The Bone Tiki

by David Hair

  He became conscious of Pania murmuring in his ear, whispering in Maori, words he didn’t know. He felt a sense of shame that he couldn’t speak his own language. He tried to speak, but Pania shushed him gently.

  ‘You’ll be OK. Just listen. You’ve been brave, and you will be again. Everything seems strange, because you’ve stepped into a world you didn’t know existed. But it was always here, waiting for you. Aotearoa. It’s light and magical, but it can be dark too. Just like your world. It’s like a river, and when you put one foot in, the current won’t let you go. You just have to swim. It would be better if you knew more of tikanga-Maori, your culture. But you will learn. You just have to be brave, and believe in yourself.’

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘You can still go to Taupo, as you planned. But remember, they know where your mother lives, so you must be careful. Puarata is strong, and he won’t give up.’

  Mat went still, those words echoing in his skull. They know where your mother lives. Of course they did! How could he be so stupid? Fear for his mother threatened to unleash another wave of tears, but he blinked them away, angry at himself. ‘But then…what can I do? Where can I go that’s safe?’

  Pania stroked his head. ‘I don’t think you should go to your mother. They’ll be watching her. There’s a place in Waikato, a pa near Maungatautari, on a bend in the river. There is a man there, a tohunga, called Hakawau. He can help you. Go to him.’

  Mat nodded, though when he thought of not seeing his mother, something inside him refused. He said nothing. Pania gave him another squeeze then stepped away from him, held both his shoulders. ‘If you hear the whispers again, don’t listen to them. Just take hold of the tiki, or even your koru, and say ‘Shhh’. As if you were making a baby go to sleep. OK?’

  Mat frowned slightly but nodded. After a night of such strangeness, this sounded like perfectly good advice.

  ‘One more thing. If you’re in trouble, take hold of the tiki, picture a Maori warrior in your mind, and call out for Toa to help you. OK?’

  Toa?

  Pania smiled. ‘This is important. You hold the tiki, picture a Maori warrior in your mind, and call out for Toa. He has dark curls, and is very handsome.’ She smiled at this, and stroked his cheek.

  ‘Is Toa his name?’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘It is what he is. It means warrior.’

  ‘Oh.’ The way she said it made this warrior seem frightening.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ she told him. ‘I’ve got to go now, Mat. But you’ll be fine, and maybe I’ll see you when you get back.’

  A lump rose in his throat. ‘I…I’d like that,’ he managed, desperately wanting to hug her again. But she stepped away.

  ‘Off you go now,’ she said. ‘Good luck!’

  She turned, and walked down to the water’s edge. When she turned, the moko on her chin was back.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked her again.

  She turned. Her skin caught the light, gleamed dully like bronze. She smiled coyly. ‘I’m Pania, of course. Silly!’

  Then she turned and dived silently into the sea. It swallowed her like an open mouth, and from that mouth came that half-heard chanting again…Mat backed away, then turned and ran, along the wave line, where the beach was darkest.

  For half an hour he felt bursting with energy, striding along the shore, almost feverish with his need to get away from the lights behind him. But around eleven the energy left him, and he felt the weight of tiredness, like a massive blanket on his shoulders. He began to stagger, and his eyelids began to drag him down. He left the dark houses behind, and walked the empty beach between Westshore and Bay View. Occasional cars roared unseen on his left, beyond the embankments, on the highway. He wondered if any contained Puarata and his accomplices. Or Dad. To his right, the sea churned sullenly. Once a gull swooped above, as though it couldn’t sleep either, then disappeared out over the waves. The tiredness got worse, until he began to feel dizzy. Each step seemed to take more effort than the last. It was as though all that he’d seen and done was bleeding him of energy.

  He remembered dimly that somewhere above him, on the embankment that protected the low-lying inland from the sea, and bore the railway north, there was an old gun emplacement—a rough and dirty concrete thing half-buried in the gravel. It had been made for the Second World War, when the threat of Japanese invasion had seemed real, and there’d been rumours of Japanese submarines in the waters of Hawke Bay. He’d looked at it once—its walls were covered in graffiti, and it stank of urine and rot. Maybe he could sleep inside? Just for a while…

  He turned away from the shore, and began to clamber up toward the embankment. The gravel scrunched, loud in the darkness and silence. He looked up and froze. Nearly yelped in terror. There was a massive man-shape there, still as stone, with one red eye glowing from the middle of his head. He gasped and tried to back away, when the shape spoke.

  ‘Ullo? Someone there?’ A match flared, and Mat found himself staring at a stubbly, rough face, with a kindly smile. The red eye shrank to nothing more than a cigarette. He was a soldier, but not a modern soldier. He wore a khaki greatcoat and lemon-squeezer hat, and an old rifle over his shoulder. Mat stumbled backward, his brain refusing to take all this in, tripped, and fell backward.

  ‘Hey, Mike,’ he heard the soldier call. ‘There’s a lad out here.’

  The soldier’s boot crunched closer, and he bent over Mat, who had no energy left to run. He held the lit match over Mat’s face. It lent the soldier’s face a ruddy glow.

  ‘Hey, lad, you OK?’ Another soldier appeared beside him, thinner, with a small moustache. He was also wearing an out-of-date uniform. Maybe they belonged to some military re-enactment society, Mat thought dazedly.

  ‘He looks dead-beat, Wally,’ the new man commented.

  Mat felt a sense of panic as they both bent over, but as they touched him, he felt a strange welling of sound rise from the waves behind him. Entwined in the sound of the waves was a girl’s voice, singing, something like a lullaby. A wash of dizzying lassitude made his head spin. He barely felt the two soldiers as they carried him into the warm, and wrapped him in blankets that smelt of camphor and grease. He hardly tasted the steaming cocoa they poured down his throat, or heard the rough but soothing words. Instead he felt as if he was in a tumble-dryer, slowly spinning into a soothing cradle of comforting, all-embracing sleep.

  A calloused hand tucked a tin water-bottle into the crook of his arm.

  ‘That’s for tomorrow, laddie. You have a nice wee kip, now,’ he heard Wally say, and then everything floated away.

  6

  Kelly

  The first thing that came back was taste. His mouth felt dry and sour, as if he hadn’t brushed his teeth for days. Maybe he hadn’t. Then came smell. Sea air, and wet concrete. He opened his eyes to a bright glare. His body ached everywhere. He was wrapped in his coat, propped against the side of one of the gun emplacements, in the approach path to the airport. A gull landed beside him and shrieked in annoyance. He shook his head groggily, and the memories of yesterday flooded back. The gull flew away.

  The tiki…Dad, Riki…Puarata! He crouched beside the emplacement, and looked cautiously around. The highway was humming with Saturday morning traffic. He glanced at his watch—7.11 a.m… the sun was well up. The beach was empty but for an old woman strolling a few hundred metres to the north.

  I’m going to the mouth of the Esk River, then I’m going to cut inland along the river banks, and hitch a ride to Taupo…I’ve got to see Mum…and go to Maungatautari Pa and see some tohunga.

  Seriously weird.

  He looked around him. He had a dim memory of two men wrapping him in blankets, but there was only his kitbag and coat. He picked the coat up and a plastic water-bottle fell out. He frowned at it, picked it up. It was full, and still had the plastic seal around it. But he remembered Wally tucking an old army-issue water-bottle there. He almost left it, but then he shrugged to himself, broke the seal,
and had a drink. Then he brushed his teeth, rinsed his mouth with some more of the water, re-packed, and set off north.

  The old woman he’d seen in the distance peered curiously at him as he passed by. She was Pakeha, with a woollen shawl and straggly grey hair. She wished him good morning, and peered thoughtfully after him as he passed. Gulls whirled above, swooping into the waves. Once an aircraft roared overhead, coming in for landing at the airport. Then he was level with the first houses of Bay View. He went past a Maori man fishing, trudging on as the day heated, and the wind grew stronger. The sea breeze was chilly and he was glad of the coat, despite the sunshine. By lunchtime, his belly was growling, and he wished he had the food Riki had taken in his pack. That set him to wondering what Riki was doing, and where his father was. Had anyone phoned his mother? Maybe if he knocked on someone’s door, he could ring her? He felt a sudden surge of apprehension at the thought, and dropped the idea almost immediately. It felt wrong, and he decided he needed to trust his instincts.

  By noon, he had left Bay View behind. There was a strip of beach houses to his left, and he met a few more old people, walking dogs. All of them stared, and one asked his name. ‘Riki,’ he lied, without knowing why, and hurried on.

  He reached the river mouth. The Esk was more stream than river, but he remembered some good swimming holes. Here at the coast the river cut through mounds of smooth shingle and flowed into the waves. He drank some more water—it was half-empty now, but the river water would be drinkable—and began to walk upstream.

  It became impossible to stay dry, without getting tangled in willows, or running into fences. An hour of splashing and wading saw him crossing a bridge under the highway. He approached it cautiously, but there was no black car sitting in wait, no suited men leaning on the parapet smoking. He’d reached a fork in the highway—the bridge was the route for those going north, past the pulp mill, to Wairoa or Gisborne. A few metres short of the bridge was the turn-off to Taupo, but Mat didn’t go that way. He knew the river followed the Taupo road, paralleling it through the Esk Valley basin, and it seemed safer to join the highway somewhere away from the fork.

  In the broad area beside the bridge, a car was parked, and a family picnic laid out. His stomach rumbled. A large group of Asian adults and children watched him curiously, but said nothing. He walked on past the vineyards, feeling hotter now that he’d left the coast. Sandflies buzzed about, and a fantail began to follow him, snapping at the insects he’d disturbed. He wished he had something so plentiful to eat. The air carried the scent of growing things, but it was too early for grapes. He settled for drinking more, and refilled the bottle from the river. The river water carried a silt tang, but was cool and sweet.

  Once out of sight of the bridge, it was as if he’d left the world of people. The willows muffled the distant sounds of cars on the highway, which moved away from the river, until hundreds of metres separated Mat from the road. The land between was filled with grapevines and high grass, but the banks on the river steepened and soon he forgot about the outside world. He was trudging and sloshing down a winding corridor of willow, the sky was a narrow bank of blue above and the only noise was the splash and chortle of the stream, and the song of birds and cicadas in the trees. Dragonflies darted about him, and the breeze ruffled his hair gently. It was hard to remember he was being hunted.

  He made slower time than he’d thought he would, with fallen logs, tangled willow that occasionally overhung the stream, and deep pools, all slowing him down. He fell more than once, so that he was constantly wet below the waist. Several times stones slid into his trainers, and he had to stop and shake them out. He grew tired, and sick of the effort.

  He heard the strange whispering just once. His name, whispered hungrily, barely audible yet chilling. ‘Mat…Mat…where are you? Answer me, boy…or it will go badly for you and your parents…’

  Suppressing a brief tremor, he pulled out his koru, pictured a baby in front of him, shushed it, and the whispering went away. He shook his head, to dispel the faint echo of that hissing voice, and then it was gone. A sense of unreality momentarily overtook him. Nothing made any sense any more…and yet it did…Puarata was real, and so was Pania. What she had told him had worked, and he had done it. With his own imagination, he made the voice go away. He felt a small surge of satisfaction. Feeling better for this small triumph, he pushed onward, and was beginning to think about where to leave the river and chance the road when he heard a dog bark, and seconds later someone called out to him.

  ‘Hey!’

  Mat stopped, cringing. The voice came from a sunny-faced girl, maybe eighteen years old, slightly plump with short red hair, in a dirty blue T-shirt and shorts. Her skin was pink from the sun and her nose freckled. At her side was a big golden-brown Labrador with bright eyes and a drooling tongue. It barked again, tail wagging.

  ‘Hey, you OK?’ the girl called again.

  He felt a small pang of worry, wondered how best to answer.

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied, trying to sound nonchalant. ‘Just, y’know, hiking.’

  The girl leaned against a tree trunk. She had a water-bottle in her hand. ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Mat asked, wishing he sounded more casual. ‘This isn’t private land is it?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘Nah.’ She tossed a glance back over her shoulder. ‘Eskdale Park.’

  ‘Oh.’ He was further into the valley than he thought. He looked at his watch. Nearly half-three. ‘Well, better get going,’ he said, turning away.

  ‘Wait!’ the girl called.

  His heart began a slow painful beat, and he felt new beads of sweat forming on his forehead. ‘What?’ I wonder what she’d do if I just ran?

  ‘I just wondered if you wanted a bite to eat. And to see the fair.’

  ‘What fair?’

  ‘There’s a fair back in the park.’ She indicated the area back through the trees behind her again.

  ‘No thanks.’ He turned again, took a few steps.

  ‘Are you that runaway kid?’

  He froze, and then began to think seriously about running. ‘What runaway kid?’ he called over his shoulder.

  ‘The one on the radio. Wiremu someone…that you?’

  Uh-oh. ‘No.’ His voice sounded squeaky.

  The girl took a step toward him and he took three quick ones back. She stopped, raised both hands quickly, palms out. ‘Don’t worry!’ she said quickly. ‘It’s OK, y’know. I used to run away from my folks heaps when I was your age.’

  He stopped backing up, and stood there, wondering what to do. The Labrador trotted up to him and nuzzled his hand, as though trying to persuade him to like the girl.

  She had a friendly face—none of Puarata’s oily power, or Donna’s hardness. She looked like someone who laughed a lot, and her T-shirt had a clown on the front, which decided him. Bad guys didn’t wear clown T-shirts.

  ‘OK, maybe I am.’

  She hesitated, then said ‘Umm…I’m Kelly.’

  ‘Mat.’

  ‘Hi Mat…not Wiremu then?’

  He shook his head. ‘That’s my first name—but I prefer Mat.’

  Kelly nodded. ‘I’ll call you Mat, then. You hungry?’

  Mat nodded.

  ‘I’ve got some food in the car. Nothing healthy, just chippies and stuff. That OK? You want to wait here, and I’ll bring it down.’

  ‘OK.’

  Mat watched her out of sight, then splashed to the bank and sat on a fallen log.

  The Labrador nuzzled him again, wagging its tail. He ruffled the dog’s neck, and looked up as Kelly reappeared from the trees, her hands full of packets.

  ‘Hey, Dog,’ she called, and the Labrador bounded toward her, barking happily. She laughed as it shouldered her legs, nearly knocking her over. ‘Don’t know whose it is, the silly mutt. Showed up this morning when I arrived for the fair, and no one seems to own it. Seems to want me to adopt it.’

  ‘You going to?’

  ‘
Nah, I’ll leave it behind when it’s time to go.’

  The Labrador looked at her with such a hurt expression that they both laughed, and Mat felt a sudden lifting of tension, though he still watched the girl cautiously.

  As if trying to entertain them both, the Labrador barked happily and cavorted about.

  ‘I think he’s adopted you!’ laughed Mat.

  ‘He’s certainly turning on the charm, aren’t you, boy?’ Kelly sat down beside Mat, just out of arm’s reach, and put a pack of chippies on the log. Chicken-flavoured. Mat’s stomach rumbled.

  ‘I’m out of fizzy, sorry,’ said Kelly apologetically.

  Mat reached out cautiously and took the chippies. The Labrador nuzzled his hands, and he gently pushed him away.

  ‘Mine, doggy,’ he told it, opened the packet, took a handful and stuffed them into his mouth hungrily. Kelly pulled out a small mirror, and some pots of face paint, from her waist pack.

  He munched chippies, which tasted as good as any meal he’d ever had, and watched her apply a pale foundation to her face.

  ‘Whatcha doing?’ he asked between mouthfuls.

  ‘My make-up. I’m a clown. I’m on again shortly at the fair.’ She grinned. ‘Kelly the Magic Clown, that’s me. I do magic tricks and silly klutzy clown stuff. Cool huh?’ Mat twisted his mouth dubiously, but nodded.

  ‘I think the dog wants to be in show-biz too.’

  ‘Has he joined in your act yet?’

  ‘Nah…in my lunch-time show he was more interested in chasing an old woman’s poodle!’ She laughed, an infectious laugh, and Mat felt himself relax.

  ‘What’s the fair?’ he asked.

  ‘Just a country fair they have out here sometimes over spring and summer. Food stalls, crafts, and sideshow freaks like me. Its pretty low-key.’

  Mat nodded.

  ‘So,’ asked Kelly, looking more closely at him. ‘How come you’re on the road, Mat?’

  Mat considered a moment. ‘Just gotta get away, y’know,’ he said, hoping she wouldn’t press him too much.