Taniwha's Tear

by David Hair

  Mat backed away as his oldest friend and (maybe) his newest one began plying their weapons at each other in a duel that had as much to do with zany challenges and insults as it had to do with real fighting. It ended when Riki tripped Damien and swept in with reversed taiaha, pressing the sharp tongue of the club to rest on Damien’s belly, even as the tip of the foil caught him in the chest.

  ‘Both dead!’ shouted Mat, laughing. The two cursed each other good-naturedly, and then Riki pulled Damien to his feet, and hugged him quickly.

  ‘I reckon ending up on your arse means you lost,’ Riki observed, ‘regardless of anything else.’

  ‘It was just a trap to lure you in,’ Damien retorted. ‘No winner, no loser, so…’

  ‘…so Mat buys breakfast!’ Riki finished.

  ‘Huh?’

  They drifted back through the waking town, looking for some where that opened early. The streets were wide and lined with palms, and few buildings were higher than two storeys, blocky buildings from the thirties and earlier, with awnings to shelter shoppers from the sun. The sky was clear again, and you didn’t need to be a meteorologist to know that it would be another scorching day.

  Gisborne had been the site of several Maori pa, built around a natural harbour formed where three rivers, the Waimate, Taruheru and Waikanae, flowed together and into the sea, beneath Kaiti Hill. The short stretch where the Waimate and Taruheru ran together to the sea had been named the Turanganui River, one of the shortest named rivers in the world. The Turanganui gave the settlement its first name, Turanga.

  It had been among the last places in New Zealand to be settled heavily by Europeans, who were even now barely in the majority. Early on, there had even been some Chinese settlers who had initially been treated as virtual slave labour, paying a poll tax just to remain in New Zealand. The region had seen some of the worst fighting and bloodiest deeds of the Land Wars, as recently as the late nineteenth century. Tribal roots were strong here, where one’s iwi and hapu counted for much. Captain Cook had named the region Poverty Bay due to the meagre provender offered by the native tribes, with whom he had fallen out, but the region had aways been prosperous.

  They found a café on the main street, which was only three blocks back from the beach. It was a battered-looking place with stainless steel furniture and painted walls covered in old movie posters. They ordered bacon and eggs, and a plunger of coffee. Damien and Riki kept up a banter that had the girl serving them giggling constantly as she took the order, and they joked their way through the breakfast, catching up. Damien had arrived in town just before Christmas and had been spending every day with Riki. They were all of an age, all in the same year at school. Damien told Mat his ancestors were actually Danish. They had come to Dannevirke following the First World War to join an already thriving Danish community.

  ‘Dannevirke is this honky town with Viking stuff everywhere,’ snickered Riki. ‘Half the dudes there have names like Jens Jensen or Anders Andersen. It’s totally hokey.’

  ‘Hey, it’s not like that at all. Well…mostly not. Anyway, it’s home.’ Damien looked at Mat. ‘So, Riki tells me all this stuff about other worlds and evil witchdoctors and stuff. Was that just further signs of his lunacy?’

  Mat pursed his lips. Oh well, it’s out there. He looked back at Damien. ‘It’s true.’

  Damien rubbed his chin. ‘Really? No bull?’

  Mat shook his head.

  Damien whistled. ‘“Stranger things under heaven” and all that, huh?’

  ‘I guess,’ replied Mat, watching the youth carefully. ‘I can prove it,’ he added. He felt on uncertain ground. Wiri had told him that it was best to keep the existence of Aotearoa a secret, and yet he had been unable to keep himself from telling Riki—after all, Riki had been caught on the fringes of the whole thing anyway and was owed some sort of explanation. He hadn’t expected it to go further. He instinctively liked Damien though.

  Damien looked intently at Mat and nodded. ‘That would be…interesting.’

  Mat shifted, unsettled at the turn the conversation had taken. ‘How did you get into fencing?’ he asked Damien. ‘Your dad?’

  ‘Nah, the usual,’ Damien replied. ‘Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, you know. My dad thinks I’m nuts, but I kind of suck at ball sports.’

  ‘That’s cos he’s unco, like most Pakeha,’ Riki put in.

  Damien reached across and fake-swatted Riki about the head. Then he glanced at the door and gave a low whistle. ‘Incoming babes,’ he whispered, winking at Mat.

  A mismatched but eye-catching pair of teenage girls had just entered the café. The taller of the pair was blonde, with her hair tied severely in cornrows, her square face pugnacious but pretty. She was dressed in just a tank-top and tiny shorts, and her limbs were golden brown. A gold necklace with a gem-studded butterfly pendant, matched by her earrings, glittered above the swell of her chest. She moved with a purposeful gait, almost businesslike, despite her holiday attire. She took in the other customers, including the three boys, with a haughty sweep of her head, before saying some thing to her companion and sitting down, leaving the other girl to order at the counter.

  The other newcomer certainly didn’t match her companion. Rake-thin with orange proto-dreadlocks, she had a horse-like face, glasses that magnified her eyes alarmingly, and her mouth glittered with braces. She too had on a tank-top, but she scarcely filled it, and her face and skin were heavily freckled. She laughed strangely as she ordered, then sat with her friend, pulled out a small laptop from her satchel, and began tapping at it feverishly while the blonde girl looked bored.

  ‘I bags the blonde,’ hissed Riki. ‘Extreme hot babeliciousness! The gingernut is kinda freaky-looking.’ He nudged Damien. ‘Ideal for you, I reckon.’

  ‘She laughs like a horse,’ Damien whispered. ‘And she looks like some kind of druggie. You’re right about the blonde one; she is really hot.’

  ‘She’s looking at me,’ Riki noted.

  ‘Nah,’ Damien retorted. ‘She’s looking at me. Let’s order some Cokes, and hang here some more.’

  They both looked at Mat. Mat sighed, and shrugged. Girls were still some kind of foreign species to him, though since meeting Kelly, he’d had to admit that they weren’t as dull as he’d previously supposed, and Pania was very…married, he reminded himself. Still, it might be fun to hang around, and see what developed.

  He ordered the Cokes, and they sipped them while chatting. Riki and Damien made ostentatious jokes so that the girls would notice them, but the blonde barely looked their way, and the other girl was absorbed by her laptop, cellphone and headset.

  Finally the blonde got up to pay. By then Riki and Damien had lost interest and were playing a fencing game with the wooden toothpicks, but Mat found himself watching her stride to the counter. He saw her lean forward to catch the eye of the woman behind the counter, and then he felt it. The stirrings of the liquid energy that he had learnt to use himself, in that frightening chase across New Zealand and Aotearoa in September. The power that he named ‘magic’ for want of a better word.

  It came from the blonde girl.

  The woman at the counter swayed slightly, then blinked, opened the till and handed the girl a twenty-dollar note, closed it again, and smiled. The blonde girl smiled to herself, and then turned and strode out the door, with her skinny companion fussing behind her, trying to pack up her laptop as she scurried after her.

  The air had a strange reek to it suddenly, and tasted slightly oily and unpleasant. Mat felt his mouth go dry. The girl had the same powers that he had, and she had just used them to steal.

  He leapt to his feet and ran after her.

  5

  Lena

  Hey!’ The girl turned, and Mat suddenly found himself staring into intense eyes so vividly blue, they were almost turquoise. Her nostrils flared and she glared at him, wary, as if expecting to have to fight. Her strange friend just goggled at him, trying to wrestle a laptop headset from her ears.

  �
�What?’ The blonde girl’s voice was clipped, defensive. Up close she looked a year or two older than him, slightly taller and intimidatingly pretty.

  Mat stopped short of her. ‘I saw what you did,’ he said softly.

  She blinked, and sucked in her lower lip. Her frown was part-guilty, part-curious. ‘And?’

  It was his turn to blink. ‘Don’t you think it’s wrong?’

  She shrugged, slightly belligerently. ‘If you’ve got it, use it.’

  Her offhandedness made him angry. ‘That’s bullshit. You stole.’

  The stringy girl with the laptop finally unplugged her headset. ‘What are you two saying? Couldn’t hear you,’ she laughed nervously. She peered at Mat with super-magnified eyes. ‘Do we know you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the blonde girl disdainfully. ‘Do we know you?’

  Riki and Damien piled out of the café and peered at them curiously.

  ‘I’m Mat Douglas,’ Mat said to the bespectacled girl. ‘Your friend forgot to pay at the café.’

  ‘Oh! How embarrassing,’ the girl gasped. ‘I’ll do it, Lena.’ She began rummaging in her pockets.

  ‘Don’t worry, Cassandra, I’ll get it,’ Lena answered levelly, her eyes on Mat. She walked past him and the two other boys, back into the shop. Mat followed her. She half-turned. ‘Checking up on me, are you?’ she whispered harshly.

  ‘I just want to see how you do it,’ Mat replied coolly, though his heart was thumping.

  Lena walked up to the counter, and when she had the owner’s attention, told her that she had mispaid, and handed back the twenty-dollar note, plus another twenty dollars. This time Mat felt the discharge of energy in a subtler, more gentle way, and there was none of the queasiness he’d sensed before. He immediately felt better.

  The owner was flustered but took the money, shaking her head. Lena looked at Mat coldly as she swept down the dim passage to the exit once more. ‘Happy?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m happy…to meet someone…like me.’

  The girl turned. She was suddenly close to him, in the shadows of the doorway to the café. She was wearing an expensive perfume, but Mat could smell fresh perspiration beneath it. The mix was heady and suddenly intoxicating. ‘Show me,’ she whispered, her face just centimetres from his.

  His chest pounded as he lifted his hand, and called a tiny blossom of flame into his palm. It was harder to do under such close scrutiny, but he managed. The dark little corridor was suddenly drenched in light, making their shadows dance on the painted walls. The girl’s eyes went wide, her lips moving soundlessly. She looked from the flame to him with hungry eyes, then Mat heard other customers coming their way, and let the flame wink out.

  ‘Can you…could you…show me how to do that?’ she whispered when they were alone again, her earlier defensiveness gone, replaced by some thing far more welcoming.

  He swallowed. ‘I don’t know…I could try.’

  She startled him then by leaning forward and seizing his hand, and staring at the palm as if looking for some scar or sign of what he’d just done. Her hands were hot and damp. ‘I’m Lena, from Auckland. The geek-girl is Cassandra. She lives here. She’s not really my friend, y’know, but my father knows her parents, so I’m stuck with her. Let’s dump the lot of them and go some where. I want to see that again.’

  Mat reeled slightly. He’d heard that Auckland girls moved fast. ‘Umm…’ He nodded towards the door. Lena turned and pushed it open, and they emerged blinking into the heat of the mid-morning sunshine. The street was beginning to fill with early-morning shoppers. Mat quickly made introductions. Cassandra seemed to know Riki’s extended family, but only by reputation, and the way her nose twitched suggested it wasn’t a particularly good reputation, but she didn’t say anything.

  ‘So, Mat, what are your plans for the day?’ Lena asked him.

  Riki nudged Damien. ‘We were going to go round to Wainui Beach and do some surfing,’ Riki replied before Mat could answer. ‘I’ve got a car,’ he added.

  ‘Cool!’ exclaimed Cassandra. ‘I love surfing!’ The boys looked at her skinny frame doubtfully.

  Lena sighed, but then smiled warmly at Mat. ‘I’d like to come and watch,’ she said, pulling on some Gucci sunglasses. She took out an expensive-looking cellphone. ‘What’s your number, Mat?’

  Riki had to borrow his grandparents’ car, but as they seldom drove, this wasn’t a problem. They arranged to meet the two girls at the end of Wainui Beach, which was northwards around the coast from Kaiti Hill, facing east, about twenty minutes’ drive away. Riki drove alarmingly, paying hardly any attention to the road at all, so intent was he on speculating about Lena’s bust size. The little Datsun veered everywhere as he waved his arms about.

  They had only just pulled up in the gravel car-park to the beach access walkway, set in scrub and lupin in a gap between the holiday homes, when an open-topped BMW sportscar with a board sticking out the back roared in beside them. Cassandra peered across at them from the passenger seat. ‘Ha! They beat us here!’

  ‘She’s yours,’ Riki muttered to Damien. ‘I’ll have the blonde, when she realises that Mat is underage.’

  ‘I am not underage,’ Mat retorted. ‘I turned sixteen in November.’

  ‘Touchy, these kids,’ Damien remarked airily. He grinned at Cassandra as they got out of their vehicles. ‘Hey, babe.’ Cassandra ignored him.

  Lena pulled up her sunglasses and smiled dazzlingly at Mat. ‘Hi,’ she said brightly.

  Mat felt a smile climb across his face, and his skin moisten, while his mouth went dry. Riki rolled his eyes in mock despair. ‘You gotta learn to relax around chicks, man,’ he murmured, not helping at all.

  They took the surfboards from the Datsun’s little roof-rack, and headed for the beach. Lena was still clad in her tiny shorts, and the boys all had swimming trunks, but Cassandra was now wearing most of a black-and-navy wetsuit, and had her own surfboard. Her glasses were clamped on with some vivid orange sports-elastic. ‘Let’s hang ten! Ha!’

  Lena rolled her eyes at Mat.

  Mat wasn’t a great surfer, but he had decent balance, and his new surfboard was a good one for his ability. Riki was very good, and made sure they all knew it. Mat didn’t mind—he knew what he was good at.

  Damien was…well, Damien was totally awful at surfing, as Riki noted often that afternoon, but it didn’t seem to deter him. The surprise was Cassandra, who was almost as good as Riki, darting among the waves nimbly, and surprisingly strong about the shoulders when paddling out to the waves. The whole beach knew when she had caught a wave, she hooted so loudly.

  Mat finished before the others, and walked up the beach to where Lena was sitting above the wave-line, staring out across the water. He felt her eyes on his form as he walked up, and felt suddenly self-conscious. It was quite one thing to fantasise about girls when he had little chance of actually meeting one, coming from a single-sex school and stuck at home most nights with his father, but it was quite another to know how to deal with a worldly Auckland girl, especially after what he’d seen earlier.

  Best to go straight to the heart of things, he supposed. ‘Are you mad at me?’ he asked as he sat beside her.

  She seemed to consider the question for half a second too long. ‘No. I was just surprised. No one has even spotted it before. I don’t do it often, but I was in a funny mood.’

  As an explanation for attempted theft it seemed fairly inadequate, but Mat decided to let it go. ‘When did you learn how to do it?’

  She looked at him appraisingly, and spoke hesitantly, as if to a priest in a confessional. ‘It started when I was twelve. It was really odd. I noticed that I could tell the most blatant lies, convince people the sky was pink, or black was white, and they would believe me for a few seconds. At first I thought I was imagining it, and then I started to try doing it deliberately, and it worked. If I keep it close to the truth, they believe me utterly—it doesn’t even wear off now.’ She sucked on her lower lip. ‘It’s kinda scary.
But I’m not a thief! You need to believe that. I was just short of a little cash, that’s all.’

  Mat nodded, not really believing her, trying to decide if that mattered.

  Lena went on, her voice distant. ‘I can do it to animals too, even easier than people if it’s a simple thing. Once I convinced a dog to bite someone—this guy who was following me in a park in Auckland. The dog went for this guy like a mad thing. I couldn’t call it off. The guy was a creep, but it was still freaky. He ended up in hospital, and the dog was put down.’ She shuddered slightly. ‘What about you?’

  Mat considered carefully. ‘Three months ago.’

  ‘And you can make fire? Cool!’

  ‘Other stuff too.’ Mat kept his voice modest. He could tell the girl had pride, a lot of it, and he didn’t want to put on airs with her.

  ‘What like?’ she asked, slightly distantly.

  ‘Umm…it’s kinda hard to explain. Little things.’ His mind raced: over shifting between worlds, messing up Donna Kyle’s powers to free Wiri, and calling Wiri out of the tiki. How could he describe such things to anyone that wasn’t there? And he wasn’t sure how to talk about what Pania had shown him. ‘Just little things,’ he said lamely, then added: ‘I’ve never met anyone else who could do these things.’ It wasn’t quite true, but he wasn’t ready to tell her about Puarata, and Donna Kyle, and those acolytes of Puarata that had clustered beneath him at Reinga during the final confrontation. They were all dead now, except Donna, whom they’d left bleeding and unconscious in Auckland and he hoped to never meet again.

  ‘I’ve not met anyone like me either,’ Lena said quietly. She smiled at him. ‘We’re like a secret society. Even a coven!’ She sounded taken with the thought.

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘I’ve been reading a lot about it: books on witchcraft and the like. I’ve got spell books and tarot cards and stuff at home. I got them at these New Age shops in Devonport. I’ve tried a lot of it out, but I’m not sure it works. But what I do does.’