Magic and Makutu

by David Hair

  For a few minutes all was well, as Riki powered up the gentle slope. Behind him, he could hear Mat’s voice rise, the ritual words of a formal challenge flowing from his mouth fluently. It would have made their Maori Studies teachers weep with pride, had they been there to hear it. He whispered a silent prayer to whoever might be listening that Mat might somehow make it through. It tore at his guts to leave his best friend behind like this, but there seemed no option, not if one of them was to reach Aroha.

  Matty always comes through these situations, he told himself.

  He won’t when he’s given away all his power, a darker voice replied.

  As the cleft ahead loomed larger and the cliffs closed in on him, Riki saw that they now had sweeping carved designs on them, the designs of ta moko, writ large on the thighs of this giant earth goddess. In the stream beside him, which ran from the cleft above, reeking of sulphur, there were long eels, each as thick as his leg, tracking his movements as he passed. The heat of the water was filling the gorge, making him sweat, and the sulphur began to fill his nostrils. It became hard to breathe, dizzying to go on. He tottered towards the stream, suddenly and idiotically thirsty, and the eels gathered, jaws snapping.

  Without having had the time to fully assimilate Mat’s powers, he had no idea what he could or couldn’t do, so he acted purely on instinct. He reached out for cleaner air, tried to draw it to him. For a second it all seemed to go wrong, as the fumes of the stream only became more noxious, as though he had sucked them all towards him, but then a cooling gust washed over him from lower down the valley, pushing the poisonous gases up. A couple of eels lunged up out of the water at him, but he leapt clear. Jaws snapped centimetres behind him as he began to dart and leap, crossing the stream in bounds, careful never to touch the water, the frenzied eels pursuing. Heat rose, beating at his face, until the water he was leaping was boiling, repelling even the eels.

  He burst past the point where they could follow him, soaked in sweat and lost in clouds of steam, barely able to breathe but for the lifeline of air he was pulling from outside. The heat was almost unendurable. He floundered, unable to think how to counter it, while his clothes and his feather cloak began to crisp and char on him. The heat was like a wall in front of him and his skin was beginning to blister. The fiery cleft before him filled his sight, turning the world to an orange blur.

  What would Mat do? He had no idea, but some kind of answer came when his hand brushed the rock face and found it cooler than the heat radiating from before him. He gripped it, some wild idea about crawling into the rock to hide filling his befuddled head, but the rock was solid.

  Something did happen, though: a kind of temperature exchange, heat flowing through him into the rock, which began to heat, as his own skin cooled. At first he thought he’d imagined it, but then the effect became unmistakable. As he kept contact with the stone, that steadied him as he stumbled on, right into the burning mouth of the cleft, a narrow chamber with walls of glowing lava opening around him. A few steps on and his feather cloak began to burn, the feathers curling up and withering to ash, yet he himself felt almost nothing. Then his clothing burnt away as well, but his skin and hair remained undamaged. He lost the vortex of clean air, but he didn’t seem to need it now, as though it was a crutch he no longer required in order to walk.

  His sight was filled with throbbing and vividly coloured walls of liquefying stone that blocked his way, his vision warped and distorted by the currents of heat. He was naked but for the taiaha in his hands, his skin burnished and lit by the orange glow. Yet he felt strangely comfortable, now entirely attuned to this unearthly environment. There was no visible way ahead, but he sensed that the barrier at the far end of this chamber before him was thin … a hymen of stone, he realized with a flush of discomfort that he nervously dismissed.

  The solemnity of the moment did not escape him. This was the final quest of Maui. This was immortality or annihilation. This was the renewal of the age. Kiki had done this. Before him, so too had Rakauri, the father of Ngatoro. He was walking a path trod by giants.

  Riki had never been one to get overawed by such weights. With a light toss of his head and a wry grin at the irony of it all, that a vagabond kid from Meeanee could walk in the footsteps of legend, he raised his taiaha and plunged it into the barrier.

  Within seconds, Mat knew he was in trouble. Byron swayed from his overhead blow, and with his left hand slashed, slicing a long bleeding wound in Mat’s forearm, then lashing out with his foot, catching Mat across the midriff and hurling him backwards towards the pool.

  Byron grunted in apparent surprise at the ease of his strike. ‘Pathetic, Douglas.’ But he still circled warily. His gaze was firmly on Mat’s hands, where the red fingernails still protruded, the gifts of the fire goddess. He didn’t follow up his blow as he could have, darting aside instead.

  He thinks I am trying to fool him into overconfidence. Byron’s scared of the fire-nails.

  Mat wondered how he could use that.

  Taiaha-lore taught that you should watch the feet of your opponent, to anticipate their blows. If Byron was going to have one eye on Mat’s hands instead, perhaps there was some chance of landing a few blows. He advanced again.

  They exchanged cautious blows, like fencers using rapiers, not quite coming together, probing. Then Byron sprang forward, his two weapons flashing, his left-hand patu crunching against Mat’s taiaha and rebounding. The stone club broke in half. Mat smiled grimly. His powers might have been given away, but the taiaha was still Ngatoro’s, and retained its potency. He gave ground, as Byron adjusted his stance to fight one-handed, and circled even more warily.

  They were both side-on to the trail now, close to the pool. Byron backed a little, threw a glance towards Riki. Mat followed the look: his friend had slowed, was walking dizzily. He felt his anxiety rise.

  ‘The fool won’t last another minute,’ Byron remarked grimly. ‘Does he know nothing?’

  I’ve got to keep his attention here. Mat attacked again, lashing out, but keeping distant and using the length of his weapon to keep Byron at bay. Despite having only one weapon now, Byron batted Mat’s blows aside with almost contemptuous ease, but didn’t follow up. Mat had noticed this when they fought in Arrowtown: Byron was a cautious predator, like a big cat: content to fight patiently, letting small wounds weaken and cripple an enemy without taking risks. That suited Mat, who wanted this to take as long as possible. But now Byron was clearly beginning to sense that something was wrong.

  After another flurry of blows, they were momentarily some ten metres apart. Suddenly the young tohunga makutu slashed his patu through the air, shouting a spell, and Mat sensed a blur of bone, then his vision swam as the skin on his chest was slashed open from fully ten metres away. He gasped, flinching and ducking aside as a second spell-blow lashed at him, parting the air where his face had been an instant before.

  Byron stared at him, perplexed. ‘Surely you know the counter to that spell, Douglas? I learned it in my first year as an apprentice.’ His eyes flickered to the distant figure of Riki again, vanishinginto the steamy mists further up the gorge, ever closer to the cleft.

  Go, Riki! Go! Mat licked his dry lips, his chest burning, blood welling through the rent in his skin.

  ‘Your companion, he is no Adept,’ Byron stated, doubt growing in his voice. ‘My master has investigated all of your friends.’ His stance became more aggressive. ‘Let’s end this.’

  He’s starting to realize. Riki was barely visible now, but a strong wind was blowing up the gully towards the cleft, lifting the steam away, revealing his friend, now holding to the walls and approaching the glowing cleft, an orange radiance all about him.

  Byron straightened, then with a sudden snarl began an invocation, reaching out a hand towards Mat, fingers splayed. Mat knew the spell, and knew the counter, but he was no longer an Adept, so any words he said would have been pointless. It was a heart-grip, a makutu spell an Adept could use against a human with relative im
punity, but would never work against anyone with skill in magic.

  Mat tried to advance, as the spell was a slow one, not one that was easy to use in combat. But Byron cast it faster than he thought possible. He felt the tohunga makutu’s grip inside his chest as clearly as if his enemy had plunged a hand inside his ribcage. He tried to shout, in useless defiance, as his legs wobbled and he fell against the wall behind him. He tried to fight back, but without his powers, all he could do was attempt to manage his body’s response. The air in his throat seemed to become as thick as dust, and his skin was burning up. He looked up at Byron, saw him advancing slowly around the pool, patu raised now, left hand still extended toward him.

  He had seconds left.

  This is it … this is what dying feels like …

  Byron glared almost indignantly at him. ‘You’ve got nothing,’ he exclaimed disgustedly. ‘You are nothing!’ He loosened his heart-grip, shaking his head, his caution forgotten. ‘Why did Kiki ever fear you? A child has more power than you. Yet at Arrowtown, at least you had something.’

  Mat’s legs gave way and he slid down the rock, falling into a seated position. Byron loomed over him, left hand still raised with fingers bent into talons, the link to his heart still there. He kicked Mat’s taiaha away and bent down, patu raised to strike, the blow withheld by curiosity alone.

  Mat turned his head to where Riki had reached the cleft, his dark shape silhouetted against the orange glow. Byron followed his gaze. His confidence faltered. ‘How has he got so far? How …?’

  ‘My … mana … now his …’ Mat managed to choke out, because by now it was too late for Byron to do anything about it— and too late for him, too.

  ‘No!’ Byron gasped. ‘Not possible! You can’t just give another your power! You can’t!’ Disbelief and denial wrote themselves all over his face. Mat forgotten, he straightened and stared out across the pool.

  Mat managed to gather his own wobbling legs beneath him, as Riki vanished into the cleft.

  ‘NOOOO!’ Byron screamed, utter fury and despair bursting from him. He began to move, his eyes wild as he began a leap that would take him over the pool and set him on a frantic sprint up the gully to the cleft.

  Mat’s diving tackle struck him about the waist, and they plummeted together into the pool.

  The taiaha tore a rent in the barrier, revealing a tunnel beyond, then burst into flames and disintegrated, as Riki pushed through the living heat. Looking at his hands, he could see the bones of his fingers through his skin, lit from behind. He was sweating litres, rivulets running down his bare skin, and walking was like wading through boiling, invisible treacle. But he was unhurt. He went on, another dozen steps and another. The walls of the cave were glowing, with molten rock seeping through. Twice he passed blemishes on the wall, and realized with a start that these black stains were in the shape of human skeletons, burned to silhouettes like the victims of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. Then he stumbled out of the close confines of the passage into a chamber, and the heat vanished. He stopped, gaping in wonder.

  The chamber was about the size of the interior of a bus, with walls of obsidian glistening. Strangely, the only source of light was a full moon, low to one side as though about to set, its light shining through the semi-transparent walls. On the other side — eastwards, he supposed —was the glow of imminent dawn. The silver and rose light mingled as it bathed the only object in the room: a slab of stone like a sacrificial altar, right in the middle. On it lay Aroha, lying on her back, clad in a feather cloak. She seemed to be asleep.

  He walked slowly to her, then froze, glancing sideways. There was something else in the room: a piwakawaka, a fantail, perched on a small ledge, watching him intently. The fate of Maui sprang immediately to his mind: during his passing through Hine-nui-te-po, it had been a fantail that had woken the goddess, who in her rage had crushed the demigod to death. Riki stared at the tiny bird, scared to even breathe.

  Be quiet, little bro, he begged it silently. Please!

  The bird cocked its head, but remained still. For now.

  Ever so cautiously, Riki shifted his gaze from the watchful bird to the sleeping goddess. He exhaled slowly, and lost himself in her face. In many of the dream-tests she’d been present in some way. Initially as a frightening presence, but then he’d got her to smile. They’d talked, and laughed. She’d asked him about his life, what was important to him. They’d even kissed, shyly. It had been like drinking a sweet, potent liquor. Like honey and warm gold. He’d dared to dream. Although the girl on the slab seemed lifeless, he could sense the power in her: not a benevolent power, but not evil either. Hine-nui-te-po, Queen of Death and the Night. He could sense her might, quiescent for now, but strong enough to crush and destroy worlds. She frightened him, despite having seen her softer side.

  So now what? he wondered. Do I kiss her, like Sleeping Beauty?

  He looked again at the fantail, and its beady, piercing eyes. It was waiting, watching him avidly, half-puffed up as though to squawk a warning.

  I could kill it, he realized. He could feel the spell bubbling up from the knowledge Mat had given him. A death spell. Makutu. Is that what Maui should have done? He explored the possibilities, and realized that this was indeed a winning move, one that would give him the chance to become immortal. The fantail was just a bird: one helpless life among myriad. Who would even care? It’s what Kiki did, he realized. That’s how he managed to conceive Puarata.

  He shook his head. The act felt wrong, poisonous … evil. He walked slowly around Aroha, hesitating, seeking another way. All the while his eyes drank in her perfect face, and her glorious body, just lying there waiting to be claimed.

  Am I really supposed to make out with her while she sleeps?

  The notion left him feeling queasy, as though someone had suggested he drug a girl in a nightclub. It was far too close to date-rape for his liking, and he would not do that, not even for immortality.

  So he remained frozen in thought, and the fantail bobbed along its little perch, staring at him and waiting. Moments crawled past. The rosy glow grew on the eastern side of the chamber, the light of dawn infusing the chamber, even penetrating the rock walls. The fantail became restless, and so did he.

  Time is passing, and I don’t know what to do.

  What happens if I do nothing before sunrise? Is the chance lost?

  Slowly, still unsure what he should do, he reached out a reluctant hand and touched Aroha’s arm, with no clear intention, just the imperative to do something.

  The little piwakawaka screamed a warning, and her eyelids flickered open.

  Shafts of light

  In the blink of an eye, as Riki backed away, his brain unable to supply any kind of meaningful action, Aroha went from comatose on the slab to upright, staring at him with eyes of dark fire. Her black hair flared about her, and her lips parted, revealing white teeth, pointed and gleaming. Terrifyingly beautiful, glacial and pitiless. In the next instant she flashed across the chamber and was in front of him, her face filled with rage and contempt.

  The little piwakawaka was chortling with malicious glee, eyes bulging as it waited to witness Riki’s end. The weight of the goddess’s gaze fell on him. Crushed him. She reached out her hand, and froze the breath in his throat. The world swayed, and his legs gave way.

  ‘Aroha …’ he whispered, as he fell.

  Mat was wrapped around Byron’s waist as they plunged into the pool, the water tearing at his grip as his enemy twisted and lashed out with hands and feet, trying to rip Mat from him as they fell through clear warm water, fish scattering, eels the size of a man twisting hungrily and lunging as they passed. He heard Byron’s frantic, crazed scream bubbling in the water as they went down and down …

  … and then a seagull soared past them, through water that felt aerated and somehow insubstantial, and the pool’s depths became brighter, not darker, suffused with rose gold light. Byron kicked clear of him, scrabbling at the water desperately, but Mat grabbed him ag
ain and pulled him down. They fell through the bottom of the pool, and out into the sky of the world beneath.

  Byron’s face flashed from fury to dread, and instead of seeking to pull away, he spun and seized Mat’s ankle, howling in terror. For long seconds they fell, locked together, the frigid air lashing them both as they struggled. Then they began to pull apart, because Mat, still in his feather cloak, had more wind resistance and therefore a slower descent rate. He lashed out with his feet, not wanting to die bound to his enemy. By now Byron had lost all composure, was gibbering with fear, begging to be saved. But Mat remained calm as he slammed his heels into his foe’s chest, again and again until Byron was torn away, his wail lost in the roar of the winds. In seconds he was hundreds of metres away, flailing in desperation.

  Mat remained resigned to his fate, and clear-headed. The wind struck him like a physical blow, ripping at him with claws of ice. Earth spread below, growing larger by the second, the landscape revealed by the eastern glow. Some part of him dimly recognized Wellington Harbour. There was the city, dark and lightless, though he could make out tower blocks clustered around the harbour, so this was the modern world, not Aotearoa. He wondered what any witnesses might make of two men falling out of the sky.

  He couldn’t tell whether he was going to hit land or water, but he knew it wouldn’t make any difference: at terminal velocity, either would be fatal. Byron was far ahead, plunging out of control. They’d both be lucky if their earthly remains could even be identified. But that didn’t matter. Despite it all — his failure and imminent death — he was certain he’d done the right thing. The only galling thing was that he would die without knowing whether he’d done enough, and whether Riki had succeeded.

  His life didn’t flash before his eyes, but faces did. His parents, together smiling, as they had in the good times, before their marriage went sour. Riki, his best friend, forever. Wiri and Kelly. Fitzy barking, his turehu form somehow overlaying his canine face. Damien, hugging Shui. Cassandra. Lena.