by David Hair
‘I guess.’ Riki’s voice lacked its usual bubble. ‘You know, I’m the first member of my entire family — and I mean going back to the dawn of time —who’s ever qualified for university? All the others dropped out at Year Eleven, if they even got that far. Everyone’s been giving me shit about it, too, like I’m getting above myself. It’s pissing me off.’
Mat had seen that himself, not just in Riki’s family, but others at Boys’ High, from poorer families. It certainly wasn’t just a Maori thing. Not succeeding was almost ingrained in some families: the pressure to quit early and get some easy money, or even just go on the dole, had taken even some of the smartest boys. He saw them sometimes, former First XV heroes wandering out of pubs in the middle of the afternoon, smoking and working on their beer guts. He was glad Riki hadn’t gone the same way.
‘It’s only five weeks until the solstice,’ Mat noted softly.
Riki knew what he meant. ‘You ready?’
‘I guess. I’ve got my taiaha in the back, and my cloak, too. Just in case something happens.’
‘Boy scout.’
‘Yeah, I know. But what if Byron comes after us?’
‘Yeah, I know. I’ve got my gear, too.’
‘Good, but remember you’re not coming with me.’
Riki’s eyes narrowed. ‘What?’
‘You can’t come with me. This is a solo thing, man. Only an Adept can survive it anyway.’
Riki met his gaze. ‘There is absolutely no way in the world I’m not going with you. Someone has to have your back, and that someone is me. Always has been, always will be.’
‘You can’t. Probably won’t even get the opportunity. And anyway, I’ve been reading up, and in every version I’ve seen of the Tawhaki legend, the man who goes with him ends up dead.’
‘That just means Tawhaki hung with losers. You don’t: you hang with me. You ain’t doing this thing alone, bro. That’s all there is to it.’
No amount of arguing was going to change Riki’s mind, Mat could see that clearly enough. However he had a feeling that, when the moment came, only he would be permitted to take it. He hoped so: he’d already lost Damien; to lose Riki as well — he wouldn’t be able to bear it. But with solstice still five weeks away, there was time to talk Riki out of it.
‘Anyway, did you call Evie?’ Riki asked, pointedly changing the subject.
Mat looked away. ‘Yeah. Well, I sent an email.’
‘Wimp.’
‘Yeah, I know. But …’ Mat spread his hands helplessly. He had to focus on Aroha right now, get his head right about her. Talking to Evie would undermine that. ‘She texted me back, said she’d be careful.’
Riki waggled a finger at Mat’s parents in the front seats, and mouthed What about them?
Mat pulled a face, and shook his head. How would I tell them? The two boys looked at each other. There wasn’t really anything else to say about this mess. The sickening fear that something might happen to someone he cared about had Mat on the edge of nausea. The feeling persisted as they drove south, staring out the windows in silence. When they finally stopped for lunch, in the quaint town of Greytown in the Wairarapa, not even the glorious food at the Main Street Deli could reawaken his appetite.
‘You two are awfully quiet,’ Colleen remarked. She and Tama had kept up their own chatter throughout the journey, arguing genially about everything from politics to teaching standards to whose turn it was to have Mat for Christmas that year. ‘Are you planning some mischief?’
Mat prodded at his BLT, pushed his coffee around, and looked at her. He’d had an idea while talking to Ngatoro; an idea which required his parents’ help. But he wasn’t sure they would go with it. ‘Actually, there is something.’
‘Whatever you want,’ she vowed recklessly. She only got to see Mat at school holidays, and had a tendency to compensate by smothering him. However, she also had a huge fear of Aotearoa, dating back to her first encounters with it: being kidnapped by Puarata and held hostage; and later having her house in Taupo trashed by goblins. Her smile faltered, as she seemed to read something in Mat’s expression that brought all those incidents back to mind. ‘What is it?’
Tama knew more of Aotearoa than Colleen. ‘Tell us the worst, Mat.’
Mat glanced sideways at the puzzled Riki, then ploughed in. ‘Well, Dad, do you remember back in February, when I had to go off while we were in Auckland?’
‘Sure.’ Tama had been commissioned to defend Donna Kyle, one of Mat’s enemies, in a court case in Aotearoa. However, she had escaped, leading to a chase involving Mat, Wiri and Evie. It had also led to the death of Mat and Riki’s friend Damien. ‘What about it?’
‘Well, the Treaty of Waitangi was stolen.’
Colleen gripped Tama’s forearm unconsciously. ‘The original Treaty? Surely not? That’s in a vault in the National Archives in Wellington.’
‘That’s the real-world original. This was the original original: the one that resides in Aotearoa. You’ve seen on the news how the one in the National Archives is supposed to be deteriorating, and the scientists can’t do anything? That’s because the Aotearoa-original has been stolen and destroyed. Without it, all the related Treaty documents in this world, like the copies made so later tribes could sign, will fall apart in a few more months.’
Tama glanced at Colleen. ‘That’s terrible. It’s … appalling. What’s being done?’
‘Well, no-one knows for now, except a few people. But I have a plan. When I was with Ngatoro,’— Tama and Colleen knew about the old tohunga, although neither had met him —‘I asked him about the Treaty. He said: “It’s just a piece of paper. Others can be signed.” That got me thinking.’
He stopped for breath, trying to find a way to make his idea sound less crazy than it probably was. His parents waited expectantly. Eventually Riki laughed. ‘It’s cool that you can still think, bro, but you need to tell us what you thunked.’
‘Uh, yeah. Well, what I thought was that if we re-created the Treaty, and got the original signatories to re-sign it, then it would effectively replace the destroyed original, and, through the bond between the two worlds, resuscitate the version in this world.’
Three sets of eyebrows went up and hung there. Three sets of eyes stared at him with expressions ranging from Riki’s amused speculation, through Tama’s calculating frown, to Colleen’s fearful confusion.
‘What did Ngatoro say?’ Riki asked quickly, before Mat’s parents could voice their doubts.
‘Dunno — I only just thought of it. But Dad, you’re a lawyer, so you could handle the wording, and you’ve got that letter of introduction Governor Grey gave you after the court case. And Mum, you teach Art and English, and you’re amazing at crafts, so you’d be perfect to make the document look identical. If you could make it, I could get the signatories to sign again: I know I could.’ He didn’t actually, but he’d met Hone Heke and he reckoned that if he could convince that charismatic and influential rangatira to sign, others would follow. ‘Ngatoro believes that if we allow the Treaty document to decay into nothing, race relations in this country will follow suit, both in this world and in Aotearoa. Wiri thinks the same.’
Tama looked dubious. ‘I don’t know, son. It sounds a little far-fetched, even by Aotearoa standards.’
‘I want nothing to do with that horrible place,’ Colleen said emphatically, finally realizing she was clinging to Tama’s arm, and snatching her hand back. ‘Mat, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Don’t throw it away on that ghastly world. Everyone there tries to kill you.’
‘Not everyone, Mum.’
‘It’s a land of the dead: you’re alive, and I want you to stay that way.’ She glared at him. ‘I’d make you promise never to go there again, if I honestly thought it would do any good.’
There was no safe way to answer that, so Mat kept his mouth shut.
‘It’s not your problem, Mat,’ she went on. ‘You belong in this world. If you just let it be, that place will stop reaching
out to you. Let someone else solve it, and stay well away. You’ve got your whole future before you. Don’t throw it away.’
But Mum, in a few weeks a Death Goddess is going to reach down and drag me into Aotearoa on a quest to save the world. And if I fail and Byron Kikitoa succeeds, he’s going to become some kind of super-tohunga makutu, and he’ll be coming after all of us …
Mat wasn’t stupid enough to voice any of that, but Riki knew. The two boys clamped their mouths shut, and tried to look like nothing else was going on.
‘Please, Mat,’ Colleen implored him. ‘Don’t get involved. Not now.’
‘I’ll try’ was all he could say that his parents might believe.
The house was on Diana Avenue, high on Hospital Hill among some of the best new homes in Gisborne. Panoramic views of the entire bay spread below, from Kaiti Hill above Cooks Landing to Young Nick’s Head, with the city and the patchwork paddocks of the farmlands and vineyards between. An aeroplane droned in the distance, and somewhere, a few doors down, children laughed and shrieked. Flies buzzed and the heat of early summer was softened by the sea breezes that reached even here, three kilometres from the sea. The warmth and brightness still radiated even as the sun slipped below the horizon, and evening gently enveloped the bay.
No-one saw the dark shapes that crept from out of the bushes below the house. One, the smallest of the pair, stayed in the shade of a hedge at the foot of the property, carefully avoiding the sunlight, but the other strode on, careless of being seen. He was clad in black jeans and a hoodie, and his right hand remained inside the big front pocket of his top as he flowed athletically from the lawn to the balcony, to the open sliding door. Music was playing, a symphony.
Byron Kikitoa’s lip curled in contempt. How anyone could listen to that sort of shit in this day and age he couldn’t understand. What kind of music didn’t even have a beat?
He stepped inside the house.
‘Hey, who are you?’ A rotund man with glasses and a shaved head was in the kitchen, one hand holding a wine bottle and the other a corkscrew. He looked more annoyed than frightened at Byron’s sudden appearance, then his jaw dropped as Byron stepped fully into the lounge.
‘Hey, you can’t just walk in here! This is my house.’
Byron looked around. There was no sign of the girl, or anyone else.
‘Get out before I call the police,’ the man said, his voice rising an octave although he was trying hard to sound threatening. He put down the corkscrew and reached for a phone.
Byron drew a Beretta handgun from the front pouch of his top. It had a six-inch silencer which made it look like a cannon. He enjoyed the change to the man’s expression as the barrel aligned with his face. He froze, went white, while the wine bottle slipped from his grasp and shattered at his feet, red fluid spraying.
Byron walked forward and pressed the muzzle against the man’s forehead. ‘Howard Allan?’
The man’s mouth worked, but his brain had all but shut down at the sight of the gun. The threat of sudden death could do that to a man. Byron had to suppress the urge to giggle at the sight. Ball-less twat. Apparently he was a millionaire several times over, some kind of tech-genius. But he looked like a wad of damp dough to Byron.
‘Wh-what do you want?’ Howard Allan squeaked.
‘Your daughter.’
‘She’s … she’s not here. She’s gone to America.’
Fuck! The plans I had for her …
Byron drew back slightly, pulled the gun away from Howard Allan’s face, watched how his face sagged with utter relief.
‘I can give you money,’ the man babbled. ‘Anything you want, take it. It’s just stuff, y’know. You can’t take it with you, right?’ His voice was still desperate, pleading. Irritating.
‘Can’t I?’ Byron glanced left and right. It was a nice house, lots of little knick-knacks and gizmos, but nothing that really interested him. ‘You know, you’re right,’ he said. ‘You can’t take it with you.’
He squeezed the trigger.
The dead man hadn’t lied. His daughter wasn’t here, and her room had an abandoned feel to it. Disconnected wires splayed across a bare desk, like tendrils of some alien plant seeking fertile soil. An itinerary was pinned to a corkboard on the wall, amidst photographs. He knew some of the faces: Douglas of course, and his skinny friend. The fencer boy, the one he’d stabbed on White Island. A woman posing with a younger version of the dead man in the living room: her mother, he guessed. The rest were girls in school uniforms or party dresses. Cassandra Allan herself was in most; bony, angular and bucktoothed, with hair that was at times matted dreadlocks, other times shaven or spiked. There was a restlessness in all the images; she always seemed on the verge of doing something else.
I’ll kill her when she gets back. By then I’ll be able to do whatever I like.
Back in the lounge, he paused, staring out over Gisborne and Poverty Bay. Kiki would be waiting impatiently below, anxious to get back to his habitual darkness. It wasn’t that sunlight harmed him — he wasn’t some Hollywood vampire — but it caused him discomfort and messed with his powers. It was a weakness Byron planned to exploit fully very soon.
Any kind of weakness disgusted him. From growing up poor, running wild on the streets of Rongotai, he’d learned very young that weakness would be exploited by others. Especially his father. He cringed inside to even think of the old bastard, a man so massive and strong that few suspected how weak he was. How totally in the thrall of drunkenness and drugs. A pathetic monster, who stood up to the weak and hid from the strong.
The only regret I have about you, ‘Daddy’, was that you were unconscious when I killed you.
Byron had been nine, coming home from school to find his mother beaten senseless and his father passed out from drinking. He’d powdered every pill in the cabinet into a coffee cup filled with rum, then tipped it down his father’s throat. The old man never woke up. The cops had barely investigated, declared it suicide and signed it off. He’d thought his mother might snap out of it after his father died, but she’d got worse. Byron and his brothers had been taken off her, and parcelled around other families by Social Welfare, still in the neighbourhood. He’d taken to stealing, got into fights. Discovered that if he wished someone ill, with all his heart and soul, then bad things really would happen to them.
His first magical victim had been an older boy who’d just beaten him with a stick, to steal the jewellery Byron himself had stolen from an old woman in Roseneath. He still remembered his fury at being held down, humiliated and dazed, hating that boy as he’d never hated another being. Byron knew his attacker was allergic to bee stings, and for some reason he’d focused on that, wishing and praying and beseeching the heavens for bees to come and sting and sting and sting until the other boy was nothing but a puffed-up poisoned corpse.
Within ten minutes, it had begun. The first bee came, even though it was night and it should have been sleeping. One sting would have been enough to put the other boy in hospital, but more came, then more. When Byron staggered away, lights coming on in the surrounding houses to investigate the screams, the other boy was covered in the creatures. Byron had known that it was he and he alone who had made it happen.
Kiki had found him within a week, and taken him to a place where Social Welfare would never find him. Changed his name, and the way he saw himself and the world about him. Changed his destiny.
All of his brothers were either dead or inside prison now. He’d not seen the surviving two for years, barely knew them. Kiki had rescued him from that path. Channelled his powers into being something more. Fashioned him into a likeness of himself.
Byron had been so damned grateful, at first. But now he knew that gratitude was just another form of dependency, of weakness.
I’ll show you that I have surpassed you, old man, and then I will be rid of you, as easily as I killed Howard Allan, and with as few regrets.
But for now, he had to play the eager, subservient pupil for a few m
ore days. To serve and obey. Years of discipline, imposed with savage cruelty, had conditioned him to play that part. He was far too strong of will to show his true intentions now, with the goal in sight. So he exhaled slowly, squared his shoulders, and crept back into the darkness of the encroaching bush.
Harbour city
The moment the door of the car opened, a giant Labrador was bounding down the steps from the house above. Mat’s ears heard frantic, excited barking, but his mind could hear words: ‘Mat! Mat! Mat!’
He dropped to his knees, let Fitzy leap at him, rolled with the impact and hugged the dog-turehu with as much enthusiasm as the little Nature spirit was exuding. ‘Hey, Fitzy! Whoa!’ They rolled about laughing, then pulled apart as Tama and Colleen peered down at them with amused smiles on their faces. ‘Awesome to see you,’ he told the dog. He’d not seen Fitzy since the year before. The turehu looked exactly the same of course, being a fairy creature of Aotearoa: shaggy, a little wild and full of energy.
Riki had his turn at hugging the little turehu, while Mat clambered to his feet and looked up to where Wiri and Kelly were descending to greet them. Wiri bounded towards them, his handsome face lit up with pleasure. He hugged Mat, then pushed him to arm’s length and looked him up and down. ‘Growing up,’ he said approvingly.
Wiri looked just the same: his youthful face had a timeless quality to it, and indeed ‘timeless’ was a word that was particularly apt. He had been born before the European settlement of New Zealand, but he’d spent most of his existence as a spirit, bound to a bone tiki carved from his own shoulder-blade by Puarata, and forced to serve the evil tohunga. That was until two years ago, when he had regained his mortality. So though he looked around twenty-four, his true age was lost to antiquity. He’d lost none of his warrior athleticism, judging by the way he moved, and if he was aging, it wasn’t apparent yet.
The last time Mat had seen Wiri was in February, during the pursuit of the stolen Treaty. Seeing him again made the world somehow more complete. The bond they’d forged in the past two years was something he relied on. Wiri occupied a place in his life akin to the elder brother he’d never had, combined with hero and idol.
