Authors: Summer Wigmore
Magic, she guessed.
It must’ve been a thoroughly magical place in general, because it seemed like the forest stretched on forever, but at just her next step she was walking into someplace that was …quite undeniably a café, somehow. Walls and everything. And tables, tables with – with
very
strange people sitting at them, and oh, wow, there was greenery everywhere, plants on the tables and flax in the corners and vines hanging down and gosh this was pretty. There was a rickety staircase that led to another level and that one was even
more
bestrewn with greenery, blooming rata twining with the staircase, ferns half-concealing some of the tables.
Tony stood and gaped for a few happy seconds before Whai turned back and tugged at her arm. “Such an embarrassment,” he grumbled, towing her to one of the tables and pushing her down into a seat. He took the one opposite her, shoving someone’s deserted coffee cup aside with a clatter of cutlery.
Tony looked around, bouncing a little in her seat. There were iwi atua
everywhere
, gathered in chattering groups around tables or sitting by themselves or bickering comfortably, so that the air had the normal thick café warmness made of equal parts conversation and coffee-smell. The familiarity of that was sort of really cool, when juxtaposed with the obviously inhuman nature of the Hikurangi’s customers – there were people with scales, or spines, or strange eyes, or leaves where their hair should be, and anyway it was just really awesome to see people with feathers for hair or inhuman faces or whatever else clutching mugs of hot coffee in long-clawed hands and leafing absentmindedly through magazines and chewing on brownies.
Whai scowled at her, drumming his claws against the table. “You’re staring,” he said.
“Well, everyone’s staring at me,” Tony pointed out. “I mean, everyone with eyes, anyway – oh wow, is that guy made of
greenstone
?”
“Huh?” said Whai, looking. “Oilhead. Course he ain’t.”
“Dangit.”
“That’s just how your brain’s seeing it, or however that goes,” said Whai vaguely. “Doubt you could handle the truth of things. But – look, stop staring!” He grasped her hand and pushed it gently down onto the table, which was when she realised she’d actually been pointing at the made-of-pounamu guy. “Tony,” he said, seriously, and she tugged her hand free but met his green-glass eyes. “This is where we go when we’re tired of playing at human, got it? When we can’t handle slinking around at edges and corners and dead-of-night. This is our place, it’s the only place where we can go and just be, and I know this is all new to you and a lot to deal with, but – stop panicking! Things are gonna be fine.”
Tony blinked at him. “What?”
“Things are gonna be just fine,” he said reassuringly. His voice was all thick and raspy, like the waves at the shore. He patted at her hand. “Shhh, now, all’s well.”
“Panicking…?” She stared at him. He stared back at her, eyes too huge and teeth too sharp, as they sat amongst this group of people who were as far away from being human as it was possible to be, as they sat amongst this whole shiny, utterly terrifying new world. She was still reeling from all the discoveries, but – “I’m not panicking, what, Whai this is… ” She flailed her hands a bit, trying to get the point across, her mouth pulled into a helpless grin. “This is
so amazing
, it’s like, the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. How can you not tell that?” The pounamu guy was still looking at her, guarded and gleaming, and she gave him a wave. Then she waved at the other people who were looking at her. Quite a few of them waved back, looking startled but pleased.
Whai stared at her. “What?” Tony said. She was bouncing a bit again. She really wanted to meet these people; they all seemed really interesting. She smiled at him. He looked unsettled.
“That’s… ” he said. “Truthfully, it ain’t common for this kind of newling knowledge to get passed along without, well. Uh.” He tilted his head and dithered. “… Shoulda been more screaming,” he said frankly.
“Oh my gosh oh my gosh,” Tony screeched delightedly, “there’s a guy that looks just like Hinewai oh wow I should totally talk to him!” Then she clapped her hand over her mouth and winced. “Sorry,” she mumbled over her fingers, to the café at large. There was some laughter.
“No, see,” Whai said patiently, “the
terror
kind of screaming, not the oh joy looksee it is the Beach Boys sort of screaming –” But she wasn’t paying attention, because she was too busy leaping to her feet and bouncing over.
“Hey!” she said. “I’m Tony… ”
He stopped and looked her up and down, all haughty disdain. Taking in every inch of her from her pink gumboots to her tousled hair. The words she’d been going to say clung to her throat. “You’re human,” he said, and then, disinterested, his eyes slid away. He walked past her.
He was taller than Hinewai but he had the same sharp angles and pale skin and long clever fingers, the same impossible beauty. He was dressed in an impeccable suit, which drew out his sharpness a lot more than Hin’s casual clothes did. His pupilless eyes were a blankly pale blue like early-morning sky, and his hair was goldy-red and long, tied back in a sort of ponytail.
“I’m a taniwha,” Tony said.
The man froze. Turned around. His eyes took her in again, and his mouth made a twisted line, and then he bowed. It was a shallow, grudging sort of bow, but it was a bow all the same. “Tēnā koe,” he said, and then he said something else in a language Tony didn’t know. His voice was smooth and musical, silvery-sweet, like a flute. It particularly suited the lilting syllables of whatever he was saying, which didn’t really matter, because she couldn’t understand it.
“Huh?” she said.
He raised a perfect eyebrow and relaxed from his carefully respectful stance. “I said, it is an… ” He looked her over again, being quite obvious about it. “…
honour
to meet you, great guardian of the land.” He laughed suddenly, a flash of teeth and throat. “I’ll rest easier knowing we have the likes of you to safeguard us, I am sure.”
Whai had caught up to Tony by this point, and he tugged at her arm. “Tony, you don’t want to talk to
him
,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Ariki’s no fun ’less you want to talk for hours ’bout hitting things and sharpening spears, and
nothing else ever
. There’s better folk to talk to. There’s better
tables
to talk to, c’mon.”
The pale man – Ariki? – drew himself up to his full height and said nothing. He said nothing in a way that spoke volumes.
“I haven’t ever really guarded anything,” Tony said, babbling a bit, “but, I mean, I’m glad the
sacred guardian
aspect is the one people keep on drawing attention to, because I’m pretty sure there’s lots of stories where taniwha, like, eat people and stuff, and that’d be even less fun than guarding things.” There was a tension between them. She really hoped they weren’t about to fight.
“New to your identity? What a surprise. I would never have guessed at that. Considering the sort of company you keep.” Ariki pointedly did not look at Whai, who bristled. “I’ve paid you my courtesies, beastling, let me by.” He looked down his nose at her.
“Sure!” She beamed and held out her hand, and after an icy, disdainful pause, he shook it, dropping it quickly afterwards as though afraid of catching humanity from her like some sort of plague. “Just one question though – what are you?”
“I am of the air and earth,” he said. “I am a mountain lord. I am the music you hear in the mists that you cannot help but follow. I am
patupaiarehe
, child, and you’d do well to remember it.”
“He’s one of the mistfolk,” Whai said dismissively. “Like I said. They hang around singing shoddy magics and trilling to birds and… and dying of cheeseburgers, and the like.”
Ariki snarled something unintelligible, his hand going to his pocket; the carved bone handle of some sort of knife jutted out of it. It didn’t really match his suit.
“Cheeseburgers? What?” Tony said, trying to break the tension, though none of the other atua were looking at them as though this was anything unusual.
“They can’t stomach cooked food,” Whai said, grinning at his triumph. “Well, we can’t either, but – ’s like how fire hurts, but for patupaiarehe it goes for cooked food too. You can ward ’em off by, like, flailing a kumara at them. It is the
best
of things.”
“At least we don’t spend all our days wading through the oily muck,” Ariki snapped, looking much less regal and lordly, “which was foul even before tangata pumped all their soiled slimes into it. You’re looking especially repulsive today, Whai. Was it something in the water, or were you merely
born
human levels of hideous? I extend my pity –”
“Your hair looks like a baby’s first attempt at weaving,” Whai shot.
Ariki stopped talking and just spluttered for a second. He smoothed a strand of hair back from his face. “Well. Your hair looks like shark oil! Like red ochre, like all that’s contemptible in the world.”
“You stink of uncleanliness. You’re a dog, you are! My fern-root’s the bones of your ancestors!”
“You’re bored enough to play at war, but you know nothing of death or the hunt. Play with your nets as much as you like, fisher-rat. They will be the things that hold you still when I drown you, when I burn you, when I stab you deep.”
“You’re a dick.”
“You – you are a
human douchebag
.”
“I hope you die of –”
“I hope fishermen’s boats hack you to a million –”
Tony tuned them out. She was watching the fight, first with alarm, then with amusement. There was… something about them, she thought, looking from one to the other. They both had a lean build – Whai was shorter, but made up for it in the way he stood. They were both ferocious, all prickly pride. Whai was smirking, Ariki practically spitting with rage, but their faces had a certain sharpness in common. On a hunch she said, “Are ponaturi and patupaiarehe related?”
They both stopped mid-sentence to stare at her in horror.
“
No
,” Ariki said, at the same time as Whai said, grudgingly, “Yeah.” They glared at each other for a few seconds, and then Ariki relented and said, as though it pained him, “Unfortunately.
Distantly
.”
Tony grinned. “That’d explain it, then,” she said. “We should probably get going, I don’t want you guys to fight any more. But it was excellent to meet you.” She bowed to Ariki.
He sniffed, trying not to look pleased. “Hark at you playing the guardian! You’re not entirely insufferable, I suppose, for someone raised human,” he said. “If you make efforts to associate with better oomph. What on
earth
do you think you’re, I, please unhand me at –
thank
you.” He took a hasty step away and smoothed out his jacket, looking a little panicky. Heh. Surprise ambush hugs were the
best
ambush hugs.
Whai remained standing where he was, glaring green-eyed at Ariki. “Whai, c’mon,” Tony said, tugging at his arm. “We should get food or something. Like whelks! But not actually whelks, because ew.”
He let her tug him away from the patupaiarehe, but he dug in his heels once they’d gone a few metres. “Mist man,” he said, voice flat and grating as broken glass, as a mouthful of shark teeth. “Hear me and know this. Stay
away
from this girl. Her mind is not yours to meddle with, her soul not yours to shape. She’s too strong for you, besides! She could easily tear through any flimsy net you cared to toss! Ha!”
Ariki stared at him. “… Calm yourself, fish boy,” he said, all cold amusement. “I have no designs on your new friend. Rest assured that I know better than to tangle with a taniwha. You, though… oh, Whai, Whai,
Whai
.” He gave a patronising little smile and shook his head. “Are you truly getting attached? Like she’s truly kin to you?”
Whai bristled. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“She’s nowhere near mad enough to be one of your kind,” said Ariki, “or wild enough, or
dead
enough.”
Whai jerked back like he’d been hit. His face went dangerous. Which was strange, because it had been dangerous all along, snarls and ferocity. Now there was a blankness to him, though. Tony thought of him by the pools outside, vulnerable, brokenness etched into the tense lines of his back.
Ariki looked to Tony like he rather regretted saying that. If so, he was too proud to take it back.
In a matter-of-fact way Whai grabbed Ariki’s tie and started to strangle him.
“No,” Tony said, too quiet. No one in the café moved to intervene or even looked concerned. What were they thinking? “
No
,” she said, louder, and she slammed her hand down on Whai’s hand hard enough to break his grip, then placed a hand on each man’s shoulder and shoved. Whai went flying in one direction, Ariki in the other, stumbling awkwardly into a table and clutching at his neck.
Tony stood there, breathing hard. More-or-less silence had fallen. The other atua were staring. She felt hideously embarrassed, now, but this wasn’t over yet.
“You!” she barked, glaring at Ariki. He pointed at himself questioningly. “
Yes
you, you poncy idiot! It’s okay to needle him, he needles you back, he can take it. But
fight fair
! Okay? And you!” She rounded on Whai, glaring. He shrank back. “You,” Tony said, more quietly, “are gonna be treated to a nice lunch and I might hug you some more. And stop gnashing your teeth at him!” she added, aggressively, and Whai wiped one hand across his mouth and nodded.
Better.
“What was that about?” she asked later, when they were sitting at their table. Whai had for some reason chosen to purchase an albino eel, all pink pits for eyes and slickly white scales, and he was eating it with an air of cheerful defiance. To antagonise Ariki, maybe. Maybe that was the atua equivalent of fighting. Like, instead of throwing beer at them and shouting FISTICUFFS, just being like, ha, dude, I am going to eat my eel menacingly at youuuu.
“Well of course coffee’s going to be more expensive here,” he said impatiently, “people don’t ask for it as often. A lotta folk don’t like hot things.”