Song of the Spirits (In the Land of the Long White Cloud saga)

by Lark, Sarah

  Marama and her tribe had not only attended the concert but enriched it with two of their own haka, performed at William’s express request. Marama took it as an apology for the affront at his wedding when he had not allowed the tribe to perform, and happily agreed. She was a conciliatory soul and quick to forgive. And when her singing voice, as high as though it were soaring among the clouds, mixed with Kura’s dark, powerful organ playing, William would have loved to sign her on for the entire tour right away.

  The White Hart’s hall was quite a bit more diverse than usual that day. Tonga had come to Christchurch with half his tribe to pay homage to the heiress of Kiward Station and to say his adieus, likely forever. However, most of the Maori did not stand out. Almost all of them wore Western clothing, though they sometimes combined the various articles rather inexpertly. Tonga appeared in traditional clothing, and his tattoos—he was practically the only one of his generation who wore them—lent him a martial air. Most people initially took him for a dancer. When he joined them in the audience, they edged away from him uncomfortably.

  Tonga was also the only one who frowned over Kura’s performance. He would have preferred to retain the purity of the Maori songs than have them arranged for Western instruments.

  “Kura will remain in England,” he told Rongo Rongo, their tribe’s witch doctor. “She sings our words but does not speak our language. She never has.”

  Rongo Rongo shrugged. “Nor has she ever spoken the language of the pakeha. She belongs to neither of our worlds. It is right that she seeks her own world.”

  Tonga cast a meaningful look at little Gloria. “But she’s leaving her child with the McKenzies.”

  “She’s leaving the child to us,” Rongo Rongo said. “The child belongs to the land of the Nghai Tahu. To which tribe, she will decide for herself.

  Jack sat with Gloria in the second row. He was making a big sacrifice for her, as he would never have set foot anywhere near a Kura-maro-tini concert of his own accord.

  “I can certainly understand why that fellow in Blenheim was out of sorts,” he had told his mother. “I’d probably end up in an asylum after spending that much time with her too.”

  Neither promises nor threats from Gwyneira had been able to convince him to go the concert. Then, however, Kura had insisted on the presence of her daughter, and Jack changed his mind at once.

  “Gloria’s only going to scream again. Or worse, she won’t scream, and Kura will suddenly have the idea that she has talent and have to go with her to England. Under the circumstances, I’d rather go and keep an eye on her.”

  Gloria did not scream but merely played with a wooden horse Jack had brought along, clearly bored most of the time. When Kura conjured the spirits on the stage, though, the little girl scampered out of their row and ran down the aisle to the back of the room, where the Maori were seated and Tonga was leaning against the wall with a threatening expression on his face. Jack did not follow the girl, but he watched her out of the corner of his eye. It was no surprise to him that Gloria had fled all the caterwauling and preferred to play with other children. He, too, was happy when the concert was finally over. He left the hall with his parents—James winked at him, likewise relieved—picking Gloria up on his way out.

  The little girl was with a somewhat older Maori boy who was wearing, to Gwyneira’s amazement, a traditional loincloth. Moreover, the boy was not only decorated with the typical amulets and bands of a Maori child of good family but he was also already sporting his first tattoos. Though many pakeha were disgusted by them, Gloria did not appear to be bothered by them.

  The children were playing with wooden blocks. “Village,” the boy said, pointing to the fenced-in complex in which Gloria had just set another house.

  “Marae!” Gloria declared, pointing at the biggest of the houses. Next to the meeting hall, she had also marked out storehouses and cooking lodges: “Here pataka, here hanga, and I live here.”

  Her dream house stood next to a lake drawn on the ground in chalk.

  “And me!” the boy exclaimed, self-assured. “Me chief.” Tonga appeared behind Gwyneira, who was listening to the children with a smile.

  “Mrs. McKenzie,” Tonga said as he gave his customary bow. He owed his comprehensive pakeha education to Helen O’Keefe.

  “Kura-maro-tini impressed us greatly. It is a shame that she is leaving us. But you still have an heiress,” he said, indicating Gloria. “This, as it happens, is my heir. Wiremu, my son.”

  Helen stepped behind the two of them. “A handsome boy, Tonga,” she said, flattering him.

  Tonga nodded and gazed, lost in thought, at the children at play. “A handsome couple. Don’t you think, Mrs. McKenzie?”

  Wiremu was handing Gloria a seashell. Gloria gave him her wooden horse in return.

  Gwyneira beamed at the chieftain. But then she restrained herself and met his gaze with a mischievous gleam in her eye.

  “Children will be children,” she said.

  Tonga smiled.

  Afterword

  Daily life in a New Zealand coal-mining settlement at the end of the nineteenth century is described in as much detail as possible in this novel. The descriptions of the work in the mine and the miners’ all-but-unbearable living conditions, the miners need to seek comfort in alcohol in the evening, and the representation of the local brothel as a “second home” are all historically documented, as is the often inhuman greed of the mine operators.

  Nevertheless, Song of the Spirits is a historical novel only in a limited sense. The social history is meticulously researched, but many settings and historically important events were changed or are purely fictional. For example, though there existed in the area around Greymouth roughly one hundred thirty coal mines from 1864 until modern times—operated privately, jointly, or by the state—none of them belonged to a Lambert or Biller family, and no former mine operator had a comparable family history.

  The mine accident depicted in the novel is based on that of the Brunner Mine in the year 1896 with respect to the number of dead, the first rescue attempts, and the cause of the accident. Sixty-four pitmen and both of the first rescue workers perished; all of that is recorded. Recordings of the witnesses’ memories of the event exist as well. With the necessary research, I could have used the names of the victims and those they left behind. However, it is precisely this sort of painstaking documentation of New Zealand’s history that makes it difficult for me—and ethically questionable—to set a truly historical novel in New Zealand. And by “historical novel,” I mean a story in which several somewhat fictional characters act in original settings in front of a real, researched backdrop. The plot should not seem tacked on but clearly and strongly influenced by factual occurrences.

  New Zealand was first discovered in 1642 by Dutch seafarer Abel Janszoon Tasman and mapped in sections in 1769 by Captain Cook. The North Island only first started being settled by whites in 1790, and the first forty years can be considered narrative material only if one is enthusiastic about whale and seal hunting. True settlement did not take place until circa 1830. Although New Zealand’s history is relatively short, it has been all the more precisely recorded as a result. Practically every town has an archive that contains the names of the settlers, their farms, and often, details of their lives.

  Theoretically, as an author, one could “pick and choose” at his or her discretion and endeavor to breathe new life into real history. In practice, however, we are not dealing with people of the Middle Ages, whose traces have been lost over the course of centuries, but rather with people whose descendants may still live in New Zealand. Naturally, they might take offense if a stranger took their great-grandparents and furnished them with a fictional personality—particularly if it is one as unsympathetic as that of the Sideblossoms.

  Since New Zealand is not as large as Australia, for example, one cannot plant completely fictitious farms and towns in real-life settings without some problems. For that reason, I have denied myself the pleasur
e of letting my readers follow in the footsteps of my novel’s characters. Landscapes and settings—the surroundings and architecture of farms like Kiward and Lionel Stations, for example—were altered, and historical personages supplied with new names.

  Nevertheless, some information can be easily verified. For example, the name of the sheep breeder who caught the historical James McKenzie can be researched with a few mouse clicks. I can assure the reader, however, that he had as little to do with my John Sideblossom as the real McKenzie with his counterpart in this novel. James McKenzie, it should be noted, is the only one whose name is not fictional, as his fate has been lost to history. Two years after his trial, he was given a reprieve, disappeared somewhere in Australia, and was never seen or heard from again.

  If there are any other similarities to real farms or personages, they are purely the product of chance.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like once again to thank everyone who helped make this novel happen, above all, my editors Melanie Blank-Schröder, Sabine Cramer, and Margi von Cossart, who really pored over every detail to make sure it was correct. My miracle-working agent Bastian Schlück also deserves mention. And as always, Klara Decker, who helped with the Internet research and test reading—I’m filled with awe every single time someone can retrieve the name of the chief secretary for Ireland in 1896 from the Internet with three mouse clicks. I’d also like to thank the cobs—and the other horses too—for not throwing me off when, on their backs, I lapsed into daydreams of love and sorrow in New Zealand, and my friends, who remained patient when I withdrew for entire weeks after leaving nothing more than the note “I’ll be in New Zealand.”

  My border collie, Cleo, was both an inspiration and a model, this time for Callie. In appearing in this novel, she will have superseded her namesake in In the Land of the Long White Cloud in age. The breed does indeed live a long time. Nevertheless, thank you to everyone who kept track and wrote to ask whether a dog can really live to be twenty years old. You can’t get anything past discerning readers!

  About the Author

  Photo © Gonzalo Perez, 2011

  Sarah Lark’s series of “landscape novels” have made her a bestselling author in Germany, her native country, as well as Spain and the United States. She was born in Germany’s Ruhr region, where she discovered a love of animals—especially horses—early in life. She has worked as an elementary-school teacher, travel guide, and commercial writer. She has also written numerous award-winning books about horses for adults and children, one of which was nominated for the Deutsche Jugendbuchpreis, Germany’s distinguished prize for best children’s book. Sarah currently lives with four dogs and a cat on her farm in Almería, Spain, where she cares for retired horses, plays guitar, and sings in her spare time.

  About the Translator

  Photo © Sanna Stegmaier, 2011

  D. W. Lovett is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from which he received a degree in comparative literature and German as well as a certificate from the university’s Center for Translation Studies. He has spent the last few years living in Europe.