Not the Faintest Trace

by Wendy M Wilson

  “I’m not pretty enough for him,” she whispered to Maren.

  Maren had shrugged.

  “What good does pretty do in this country? If he knew how you could cook he would come running back.”

  But a woman couldn’t be too choosy, and Mette knew she was. She wanted to find a man who would give her healthy babies and make a home for her. But also someone who would enjoy talking to her beside the fire in the evening, someone who would be there when she looked up from her sewing. She imagined a sturdy, fair-haired man with a pipe in his mouth and a twinkle in his eye, a man who would talk to her about books and history and interesting things that were happening in the world. Danish men were not generally talkative types, however, and they certainly didn’t fit the image she had in her head. Not any that she knew at least.

  A group of young boys was playing in the dirt near the entrance to the bush. They stopped playing and looked at her with wide eyes.

  “There’s a troll in there,” said one.

  “In the bush?”

  He nodded. His blond hair fell forward and he brushed it back. “We saw him. He was a big troll and he was holding a sack and a club.”

  Mette suppressed a smile. She’d seen just such a troll in a book of fairy tales when she was younger.

  “And was he green with orange hair?”

  One of the other boys jumped in. “No, he was brown and he had marks on his face, dark ones, like wings. And he had a big cloak made of feathers.”

  Well, that was a different kind of troll. Not the kind Mr. Anderson described in his stories.

  “Why did you think it was a troll then?”

  “Because he was angry,” said the first boy. “He looked at us like he was going to put us in his sack and take us away for dinner. We were scared and we ran home.”

  Mette had nothing to say to that. But she felt a little twinge of nervousness in her scalp as she walked, as if someone was staring at her from behind. Once or twice she spun around to make sure she was alone. The troll sounded like one of the Hauhau Maren worried about.

  The trees on the mountain side of the clearing were massive, larger than the span of a tall man; the bush was dark and full of things that were unknown to Danish people. She’d done her best to explore and understand the plants and animals, but knew she had much to learn. She forced her mind from the troll. The boys had imagined him, she was sure. They were boys. That’s what boys did.

  She touched the leaves of a fuscia tree as she went by. Later in the autumn it would be covered with konini berries and she would make jam. Pieter loved her jam, and took a jam sandwich to work with him every day. Too soon for the berries yet, but she longed for something sweet. Savoury would be nice as well, something with taste, or bite, like the pickled herring they used to eat at home. On that memorable trip to Foxton on the tramway they’d visited a small café and she had tasted whitebait fritters, made from the tiny fish that swam upstream in the springtime, cooked in a batter of eggs and white flour. She’d never tasted anything so delicious in her life, and she longed to taste them again.

  Perhaps she would find some honey today. Manuka scrub flourished at the edge of the forest and was beginning to flower with small white buds. Bees loved the pollen from the manuka blossom. She stopped to pull off some leaves for tea, just the smallest and softest leaves, and tucked them carefully into one side of her basket in a kerchief placed there for just that purpose. The larger leaves made a bitter tea but the smaller ones were refreshing and you could almost imagine you were drinking real tea. If she could not find any honey she would at least have some leaves for tea.

  She could hear the hum of the sawmill in the distance and as she got closer she thought she recognized the voices of Pieter and Hans Christian. Behind the mill a stream surrounded by fern and the occasional kowhai tree, not yet in bloom with its lovely yellow flowers, rose towards the hills and she climbed towards it. She pulled out some young fronds of pikopiko and put them beside the leaves. The roots tasted horrid, but they filled you up when you were hungry. Someone had suggested to her that pikopiko tasted like asparagus, but not to her. You might as well say that huhu grubs tasted like chicken, which they certainly did not.

  She wandered slightly off the path, being careful to keep it in sight. People were always disappearing into the bush and not coming back, especially small children, and she knew she must stay within sight of the path. Maren had put the fear of God into little Hamlet, telling him that the troll would get him if he went too far from the cottage. So far it had worked, although it had also made him nervous about going to bed at night, and he often woke in the night yelling that there was a troll under his little truckle bed. When that happened Maren and Pieter would take him into their bed. Maybe the other mothers in the clearing had told the same story to their boys and that was why they were claiming to have seen a troll. It was their name for a scary being who lived in the woods.

  Still in sight of the clearing she found a large growth of puha, which would do for their vegetables. The leaves of puha, which was a type of thistle, were quite tasty if they were twice cooked in water—almost like spinach. Beside the puha were some red capped toadstools. She had avoided mushrooms and toadstools so far; you never knew which ones would kill you. She knew for certain that the red capped toadstools were not to be eaten. They made you go crazy, and then they killed you. She’d seen it happen with her own eyes.

  A small sound made her turn and look to one side. A pair of bright eyes regarded her through the undergrowth. She stared into them and drew in her breath.

  “Hej min lille mand,” she said softly, moving slowly towards the baby pig.

  How they would love her if she came home with a little piglet for dinner!

  She glanced down, looking for something heavy and spotted a hand-sized rock. Keeping her eyes on the pig, she bent and picked it up. The pig kept looking at her, its head on one side enquiringly. She took a minute to look around. If the mother was nearby she would run like a hen with its head chopped off to the clearing, but she knew baby wild pigs could become separated from their mothers and she would have heard a large wild pig moving through the bush. She hoped so, at least.

  The little pig moved towards her slowly, a conspirator in its own death. It was busy nibbling leaves from the very puha she had just harvested when she raised the rock in two hands and brought it down hard on the side of its head. It fell slowly sideways, its eyes glazing over. To make sure, she hit it hard two more times, being sure not to get any blood on her woollen dress and stockings. Then she carefully lifted it and placed it in her basket. It was heavier than it looked and would give them so much meat! She covered it with leaves to keep the smell from the mother if she were nearby, turned, and walked towards home, the pig weighing her down on one side. She had trouble keeping from laughing. A pig for dinner. It would last them for days, and the fat under the skin would sizzle and cook into the most delightful taste. She could already imagine it.

  After only a few steps she heard another noise, muffled steps in the leaves. She stopped. The mother pig was behind her. Now she was in trouble. She moved around carefully to see what was there. In the mottled shadows, she could not see well, but the pink skin of a pig would stand out against the green. Instead, she saw something brown. Some legs. Human legs. She raised her eyes and saw another pair of eyes looking down at her from under a blue cap, eyeing her in a way that was not unlike the way she had eyed the pig.

  She gasped and almost dropped her basket. The troll.

  A huge, dark-bearded man wrapped in a feathered cloak stared at her from the bush; or, more correctly, not at her but at her basket. He carried a bag of something that was moving, wriggling to get free, and she thought in horror of little Hamlet, wondering if he was safe at home. This was one of those Hauhau who ate little children. He was the troll the children had seen. The women in the clearing talked about the terrible Hauhau and scared the children with stories to make sure they behaved properly, often calling them trolls.
She had not made the connection.

  He raised his arm towards her and pointed at the basket. His face, the part that was not covered by his beard, bore blue markings resembling a large butterfly.

  “Poaka,” he said and snapped his fingers at her. She understood what he wanted. He wanted her pig. She backed away slowly.

  “This is my pig,” she said. “My poaka. For my family,” waving towards the clearing. “They wait for me, over there. Many men. Big men.” She heard her a quiver in her own voice and dug her nails into her hands to calm herself.

  He shook his head dismissively. “My pig,” he said, taking a step towards her. His voice was deep and gravelly, and sounded rusty.

  She was still holding the rock she had used to kill the piglet and without thinking she threw it hard at him. He grunted and took a few steps backwards, his hand to his forehead.

  Clutching the basket with the pig close to her chest, she turned and ran, screaming loudly as she did so. She heard branches snapping behind her, expecting at any minute he would grasp her by the shoulders and seize the pig, but nothing happened. Even in her panic she realized that running back to the clearing would not help—there were no men there—so she ran towards the sawmill, which was a mere hundred or so yards away. She had the sawmill in sight and could even hear the machines running and men shouting, when a rider on a large black horse appeared in front of her on the track to the sawmill. It was him, she was sure, a big dark man with a blue cap, but for some reason he now wore a long blue-grey greatcoat which came down to his stirrups. She didn’t stop to think about why he had changed his clothes, or how he was suddenly riding a horse, but opened her mouth and screamed as loudly as she could.

  “What the dickens…” he said, clutching the reins of his horse as it reared up.

  5

  The Banshee

  She had appeared out of nowhere, running like a gazelle, and as soon as she saw Frank she started screaming like a banshee and clutching her basket to her front as if it contained the crown jewels of England. He dismounted and stepped towards her, his hands out, unsure what to say or do. But she dodged around him and in doing so, bumped against him and spilled the contents of her basket: a dead piglet, followed by a shower of leaves and petals. When she bent to pick it up, her bonnet came off, causing one of her braids to come loose and swing down in front of her face. He leaned down to help her and she reared back, took off her wooden clog and hit him on the back of his head. He stood up and rubbed the spot, staring at her in astonishment.

  “What are you…?”

  “That’s my pig you skiderik. Take your hands off it.”

  Frank stepped back to escape the flailing clog, his forearm in front of his face. “I’m not after your pig, I…”

  She stopped and stood there panting, the clog still in her hand, raised and ready to hit him again. Her face was flushed and her hazel eyes were fixed on his, waiting for him to move. He recognized her now. The woman who had lit up the clearing, the day he went to tell Nissen and Sorensen he’d changed his mind. He’d wanted to meet her, but not like this.

  “I was only trying to help,” he said mildly. “You dropped your pig.”

  “Was it, did I…” she stammered, doubting herself. She let the clog drop to her side.

  “Did you what?” he asked, retrieving the piglet, brushing away the leaves and wiping off the dirt. He held it towards her and she snatched it and put it back in her basket. “Looks like a pretty fine meal you have there.”

  “Was it you…?” She waved her hand towards the bush. “I saw you in the woods…”

  He shook his head. “How could you have? I came from the sawmill, from that direction…”

  “He looked very much like you.”

  “You saw someone in the bush who looked like me and who scared you for some reason?”

  “He tried to take my pig, and he had something in a sack that wriggled. I thought it might be,” she stopped and clutched at her throat, a catch in her voice. “I thought it might be Hamlet.”

  He was confused. “Hamlet? I thought you had the pig and he—the person who looked like me—tried to take it away from you.”

  “Hamlet is my sister’s little boy, not a pig. I’m afraid because I know that the Hauhau take the little children and eat them.”

  “Hauhau don’t eat little children. They don’t eat anyone any more, if they ever did. What is it with you Scandies that you’re afraid of the Hauhau eating you? What about this person in the woods who looked like me?”

  She looked at him more closely, then stared back into the woods, thinking.

  “Well, he wasn’t completely like you. He had the the…” she patted her chin, “the hair on the face.”

  “Beard,” he supplied.

  “Yah, the beard. And it was big and black, like yours. And he was tall like you, but maybe not quite so tall or hand….” She stopped and looked him up and down. “He was wider than you.”

  She glanced upwards again.

  “And the hat was like yours too.”

  He took off the forage cap he was wearing. “You mean it was a soldier’s hat, like this? What about on his feet? Did he wear boots?” Frank glanced down at his own boots, the Hessians that were an exact copy of those his father had worn when he saw duty with the Duke of Wellington.

  “Yah, his hat was exactly like that. But I didn’t see his feet. He was standing in the ferns.”

  “Could have been a deserter.” He looked thoughtful. The deserters he had encountered on his travels often wore vestiges of their former uniforms mixed with Māoriclothing; they were fearful of people like him who had been non-commissioned officers. They tended to be hungry as well. A deserter would have certainly taken a pig from this young woman if he’d wanted it. Besides, it would explain what the Armed Constabulary were doing in the district. They were looking for men like this, despite what the two Irishmen had said. Memories were long for the army.

  She shook her head. “No. He was a Hauhau. He was wearing a cloak with feathers all over it, and he had drawings on his face. Blue drawings that looked like a butterfly across his nose. And he was dark. Darker than you—a little darker than you, although there it’s dark in the bush so I can’t be sure.”

  Frank stroked his beard thoughtfully. “A Māori then? Although deserters often take on moko—tattoos. Lots of them around still in hiding.” He decided against telling her he had moko himself, on his upper arm, a wreath of oak leaves with the number 57 in the centre. He’d had it done in Patea, after the attack on Otapawa. Couldn’t get rid of it now. Fortunately, he hadn’t had the name of some long-forgotten woman etched on his arm, or worse, his mother’s name, like many of the soldiers did, so far away from home and lonely.

  She shook her head. “No, he was certainly a Hauhau. His English was not good. And he said a word that sounded like pig, but wasn’t. It sounded like poker.”

  Frank tried not to smile, wondering how she could tell the English wasn’t good. It wasn’t much use arguing about the man. He was long gone.

  “A Māoripossibly, but no reason to believe he was a Hauhau. A needy person passing through and hungry. Let’s get you home then. Or would you prefer that I escort you to the sawmill. I presume your husband works there?”

  For some reason, she flushed bright red.

  “No,” she said. “My sister’s husband works there. Pieter Sorensen. You know him perhaps?”

  “I do,” he said, surprised. “I talked to him last week. He and Nissen, about those missing boys…”

  She bit her lip and looked away.

  “You know them, I suppose.” Damn. Of course, she knew them.

  She nodded. “I thought they might have drowned. But now I think the Hauhauhave taken them, after I saw a Hauhau with my own eyes.”

  “No, no.” He shook his head, frustrated. The ideas some new immigrant communities had about Maori were laughable. “Don’t worry about the Hauhau. They’re not a problem any…”

  She was looking past him at
something.

  “Is someone behind me?” he asked softly.

  She nodded, her eyes fixed on a spot behind him, and whispered, “The Hauhau…”

  “Walk towards the sawmill,” he said in as normal a voice as possible.

  “He has a hatchet,” she said quietly. “He’s looking at your head…”

  Frank felt the hairs on the back of his neck tingle.

  “Go.” He grabbed her shoulder and urged her along the path. “Go, run for the mill.” He bent to pick up her bonnet, which had fallen to the ground. As he started to move he felt something fly by his ear and land with a loud thud in a totara tree. He flung himself on his horse, leaned down, pulled her up and threw her across the saddle, still clutching her basket. Both braids had come down now, and she was breathing quickly, starting to panic. He backed the horse up a few steps and yanked the tomahawk from the trunk of the tree. He felt the sharp edge, imagining the job it would have done on his head if he’d been standing upright.

  “Go, please go,” she whispered.

  “He’s already thrown his tomahawk,” Frank said. “I doubt he has another one. If he makes a move, I’ll hit him with his own tomahawk.”

  “But he may still be able to hurt us,” she whimpered. “Id he has a gun...” She was straining her head backwards to look at him. “Please, let us go now.”

  He turned his horse. The path was empty, but he thought he could see a shadow moving away deeper into the bush and hear the muffled sounds of ferns being trampled. No point in giving chase, not through the dense bush on his horse, and especially encumbered by the girl. He held his horse in place, his hand lightly on her back to hold her still, concentrating on looking and listening. But the bush had gone silent. He stared at the spot where he had last seen the shadow. He had the eerie feeling that someone was staring back.