Kokopu Dreams (15 page)

Roger had gathered his little family in one afternoon. He'd recovered from the Fever and nearly gone crazy after a solitary week. So he'd mounted a bicycle and gone searching, armed with the trombone on which he'd learned to play two notes. He'd stopped at every farmhouse he saw to blow an experimental blast. At the fourth hedged-in, red-roofed cottage, he'd alerted Marianne, sitting alone after burying a husband and starting to think about whether or not she wanted to go on living. Roger's trump was the sweetest sound she'd ever heard, she said, and the two of them carried on. First they found ten-year-old Myfanwy and then teenaged Lucy, a dark and intense young woman whose Gothic fantasies had no trouble accommodating the Fever.

Roger and Marianne were both artists, painters and carvers, and at first they pursued their interests with vigour and enthusiasm. But they soon found the demands of their new life left very little time and energy for any activities not directly connected with survival.

‘Pity you're not staying,' Roger said to Sean. ‘We could use an extra pair of hands over the winter.' He turned on his chair to look at the door. ‘But your friends'll be a big help anyway.' Sean pictured Kevin asleep, Hoheria beside him in the armchair, and he was almost overwhelmed by a rush of love and affection for the pair. With it came the realisation that he didn't want to be parted from either, that they were now his family.

‘I don't really like the idea of moving on without them,' he said. ‘We've come a long way together.'

‘Sorry, mate,' Roger replied. ‘But I don't think you've got a lot of choice in the matter. I get the idea those little guys run the show now, and I sure as hell wouldn't want to upset them.'

Sean thought back to Uncle Morepork's warning. ‘Don't get on the wrong side of them. You won't know another moment's peace.' He wondered what the Maeroero had done to make Roger so wary of them.

‘What happened?' he asked. Roger looked at Marianne. She shuddered.

‘They didn't hurt us,' he said. ‘But they scared the crap out of us.'

Marianne placed her hand on top of Roger's. Sean could see she her face tensing. She took up the story.

‘We used to see them sometimes,' she said. ‘At first we thought we might have been doing something wrong and they were angry with us, but we finally figured it was just the way they sounded. You know, like possums on the roof. And then we started to work out what they were saying, that we all had to pitch in together and look after each other.' She poured more tea and picked up her cup. Her hand was shaking. Roger continued.

‘It started when we tried to get the tractor going. They didn't like that. They don't like machinery.' He looked around nervously. ‘We just wanted to plough up a bit of ground for potatoes and turnips, so I got working on a tractor in the shed. They were okay till I started it up for the first time. As soon as they heard it they went ballistic.'

Outside the sun was lowering and the room darkened. Marianne lit a lamp, a flickering light that threw leaping shadows, silhouettes that grew stronger as the darkness deepened.

‘They nearly killed Roger,' she said. ‘I was just taking him out a cup of tea when he started the engine, and all hell broke loose. Two of them appeared out of nowhere like they always did. One minute nothing, next thing they're standing next to me. And they made the shed vanish. We found it later. It was a heap of corrugated iron and timber where we were going to put the garden.'

‘What about you?' Sean asked Roger. What on earth could the little creatures have done? Roger shook his head.

‘It was horrible,' he said. ‘One minute I'm in a shed working on a tractor ... next thing I'm in an open paddock ... wrestling with a giant eel. And you couldn't imagine how slippery and slimy it was.'

‘Well actually ...' Sean started to say, but Marianne spoke again.

‘I didn't see an eel. I just saw Roger suddenly start fighting with the tractor.'

But the fight hadn't lasted long. She'd dropped the two mugs and started towards Roger when the tractor rose about ten metres into the air, spun around several times and fell with a shattering crash right beside Roger.

‘It was just like something threw it,' she said. ‘It smashed the whole thing to pieces. And it was all so loud. There was this noise like rolling thunder. It started when the Maeroero first appeared ... it got so loud. I wanted to throw myself on the ground with my hands over my ears.'

‘The tractor's still out there in pieces,' Roger said. ‘I tried to put it back together once, but the Maeroero appeared again and the thunder noise started up, only this time it sounded like growling.'

‘They come around most days now,' said Marianne. ‘They just watch, but it's like they're keeping an eye on us. And they're such ugly little beggars, with their horrible noises and warty skins. Where on earth did they come from?'

‘They caused the Fever,' Sean said. He tried to explain, thinking of Uncle Morepork's words about a whole lot of mischievous Luddites guarding the mauri of the land.

‘I can believe that no trouble,' said Marianne. ‘Reject fairies too. How come they never got into any storybooks?'

‘They did. Rumpelstiltskin must have been a cuzzie. And all those critters like kobolds and hobgoblins that turned milk sour and scattered flocks of sheep. I think they've always had a bad press.' He thought of Cally's paintings and the misshapen little creatures lurking in the undergrowth.

‘Kati ra, kati ra!' he hissed.

‘That's them!' cried Roger. ‘What does that mean, anyway?'

‘Something like "that's enough, that's enough".'

‘Makes sense,' Roger said. ‘No wonder they were pissed off about the tractor. Today one piece of machinery, tomorrow agribusiness.' He looked relieved, then he grew thoughtful again.

‘But what about the dreams? Can they just get into my head like that?'

‘They can do what they like,' Sean said. ‘Nothing to stop them now. And what about the dreams anyway?'

‘You're in them,' Roger said. ‘I saw the three of you coming here. I've seen you crossing a high pass in the snow, and riding with a beautiful red-haired woman.' Marianne gave him a look. ‘Not my type,' he added hastily. ‘I much prefer blondes.'

Sean laughed, then grew silent himself as he thought back to times with Te Rina and her dark-haired beauty. He was suddenly struck with envy for Kevin — no longer alone, with Hoheria in the armchair beside his bed and caring for the young man in a way that made him ache with loneliness. Sean pushed his chair back and rose just as Marianne stood up.

‘We'd better check on Kevin,' he said. Marianne was already making up another poultice. The three of them tiptoed into the room where Kevin was breathing raspily in his sleep and Hoheria was invisible in the shadowed armchair.

Kevin stayed asleep all night, Hoheria refusing to leave her armchair. She was snoring gently when Sean and Marianne looked in the next morning. She was still there when Kevin awoke the following evening with panic in his eyes and wild questions on his whereabouts.

‘You're safe here,' Marianne told him. ‘And you'd better stay in bed for at least a week. You nearly died.' Her voice softened. ‘I suppose it wasn't the first time either.' Kevin managed a weak smile. Hoheria looked proprietary.

Sean felt the feeling of family grow even stronger. He remembered Hoheria's words about clinging to what she had in the face of everything she'd lost, and he realised he was no different. He'd lost a great deal. Te Rina, the children, his life in the Old Times. Where was he going? Why? What did the Maeroero want? Hoheria watched him drift away. Her voice was gentle when she spoke.

‘We're a family, the three of us,' she told Marianne. Kevin gave a weak thumbs-up from the bed. ‘I don't know what happens next but I do know we need to stick with each other. Us three being together is like a second chance — even a third chance — and I don't think we can afford to let it go. We mightn't get another.'

‘I know you're right,' Sean said later when they were alone. ‘We need to stick together.' Even as he spoke a sick and empty feeling was growing. How could he possibly move on by himself? How could he leave Kevin and Hoheria behind?

‘You have to go on ahead,' Hoheria said. ‘The Maeroero told me last night. Scary, aren't they? Scary and ugly. But as soon as we can, we'll come after you. You shouldn't be hard to find.' She repeated Kevin's words. ‘I mean, how many people do you know wearing an eyepatch?'

Later that day, when Sean checked on Kevin, the young man spoke to him.

‘Sorry I doubted you,' he said. Sean stopped in the doorway and turned back. This was a first.

‘Hoheria told me about the Maeroero,' Kevin said. ‘Marianne too. I see what you mean.' Sean walked back into the room and sat on the bed.

‘So you understand I have to leave?' he said.

‘Sort of. But whatever it is you have to do, I'm with you all the way.'

Sean smiled. ‘None of us have a clue what's going to happen and I've been scared shitless. But it really helps knowing you believe. Thanks for that.'

Five days later, relieved to see Kevin sitting up in bed feeding himself, the rents in his swanny sewn up, his saddlebags packed with manuka honey, roasted barley and dried meat, Sean saddled Bojay, mounted and rode off down the drive. Roger, Marianne and their family waved goodbye. Hoheria made no effort to wipe away her tears.

‘We'll find you,' she called. ‘We'll start looking in the spring.'

16

ONCE AGAIN, Sean was alone. He'd left his family and friends behind. The emptiness was familiar, and so was the feeling of danger ahead, especially when the Maeroero's arrows directed him inland through Burkes Pass. But to his relief he didn't have to cross the Mackenzie Country, the place where the Fever started. At the top of the pass another arrow sent him down the Hakataramea Valley. The clear blue cloudless days and chilly nights, creeks full of eels and roadside groves of pines that gave good firewood and a soft bed of needles lent him comfort at least, as he tried to cope with the turmoil in his head. By the time he reached Kohurau, after crossing the Waitaki River on a narrow bridge that felt like it was a hundred years old, he imagined he was ready for whatever the future might bring.

Sean spent the night at a place called Duntroon, near where the Maerewhenua River joined the Waitaki. He remembered the name ‘Maerewhenua' from an Old Time dictionary of place names. ‘Land of the strange, wild people', the dictionary had said, and when he saw the name on a signpost he was filled with alarm.

He camped under a rock overhang, puzzled at first by the tatters of chain-mesh fencing that were all that remained of a protective cage around the overhang. But as he sat eating eel, unleavened bread and wild honey streaked with propolis, he noticed drawings on the walls illuminated by the firelight. Hunters wielded spears; moa, penguins and giant eels danced and slithered. The drawings were ancient, the place felt churchlike, and that night Sean dreamed again of a little village by the sea. In the morning his plans to follow the river down to the coast were changed yet again by an arrow in the road that sent him along the Maerewhenua River towards the Kakanui Mountains.

At first he was riding along crumbling tarseal. Oak trees stood bare and bony in the early winter and fallen leaves littered the road. Then with a shimmer and a lurch he was on a narrow winding track threading his way between mahoe and kotukutuku. The day was warmer. Bright sunlight filtered through green leaves and Bojay's hooves were silent on the spongy ground.

What? Was he losing his marbles? Sean was just wondering what he might have accidentally eaten when he realised. The Maeroero. Of course. Then everything changed back. The leafy canopy vanished and tarseal scraps clattered underfoot. The temperature dropped. Sean started to breathe out. He was just beginning to relax when they were back in the trees, the tarseal gone. A few more steps — bony oaks — then ancient forest. The changes just kept coming. Sean was almost unhinged by the shifts, in and out of the trees, ducking branches and telling Hamu everything was okay, it wasn't his fault, he was a good dog.

Kukupa and brightly coloured kaka, like giant budgies, swooped about Sean as he rode through the trees. At first he couldn't nail the feeling of familiarity, the sense of
déjà vu
. But then with a shock he realised he'd already seen the forest, in Cally's paintings. The knowledge that somehow she'd been here before failed to reassure him.

He rode all day like that, boiling the billy at what felt like midday. He did his best to flow with the changes — the bare oak branches turning as he watched into the leafy peeling bark limbs and tiny fuchsia dancers of the kotukutuku. It was almost night. He stopped for a meal of hastily gathered acorns by a set of shallow rapids, blackberry and gorse on the banks. When the scene changed to dark waters overhung by trees, a nightmare blackness began simultaneously in the pit of his stomach and in his head. He just couldn't take any more strangeness. His vision swam and he passed out.

The fire had burned low when he came to, lying in the frosty grass, Hamu's whimpers in his ears. He felt like he was dreaming, the forest around him ghostly and unpleasant. A final flicker from the fire reminded him he was frozen so he struggled to his feet and started walking. Bojay followed on the well-marked trail that changed into a narrow gravel road as he climbed. His footsteps crunched when the leaves faded and he had to force himself to take each step.

To Sean's relief a half moon rose as they walked in the dark. At least it didn't change and, after several hours of the shifts, he was finally able to anchor himself as the track threaded through forest one minute — mahoe tree trunks glowing pale in the cold light — and the next minute his boots echoing in clay-sided cuttings. Hamu killed a weasel on the gravel road, the thin and agonised screaming splintering like breaking glass in the night.

As he climbed it grew colder. Finally he emerged at the top of the pass just as the moon came out from a bank of clouds. Sean looked out over a treeless landscape with deeply etched spurs and gullies and distant peaks. Ice glinted on the grass when he stopped on the roadside for a rest. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea, he thought. Maybe he should have stayed below the pass.

As he sat looking across the sea of hills below everything became darker. Another change, he thought, trees blotting out the moonlight, but it wasn't. Clouds had covered the sky and sleet started blowing in his face, icy and penetrating. If he didn't get moving he'd freeze. As he climbed to his feet everything flickered like another change. Maybe it'll get warmer, he thought, but it started to snow. Get moving, he urged himself, this feels dangerous. He couldn't stop shivering and Bojay trembled as the temperature dropped. The horse sheltered his head between Sean's shoulder blades, butting him occasionally and almost sending him sprawling.

The hypothermia-induced rapture crept up on Sean as he walked downhill. At first he didn't see the snow-covered slopes on his left, the drops to his right.

‘Gotta keep going,' he said to himself, repeating the phrase over and over. Before long he felt warm and safe. He slowed his pace and marvelled at gently rounded hills and inky gullies below the road.

The snow was soft when he sat. Kevin would love this, he thought. Snowflakes melted on the sleeve of his swanny, clear in the moonlight. His clothes were wet. He didn't care. He lay down to rest.

Bojay and Hamu nudged at the inert shape, but Sean didn't stir.

Right on dawn a figure approached Sean's body. Hamu looked on alarmed while he shook and slapped and finally slung Sean over Bojay who carried the unconscious traveller back to a hut at the Kyeburn Diggings.

Sean woke wrapped in blankets next to a stoked-up wood-stove, a pot of stew bubbling.

‘I'm Fairgo,' said the guy. ‘Get yourself around this.' He helped Sean drink something that fumed in a tin mug. It seared his throat and burned his stomach, and warmed him right through.

‘I was dreaming about eels,' Fairgo said. ‘Flying eels. And suddenly I just had to be out on the road.' He shook his head. ‘What've flying eels got to do with anything?'

Fairgo was a thirtyish Pakeha man who'd been an unhappy electrician in Otepoti when the Fever took his mostly estranged family With nothing to keep him there, he'd driven off in pursuit of the magic he remembered from holidays with his kids, camped by a stream high in the Kakanui Mountains. He'd found the magic too, but it wasn't as pleasant as he remembered. He was a prisoner, he told Sean, kept by strange little creatures as if he was some sort of exotic pet.

‘What's with everything changing back and forth?' Sean asked Fairgo when he had his strength back. Fairgo stopped muttering to himself while he cleaned two rabbits for a stew.

‘You mean the Changes?' Fairgo said. ‘That's the Maeroero playing with your head.' He peeled the skin off a rabbit and quartered the carcass. ‘They use the Changes to keep me here.'

‘How do they manage that?'

‘In the beginning I tried to leave several times. I never got further than a couple of kilometres before they drove me crazy.' He looked at Sean. ‘Beats me how you got right over the pass.' Fairgo tossed the rabbit pieces into a pot. Sean could see him thinking while he started on the second rabbit.

‘Why would they want to deal to you?' Fairgo chopped up onions and other vegetables for the stew and added them with salt and a jug of water while the pot sizzled on the woodstove. Delicious smells filled the hut.

‘Wouldn't have a clue, mate.'

‘Those little buggers caused the Fever,' Fairgo said. ‘They got sick of waiting for people to get it right.' Sean looked at Fairgo, a sudden realisation rising in him.

‘They don't want things to start up again,' he said.

‘Probably not.'

Sean jumped to his feet, his eyes wide. The past two years started making sense. No wonder everyone was puzzled, from Auntie Mihi to Poutu. No wonder nobody knew what the Maeroero wanted. They didn't want anything, not for humans anyway. But what was he doing? And what about the dreams?

That night he woke with a jolt and sat bolt upright under the possum-skin cover. Flying eels? He woke Fairgo on the other side of the hut.

‘Tell me about the Maeroero.' Fairgo's sleepiness vanished at the excitement in Sean's voice. He thought for a few moments, then spoke.

‘They don't like hurting things. One of them was eating an apple when he found half a worm. When he realised he'd eaten the other half he started crying. His mates had to help him away.' Fairgo swung his feet onto the floor and used his flint and steel to light a candle. ‘But they don't like humans much. They don't trust us.'

‘Do they send you dreams?'

‘Never.'

Tinirau. The taniwha. The Maeroero knew. They wanted to stop him. Sean felt the manaia twitching against his skin. Maybe they saw it as a threat. Perhaps they wanted it. He shook his head. Fairgo was speaking again.

‘You know, the little bastards aren't all that smart. They've been studying me but I don't think they've learned a lot. Whatever it is you're doing, we should be able to figure a way.'

Sean spent the next day working out a plan.

‘We'll give them what they want,' he told Fairgo. ‘I guess we'll be seeing them soon enough.'

It took him three days in Fairgo's workshop to copy the manaia, shaping and finishing a piece of pig's jawbone. They smashed some old bottles for coloured glass jewels and Sean wove a kiekie thong. He tied the new manaia around his neck and picked up the original.

‘If you like I'll wear that,' Fairgo said.

‘They're here,' Fairgo said. ‘It's show time.' He looked nervous. His hands shook.

‘Remember the rules,' Sean said. ‘They can't hurt you.'

‘Yes they can,' Fairgo said. ‘They can turn my brains into scrambled eggs. Yours too. Don't forget it.'

Sean looked out the open door. Sitting on a log across the yard was a little being, about a metre high, with curly red hair and a high forehead, wearing the hide of some spotted animal. It was the same guy who'd laughed at him. It was Uruao.

‘Good luck,' Sean heard behind him as he stepped out into the wintry sun.

‘Long time no see,' Sean said. Uruao made a noise like a ship sinking, hissing and gurgling with interior explosions. Sean thought he heard ‘Tena koe' in there somewhere. When Sean sat on another log Fairgo joined him.

‘Thanks for the dreams,' Sean began. Uruao made a rocks-on-the-roof noise.

‘He's saying ‘What dreams?" whispered Fairgo. Then Uruao started a cacophonous humming and to his surprise Sean recognised the tune, an old Peter Tosh song about living right.

Uruao spoke, a lengthy statement that sounded like a quarry crusher. Sean didn't understand a single word. Fairgo spoke softly in his ear.

‘He didn't send you anything,' he said. Uruao made more quarry-crusher noise.

‘The Maeroero want to know what the hell you think you're doing.' Uruao stood up, adjusted his pelt and held out a hand to Fairgo. He made a car-crash sound. Fairgo whispered again.

‘He wants an apple.' Sean's mental wheels spun.

‘They like apples,' Fairgo said. ‘Give him one from the bowl on the table. Make a big deal of it.'

Uruao took the apple, polished it on his hide, and bit into it. He grunted with pleasure. Soon he was down to the core. He popped it in his mouth and started chewing. He was just about to swallow when a thought struck him. Raising a cupped hand, he spat the mouthful into it. After carefully examining the masticated mess, he stirred it with a knobbly forefinger and extracted something that he flicked at Sean. It bounced off his eyepatch and landed in the dust. It was an apple pip. When Sean looked up Uruao was holding out his hand again. Another car-crash noise reverberated and this time Sean understood. He unhooked the manaia from round his neck and handed it to Uruao with a bow and a flourish.

The Maeroero took the manaia and started to tuck it inside his robe. Then he stopped, sniffed at it and glared at Sean. A growling noise started and two more Maeroero appeared, one wearing a feather cloak and the other a plaid travel rug.

‘Oh shit,' said Fairgo. Uruao hurled the manaia to the ground and Sean had the sudden shocking sense of something diving into his head and rummaging around, flinging thoughts and memories about like so much dirty washing. His eye rolled up till only the white was showing. He passed out and fell forward, Fairgo unconscious beside him.

It was dusk when the two men came to and helped each other inside. Fairgo lit the stove and put the kettle on to boil. He felt beneath his jumper.

‘They got the manaia,' he said. ‘We didn't fool them for long.'

Sean wanted to weep. All that way, all that trouble, the hopes and dreams of all those people. What now?

He slumped on the stool by the woodstove. Fairgo gave a weak smile and went outside into the fading light, returning with a hand held out to Sean.

‘It's a consolation prize,' he said. ‘An apple pip and the manaia you made. How's your head?' Sean tucked the apple pip into his hatband and put the manaia in his pocket. Fairgo's eyes were looking in different directions.

‘Never mind the scrambled eggs,' Sean said. ‘I've got a major stir-fry in there. But at least we're still alive.'