The Bone People (41 page)

them get too close.

And as if he were waiting for that cue, Simon takes her hand. It takes all her self-control not to pull violently

away. To wait

until the sudden pound of her heart slows to normal, to wait without

yelling abuse, until she can say, almost evenly, "I didn't hear you come up. You been here long?" A finger pressing once. His eyes glint as he looks at her. "I've been watching the sea and thinking about things." He has drawn her hand against his chest. She can feel the steady

clock of his heart. He hasn't made any other move, but she feels

as though he's saying something.

Very careful, Holmes... that's an aura-watcher, remember? It's visible to him, the electric perimeter of

yourself, the waxing and waning moon of your soul. All the skeins and flickers of your energy, he can see...

but how the hell

trying vainly to douse the anger she's feeling

do I project calm ease of spirit when all I feel is misery?

"Get inside eh. I'll be in soon."

The single silent pressure again.

"Hey, inside when you're told," voice sharpened, making no effort to contain her anger now. His heart is

beating hard against the back of her hand, and she feels him start to shake. It comes with unpleasant certainty

that he is scared of her... me? Kerewin the goody, the answering service, the white knight of the ready fist?

He is, and how... but despite his fear, he still holds her hand against his chest.

Ah hell, what am I doing?

She sighs hard.

"Hai, fella, let go my hand eh? I'm really coming in soon, but I need to be alone a little longer. Okay?"

He lets go, reluctantly. He leaves her, reluctantly. He goes slowfooted back to the bach, so she can hear each

unhappy step.

She calls after the child,

"E Sim, don't worry... tomorrow's another day, and it'll all work out. You'll see."

Alone in the dark, drug-induced sleep near, he thinks

But it's not going to work out, and there's nothing I can do about it.

It overwhelms him, a sudden flood of despair. There's nothing I can do.

The little brown man from the floor smiles sadly at him. He seems to be at the edge of the bunk.

Can you do anything?

No, he can't. He's not really here,

but the ghost is singing

E tama, I whanake I te ata o pipiri

He is falling asleep and the words are muddled with grief Piki nau ake, e tama

It sounds thinly in his ears as the roaring night comes nearer still

ki tou tint I te rangi

The lullaby is the ghost's goodbye. He doesn't see the man in the floor again.

Three days to go, and already they're souveniring. She grins to herself wryly

At least they'll have substantial mementoes. All I've got is a load of smoked fish, and the fog wiped off my

memories.

The boy has scoured the beach, gathering shells and seasmoothed glass; tidewashed bones and old seagull

feathers; poppable pieces of bladderwrack and dead dried crabs. And stones... the kind with holes in them,

bored by pholad or piddock, or ground out by other stones. Wounded stones, losers in the tidal wars, soon to

become sand except for the urchin's intervening hand.

She had asked, What are you going to do with them?

Not take them home, says Joe, you've got about a hundredweight.

Just some, the boy points, a few.

Don't throw the rest out then. They're Maori sinkers.

Joe: O yeah?

"That's what we say... we got a pile of them in the black bach. We figure when the rest of the world runs out

of lead, the Holmes tribe will still be able to go fishing."

Blowing a raspberry, "That's going to be my contribution to future family comfort here. Simon's stone

collection."

The boy, ordering his finds in piles and patterns, looks over his shoulder. His face reads, O yeah?

Well, I might get them, and I might not. I certainly won't get

Joe's souvenir.

Talk about a man in love with a stone--

He'd come back from the south reef, whistling. The whistle was strained, and when he stopped it, his lips kept

twitching as though he was smothering smiles.

"What's up with you?"

"O, nothing...."

But he didn't want to keep it a secret, just dress the stage.

"Look!" kneeling before them, and holding out his hand.

Slender, coloured like the deep sea, a rich translucent green--

Already, he's planning how to suspend it round his neck. My own greenstone, my own pendant, he says all

the time. Given me by the sea, on one of your beaches... ah Kerewin, the place loves me!

So I won't tell him about the graves up on the cliff, and how that probably got washed out with its former

owner... sour him off if he knew the smell of bones went with it eh? He can be happy with his her matau...

because the old ones might have given it to him. They gave mine to me--

She told them, when the celebrating died down.

"That's the fourth piece I know that's been picked up round by the south reef. One of my brothers found two

adzes -- they're in the Otago museum now. And I found Tahoro Ruku."

"Whale Diving? Is it a mere? A family mere?"

She grinned. Very polite way to say, Obviously you wouldn't keep a named heirloom if it didn't belong in

your family--

"No, it's a weird kind of pendant. I don't know whose family it belongs in. I made enquiries round all of my

relations, and most Ngai Tahu hapu. Memory of it is lost. Or maybe," thoughtfully, "they've changed the

name of it. You see, when I picked it up -- I was just going onto the reef for pupu and a wave uncovered it at

my feet -- when I picked it up, there seemed to be voices all around me saying 'Te tahoro ruku! Te tahoro

ruku!' It was bright sunlight, I wasn't drunk, and there were people further out on the reef who didn't look

round or anything, so the voices must have been in my head. But they were loud. They echoed...."

She shivered.

"I picked it up, and the voices went on and on, and I got scared. I said, maybe inside myself, "E nga iwi! Mo wai tenei?" and there was silence. Only after a little while, one voice returned, an infinitely Old voice

whispering, Tahoro ruku, tahoro ruku,' -- you know what?"

"No." He whispered it.

I didn't ask anything more. I just picked it up and ran back to the baches. I didn't show it to anyone for weeks,

and then,"

I know I shouldn't look shamefaced, but I always do, "I didn't exactly say where I got it. That came out later."

"I think I would have left it...."

She sighed.

"I don't know what I should have done... I argued with myself, for long enough. The sea wouldn't have given

it to me if it hadn't been meant for me. The ghosts of the old people, or whatever the voices were, didn't say it

wasn't for me. I asked who it was for, they didn't say. I didn't do anything wrong and nothing bad came of it,

so it must have been all right. I just had some strange dreams for a while."

Joe nodded gravely.

"They were about Maukiekie out there. Sometimes I saw a hole in the ground. Sometimes I entered it, and in

the heart of the island there was a marae. Tukutuku panels and poupou carved into the living rock... there was

never anyone to welcome me, but there was always breathing. Slow huge breaths... it was several dreams

before I realised it was breathing, and not an underearth wind. I thought, It's the island breathing, or Papa

herself. I don't know."

He just sucked his breath in, Ssseee.

"The dreams were trying to tell me something but I couldn't understand them. I still don't. In the last one, the breathing stopped, and the marae suddenly lightened like something lifted the covering rock off, and a great

voice, not human, cried, "Keria! Keria!" Bloody strange way to end a dream, eh?"

She laughed. "I woke my brother up yelling, 'Dig what?' and he thought I was nuts."

"It was the call of peace, the ancient one...."

"I know. I learned that later. But I still don't know what the dreams meant... I've got Tahoro Ruku safely, and it's dear to my heart. Even though I often feel I'm merely its guardian, and someone else is meant to have it--"

"You don't wear it?"

"No. For one thing, it's too big. For another, I haven't got a suitable cord. Anyway, you can see it back at

Taiaroa, and tell us what you think."

He looks at the pendant in his hand. "I'm glad this didn't have voices with it... you ever dig on the island?"

"Yeah. I got a yard of guano and a chipped shovel. Maukiekie is as solid as a bloody rock."

The dreamhold island.

Shags slide off its top with reptilian grace.

Bullkelp weaves and snakes by the base.

Rimu rimu tere tere e--

Why should I feel sad?

My memories are refurbished. They've got their souvenirs. It's been a good holiday. I've enjoyed most of it.

They seem to have enjoyed most of it.

So why should I feel sad?

She doesn't know.

She stares at Maukiekie a long time before going back inside the baches.

The wind rises to gale force, the day before they leave. Seas drive hard up the beach, and out on the reef the

blowhole booms above the roar of the waves.

"Winter's back with a vengeance," says Kerewin, and calmly goes on packing.

She has turned the old bach inhumanly tidy. The sand they've trodden in, is swept away and the floor

polished. All the familiar dead flies are dusted off the sills. Even the spiderwebs that hung in jointed cables

round the lamphooks, and grew in furry webs in the corners, spangled with sucked-dry corpses -- even the

webs are gone. The bunks are made for the final time, but all the clothes they had hung from convenient

projections -- top of ladders, bunk ends, or slung over chairs -- are sorted and folded into three piles. "Yours, and yours," she says, and goes down the beach, dodging waves, to clean and lockup there. She scrubs down

the dinghy, o keep safe till I come back, and stacks the oars, and anchor, and all the fishing gear. Bars the

boatshed door, and puts shutters over the windows. The black bach is eyeless again, blinkered against its

enemy.

"It's going to be a high wild tide," she tells them when she returns, "but that wind'll drop before too much longer. Then all we have to worry about is rain. Or maybe snow."

"Great." Joe keeps on staring at the fury before him. The great waves roll in, crests streaming away before the wind like long white hair. Near shore, the sea is latticed with a scum of yellowish froth. There is a constant

grinding thunder as shoals of rocks rumble up and down in the violent boil of water. At last he says,

"Aue tama, we better get our stuff packed too."

The boy spends an hour going through his hoard. He selects all the seacrystalled glass, two perfect

lampshells, one black and one red, and three of the holed stones; a paua shell Joe had garnered from the reef,

and the big crab claw Kerewin jokingly calls his roach holder.

("Lookat it, chela of Ozius truncatus, defunct, perfect for gripping the teeniest roach...."

"Struth Kere, he's got more than a taste for booze as it is. Don't encourage him to start on anything else.") He piles all the rest of his collection into a kete and staggers to the door with it.

"Where are you putting that?"

On the beach, point point.

"What about all those stones Kerewin wanted?"

Simon lifts his eyebrows.

"You're growing to be a bit of meanie, fella. Leave some where she can find them. She might have been

serious about keeping them for her family."

OK signs the boy and lurches outside.

He stands behind the fence and throws each piece to the hungry waves, telling them thank you and goodbye.

The bag is still heavy with holey stones when he has finished. He takes it round to the back of the old bach,

where there's an alleyway between the building and its landward fence. Some craypots and a rusted tank are

stored there, but it doesn't seem used for anything else. All she had done was look into it without

commenting, when she was showing them round. He squats beside the tank and forms words with the stones.

He croons to himself, They won't know, They won't know, making the letters good and big. But he hasn't

enough stones, and the last two letters of the third word have to be left off. He looks at his message for quite

a time, wondering whether it would be better, safer, to kick the phrase into disarray. It looks vaguely

threatening as it is. He shrugs. It's too late. Whatever is going to happen, will happen, and there is nothing at

all he can do about it now.

He leaves the message as it is.

The rain has ceased. The sky this morning is so pale a blue it appears white at first glance. The wind is gone.

The air is very still: the sea roar is magnified, and every birdcall piercingly clear.

A clean refreshed land, she thinks, walking along the tideline for the last time.

Maybe there are such things as second chances, even if dreams go unanswered--

(Back by the car, Joe says, "I don't want to go either, but you've got school, and I've got work, and we don't

have any choice eh?" Sighing, "If only she would--" He smiles unhappily to his child, his words an echo in his head, if only she would, if only. Simon smiles bleakly back. "Would you like it if I asked her to marry

me?" and the child's smile lightens and his eyes go bright kingfisher green. "Ah, you would too," the man laughs, and his heart is easy all of a sudden.

Should I ask her when she comes back to us? No, not yet, not yet....)

He contents himself by saying as they leave,

"We been good? We can come back?" grinning broadly, his eyes dancing.