Days of the Python (Python Trilogy Book 1)

by David Jurk

  When she sits, she suddenly becomes older, the young woman that she was when Mana died. Her light, nearly frail child body becomes heavier, more powerful, lush with maturity and the transition is a delight to her; she stretches as she sits down, feeling her body, and smiles.

  Mana is looking at her kindly but is not smiling.

  “It’s time,” she says.

  She is not worried. Mana is always inscrutable, mysterious. It is a part of her charm.

  “Mana,” she replies, still smiling, “time for what?”

  “To take the boat, child.”

  The image of the boat comes to her in a rush, along with memories of the other two dreams and they are jumbled all together; she feels dizzy with it. What dream is she in?

  “The canoe?” she asks. “The one in Alofi?”

  Mana nods. “It is at the wharf awaiting you.”

  She stares into the old eyes alive now in this young face.

  “Won’t they catch me?”

  “You are too clever for them. The forest and the night and the sea are your friends, and the boat is yours by birthright. You must take it.”

  She feels confusion now, what is she supposed to do with this boat?

  “Mana,” she begins to say.

  “Aulani,” interrupts Mana, “we are with you, always.”

  And as she stares, everything around her begins to fade and she tries to call out; Mana, Mana, no – I don’t understand, but there is no one there to call out to.

  She opened her eyes and found herself, as she knew she would, safely in her cave, dawn still distant.

  And she tried to shrug off the dream and its claim on her. But it was with her like a pebble caught between her toes. She tried in every way she knew to pull it free and throw it away, to push it from her mind and stay within each moment as the day passed in sunshine. But something had changed, and she knew it.

  And that night, as she lay down to sleep exhausted with it all, the doused lantern sputtering as the cave pitched into darkness, she acknowledged at last what she must do; she would obey Mana. She would sneak into Alofi and find this canoe and take it from the wharf, paddling it back to her pools here on the north shore where she would hide it, where it would belong to her.

  And with that decision, she dreamt no more, and slept the rest of the night peacefully. And in the morning, she began to plan.

  It would all have to happen at night, of course. She would start out on the bike as soon as dusk fell, riding the twenty kilometers to the Alofi wharf. No, she thought, not all the way to the wharf - it would be better to leave the bike north of the town so that she could go back afterwards and retrieve it. Going the last way on foot would also give her the freedom to quickly hide in the woods in the event she encountered any NZ. When she reached the northern edge of town, she’d circle out onto the coralline flats along the coast and approach the wharf from the ocean side. The canoe would be there. She would take it in the dead of night and paddle silently and quickly out to sea, then circle around to the north of the island, to her hidden pool. If it had a sail, all the better; once out of sight of the village, she would raise it and make better speed, perhaps even returning by dawn.

  Several parts of this plan worried her. The journey along the wooded roads at night - the memory of the dogs was still strong; she would be easy prey to a pack of hungry animals. Didn’t they hunt at night? And the canoe itself – wouldn’t it be secured in some fashion? Was it even seaworthy? Were there paddles with it? She shook these fears from her head; she had seen the canoe, she knew what it was, what it could do.

  Still, it was an audacious plan, rife with uncertainty and risk. She’d seen how heavily built the canoe was, that it was intended for two; how easily would it handle with only one paddling, how much speed could she manage? She had a journey from Alofi to the hidden pool of somewhere between fifteen and twenty kilometers, depending on how far out to sea she had to go. If all went perfectly – if she managed three kilometers per hour and encountered no adverse currents – she would need five hours or more. She would need to take the canoe from Alofi by midnight in order to make it by sunrise. She dared not paddle during daylight – surely the NZ would find the canoe gone in the morning and begin searching for it with their high-powered boats.

  And if she couldn’t manage to get underway in time, or if currents or the heavy boat slowed her down? There would be nothing for it other than to stop at dawn and hide herself and the boat throughout the day.

  And if she were caught? That would be the end of it all; she’d be packed off to an Auckland jail. But to not go was unthinkable; Mana was entrusting this canoe to her - that was as clear as the red eye in the eastern sky. That this all might be fantasy, an illusion, nothing more than a particularly vivid dream, no longer seemed a possibility.

  She waited until the moon was full, a decision that hadn’t been easy. Her instinct was to go on a dark night, use everything she could to stay hidden, but she’d badly need the moonlight to see well enough to make her way along the dangerous coastline. She considered the possibility of paddling straight out to sea then circling around to the north far from the dangers of the reef. But that would take much, much longer – far longer than she had. No, she needed the security of the coastline and the shortest possible route back to the north shore and the hidden pool.

  And when the full moon came at last, she waited until the sun touched the sea, then climbed the ridge and walked back to Mutalau. In the fading light, it felt as though she were back there in the evening when she’d first arrived, nervous and unsure. How much had changed. All that mattered then was finding the cave, and now she was sneaking into the very mouth of the lion.

  What turns her life had taken! Had anything about her life ever been what others thought of as normal, or easy? When she considered it all, when she examined the small turns that had led her to such a singular life, she readily saw that behind it all, driving it, was Mana. Not that she bore any resentment or even doubt; that Mana loved her, cared for her, wanted the best for her – if she had certainty of anything in life it was that.

  She thought of her childhood, those first steps away from the Catholicism of her mother, away from the near-slavish devotion to it that nearly all Niueans felt – Mana had led her, taught her to refute, to question, to rely on observation and knowledge instead of blind faith. Her journey had continued into the realm of spiritualism, an ancient spiritualism based on the tangible qualities of earth, sky and sea, learning from Mana the beauty of oneness with nature itself, not the Calvinistic fairy tale that preached inherent sinfulness, that wanted fear.

  And the marriage and the boy; there too, Mana had taken her. She sighed, turning away from the memory of the plane rising in the afternoon sky.

  Here she was, here she would be. Mana had died but had not left her. The canoe awaited.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  HER BIKE WAS as she’d left it, still tucked against the wall. It squealed a bit as she started to walk it across the male, but that soon stopped. Coming to the road, she took her pack off and strapped it to the rear carrier as she had weeks before. How long ago that seemed.

  She’d timed it well; as she reached the curve in the coast road where it bent to the southwest toward Toi, the bright sun descended into the trees. It was a bit more than three kilometers to Toi, but the road was flat, and she passed through it within half an hour. In that distance, she had passed by half a dozen houses, mostly the old-style fales, looking somehow less forlorn with their open-air design than their cinder block counterparts. They stood empty, to be sure, but poised somehow, ready, as if at any moment their humans might reappear.

  Once beyond the village, the woods around her deepened, and as she rode, she nervously watched the brush along the road, fearful of more dogs. Twice she thought she heard rustling as she passed but saw nothing. Within two kilometers she came to the intersection with the Hikutavake road and stopped. This was an open, cleared area and even in the low light she felt uncomfor
tably exposed. Either you’re worried about dogs or worried about being seen, she chided herself, and laughed softly, her tension evaporating just a little.

  Still, with no more than three kilometers yet to Namukulu, she must be vigilant; there was no assurance at all that it would be entirely abandoned. Though considerably north of Alofi, it was still on the coast road and there were tourist cottages there, the nicest on Niue; it would be just like the NZ to take them for themselves.

  Lights glittering in the night ahead of her alerted her long before she reached them, and she dismounted and walked slowly and quietly along the road, ready at any moment to dump the bike in the grass and dive into the brush. As she came nearer, she saw that the cottages were alive with light, the muffled sounds of a diesel generator thudding in the background. There were also sounds of people - doors slamming, laughter, Japanese rap music being played. The smell of grilled food came to her, strong and tantalizing.

  She worked the bike into the edge of woods along the road and pressed on, secure in the darkness, coming to within twenty meters of where the cabins stood across the road from her. She dared not push on further, not with the bike.

  Her heart sank as she saw a small dog run around the side of the yard, sniffing and rooting among the brush. A dog, she thought, a damn dog. At least she was downwind, but even the slightest rustle might set the thing investigating. She considered taking the pack and leaving the bike in the grass, cutting southwest through the woods, bypassing these cottages and Namukulu entirely. She was quite sure she could find the coast road in the moonlight, but finding the road was not the issue. Without the bike, she’d be reduced to walking speed with still ten kilometers yet to Alofi. She crouched in the grass, waiting, invisible she hoped against the dark wall of woods behind her.

  She waited and watched for what seemed at least half an hour and when she was nearly to the point of abandoning the bike, all the people milling about suddenly headed into one of the cottages. Had they been called to dinner? Even the dog had gone inside, and with her heart hammering in her chest, she quickly stood and began walking along the shoulder of the road. She was in plain view, well within the circle of illumination from the cottage lights, feeling exposed and nakedly vulnerable. Each step was another meter closer to the safety of the darkness to the west. She told herself not to look but couldn’t stop herself from staring in fascinated curiosity through the windows at the people within. She expected at any moment to hear a shout, to be challenged but nothing of the sort happened and in another twenty meters, she’d passed the cottages, nearing the safety of the dark forest beyond. Then she heard a door slam and the dog - the god forsaken dog - began to bark like a crazed thing.

  Instinctively, she dropped the bike in the tall grass along the road, and dropped onto her forearms, squirming around toward the cottages, flattening herself onto her belly. She saw two people, a man and a woman, come out on the porch. The dog, a small frenetic terrier of some sort, was nearly berserk, running down the porch steps toward the road in a rage, then returning as the woman called it, only to charge off again. With each charge, it went further out and returned more reluctantly. Stupid dog, she thought; it made the far edge of the road, came straight for her. She pushed her palms against the grainy soil beneath her, prepared to bolt into the woods.

  Then, calling out quite clearly, her voice thick with fury, she heard the woman shout at the dog.

  “Caesar! Come!” The dog hesitated, then gathered itself and lunged again, no more than ten meters from her now. The woman called again, her voice rising to a shriek.

  “Caesar, goddamn it! Now!”

  The dog stopped. It looked back at the house, then swiveled again toward her, but it had stopped barking and stood in the road, tongue lolling from its mouth.

  “Now!”

  The dog took one more glance toward where she lay in the brush and turned back, running quickly up the porch and back into the house as the woman held the door open for it. The man with her laughed, “Give ‘em what for, love,” she heard him say. Then he shut the door behind them, and the night went quiet.

  She lay in the brush for another minute or two, until her breathing slowed, then picked the bike up and within ten paces was beyond the lights. She mounted quickly and pedaled as hard as she could, careful to go quietly.

  Within a kilometer, she came to the main Alofi road, branching directly south along the coast. She was cautious now, shaken by the encounter with the dog and stood for a few moments, looking in both directions. There was nothing but the moon, and the black ribbon of road through the trees. On her right, the sound of the surf, low and reassuring as it worked into the rocks and pools along the shore. She remounted and headed south toward Alofi, pedaling hard and keeping to the side of the road that held the deepest shadows.

  She would soon be into Tuapa, and its two dozen houses spread along the east side of the coast road, and wondered whether she needed to worry about them; had any had been taken over by the NZ? Most were older, and small, but the views they offered of the Pacific might have made them attractive targets. When she saw the first house fifty meters in front of her, she waited quietly for several minutes, watching for lights or movement. Was it just the reflection of moonlight, or could she see a glow from one, perhaps two, of the houses? Still, confident that she was virtually invisible in the deep shadows of the trees, she walked forward, leading the bike.

  The first few houses were dark, and she walked quickly, but soon came to a large fale surrounded by an open grassy slope and across from it, on her side of the road, the trees gave way to several buildings. Everything here appeared deserted, dark. As she reached the intersection of the Falepipi Bush road, she saw sharp beams of headlights coming down it, toward the coast road. She frantically pushed into the woods, snarling herself and the bike unwittingly into a vast bush of bougainvillea, and laid still, watching the oncoming lights. The car reached the corner and took a hard right, heading north toward the cottages, tires squealing as they spun in the sand gathered at the corner, then catching the pavement. She heard laughter through the open windows, and a man’s voice, with heavy NZ accent; “Fuck all, mate!” As it passed, she saw the glint of a can sailing toward the trees in the moonlight, heard the whine from the electric motors as they were accelerated hard.

  She freed herself and spat on the road in the direction the car had gone. Niue was a joke to these people; what value had they ever placed on this island or its people? And now they owned it, now it was their own little park.

  Retrieving the bike from the bougainvillea caused a mauling of her hands and arms worse than falling into it had, and she was badly scratched and bleeding by the time she had it free.

  The houses thinned quickly as she pedaled south and in minutes, she was again feeling quite invisible as she rode in the deep shadows, feeling like a spirit under the stars, under the moon. The old bike felt effortless now, as if it were new again, as if the road here led downhill. She hardly needed to work the pedals; the bike wanted to glide all the way to Alofi.

  And now she confronted the specter that she’d known was coming; the old house across from Namoui Reefs, her house, the place she’d been born. She was less than two kilometers from it, rounding the westward bulge of the coastline before the final drop south to town. She’d hoped never to see it again. But in minutes, it was there on her left, the familiar roofline and dark profiles of the out buildings – the traditional kitchen outside the main house. The lawns, sweeping down to the road from the low ridge where the house sat, her father there with his Vodka. The path to the road so worn from so many feet; her mother holding her hand, walking up the road to the church with her before it had burned, before she’d learned to become a pariah, a non-believer. Such a sad reminder of her every failure; failure to be a good daughter, to be a good wife. Failure to be a mother – that she would not let herself think about; not now, not ever again. And as she rode past, the dark house cast a shadow onto the road, a shadow that pierced her, thrusting a f
amiliar sorrow into her breast, causing the breath to catch in her throat.

  But moments pass, our hearts surrender; life calls us on with her many ways and in the end, we are as any creature, intent on our needs – some petty and trivial and others profound. And tonight, her needs were clear and immediate, so she did what she had always done – pushed the sorrow from her as a useless, stupid thing and focused on what she knew was before her.

  In half a kilometer, she was at the Tusekola Bush road, the outskirts of Alofi no more than two hundred meters ahead. That’s it then, she thought, and let the bike glide to a stop and dismounted. The bike can stay here, she decided, and unlashed the pack and set it down. Walking the bike into the heavy brush on the ocean side, careful leaning it behind a tree, she rubbed the streaks of blood on her arms; she’d had enough of the wretched bougainvillea. She stood looking at the bike, suddenly feeling that she’d never see it again. No, she told herself, I’ll come back to get it tomorrow night, or maybe the next at the latest, but the reassurance rang hollow. Turning away, she picked up the pack, and staying as close to the line of trees as she could, cautiously walked forward.

  She considered the possibility of simply walking down the street, acting as though she were one of them, but knew that was fantasy. First, she was wearing traditional clothing – a simple flowered wrap – and second, it was filthy from her night of diving into the brush and streaked with blood from her battle with the bougainvillea. One sight of her, one hello with her Niuean accent, and the NZ would be on her.

  There were but two options; circle inland through the trees until she was as far south as the wharf, then find her way across the road to the sea. Or, as she’d planned, circle to the west, out along the coralline flats below the cliff, wading through the low water inside the reef, and approach the wharf from the ocean.