Days of the Python (Python Trilogy Book 1)

by David Jurk

  Working east through the forest didn’t appeal to her at all; it would be very dark amongst the trees, most of the houses were along that side of the road, and even if she made it, she still had the problem of cutting through the middle of town right at the busiest part of it.

  In contrast, everything about the coralline flats approach appealed to her. Just being near the ocean as she worked her way south was a comforting thought. And she convinced herself it would be quick; even if the tide was in – or came in while she was walking - it was no more than a meter deep in most places. The sea it would be.

  She turned off the road and found a path to the low cliff fronting the sea, then walked south along it until she found a gravelly slope angling down to the limestone flats. As soon as she descended, she felt hidden, safer. She contemplated the waves before her, shining clear in the moonlight. The tide was out, and the incoming waves flattened themselves in low rolls across the limestone, hardly to her knees. Hesitating only briefly, she unwound the dress from her body and stashed it into the pack, which she settled tightly back onto her bare shoulders. Now naked but for the rubber slippers she wore, she stepped tentatively into the water, feeling the smooth limestone underfoot. Taking hold of outcrops and boulders where she could, she began wading, making her way south.

  For the first half-hour it went well enough, though progress was much slower than she’d expected. The footing on the limestone bottom was tenuous; slippery and inconsistent, with depressions and ridges that repeatedly tripped her. The most vexing difficulty was the crumbling nature of the cliff itself. The western coast of Niue was exposed to the prevailing path of cyclones, and over the centuries had eroded into a chaotic terrain of boulders, undercuts, washouts and cracks – all of which made a straight path along the shore impossible. One moment, she was in water hardly covering her feet, picking her way forward, and the next, she’d be in water to her thighs amid sharp pinnacles of rock, forced to swim seaward into deeper water to get beyond them.

  Her progress became even slower as the incoming tide deepened the water around her, and the waves became stronger and more agitated. In the moonlight, she could see the effects of a growing easterly wind as it piled up the ocean beyond the reef. Steep waves formed; froth, appearing with ghostly luminescence in the moonlight, was blown from their tips.

  At some point late into the night, she rested, leaning back against the cliff, letting it relieve her of some of the weight of the pack. She stared out at the angry sea in growing desperation and tried to imagine what it would be like to paddle the canoe in these waves. What chance did she have in such a sea? And abruptly, the whole thing seemed simply insane – there was no canoe! It was all beyond rational belief, just a dream that she’d tortured herself with, convinced herself was some great task. And task for whom? Mana, of course. Even dead, Mana had found a way to change the course of her life. She’d finally had everything she needed; her cave, water, food – and more than anything, freedom to simply exist, to live without the soul-deadening expectations Mana had burdened her with from the time she was a small girl. And now, this insanity; this endless quest along this wretched coast for an imaginary boat that would, in the end, prove as much an illusion as everything else Mana had promised. And for all of it, she would find herself in Auckland after all, in jail.

  The black thoughts consumed her, filled her with despair and the certain belief that despite everything she’d accomplished these past few weeks, she’d always been inexorably moving toward this fantasy now destroying her. And why? Why was there never, ever even the simplest peace for her, the least happiness? Sorrow and loss welled up in her heart as tears streamed down her face, indistinguishable from the spray enveloping her from the surf. She lowered her head and wept, feeling as though she were disintegrating into the sea, losing herself.

  And then, Mana was there. She felt herself wrapped in strong arms, pulled tight to the warm succoring body, only it wasn’t a body, it was something else and yet it didn’t matter. She felt herself pulled back from the sea, returned to a creature of the land with warm blood in her veins, breathing air, standing upright. The sense of disintegration ended; she took a deep breath and another, and Mana spoke in her ear, softly, clearly.

  My little love, do not doubt. I would take this burden from you if I could, but I cannot; you are the last Niuean. Mother Earth calls all of us now, and we reach out to you to answer her. Go to the wharf and you will find the canoe which will take you to your destiny. Only a little further, my child. Find strength.

  The feeling of the nurturing arms around her faded, but she felt the warmth from them deep within her yet. Some sense of strength had returned, as the nothingness overtaking her body receded. She struggled upright against the weight of the pack and took another deep breath. She stood for a moment longer, the waves rocking her backwards as they broke against her thighs. She turned in the darkness and began moving again, slowly picking her way through the ragged rocks, careful to brace herself against the oncoming waves.

  At some timeless moment in the early hours of the morning, she found herself suddenly in a broad pool of diffuse light, a wide inlet of some sort just before her. The sides of it were too straight, too perfect to be natural and she looked at it without comprehension, bewildered. Only after long moments had passed did she realize what she saw; not rock but concrete, and built along the far side, a web of creosote timbers. She had reached the wharf.

  In an instant, energy flowed into her and she scrambled up the gravel bank, slipping the pack from her shoulders. She knelt, conscious of her nakedness, aware of how exposed she was in this light and worked her dress free of the pack. Wrapping it around herself, securing it with a tucked end, she crouched motionless in the gravel, staring across the inlet to the pilings of the wharf itself. No boats were tied up there – nor was the canoe in sight; not in the water nor on the surface of the quay. For one instant, for a moment so infinitesimally brief she questioned later whether she’d felt it at all, a bleak grey doubt assailed her. Then it was gone, replaced by a bright wave of certainty – of sure knowledge – that the canoe was here, very near her, and she needed only to work her way further onshore to find it.

  Walking up the gravel embankment, she circled along the shore of the inlet, and found a narrow sandy walkway leading from the wharf inland to a paved area, surrounded by shops and services for boats and tourists. And in the middle of this, set on top of a platform of timbers as a display for the tourists, was the canoe. She drew a sharp breath, stunned by the sense of recognition, seeing in physical reality before her what had been only a vision.

  For a while longer, she knelt at the edge of this plaza and waited and watched for any sign of movement, any indication at all that someone might be about. But there was nothing and she knew it must be very late; she felt the weight of the hours herself on her shoulders. Go, she told herself – go now.

  She stood and walked directly to the canoe, reached out her hand and stroked it, amazed at the immediate familiarity of it, as if she’d seen it and touched it throughout her life. It was secured to the timbers by manila ropes – she supposed in a show of ‘authenticity’. One ran from the bow, one from the stern, each affixed to steel rings set into the pavement. She knew immediately that her only chance to free it was by cutting the heavy hemp ropes. She had her knife, small but sharp, but there was no telling how it would handle ropes such as these.

  Checking the street frequently, she walked completely around the canoe, pacing it off, measuring; perhaps four or five meters. It seemed hardly large enough to hold the two people it was designed to carry. Inside, there should have been a mast and sail, but within was nothing but two paddles. Perhaps, she mused, the sail had been stored somewhere.

  Then she saw a metal plate screwed to the hull and bent over to read it:

  This traditional Va’a Motu is presented as a gift of love and respect to Dame Silvia Cartwright by the people of Niue, July of 2002.

  She knew the history; Mana had made su
re of that. Dame Silvia, the eighteenth Governor-General of NZ, had been adored by the Maoris. A liberal palagi who had famously interpreted the Maori phrase, “He iwi tahi tatou” as “Two peoples making one great nation”, an act of well-meaning inclusion which had – in Mana’s view of the world – served only to ensure that the native people put their faith in the future of a multi-cultural New Zealand. It had put them to sleep, she believed, blindly accepting the implicit notion of equal people, and only too late discovering that there was no true equality at all.

  So this was her canoe, the very famous Samoan Va’a Motu – fishing canoe – that had been the gift to Dame Silvia by the people of Niue; the event that arguably served as the catalyst leading to the dissolution of their island nation.

  She felt Mana’s fury rising in her and without further thought pulled her knife from the pack and began sawing at the lines. She may as well have been sawing iron; after a minute’s work, she’d managed to fray hardly enough to pick at with a fingernail. Pausing to consider, she walked to the edge of the pavement and found a round stone the size of her fist and took it back to the canoe. She held the tip of the knife against the body of the line and gave it a sharp knock. The knife seemed to stick, so she hit it again, careful to bring the stone down straight. The knife blade seemed to embed itself, so she rocked the point back and forth, delighted to see several threads fray up out of the weave. Pulling the knife loose, she moved it to a different spot and repeated the process. Working at it without pause, it took her half an hour to reduce the thick line to a frayed core that she finally severed with a last hard swipe of the blade. Standing and stretching against the stiffness in her back and neck, she searched the street again; still, there was nothing. Walking to the bow line, she repeated the hammering and sawing process. The knife body grew battered, threatening to splinter away, and the time it took to work through this second line seemed interminable.

  Still, she worked diligently and in time the canoe sat untied and free; all she had to do now, somehow, was move it. Using the manila line still tied to the bow, she was able to lift the weight of it, shifting it over and sliding it awkwardly down off the timbers. Then she went to the stern line and with a bit more effort sliding the whole aft section of the boat off the blocks, the entire boat then dropping to the pavement. It made a very solid sound, like a tree trunk hitting earth. Now, she thought, to the sea.

  The simplest solution would be to just drag it – so she took the bow line and bracing her feet, pulled the canoe forward a meter. It wasn’t the weight that stopped her from continuing, but the sound of the wood grinding on the pavement. Looking underneath she saw the start of deep scratches running parallel with the keel. Even with not much more than ten meters before she had it to the gravel ramp, she was afraid of the damage she’d do to it.

  But she was running out of time; already dawn was beginning to lighten the eastern sky. If only I had rollers, she thought. And looking all around the area, her eyes fell on the canoe paddles and she quickly untied them from inside the boat and pulled them free. They were of traditional design with narrow, long blades, offset somewhat from the handles. She put one down next to the boat, lifted the bow and shoved it under with her toe, then aligned it to be perpendicular to the hull. Going to the stern, she placed the second paddle in the same fashion, pushing it as far toward the middle of the canoe as she could. Taking the bow rope again, she pulled – and the canoe easily rode the paddles forward. She made it a meter before the rear paddle came free. She grabbed it and put it under the bow – the first paddle now having rolled under the middle of the canoe.

  She repeated this process eight times, until at last, the bow lay in the gravel and sand of the upper end of the ramp. She gathered the two paddles, dismayed by the damage she’d done to them. One was nearly severed, and she reluctantly left it and dropped the other into the boat.

  Getting the boat down the ramp was more difficult than she’d imagined; the sharp bow wanted to dig into the soft ground and the outriggers kept biting into the slope, digging in and halting any progress. Finally, she was reduced to standing at the very bow of the canoe, using the bow line to hoist it directly up, then giving it a sharp pull forward, making perhaps a half-meter of progress before one of the outriggers rocked over into the slope. She’d then level everything and repeat, half-meter by half-meter.

  After the long night the burden of dragging the boat brought her to the point of complete exhaustion. By the time the bow reached the sea, she was forced to drop to hands and knees, gathering herself for the final effort.

  She rose, again took the bow rope and with her remaining strength pulled the canoe forward, each centimeter coming more easily as it began to float. Finally, standing in water to her neck, it floated free. Guiding it with the bow line, she pulled it along the wharf, the outriggers awkward and troublesome in the waves. But the wall gave her a solid platform to work from and soon the boat was ready to be launched, and she looked outward, across the reef.

  The waves were coming in quick series now, more than a meter in height, and she could see in the gathering light that out beyond the reef, it was considerably worse. A squall had apparently developed from the southeast and she realized that if she could keep the canoe under control, the wind would drive her out, beyond the reef and into the deep water of the ocean. Then, she had only to hang on and paddle her way north. And she hoped the weather would keep the NZ from searching.

  Using one of the wharf timbers, she climbed onto the quay, took off the pack and wedged it under the stern seat. Kneeling poised above the canoe, she waited for a break in the waves and sensing an opportunity, leapt down into the boat and quickly settled herself in the seat. She had no time to waste and immediately took up the paddle, stroking with every ounce of remaining energy against the incoming surf.

  Holding her own as the canoe rose and fell over each incoming wave, she was astonished at its inherent seaworthiness – its tremendous balance in the water, its responsiveness to the strokes of the paddle. The stability provided by the outriggers was immensely reassuring as she rocked from one side to the other, paddling first on one side then the other.

  As she gained distance from shore, she became aware of the wind behind her, pushing her forward. She paused in her paddling, turning to check her progress, looking back to the east. She was beyond the reef already, saw pink streaks of dawn rising through the layers of heavy clouds, revealing clearly the wharf and buildings against the sky. And there, too, through a patch of clear sky was the red star. How it seems to glow, she thought.

  And on the wharf, directly beneath it, casting a narrow outline against the pale, threatening sky, someone stood watching her. She was too far to see detail; man or woman, she couldn’t tell. Was it the NZ? Or perhaps a tourist, thinking this all a normal thing, paddling out into this storm? No matter, it was too late for them – there would be no one coming out after her now, no one to come and recapture her canoe. Mana, she thought, I’ve done it!

  The wind continued to drive her westward, away from land, and in time, though the waves became larger, out in the deeper water of the open ocean they came less frequently, became less steep. The canoe rose with each, crested, then began a long surfing run down the back. Her paddling became an endless purgatory, her arms leaden with exhaustion, and as she paddled, they moved less and less according to her will, reminding her of the paralysis she’d felt in her dream.

  She rested for a moment, hunched over with the paddle laying athwart the gunwales, and tried without success to renew some semblance of energy into her body. When she rose on the next wave, she turned to look and was stunned to see how far she’d been blown out to sea. Niue was little more than a mounded black shadow on the horizon. She needed to go north, to work the canoe broadside to the wind, but as she turned back, she knocked the paddle into the sea and it was gone in an instant.

  Soundlessly, she stared at the water, looked down at herself, at the canoe, held her empty hands out in front of herself. How much
this typified her life; each time she’d felt she’d accomplished something or found refuge or love, it had been lost. And this, this ill-fated journey, was her darkest failure yet. She slumped forward without a sound. This was the end now, the very end.

  So tired she found it hard to even care, she lay down in the very bottom of the canoe, mindless of the seawater. Resting her head against the upturned sweep of the bow, she managed to get her legs stretched under the aft seat, wedging herself tightly against the hull. She gave herself up to her exhaustion, willing herself to stop fighting. Let the canoe take me, she thought. I am finished. And she closed her eyes against the rain and wind and surrendered.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  TO AKAGI HARUKO, watching from the wharf, the canoe seemed to be eaten by the waves as it blew westward with the wind. She found it quite odd that this native woman had taken a boat out in these conditions, but who knew what these people did, who knew how they thought? Even odder, perhaps, that she’d worked with such diligence to take this particular boat, but what did it matter? Perhaps it had meaning for her and she had taken it out to die. Instinctively, she bowed her head at such courage.

  When she could no longer see the canoe, nor the splash of color from the woman’s dress, she turned slowly and began walking south along the main street. It was completely deserted, and the thought occurred to her that possibly she would be the last ever to gaze upon it. I suppose, she thought calmly, that depends on the guides at the cabins in Namukulu, how quickly they feel the illness, how they react to the knowledge that they will soon die. Had they even heard of what had overtaken everyone here in Alofi?