Magic and Makutu

by David Hair

  ‘It’s just gone three in the morning.’

  Her heart thudded. ‘Oh, my God! I’ve lost hours!’

  Wiri nodded grimly. ‘But you’re looking fresher. The sleep has done you good.’ He gripped her shoulders, his face encouraging. ‘We can do this, Everalda. All we need is to work out where Kiki will be, and what he’s doing, and King Dick Seddon will have the whole of the constabulary on him. And if it’s in this world, I’ve been promised armed offenders units, whatever it takes.’

  She took that in. Tried to believe that this nightmare could be woken from. She could feel her courage wavering, the need for reassurance overwhelming. Her arms went out to Wiri, who was so strong and capable … and looked so much like a grown-up, confident Mat … and fell into his surprised arms. ‘I’m scared,’ she whispered.

  She was, too. She was terrified by a sudden urge to kiss him.

  My mother was in love with this man, who knows both worlds. I could steal him away. Mat doesn’t need me: he has bloody Aroha …

  Wiri slowly pushed her away. Their eyes met, and she could tell that he knew exactly what she’d been thinking. She went scarlet, stammered, jerked away, the rage that had built inside her wilting in the face of his gentle tolerance. Oh my God. Oh my God …

  ‘Are you OK now?’ he asked softly, as though nothing had happened.

  She nodded mutely, too scared to speak. Horrified at herself.

  ‘They don’t think we’ll have power or phones until well after dawn,’ he went on, his voice deliberately matter-of-fact. ‘The mains and every auxiliary generator have shorted. The authorities think it’s lightning strike, but we know better: Kiki pulled something, using the force of the storm. So we’ve got to do this old-school: research and deduction. What have you learned?’

  Evie threw her mind back to what was important — really important. Relating what she’d learned took no time at all: almost nothing useful, just a long list of things that weren’t right. ‘I don’t think the flute angle is the right one. They don’t rate a mention. Or maybe I just don’t know the right legends.’

  Wiri nodded, sat beside her and seized a handful of books. ‘I’ll do these.’ He clicked on a torch and picked up the first one. ‘Governor Grey wrote this one: perhaps the old reptile knew something worthwhile.’

  Four o’clock in the morning came without a breakthrough, while the storm rolled on overhead, though with more rain and less lightning now. The wind was easing, a heavy rain-mist filling up the harbour and the city, so that the now occasional lightning bursts lit up the sky appear with a milky glow.

  Evie buried her head in her hands. Flutes … Taniwha … Chaos … ‘It’s no use, there’s nothing here. Why would Kiki want a flute? Why?’ She wiped her good eye, brushing away the beginning of tears. ‘I don’t understand anything.’

  Wiri pulled out the museum tag, and stared at it. Muttered a word: ‘Hataitai.’

  He said it again, louder, the pronunciation slightly different: ‘Whataitai.’

  She tried to follow his thinking. ‘It’s a suburb, you said?’

  His eyes were bright in the dark. ‘Named after a taniwha.’

  Her breath caught in her throat. ‘Ride the taniwha out of chaos.’

  Wiri’s expression was one of horror.

  ‘Oh, my God. He’s going to rouse a taniwha — it’ll destroy the city.’

  Life drawing

  ‘Master Douglas! Don’t just sit there — draw!’

  Mr Barkley’s voice was sharp, sarcastic and impatient. Just as usual. But he was leaning on Mat harder than he ever had. Mat was at an easel, trying to free-sketch a picture of the taniwha that had chased him up the hill. Dozens of balls of paper were piled at his feet, ripped from the easel by the teacher in maddening fits of rage.

  ‘The world does not need more pictures of dragons and fairies, Douglas! Give me something real!’

  Something real? Mat stared about him. The class was full, but somehow empty also. The other students were a blur, and you couldn’t quite see them. It was as though they were scenery, or furniture. All were diligently drawing, garnering the odd murmur of approval, but Barkley was barely looking at their work: it was as though Mat was his only real pupil. He was utterly scornful of everything Mat drew.

  With a start he realized there was a live model at the front of the class. A young woman, a Maori woman, wrapped in a feather cloak, staring away into space, a solemn expression on her flawless face.

  Aroha.

  He swallowed, and then came to a rapid conclusion: this was the test. He immediately began to sketch her. He’d never really liked life drawing, preferring inanimate objects and patterned designs. The proportions on living creatures were really hard, and capturing a mood or an emotion often beyond him.

  ‘Good grief, Douglas! Are you a five-year-old?’ Barkley stormed up, wrenched the paper from the easel and screwed it up. He flung it to the floor in disgust. ‘Her nose isn’t shaped like that! And those ears? My Year Nines could do better! And you say you want to be an artist? God save us!’

  Mat bunched his fists, head down, containing his anger.

  He’s right. It was a shit picture.

  I can’t do this …

  ‘Draw!’ Barkley bellowed in his ear.

  He tried again. Used all the tips and skills they’d been given over the years to capture proportion correctly. Drew with precise movements, tried to capture every angle, as flawlessly as he could, tried to make every line and curve exact, even though it meant erasing and re-doing every mark dozens of times. His fingers ached from gripping the pencils — he went through three of them — and his eyesight blurred, as he threw himself into creation.

  The result was a passably exact rendition of the girl on the platform, captured in fine lines, with depth hinted by some shading. Definitely, recognizably Aroha, her features recorded in precise detail. He sat back, stared at it, hands shaking. He’d never drawn a better picture.

  Barkley tore it off the easel and ripped it apart.

  ‘Douglas, have you learned nothing in all these years? That’s a living, breathing person up there, not a soulless sheet of paper! Bring her to life, boy!’

  Mat felt fire kindle on the tips of his fingers.

  ‘Do that and you fail,’ the teacher told him in a low voice.

  Mat had to call on all the calming, meditative techniques he had learned from Jones and Ngatoro to let his anger go. It’s a test. I have to learn. He got up and walked to the front of the class. Stared at Aroha’s face from every angle. Took in the proud tilt of her head, her full lips and strong jaw-line, moko patterns etched deep into her skin. Her high cheekbones and deep, deep eyes, filled with something mysterious and constantly changing. Their colour was impossible to capture, her mood unknowable.

  He went back to his seat, picked up a pencil and closed his eyes, picturing the girl’s face as he remembered it, and set an image behind his inner eyes to work towards. Then he opened them again, and let the pencil flow.

  Barkley came and stood right behind him. His oppressive presence made the vision waver, and he mis-drew her left ear. The teacher hissed, and tore the picture up.

  He tried again.

  And again.

  Hours flew past, until he opened his eyes as though from sleep, and there it was. A sketch of Aroha, just her face, staring out at him, a Mona Lisa smile and burning eyes, all fully shaded, three dimensional, almost leaping out of the paper.

  ‘Is she black and white, Douglas?’ Barkley asked caustically. ‘Colour it.’ He sniffed and stalked away.

  But he hadn’t ripped the drawing up.

  Mat sagged in exhaustion. But there was a fever on him that wouldn’t let him rest. He’d only felt this way once before, the day he’d made the Celtic knot and Maori koru pendants for his parents. Those two pendants now hung interlocked about his neck. He reached for the watercolours, added water and began to mix, seeking the right blend of colours, for her hair, for her skin and moko, and most of all, for her e
yes. He painted swiftly yet carefully, conscious of time passing. When he had done, he stared at the image.

  Almost.

  He tore it up, before Barkley did it for him. Then he started again.

  This time, though, he did something he’d never done before while making art. He reached inside himself, and engaged the living magic within. Instead of recreating the whole, painstaking sketch, he simply willed it into place on the page. The pencil in his hand disintegrated, and the lead dust streamed through the air and etched itself onto the paper in soft lines. It felt somewhat like cheating … but why not? he asked himself. It took a fraction of the time that a drawing would have. Then he waved a hand over the paint tray, and the watercolours began to flow through the air in streams, painting themselves onto the paper, this time perfect. It could have been a photograph.

  Barkley grunted from behind him.

  Then he reached over, tore the picture in half and threw it to the floor.

  Mat bellowed in frustration and anger. He came to his feet, turned … stopped.

  ‘What is it you want?’ he begged the impassive teacher. ‘I don’t understand what you want!’

  ‘I could have got that picture in half a second from the camera in my mobile,’ Barkley sneered. ‘What do you think art is, boy? Photocopying? Etch-a-sketch? Paint by numbers? I want to see inside her soul, Douglas.’ He pointed a finger at Aroha, and then jabbed that same finger into Mat’s chest. ‘And I want to see your soul, too. That’s what art is, Douglas: it’s revealing the meanings that move the image and its maker. I want to know her, and to know you. If you can’t capture that, then you’re not an artist.’

  Mat stared at him.

  ‘Start again,’ the teacher barked, and walked away.

  So he did. Right from the beginning. Hand-drawing each line, not concentrating on the detail but on the emotions inside him.

  She is a goddess. Hine-nui-te-po, Queen of Death. She looks down from on high and makes demands. Her needs are defined by the cosmos, not by mere mood swings and petty desires. She commands and the universe obeys … and I am just a pawn in her game …

  He barely noticed the paper, just concentrated on the outpouring of his inner turmoil. His training filled in the details, provided the technique. What emerged didn’t look as much like Aroha as the previous image, but this one had resonance: it captured something of her power and pitiless majesty, in the way she looked down at him from the image. Dark shapes hovered behind her, and her moko seemed to writhe across her skin. It embodied everything he felt about what she was doing to his life.

  He hated her.

  He hated it.

  So he tore up the picture and tried again. Tried to see her differently.

  She is trapped by circumstance, forced to be this being who must mate with a virtual stranger or doom millions to misery and death. She wants to be normal but she can’t. She is a prisoner of the universe … and I pity that …

  The next image was softer, gentler, almost plaintive. Weak.

  He tore it up, too.

  It took seventeen more attempts, and he couldn’t say how many hours or even days had gone by. The work consumed him. He sipped water when he remembered, but ignored his rumbling belly, his gritty, stinging eyes, and aching shoulders. There were only the images emerging before him.

  She was beautiful, but remote, her eyes cast to a horizon filled with glimmers of flickering light and vast shadows. Her silken hair, each strand alive, poured over her shoulders and flowed out into the night, became the darkness, and filled it. Hine-nui-te-po. Her lips were parted, capturing a longing that could never be fulfilled. A loneliness so profound that the smallest human contact felt like a lifelong relationship. The fleeting people who populated her strange existence moved like ghosts behind her eyes. He could feel Kiki and Puarata in there, but others also, better men; her mortal father Tamure, and even Mat’s own mentor, Ngatoro. He placed a tiny reflection of himself in those eyes, a lost but determined boy on the verge of manhood, struggling to understand as he looked at her and she at him.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ a woman’s voice said softly from behind him. It was Aroha, descended from the platform. Barkley was nowhere in sight, and all the other pupils were gone, if they’d ever been there.

  He stood, turned to her. Her face looked down at his — she was taller than him —with exactly the expression he’d captured. He felt for a moment that he knew her, really knew her, the girl within the goddess.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  He turned back to view the picture, admiring it, a little pride stiffening his spine.

  I did that, he thought, straightening. I really did it. I passed the test …

  The classroom vanished, and he was in a gallery —in fact an exhibition hall. He looked about him in sudden bewilderment. Aroha had vanished, but there were people all around, intense-looking adults gazing with appraising eyes at his work, and those of all the other artists. There were literally hundreds of pictures on display. The other artists hovered by their work, hopeful expressions on their faces as the public surged past.

  Every picture he’d ever done — well, the good ones — hung about him. A dozen, mostly plain still-lives and patterns, but the best by far was this new portrait. Aroha/Hine-nui-te-po by Matiu Douglas, the label said. $3,000. He gaped. He could sell pictures for money? It seemed like a dream.

  ‘Say, you’re pretty good,’ a fat, balding man remarked, shoving his way through the crowd and thrusting out a hand. ‘Mat-ee-ooo? I love your native names! So exotic! Can I call you Mat?’ He seized Mat’s hand in his greasy paws. ‘Great to meet ya, kid! I’m Brad, and I’m a big fan of your work.’

  ‘You are? Er, I mean, thanks.’

  ‘You’ve got real talent, Mat. Real talent. We could sure use you.’

  Use me? ‘How do you mean, sir?’

  ‘Art, Mat! It’s a big thing, art. Corporates love it: offices gotta have art. Improves morale and productivity in the staff. The big companies just snap it up, if it’s the right stuff.’

  ‘Really?’ he said doubtfully.

  ‘Sure! You ever seen an office with no art in it? Listen, kid, you want to make a living from this, right?’

  Mat blinked. That was his dream. ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘That’s the spirit. Listen, you sign up with me, I’ll commission pieces from you and get them into the big banks, the insurance companies, the telecoms, the power companies. Fund managers. Investment banks. I’ve got contacts, Mat. Lots of contacts. Not just in this li’l place, but in the States, Asia, all over. Talent like you, I could sell in, no trouble. Pacific-themed stuff is hot just now.’

  Mat chewed his lower lip. Selling pictures so they’d hang in offices. It wasn’t precisely what he’d dreamt. ‘What sort of pictures?’

  ‘Just like this one!’ Brad exclaimed.

  He wasn’t pointing at Aroha/Hine-nui-te-po. Instead, he was indicating a very plain picture Mat had once done, a vaguely Polynesian geometric design with textured layers of oils in bland blues and greens. ‘The banks love this sort of thing, Mat. Love the Pasifika angle. You can get top dollar on this stuff.’

  ‘Really?’ He looked at the picture with no real affection: it had been done for a class exercise in layering and texturing, and conveyed no emotions to him at all. His eyes went back to the Aroha picture. ‘But this one—’

  ‘Oh, that?’ Brad shook his head dismissively. ‘It’s a decent piece, but it’s a little too … intense, y’know? Latest surveys say that faces are distracting, too. Workers in an office need to stay focused and busy.’ He walked past it, and jabbed a finger at the geometric picture. ‘This though, is perfect. Blues and green, those colours radiate calm. Managers love them. Soothing, simple, precise designs like these. You’ve nailed it, right there. How long it take you to knock one of these out?’

  ‘Knock them out’? Mat felt his ambitions falter. ‘About a fortnight?’

  ‘A fortnight! Not bad, kid, though you might want to up y
our output rate. Let’s make it one a week: that’s fifty-two a year, and I can probably get you about $500 a pop. My agency only takes forty per cent — that’s top rate — gives you a working income of about $16,000, Matty-boy. How’s that sound?’

  Like bugger-all. Not even minimum wage.

  His heart sank. He indicated Aroha. ‘But something like this, it’s different.’

  Brad raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Corporates don’t want “different”, Mat. “Different” is risky and, frankly, modern companies don’t take risks. Just like in the movies: the only pictures the big studios make these days are the sure-fire winners: comic-book heroes and old movie stars reprising their best roles. That’s where the money is. Same with music and books. You gotta ride the demographic, Mat, and that’s where I come in. I survey the market for you, work out the best fit for the target audience, then you crank ’em out. And here’s the thing, Mat: I’m telling them what to think anyway! That’s my magic, kiddo: marketing magic. I give them all kinds of bullshit to explain why they need my product: which is you. It’s a virtuous cycle, Mat: a wave we can ride to fame and riches. We tell ’em what they want, then give it to them!’

  Mat stared into space. It all sounded so depressing. Not like he’d dreamt it at all.

  Brad thrust a sweaty hand at Mat: ‘Whaddya say, kid? We got a deal?’ He smirked. ‘Kids like you gotta have an income, right? For all the partying and drugs, heh! Artists don’t make a lot anyway, Mat, cos you don’t contribute anything important to the economy. Opportunities like this happen only once, kid. Look around this hall: any one of these schmucks would beg for this chance — but I want you! So whaddya say?’

  Mat stared at the hand. Is this the test? Or is this life? Is this what dreams turn into?

  He tried one last time. ‘But this one is selling for $3,000.’

  Brad scowled at the flawless depiction of Aroha’s face. ‘And it took you, what? Two months? Three? You coulda slapped together twelve geo-designs at $500 each by then! Do the math, kid!’ He thrust out his hand, even more insistently. ‘C’mon Mat-ee-ooo, last chance. Look, I’ll take only thirty per cent for the first year, help you get set up. Can’t say fairer than that.’