The Bone People (59 page)

doesn't seem to be any outflow or overflow--

He puts his hand in the water cautiously, meaning to see whether the water is coloured or contains stone

flour, and snatches it out again before his fingers go in past the knuckles. Jesus Holy!

It's like ten thousand tiny bubbles bursting on his skin, a mild electric current, an aliveness.

He notices that the water is not still at the far end of the pool. Fine tendrils, filaments of clearness, rise and

meld with the pale green, like an ice-cube melting in whisky and spinning lucid threads into the surrounding

colour.

He edges back from the side of the pool. Peace, peace, I'm just looking... maybe I should introduce myself?

Feeling foolish, squatting on his haunches by the overhang, he tells the water his name and his tribe, that

Tiaki Mira has named him as his replacement.

Stupid fool, Ngakau... what do words mean to, whatever it is? If it's anything--

He says "E noho ra" before he goes, though.

The old man is sitting, back against a rock, when he returns.

"Not dead yet!" He calls cheerfully, triumphantly. "I am staggering on the edge of corruption, but I'm not dead yet!"

Fresh strength has been infused into him, from the rest or by Joe finding what he was sent to find. His eyes

are bright and see the present again, and he no longer mumbles unintelligibly to the ghosts that surround him.

He produces Kerewin's last cigar from the pocket of his greatcoat, and lights it, passing it then to Joe.

E hoa, if only you could see where your smokes went... where

are you now? And the last time I shared a smoke, it was with Haimona--

O boy, what are they doing to you? Though maybe you can't know--

They smoke in silence, sharing the cigar puff and puff about.

"Pity we didn't bring the tea," says the kaumatua suddenly. "It's a good place for a picnic nei?"

Joe looks at him sideways. "A bit too quiet for my liking."

"O, it's not like this all the time... plenty of noise in a thunderstorm! It booms and echoes all up the gorge like giant men yelling... and when there's an earthquake! Ahh, I've been here when the earth was creaking and

groaning as if she were giving birth... and sometimes, on long summer evenings when the flies are humming,

sometimes..." the bantering note is gone, and his voice is low and dreamy, "the old people come back. I've seen them standing round the mouth of that shelter up there, watching and talking softly. With their long

oiled hair, and their fine strong bodies, and proud free-eyed faces... sometimes they talk, and sometimes they

walk, filing away down a track that isn't there anymore, silent under the sun... maybe they don't come back,

maybe I've gone into their time, because they've looked to where I sit and shaded their eyes, squinting, as

though they could see something but not enough. And once, a woman threw a piece of cooked kumara at me

and I ducked, and laughed... and once I looked at my dog, and he'd gone misty. Insubstantial, until I put my

hand on him, and he whined and licked my hand, and when I looked back, the old ones had gone... mysteries,

O Joseph. All the land is filled with mysteries, and this place fairly sings with them."

"I don't think I'd like to meet any of the old folk."

I don't think I could look them straight in the eye. I'd feel like a thing of no account, less than a slave.

"You may, and you may not."

The old man shrugs, and begins talking about other days and happenings, when he was younger and spent

much of his time hunting pig and deer through the scrub.

"Fishing and hunting and looking after my garden," he finishes, "that's how my life has been spent. It has been a very easy life,

I suppose. No wars or great doings. Just watching things grow, and catching things for food. No family

worries after the old woman died. No money problems, always enough to eat, enough to smoke, a roof over

my head. A man can find satisfaction with enough."

"Yes," says Joe.

His thigh has started to ache after all the walking and scrambling over the rocks, and his arm is throbbing

hard.

I'd like to stretch out in the sun and go to sleep while he talks, but I can't do that.

He says with an effort,

"Your dogs, e pou? Where did you get them?"

"O the old lady had a bitch, that somehow got herself in pup...

dog' from a hunter's Pack maybe? They bred among themselves, never too many, all good strong dogs, not a

mean or bad cur among them. The last one, he died about two years ago, and I didn't have the heart to start

again. Just as well, ne? It's not good for a dog to outlive his master... they were company as well as hunting

companions. That last one, Tika he was called, must have been the only dog in the country who was brought

up and lived on fish, eh. I haven't hunted pig or deer for many years now, but I can still fish... o, he used to

get a bit of bird now and then, but mainly

fish--" He sits in the sun, his hands folded in his lap, remembering

the dogs, retelling their exploits as they come into his mind.

It's maybe his last talk, Ngakau. Make it happy for him.

So he chuckles amiably at the funny stories, and clucks his tongue at the bad ones, and mourns with the old

man over the deaths of long-dead dogs. The ache in his arm and leg grows, but he doesn't let it show on his

face.

At last the kaumatua reaches out his hand to him. "Help me up, o Joseph."

When standing, he cries out in a loud voice, something that is gutteral and archaic and incomprehensible to

Joe. The chant rings in the gorge, an echo dying seconds after the last word has been called out.

"A farewell," says the old man, turning to him, answering his question before it is asked. "I don't think the mauriora or the little god recognise we who watch over them as individuals. My grandmother thought of us

as an attendant stream of awareness, and said they knew when we left. Now, they'll know I'm leaving."

Joe, rubbing his thigh awkwardly with his left hand,

"I told them when I said hello. Sort of."

"What did you see to say hello to?" asks the old man, grinning.

Joe flushes.

"What looked like long shadows in the water," his words echoing the kaumatua's earlier words.

The old man says gently,

"It's all in pieces, you know... and not all of it is there. The old people managed to get the stern and the prows and a few of the hull sections to that safety... I know they used pieces of the hull to carry the little god and the mauri to the tarn." They're the round shadows?"

He smiles with satisfaction. "Ah, you're a discerning one after

all... it took me days to see them properly. Yes, I think they may be unwrapped now, but when my

grandmother brought them to the surface they were covered with the remains of cloaks. Red feather cloaks,

too."

"She swam in that?"

The old man smiles more widely still.

"You touched, eh? It's a surprise isn't it! No, she called them to the top, and the little god came with the mauri on his back, and they stayed there for minutes while she sang, and then sank back to safety. Believe it, or

disbelieve it, that was how the matter was. I tried once, using the words she taught me, but the water started

boiling, and that hadn't happened when she sang, so I was afraid and stopped. My grandmother was a very

strong-minded woman, remember, and she had knowledge she maybe never should have had."

Joe shivers, partly from the growing pain, partly from the magic.

"Where did she get hold of it?" he asks, not really wanting to know.

The old man waves a hand in the air. "From her girlhood, she was curious about this place... her grandfather

doted on her, and told her many things from the past. What he told her of the burial of this canoe, and what it

contained, fascinated her mind. She sought out the people who had knowledge, and one way or another,

obtained all she needed to know. She had the right to this piece of land, through her mother's sister, who

never was married. She had to wait years until she got it though, and when she got it, she made sure, pakeha

fashion, that it would never pass out of her hands except to someone she was confident would look after what

it bore. Me. Now you."

He looks up to the strange well in the gorge-side.

"Remember, it was a time of flux and chaos when she sought her knowledge. No-one can be blamed for

giving her information that she maybe should never have known. And she can be praised for having that

staunch courage and intelligence to preserve something she believed, as I believe, to be of unusual value.

Incalculable value. How do you weigh the value of this country's soul?"

Joe shakes his head. He doesn't want to think of what could be lying there in the cool green and stinging

water.

He does say, tentatively, as they're walking slowly away, "If it is, the heart of Aotearoa... why isn't this whole place... flowering? Something as strong as that, would make the very stones flower, ne? And there is nothing

at all... no birds... flies, you say, but... flies?"

The kaumatua waits until the halting sentences are finished.

"It despaired of us, remember. It is asleep... maybe its very sleep keeps the living things away, except for

flies, who come to the sleeping and the dead alike. Aue! the one thing I regret about dying is that, secretly, in

the marrow of my heart, I have always wanted to see what happens when it wakes up." He sighs. "Maybe we

have gone too far down other paths for the old alliance to be reformed, and this will remain a land where the

spirit has withdrawn. Where the spirit is still with the land, but no longer active. No longer loving the land."

He laughs harshly. "I can't imagine it loving the mess the Pakeha have made, can you?"

Joe thought of the forests burned and cut down; the gouges and scars that dams and roadworks and

development schemes had made; the peculiar barren paddocks where alien animals, one kind of crop, grazed

imported grasses; the erosion, the overfertilisation, the pollution....

"No, it wouldn't like this at all. We might have started some of the havoc, but we would never have carried it

so far. I don't think." He adds thoughtfully, after a pause of seconds, "I can't see that," nodding back towards the hidden well, "ever waking now. The whole order of the world would have to change, all of humanity, and

I can't see that happening, e pou, not ever."

"Eternity is a long time," says the kaumatua comfortably. "Everything changes, even that which supposes itself to be unalterable. All we can do is look after the precious matters which are our heritage, and wait, and

hope."

The lively glint is back in his eyes.

"Well, at least you can do that... this one is going to take things easy from now on!" He rubs his belly.

"Though I might wait long enough for tea, Joseph. Yes, I think I'll take you through my garden, and we'll

gather food for tea. We'll eat a last good meal together, and you can tell me all about your dead family that

was, and your live one which you have lost, and I'll be as polite as you were while I was boring you with tales

of my dogs, her?"

Joe grins shamefacedly.

"I wasn't that bored... I hope it's not our last meal. Maybe you won't be called away so fast now they,"

gesturing with his hand to the pale shining sky, "know how inept and unlearned I am."

"Ah, you'll do, you'll do," says the old man cryptically, and they walk on, limp on, in silence.

In the garden, under that bright sky, the kaumatua clutched at his chest, and fell heavily to the ground. Ahh,

he gasps, trying to regain his breath, but with each exhalation there is less left. His body jerks spasmodically.

Then slowly, he curls up, withering round his anguish like a burning leaf.

Joe started to run towards the whare, turned and came back. No phone no nothing no doctor what good would

a doctor be? He knelt by the man.

His face is suffused and his eyes are screwed tightly shut. One hand scrabbles on the ground.

It is a deliberate motion, Joe realises after a moment. Writing... aie, the will--

"Where is it? The will you want? Where?" he asks urgently, bending over and loosing his voice like an arrow into the old man's ear.

Somehow the thin shaking limbs are drawn together, driven by an inordinate effort of will. He is nearly to his

knees.

Joe unstraps his right hand from his belt, and clenching his teeth against the tearing ache, picks him up,

cradles him, arm beneath back, head lolling, arm under the long legs. For the strength in my shoulders,

praise, going one halt step after the other; for the strength in my shoulders, praise, arm feeling like it is

breaking anew; for the strength in my shoulders, praise, a slow torturous ripping apart of bone and muscle

fibre; for the strength in my shoulders, praise, staggering, skinning round the doorframe, grating against it,

using it as a prop to hold himself up a little longer. He stumbles across the room and lays the old man on his

bed.

The sweat rolls into his eyes, stinging them blind.

A whistling croaking voice, pausing after each word, an inhuman voice, says,

"In. The Bible. Pen. On clock."

He wheels round and lurches over, fingers fumbling, words ticking like an inexorable clock, "Bible pen bible

pen bible pen."

He shakes the bible and a piece of folded typescript falls out, snatches the pen off the clock knocking over a

key a candle butt, and races back to the bed.

"Ahh!" he calls wildly, "something to write on!" picking up the fallen bible and bringing it back. He is dizzy and sick, both with his own pain and the knowledge that the old man, however strenuous and gallant his