Wings of fire, p.4
Wings of Fire, page 4
Suddenly, terrifyingly, there was a small cold hand on the back of her neck and she was being pushed under the water again. Sabrina struck out, instinctively fighting back—this was no waterlogged clothing dragging her down, someone had pushed her, someone was trying to drown her! She kicked free, fought her way back up to the surface and drew a painful breath of air—and then she was under once more, this time pulled down, the cold fingers of a human hand curled around her ankle. Sabrina opened her eyes to the murky lake water, looking down as she kicked at the hands snatching at her feet.
She had been half-expecting Jack, but instead she saw white-blonde hair like foam streaming around that inhumanly sharp face she had last seen on the deck of the doomed ferry. The ghost girl was ferociously physical now, a real threat. Her skin seemed even whiter under water, white and bloated like flesh long-dead, and Sabrina was betrayed into a cry at the sight of the otherworldly creature. Bubbles of air escaped from her mouth. The apparition smiled, sharp teeth gleaming in the murk like knives. With the last of her strength Sabrina brought her free foot down, kicking at that grinning face, and found herself momentarily free.
Her throat was tight, her vision narrowing to black around her, when she finally broke surface, greedily gulping for air, swallowing several choking mouthfuls of the lake as she tried to focus on staying afloat, treading water. Coughing weakly, trying to clear her airways, Sabrina braced for another attack at any moment; she frantically scanned the choppy surface of the lake, which betrayed nothing of what lurked beneath, praying that this time she would have some warning, that she’d at least see her nemesis.
And she did—there it was, the pale hair spread out on the surface like seaweed. But the monster seemed to be struggling with somebody else. There was a familiarity to the other combatant, but Sabrina was too overwhelmed and terrified to stop and think who it might be. Whoever it was, it was keeping the pale ghost girl busy, and away from Sabrina herself. This was the only chance she would have.
Fear and instinct kicked in. Even as her conscious mind inserted the thought that this might be one of the people from the ferry, that someone at least had survived, that she owed something to whoever it was, owed a blood debt, a death for a death…even as all these thoughts raced through her mind, her body had taken independent action. Almost without realising that she had done it, still gasping for every breath, her limbs stiffening with the cold, she turned and fled, swimming as fast as she could. Away. Away.
She swam awkwardly, against the choppy waves teased out of the lake by a strengthening wind, the chilly water numbing her, slowing her down. Water kept splashing in her eyes, blurring her vision, blinding her. The shore she could half-glimpse through the twin veils of lake water and the tears that kept threatening to overwhelm her seemed so far, so terribly far away…
She became aware of movement and stopped swimming, treading water once more, paralysed with sudden fear. Is she back…? Is the ghost back?
She was getting weaker, the cold and her fear combining to slow down her heartbeat, her thoughts. The word why still fluttered around on the inside of her skull, battering itself against her thoughts with the insistent wings of a moth trying to reach a candle flame through glass—but there was a lassitude there now, almost an indifference. Soon, soon, it would not matter why. She would be with them, all the dead ones, down at the bottom with the dying ferry…
A supporting hand suddenly slipped under her arm. She turned her head to see Jack, or the thing she knew as Jack, right behind her. He was no longer wearing his sweater, and his bare skin seemed darker than it had been, no longer a warm shade of honey but a deeper, burnished colour, almost as black as the water around her. His face was… changed… very subtly, but it was changed—that disconcerting skin was now stretched taut against chiselled sharp cheekbones that were no longer the flat ones of what had been his obvious Polynesian heritage. Only his eyes remained the same, dark, glittering blankly like obsidian. The rest of his body glistened where it rose out of the water, gleaming, inhuman. He gave the impression of raw strength, of immense size; it was as though all the dimly sensed possibilities smouldering beneath the unprepossessing looks of the Maori youth from the boat were now blooming into something huge and strange and powerful.
Did he too come to drown her? Sabrina did not even try to fight him.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry…”
He watched her for a moment, supporting her with a light but firm grip. Their eyes met, and she saw the sharp slivers of broken glass she had imagined earlier reflecting in his eyes. There was nothing human about him now. He was of the lake, she realised. He was the lake.
“Here.” He produced a lifejacket, probably the same one he had denied her earlier, the one he had thrown overboard, and handed it to her. “It’s harder in the water, but get that on.”
When he relinquished his hold on Sabrina, she sank under the surface, too exhausted and too resigned to her fate to register the change in him. Jack muttered an irritated oath and caught her, holding her up as he pulled the orange plastic over her head, fastened it around her waist, and pulled the cord on the front. It bloomed; suddenly Sabrina was buoyed by the bright orange thing, floating free without his help.
“Come on. Swim!” He gave her a push, but Sabrina resisted.
He had tried to kill her, had meant to kill her. Why was he helping her now? She stared at him, blank, stunned. She had questions. She could remember none of them. None but the first, the last, the one that meant everything. The word which had finally found a gap in the glass and was now hurling itself straight at the candle.
“Why?” she whispered. His name swam back into her consciousness, touched her mind. “Why, Jack?”
He looked at her, and reached out to gently push a lock of wet hair out of her eyes. Sabrina flinched from the touch, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I did not want those people dead today.” Jack said, his voice full of regret. “She has no right to command me. Not here.”
She blinked the water out of her eyes. Atonement? He was helping her out of guilt…?
“Fiana, what of Fiana?”
“The dark one?…”
He raised himself out of the water, seemingly without effort, and looked around. His body was…not quite human any more, turning into something long, sinuous, even darker and blacker than before. But the light was fading fast and it was getting harder and harder to see—and Sabrina’s mind was in overload, merely noting things mechanically without classifying or analysing them. “I can’t see her. I can’t see either of them. But this is not her domain either, less even than Shura.”
“Who’s Shura?”
“The other, the fair one, the foreigner… Swim, dammit. You’ll die out here.”
And suddenly, just like that, she knew whom she had abandoned out there, fighting Shura in the cold waters of the lake. The familiar shape she had turned her back on. Fiana. It had been Fiana. Her friend.
“Oh, dear God!”
“What?” Jack’s head snapped around.
“I left her! I left her alone, I left her with that…. with…”
“There was nothing you could have done!”
“But you can help her!” Now, floating with the help of the lifejacket, all the guilt came rushing back and caught Sabrina by the throat. Here was salvation. Jack had come for her, he would go to Fiana’s aid. Atonement—he wanted atonement—this would not bring back any of those lost lives on the ferry, but if there was one, just one, that could be saved…Sabrina held her hands out to him, pleaded for her friend, the creature that had saved her. “Please, Jack!”
He frowned. “Too late now. She’s like you in the lake.”
“Why?”
Jack looked at Sabrina a little strangely. “You really don’t know…?”
“I only know she is my friend,” Sabrina said, and her voice broke. “She is only here because of me being here. I don’t know how I know that, but I know it. If she dies here, I might as well have killed her.” She coughed weakly. She could no longer feel her feet. “Do what you can, Jack. Please.”
She knew that he could do it. If he chose. She knew entirely too many things all at once. Understanding was still not there, but all of a sudden it was as though there had been a closed and locked room in her mind, and now, suddenly, someone had lit a lamp in there and she could see into it, see clearly, knew things she never knew she knew…
Jack lowered himself back into the water, level with her again. “Will you be able to get to shore on your own?”
“Yes.” She hoped so. With the life jacket she would.
“Go on then. I’ll see what I can do.” He touched her cheek, and let his hand slide down the line of her jaw and neck to the pendant. He fingered it lightly, then laid a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her away. “Go. I’ll see what I can do. I am sorry, Sabrina. Believe me, I am sorry. This should never have happened.”
Sabrina felt her eyes fill up with tears again but he was already gone, disappearing behind a wave. She felt something brush past her leg, a sleek something much like a fish, but larger, much larger; she recoiled instinctively, shying away. In the gathering darkness she thought she glimpsed a long sinuous neck rising out of the water, and then… a wing? A wing? She was obviously having hallucinations. She had to get out of this water. Now.
She turned towards the shore and began paddling, awkward and floundering with the bulky life vest.
The lake had turned into an ocean. There was nothing but water all around her; it seemed to go on forever. She swam, and swam, and swam—a wind-up toy, going through the motions as though she had been wound up with a key and left to swim until the mechanism ran down. Hours seemed to pass before she glimpsed a deeper shadow rising out of the water that was the shoreline. Finally, just about at the point where she was ready to give up and just let the lake take her, she felt something resembling solidity under her feet. Her shoeless foot came down on something sharp, a stone or a buried stick, and she moaned softly as she sidestepped, dragging her feet, crawling on hands and knees, scrambling to the shore as best she could, shivering violently, closing her eyes tightly. Stiff from cold and exhaustion, sprawled half in, half out of the water, she had no strength left any more.
When she finally opened her eyes, after what seemed a very long time, and looked up at the trees above her, she gasped, and adrenaline gave her strength to sit up. It was almost full dark now and things were difficult to see clearly, but she thought she could make out a man, right there in the trees—he looked like he was wearing the ubiquitous Swanndri shirt, and what looked like some sort of a hat, something that threw his face into deep shadow. He held a rifle in his hand. Sabrina stayed on her knees, frozen, looking up at him. He made no move either. Had he seen her?
She finally broke the stasis, struggled to her feet, lost sight of him for a fraction of a second. When she looked up again, the man was no longer there. Had she been hallucinating again…? Her wet clothes clung to her, cold and clammy; she was starting to shiver uncontrollably. She was too cold, she had to get warm soon, had to find somewhere to get warm... She turned to look out over the lake, searching for Jack. But she could see nothing. If he was out there it was too dark for her to see him.
*3*
Jack left Sabrina’s side with serious misgivings. He shouldn’t have let her survive this, he should never have let her go, this he knew. There would be a price to pay for that.
But Shura should not have sunk the boat either; the people on that boat had nothing to do with the tapu that Sabrina had unknowingly broken. That pale foreign spirit cared nothing for the value of life. Jack had taken his fair share of lives, too, but there had always been good reason for it—and, when it was necessary, there were ways it had to be done. Shura seemed unbound by such things; killing was part of her very being. He had left her alone as she had emptied the woods of living things to assuage her thirst, but she had done this in his lake. And she would pay a price for that too. Making that happen was a task he would savour.
Why had Sabrina come to his lake bearing that other hidden in a pendant around her neck? She had not known; she had said so and he believed her. It was there in her face. She had taken the stone in ignorance or through trickery, not willingly or under duress. But there was something about her all the same. Something familiar in her spirit that had slowed him down, demanded an explanation. She was so delicate, she looked as if she might break at a careless touch. She reminded him of his sister, of Koronae, before…
<<>>
“Koronae is gone! She is gone! Gone!”
He-who-had-been Taunui had heard them calling—she was the last, the most beautiful, the only child remaining in the house of his aged father. All of the sons were gone, slain by their enemies, but of the many brothers only Taunui had come home, atua now, one of the spirits, watching over his family. Koronae, the beautiful. What had happened to her?
They had all gone looking for her, the entire tribe, knowing that she was all that the old chief had left. For days they searched, and they found nothing. But the wairua of Taunui, the spirit, went with them, ranged further, higher, faster, a brother searching for his lost sister, a spirit searching the forest where she had gone, finding places the human searchers could not go, seeking with the eyes of the spirit for the soul of his sister. And he found Koronae, at last, lying broken like a reed with her leg shattered and white bone showing, holding her arm strangely, as though her ribs hurt. Her eyes were closed, her breathing shallow.
But he was atua, of the spiritual realm, and had no physical comfort to give.
“Stay for me, my sister,” Taunui whispered into her ear, and for just a moment he thought he saw her features relax from their grimace of pain. “Stay for me. I go to send help…”
He could not move her nor bind her hurts, but he could tell others where she was. Most of the village was still out searching—but his other sister, Moturau, the one whom her father had handed to her uncle, the tohunga, to raise, was asleep in their uncle’s house when Taunui returned to the village, the kainga. The atua slipped into her dream, gently, shaping the path into the mountains, showing her where to climb, which landmarks to follow. ‘Tell the tohunga,’ Taunui whispered. “She is here, our sister, our Koronae, she is hurt, she needs help, tell them. Come for her. Come quickly…”
When Moturau woke she knew immediately that she had been summoned by the spirit of her brother. “I must go,” she told her uncle. “I know where she is, I can find her, I can bring her back. She is hurt; she needs my help.”
“Take men with you, to protect you, to help you…”
“I must go, I must go now, I cannot wait!”
So the tohunga made a kite for Moturau, and painted it red to protect her from the maeroero, the wild men of the woods, and said, “The atua may have told you where she was but he could fly there over the trees, over the stones… the kite will show you the way. Follow the kite and it will lead you to Koronae.”
Moturau took the kite and went into the forest. For three days and nights she followed it, the red kite flying high over the trees, scrambling over hills and through forest, past ancient beeches and young ferns only starting to unfurl. She followed the kite and the dream which her brother had left with her until the red kite finally came down to rest—and where it landed there she found her sister, in great pain and close to death.
Moturau had not slept in three days and had only eaten while on the run. Weak and exhausted, she fell to her knees when she saw her sister, and wept. Koronae opened her eyes and saw her sister’s pale, drawn face, her moko tattoo stark black against it, and wept with her.
“What have you done, my sister?” Koronae whispered, very weak now. “For now that you too are gone from our uncle’s house, so is our father left childless in his old age…”
And they held each other, and wept together, bitterly and long.
And their tears flowed, and pooled at their feet, and ran down the mountainside, and they wept until a lake glimmered there when the moon rose that night. And they died there, the two sisters who loved one another so well.
And Taunui was stricken with guilt at what he had helped to do, and his wairua was filled with pain. And it was then, as his spirit mourned his lost sisters at the shore of the new lake, that he became its guardian, its taniwha, the spirit of the warrior flowing and changing until the great black dragon stood there mantling its wings, roaring its sorrow, its vow to preserve and to protect, and dived deep into the lake to become one with it, until the world grew old.
<<>>
He had not thought about his sister Koronae for a long time. That was before. Before he had been what he was now, had been for so long he could barely remember before. Once, long ago, there had been no lake. The pale people had not yet come here when he had walked the earth in a purely human body. And he would not, back then, have let Shura have Koronae.
He searched the waters for the pale killer. He could taste her presence in the lake, but he could not find that other one, Fiana, whom Sabrina had asked him to rescue. But then Fiana was different to Shura, and different to him too. She was new; he had never seen her kind here in his lake before. But he knew what she was, in the manner of their kind recognised one another. He knew of her kindred, he had heard stories about them; they could appear human, as she had been on the boat. Vulnerable, but she would have been vulnerable in her other form anyway. If he was right, she was a salt-water creature, and his lake had been no place for such as she.
There was a scent to Shura, the faintly sweet, faintly coppery scent which was the scent of death, of dying, of spilled blood. When she had been new here and had started killing in the woods, the whole forest had reeked of it. Jack had learned to know it, and to avoid it if possible; when she had cleaned out the forest she had confined herself to a couple of preferred hideouts and Jack didn’t willingly approach those. Now, here in the lake, her scent was confused by her recent kills, and diluted by the lake water—but he finally located her and headed for her as fast as only one of his kind could move. When he came upon her, she was holding on to Fiana’s nearly lifeless body, keeping her under water, greedily tasting her dimly flickering life, already claiming it as hers…
