by David Hair
Mat stood his ground. ‘If you’ve killed Riki with your pet beasts, I’ll kill you. I don’t care about your quest! Byron can have you for all I care. If immortality means being anywhere near you, I’d rather die!’
They stared at each other for long, slow seconds; he furious, she icy calm.
Then her expression softened. ‘Oh, Mat, I wish it didn’t have to be like this either. But the path to gain immortality and remake our world was set down long ago. These chances only come once in centuries, and only the best can survive it. I didn’t want your friend to come any more than you did.’
‘You’re the one testing us! Help him!’
She shook her head softly. ‘No, Mat: it’s not me testing any of you. I’m just the prize. It’s the Land that is testing you.’
His fury lessened. ‘Oh.’
‘I can interact to some extent, and that is all. Right now five young men are trying to reach me, and three of those serve the dark path —te tiro makutu. One other, Riki, has no magic at all and is doomed to fail. There is only you in whom I trust.’
‘Riki means more to me than you ever will.’
Aroha flinched. ‘I know. But only a tohunga can breach the barriers that lie ahead of you all.’ She reached halfway to him. ‘You are my only realistic hope, Mat. Please, don’t fail me. Don’t fail this land.’
Her hand hung between them, and he reached out to touch it, but couldn’t. It wasn’t substantial. She wasn’t really there. ‘How long have I got?’ he asked, as his temper ebbed.
‘This experience might feel like days or months or years, Mat, but in reality it will be over by dawn in your world.’
He hung his head. ‘Is Riki …? Did he make it?’
‘I cannot tell you how he fared. His test was different to yours, Mat. Everyone’s is.’ Her face resumed its efficient, impassive mask. ‘Now, please, your class awaits.’
Mat bit his lip. ‘Wait,’ he blurted as she turned to go. ‘What was the point of that? Climbing a wall to escape a monster: what earthly use could anyone gain from putting anyone through that?’
‘I do not set the tests,’ she said again. ‘But I imagine it was to weed out those who do not have the determination to rise above the seemingly overwhelming, and gain from it.’ She half-smiled. ‘You overcame your most primal fears, nightmares that have had you in terror since you were a child. Not only that, but you learnt more about the uses of Mahuika’s fire-nails in ten minutes than you did in the year since you gained them. You ran faster uphill with a pack on your back than you’ve ever managed on a sprint-track in running shoes. Now, a few minutes later, you’re barely showing the effects. I’d say that’s a pass, wouldn’t you?’
Mat stared at her, realizing that she was right. He was barely even puffing now. All that energy, drawn in and burned up, and he felt … fine. More than fine. Great.
‘You’ll need all those skills if you are to overcome, Mat. Go to your class.’ She turned and walked away.
He stared after her, still resentful, but scared now— not of the tests, but of what they would draw out of him, and what he would become. And still absolutely terrified for Riki.
Then the door opened, and Mr Barkley the art teacher snapped at him. ‘Douglas! Are you joining us today or would you rather go and sit outside the principal’s office?’
Mat ducked his head, and scurried inside.
Oil and spark
‘Tama!’
Colleen stared after her husband, her mouth open, her mind not comprehending. But although her shout reverberated down the corridor, he never looked back. She turned to stare up at Jones. ‘What’s he doing?’ But the Welshman was caught up in his own agony, staring at the gun in his hand, which was shaking uncontrollably. ‘Aethlyn?’
‘I can’t go back in there,’ Jones exclaimed, his voice helpless and hopeless for the only time she could remember. Even during the months where she’d nursed him in Taupo, his life in the balance, he’d been so sure of his own capacity to go on. But now all of that had gone.
‘You don’t have to,’ she replied firmly, while her eyes went about her, beseeching aid from the men around her. But they were tending wounds, or reloading, or trying to ascertain what was happening outside. She felt herself pulled to tearing point by the need to go and the need to stay. Tama … Aethlyn … She loved them both. But not in the same way. Aethlyn Jones was fatherly, gruff, solid, like a beloved uncle. All the time they’d spent together, there had never been anything between them other than concern and caring. The Welshman was important to her son, and he had needed her, needed someone to tend him as he fought back from the very edge of death. She couldn’t leave him now, not with the gun primed in his trembling hand. Not with his need so urgent.
And Tama? Lifetimes could not contain the complexity of how she felt about her estranged husband. Guilt and regret and suppressed longing; emotions as deep as oceans.
Slowly, carefully, Colleen took the hand holding the gun, and slid her little finger behind the trigger, to prevent it being pulled. ‘Hold on,’ she pleaded. ‘Don’t do it.’
‘You don’t know what it’s like in there,’ Jones whispered hoarsely. ‘It’s a morass, all those souls tangled together, dissolving into each other until you don’t know who or what you are. I’ve lost so many memories, gained others from lives I never lived. There’s me and all these others, our bodies and souls being churned into one giant pond of blood and flesh and sludge. I’m losing my identity! I can’t go back in — I’d rather be nothing than in there!’
Aethlyn …
She didn’t hear the voice with her ears, but inside her mind; quivering through the trembling hand in hers, came Kiki’s rasping, crackling voice, summoning his servants back to the Wooden Head.
Aethlyn Jones, come …
‘Don’t listen to him,’ she told Jones. ‘Stay with me.’
He dragged his gaze to her face. His look was blank, unfocused, as though he barely knew her. Everything else in the room faded from her awareness, as she met the agony inside him with all the compassion and empathy she could muster. All her being went into willing him to relent, to be still, to have faith that something might make his existence more than what it was. That there was hope, in the shape of Tama, for she’d finally realized what he was doing, and why.
Foolish, stupid, brave man …
‘Please, give him time,’ she whispered. ‘He’ll come through.’ Though she didn’t know how or if it was even possible.
The next moments were an eternity, as his finger tightened on the trigger, and he stared at her with hollow-eyed despair, the revulsion he felt for descending back into the cursed carving all too apparent.
‘I’m sorry,’ he managed to gasp.
‘No — please — stay with me.’
Her eyes bored into his, her other hand found his cheek, stroked it, as she fought his desire for self-destruction with all she had, a silent war in which eye contact was everything. To look away was to lose him. All the while, Kiki whispered into their brains like worms boring through rotting timber.
Tama ignored the shouts behind him as he ran for the stairs, hurdling bodies sprawled in grotesque postures, like broken dolls. Those he brushed against had a strangely insubstantial quality, as though they were slowly dissolving into thin air. They were spirits, and now they were truly dead. Mat had once told him that when a person died in the real world they might pass on to Aotearoa, or go elsewhere. But a death in Aotearoa was final.
They’re passing on — as I will if this doesn’t work.
But right now, it didn’t seem to matter. There was a madness gripping him, and he couldn’t fight it. In the past few days he’d come to see clearly that he still loved Colleen, despite all they’d done to each other. To now see her looking at Aethlyn Jones in the way she’d once looked at him was more than he could bear.
I’ll give them the happiness they deserve.
Some native caution returned, though, as he reached the ground floor, and joined the mi
lling men and women: still dozens, despite all those slain inside. They were forming lines, their faces vacant. One part of the walls was scorched where Kiki, presumably, had tried to set the building alight, but it wasn’t burning: he wondered if that was because the building still existed in the real world. But he averted his eyes, mimicking the shuffling walk of the captive spirits.
As he did so, he felt the weight of the Wooden Head’s gaze. He glanced toward it, saw its paua eyes gleaming in the darkness, and felt the malice it radiated. A kind of existential dread hung in the air, whispered in his ear, permeated his nostrils. Every step was like walking slowly into dark waters. He could feel the horror of the others around him, the prisoners of the Wooden Head, walking slowly towards it. It felt like he had fallen into a zombie movie, the last living human trying to pretend he was undead, too.
Not far from the Wooden Head stood a hunched figure, buried in a feather cloak, squatting like a toad as he stared up at the Government Buildings. His gaze was no less baleful than that of the Wooden Head, but all his hatred was concentrated on the building above. ‘Aethlyn,’ he chanted in a low, gravelly rattle, ‘come down.’
Tama shuddered. Hold on, Jones. Give me this chance to help you.
Looking ahead, he could see the Wooden Head clearly now, looming above the column of walking ghosts. As they reached a point in front of it, suddenly the shambling ghosts disintegrated, turning into black smoke that flowed, wailing, into the carving’s mouth. With each ‘meal’ the eyes seemed to glow more brightly.
‘Come down, Aethlyn — I command you!’ Kiki’s voice had an edge of frustration. ‘Come to me!’
The spirit in front of Tama shrieked as it dissolved into the carving’s cruel jaws.
It was his turn.
With a shout, he threw himself forward, hurling the oil lamp and jerking his hand from his pocket, fingers working on his cigarette lighter, even as those dreadful eyes bored into him.
The paua orbs caught him, and he felt a thousand tiny hands grip him and pull him away. It was as though he were caught in a web, with only the carved face above moving, its lips pulling back to shriek. But the oil lamp continued its trajectory, shattering against the carving, splashing its contents over the old, dry timbers. Hundreds of eyes turned his way as he fell to his knees, dark claws digging into him, ripping at his very soul as he pitched forward.
But he saw only one face, imprinted on his mind ever since that night in Camden Town, London, when she’d turned his way in a crowded bar and grinned.
His thumb jerked, even as his heart faltered.
A spark flew.
And caught fire.
Colleen Douglas heard the scream, the bean sídhe wail that shook the windows of the old building, and thought her heart would burst apart, it was pounding so hard. The sound of that cry was like every ghost in creation screaming in fury and terror and agony and — release.
For the past two minutes, she had been holding onto Aethlyn Jones, trembling. She was no longer restraining him, but he was restraining her, from going after her man, who had gone off to do something incredibly foolish, leaving her whole existence in the balance.
The seconds had dragged, with only Ballance’s dry voice to focus on: ‘I think I see him … I think … he’s in a line— Oh my God, he’s getting closer. Do I shoot him? What do I do, Dick?’
‘Shoot him? Don’t you dare!’ Seddon snarled. ‘I think he’s going to—’
Whatever the premier was about to say was drowned by that awful cry.
Colleen tore herself from Jones’s grasp and ran. Pelted along the corridors which were filled with mist, the bodies of the dead ghosts disintegrating as she kicked through them, cobweb lives fraying in the wind of her passing.
Shrieking Tama’s name, she burst from the front doors and outside. The ghosts were gone, the lawn empty of all but one figure, lying face-down in front of a burning pole. She scrabbled across the cobbles and the grass, throwing herself over the prone body, heedless of all else.
‘TAMA! TAMA!’
She seized him, heaved him onto his back, staring at his slack face, his wide-open eyes. ‘TAMA!’
Something gurgled, away to her right. She saw a wizened old Maori man, so bent he might have been a dwarf, pawing at the ground and staring at up at the burning carving, his body shaking, his face livid, his bulging eyes incredulous and enraged.
Kiki … It’s him …
The tohunga turned his face towards her and his burning eyes narrowed. Guttural words crawled from his throat, and something began to form in the darkness between them. Her throat tightened, seizing up as she stared, mesmerized.
Then beside her, something growled. Fitzy, snarling a warning. She clutched at the dog, felt his heart beating madly, but he didn’t give ground.
‘You again,’ Kiki growled. His fingers began to twist the air.
Then doors flew open behind her and boots struck stone. Kiki’s eyes left her, then with a cry of utter frustration, he straightened a little and began to fade from sight. Shots rang out, tearing through his form, and he seemed to flinch. Then he was gone, and Jones was beside her, smoking pistol in his hand, his form solid as the earth beneath her. She clutched his hand, but her eyes went back to Tama.
Oh my dear, stupid man …
He opened his eyes.
She burst into tears and collapsed onto his chest.
A library by candlelight
Evie crossed the empty Jervois Quay, the main route around the waterfront, by the bizarrely decorated wooden land-bridge, buffeted by winds so strong she had to scamper from shelter to shelter in between the worst gusts. She splashed through the puddles on Civic Square and up the stairs leading into the back of the library. The glass doors were locked, but that was nothing, not when the electronic locking was down. A simple key card like the one she’d given her mother made them slide open. She left it wedged in the door for Wiri to follow. Then she used a Fire Energy card from the Pokemon trading-card game to light her way. The mezzanine level led past a vacant shop and a locked-down café. She descended into the silent library, trying to hurry, but cautious as she had glimpsed security people out the front and couldn’t afford the interruption.
She wondered how Wiri was faring, and then whether Mat was alright. Riki, too; she liked the stringy Maori boy with the insouciant smile, couldn’t bear to think of what might happen to him on a quest that was way over his head. Then she was thinking of Tama and Colleen and Kelly and—
Stop it! Concentrate! We don’t know how long we’ve got!
Her watch told her it was just after midnight, on Friday morning. The wind still yowled outside, pummelling the huge glass panels. The library was a giant modern glass-and-steel structure, the exterior reminiscent of the Coliseum, with pillars like palm trees. There were three full floors, and a directory hung above the escalators. She found the section she needed — folklore and mythology — quickly enough, among the social sciences on Level Two, dragged likely books from the shelves and squatted on the floor, riffling through them frantically. Lightning burst above the city, and the thunder was so loud that it made the ground quiver.
She didn’t know what she was looking for. Flutes? They featured heavily in the legend of Tutanekai, playing his flute to bring Hinemoa to him. That didn’t help, and soaked up time she wasn’t sure she had. Recalling what Mat had divulged to her — that his quest seemed to be linked to the legends of Tawhaki, and also the death of Maui — she tried books on them. They had nothing about flutes in them at all, not even the most detailed unabridged versions of the legends. Minutes slipped past in a blur, while her single eye strained; her left eye’s feeling of being filled with energy had dissipated as she used her powers, and it had gone blind again. Staring at the pages was a strain on her right eye: she’d had to give away recreational reading to a large extent since she lost sight in the left eye, and was perpetually afraid that one day she’d begin to lose her sight in the right as well. But tonight there was no choice, so she p
ressed on, even though now the adrenalin from the earlier danger was passing, and exhaustion was kicking in. She could barely keep her one eye open …
‘Hey, Everalda!’ A hand shook her shoulder. ‘Are you alright?’
She came awake in a jerk, woken from a terrifying dream in which she was being pursued by a hobbling old tohunga who was going to plunge his staff through her heart if he caught her. A dark shape was bent over her, and she didn’t know for a moment where she was.
Then she recognized the voice as Wiri’s, and as she came fully awake, the little Pokemon card in her hand flared up again, creating a little glowing island in the dark,
Wiri looked exhausted, and almost angry. I was sleeping: everyone he cares about is in danger and I fell asleep. She was utterly mortified. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t help it, I’m so sorry!’ She wanted to cry, both eyes stinging.
He knelt beside her, and pulled her against him. ‘It’s OK. I almost nodded off myself in the police station. I went there to report the break-in, after I had moved your mother’s body. We’ll give her a decent burial when we can, I promise. There are cops looking after Te Papa now.’
‘Can the police help us?’
‘In this world, certainly. They can look after Mike and Sosefo and lock down Te Papa in case Kiki comes back. More than that, I have some connections, through to the Aotearoa Constabulary. They’ve got men going around to protect Kelly and Nikau, and others going to find Tama and Colleen and Fitzy. They are OK, by the way. Kiki attacked the Government Buildings using the Wooden Head, but they repelled him. They’re in the old Parliament chapel now, waiting for dawn and guarding the forged Treaty. So that side of things is covered. But it’s down to you and I now to work out what Kiki is doing next.’
Evie nodded slowly, feeling a little less helpless. There are a whole bunch of people helping us — we’re not alone. ‘What time is it?’
