlet. But that’ll take hours. Or we could swim across.’

  Mat reached out his fingers and laced them through the water. ‘It’s freezing—we can’t swim!’

  ‘I could—I’m a good swimmer.’

  ‘Well, I’m not…and all my clothes would get wet—how would I get my pack across dry?’

  She thought for a moment, pulling at her hair. ‘I know—wait here,’ and then she was gone, slipping away toward the wharves.

  Mat had waited for ten minutes, and was beginning to fidget. The wind was getting up, and the air was even colder. The man on the bridge had lit a cigarette, and it glowed like a red eye, just the length of a football field away. The noises from the bars and restaurants grew louder, music and shouting. A smell of dead fish and rotting seaweed hung about the water’s edge, like the smell of the warrior’s breath.

  ‘Hey, Mat,’ whispered Pania, from behind a trailer boat. Mat went over to her, shivering at the chilly air. She looked pleased with herself, showing him a small pile of shadowy objects. He picked up the top one—a grey plastic bag, big enough to fit his kitbag. Underneath was a life-jacket, and a towel.

  ‘Where did you get these?’

  ‘I nicked them, dummy. Come on, get your jeans and coat off, and put them in the bag.’

  He blushed, and she giggled.

  ‘Come on, silly. I’m going to have to do the same,’ and she pulled her jacket off, revealing a black crop-top T-shirt over the swell of her breasts, and then she bent to the button of her jeans. Mat felt himself colour, and he turned away quickly. He fumbled with the coat button, and then pulled it and his jeans off, and stuffed them into his kitbag. He heard Pania snicker behind him.

  ‘You ain’t got much tan for a Maori boy. You look like a skinny Pakeha.’

  He felt his cheeks go hot.

  She handed him a life-jacket, still chuckling. ‘You know how to fit one of these?’

  ‘Sure,’ he answered crossly. ‘Dad’s got friends who own a yacht.’

  He snatched it from her and pulled it over his head, then pulled the straps tight around his chest. Pania began packing the kitbag into the plastic bag. ‘I’ll carry this,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to go back a bit, so the guy on the bridge can’t see us in the water. We’ll go back to where the wharves start.’

  Mat nodded, unable to think of anything beyond how cold the water had felt, and the strangeness of what he was about to do. ‘Are you sure there’s no other way of doing this?’

  ‘Heaps,’ she answered. ‘But none we can do now. Coming?’ She turned and glided into the dark waters. Mat swallowed and scampered after her.

  They entered the water where the wharfs began. Only a few metres away cars were pulling out of the car parks. The man on the bridge had been joined by another figure—slim, with blonde hair. Donna, Mat recognised with a small shudder. She’s got a gun. He clenched his fists, to stop his hands from shaking. Pania slipped out of the darkness, and into the rippling water. Her hair fell all the way to her waist, and she seemed to flow into the water like some elemental spirit, as if she were one of the Sea People of the legend. When she turned to see what he was waiting for, only her face caught the light, and the rippling of the water seemed to catch on her chin. Momentarily it seemed as if the moko he’d thought he’d seen when he first met her was there after all. He shook his head, trying to banish the strangeness that was swallowing everything he knew, and stepped into the water.

  It was painfully cold, and got deep much quicker than he expected, and he nearly panicked when his feet lost the bottom, but Pania was beside him, with her hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s not far, Mat. Come on—don’t kick hard, and keep your feet under the water so you don’t splash. You’ll be fine.’

  And he was fine. He felt a warm sense of trust course through him, and he lay backward, let the life-jacket support him, and gently kicked toward the far shore. The stars were out, but it was the dark of the moon. The water was inky, and the surface rippled with the reflected lights from the streetlights and restaurants. He glanced to his right and could see the bridge and the two figures. Neither looked their way.

  Pania flowed beside him, dragging the bag, which she was keeping almost entirely out of the water. Her face reflected no effort, only serenity and a sense of fun, as though this was a game and she was winning. ‘Not far,’ she whispered. ‘They’ve not seen us. Don’t look at them again. The blonde one has the eye.’

  Mat wondered briefly what she meant.

  After the initial shock, the water wasn’t that cold, and the stars danced above. It seemed that if he stopped to listen, he would hear music—not the pounding beats from the bars on the wharfs, but something older, melodic, chanting…something not carried in the air, but rising from the sea. Something that called…He shuddered and kicked harder, making a ripple and a tiny splash. Pania frowned but said nothing, as she side-stroked alongside, towing the bag. Then suddenly they were clambering over slimy concrete blocks and onto the grass verge behind a fence. The wind rose again, frigid against wet cloth and skin, and they both shivered. Pania led them away to the right, toward the point, and a bush that grew beside the road in a horseshoe shape, almost a perfect changing-room. Hidden in the middle of the protecting screen of foliage, the bridge was out of sight, and Mat felt a sudden sense of relief.

  ‘Get your wet stuff off,’ whispered Pania. ‘Give it here.’ She pulled the kitbag from its plastic protection, and pulled out dry clothes. ‘See,
your stuff is all dry. Did you bring a towel? Yes! Here, dry yourself off.’

  Mat grabbed the towel and wrapped it around his shoulders, then peeled his undies and T-shirt off, too cold and wet to feel self-conscious. The two pendants on his chest clicked together briefly. Oddly, both still felt warm. He towelled hard at his skin, then pulled the fresh clothes on. Pania wrung his wet gear out, then stuffed it in the front pocket of the kit. She was dripping wet, dressed only in a wet crop-top and underwear, but she wasn’t even shivering.

  ‘If you walk along the seashore, no one will see you. Don’t stop for anyone, and only cut in when you strike the river outlet. OK?’

  Mat nodded, wishing she were coming with him. Once he’d finished getting dressed, they walked together down to the water at the south end of Westshore Beach. The bridge was out of sight, back around the point. There was sand and beyond the small breakers container ships waited offshore. To the south, Bluff Hill blocked the city while to the north, houses arced around the bay—Westshore, and then a gap, to where the houses of Bay View twinkled like earthbound stars in the distance, some eight kilometres away. Further still, lights near the pulp-mill at Whirinaki, and then darkness. The Esk River came out near there. About 10 kilometres away, maybe more. Starlight caught the foaming waves, all around the Bay, creating a white line that marked the edge of the land. He had to go north, away from the light and into the darkness. He checked his watch. It was nearly ten. He should start. But he felt awfully alone, and afraid.

  Pania put an arm around his shoulder and pulled his face into her shoulder. She was about as tall as his mother, and his face pressed into the nape of her neck, where it fit perfectly. Her crop-top and hair were wet, but her skin was warm.

  ‘You’ll be OK,’ she whispered.

  He nearly burst into tears, but gritted his teeth and fought the urge with all his strength, even though he was nearly paralysed with fear—for Riki, and for Aunty Hine. Fear of Puarata, Donna, and the warrior. Fear that his mother would never hold him again. And fear that his dad would never be his dad again.