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  “Hey, would you like Papakura while you’re here?’ Tumuaki asked.

  “Huh?” she asked.

  “As a kaitiaki, I mean.”

  Most people had a celebrity avatar as their kaitiaki, or personal guardian, on their phone. It gave them a thrill to get news and omens from a grizzled kuia like Maisey Rika. Tumuaki was offering something else here.

  “You mean the ancestor?” Āhua asked.

  “Well, a simulation.”

  It’d be a breach of security protocol, but a kaitiaki was just a voice and a face. What’s more, she was curious. “Sure, why not?”

  “I should tell you she’s still in beta. They’re all a bit . . . dark.”

  “Dark?” Āhua sat up in bed.

  “We fed the tribe’s entire archive into a learning AI, and used it to create simulations of fifty tīpuna. The idea was to literally bring the archive to life so we could understand history just by chatting with our ancestors. But a lot of the source data was colonial. The simulations turned out a bit – savage. Take her advice with a pinch of salt, okay?”

  “Okay, sure. Let’s do it.”

  Tumuaki groped for his phone on the bedside table, then passed Āhua hers. She accepted his request, and blinked in surprise. She’d been expecting some wrinkled old crone; not this young woman with wild dark hair and clear skin and a serious mouth, her lips and chin inked deep green. Āhua realised with a start that the woman’s moko was identical to the one she’d had lasered on. Papakura’s eyes danced with recognition and mischievous life.

  I’m your twenty-third great-grandmother, the voice in her ear said. Welcome home.

  Long after Tumuaki had fallen asleep at her side, Āhua stayed up talking to the simulation. Each question about her father’s people and their lives on this coast led to ten more. She watched digital re-enactments of the meeting at Rūnanga when Ngāi Tahu debated permanently settling the Poutini coast. She watched Tūterakiwhānoa force open the Māwhera Gorge with his enormous thighs. She watched her twenty-third great-grandmother wield a taiaha in battle, dancing as if she was the altar flame that burned at Māwhera, centuries ago.

  Back in the upper Arahura, Āhua pushed Tumuaki and their meeting from her mind. Tama was watching her closely, his black eyes unblinking and cold.

  “No issues coming in,” she reiterated as the monorail gently decelerated, then finally came to a halt. “We’re here.”

  They’d reached the creek known as Waitaiki, which was the source of pounamu, and ground zero for the myth and the tour. She and Tama bent their heads together and whispered a quick fierce karakia, then parted without a glance, strangers once more.

  Āhua stepped down onto the platform. She turned in a slow circle, awed at the sacred place she’d heard so much about. The air was damp and cool. The mountains stood silently above. Great rivers of mist poured over the broken tops of the McArthur range into the valley below. Waitaiki Creek tumbled down to the Arahura in a foaming roar. Āhua could feel the wairua of the place. A quiet shiver of anticipation ran down her spine.

  For generations her tribe had dreamed of retrieving their ancestor Waitaiki. The time had come.

  She strolled down to the edge of the creek where the other guests were taking their places at tables discreetly positioned among mountain flax and hebe. Their faces were open, lit up with the unfamiliar beauty. Waiters brought cocktails. Āhua noted the positions of armed guards. She held up her phone as if taking a photo.

  “Kaitiaki,” she murmured, “why are they here? Protecting the guests?”

  Protecting the stone. This is still the real source of pounamu.

  “Okay. Run divination app. What are the omens?”

  Her phone chimed a moment later. It was part old lore – analysis of clouds, GPS mapping of birds, the positions of stars – and part simulation using all available data.

  By nightfall you will drink your enemy’s blood, her kaitiaki said. But your enemy is yourself.

  Āhua glanced sharply at her phone. She’d never had a response like that. “What do you . . .”

  “That’s Arahura stone,” Tumuaki said.

  He was standing at her elbow, just inside her personal space. He reached out to touch the inaka hei matau hanging at her throat. “Bringing it home, eh?”

  “No, this is Tūhua stone,” she said, putting her phone away.

  Tumuaki raised an eyebrow. “Tūhua stone?”

  Āhua kept her voice playful. “Waitaiki’s the mother of greenstone, and she’s from Tūhua. So it’s really ours.”

  “Hah! You—”

  The reedy blast of a pūkaea cut short Tumuaki’s reply. Moments later a second trumpet joined, the note surging out then falling away in a plaintive echo of the human voice. The ground began to tremble. Cocktail glasses shook with a high-pitched ringing, then with a shuddering groan the taniwha burst from the river, clawed his way up the bank, then came to stand before them, poised and dripping, sniffing the air. His eyes flashed with the rainbow iridescence of pāua shell.

  Waitaiki climbed from his back and slipped down onto the river bank, naked and shivering. The taniwha hauled driftwood into a heap and kindled it into flame with a quick karakia. Āhua watched with fascination and horror as Waitaiki and the creature folded themselves together beside the blaze, her arms draped across his neck, his tail encircling her body; concentric circles of life. The ancient deity and the young woman whispered to each other in low voices.

  It was an ingenious piece of theatre, Āhua thought. What if Waitaiki wasn’t kidnapped? What if she eloped?

  Every now and then Poutini lifted his head and looked down the valley. On the horizon, something gleamed. The creature let out a rattling hiss. Āhua knew how the myth went: Waitaiki’s husband had tracked them here, and was approaching fast.

  “Here we go,” murmured Tumuaki. “Wait ’til you see Tama-āhua’s war party.”

  “I can’t wait,” she murmured back.

  Poutini unfolded himself and stood with muscular grace, padding away from Waitaiki to stand in the riverbed just metres from the guests, his attention focused on the horizon like a hunting dog.

  From this close, Āhua could see the twin rows of serrated shark’s teeth gleaming in his jaw, the impossibly detailed matte-black tattooing on his hide, the ripple of muscles and tendons beneath. She knew they were the pistons and hydraulics of the tribe’s best engineers, but the wairua felt strong.

  Then with shocking clarity, Poutini began to karakia. The penetrating, otherworldly rhythm of the atua’s war chant seemed to come from everywhere at once. He whipped his tail and stamped the ground, his eyes bulged and he seemed to grow in size. Sudden mist burst up from the creek, swirling at random then solidifying into Poutini’s own form, again and again, until a rank of ten spectral taniwha stood ready to fight at his side. The gleam on the horizon grew brighter against the thundery grey day.

  Poutini’s chant reached a crescendo, then abruptly changed. The creature bowed his enormous head, took a deep inbreath, and then his war cry became a lament. Though he was of the atua, he knew he would never defeat Waitaiki’s husband in battle.

  The wraiths of mist disintegrated in brief showers of rain. Poutini keened with an unearthly sadness that rang from the stones. He turned and folded himself once more around Waitaiki. His tail encircled the woman, holding her close.

  His embrace grew tight, and his lament sank to a rumbling dirge, and he began to squeeze, and squeeze harder, bearing down on his lover with the great remorseless pressure of the mountains themselves. If he couldn’t have her, no one could. The piercing bone cry of a kōauau toroa joined in. Hairs stood up on the back of Āhua’s neck, and she felt tears forming in her eyes.

  Waitaiki started to struggle, and then kicked and screamed as her skin began to change. Poutini’s tail coiled around her again and her breathing slowed and her struggles grew feebl
e. Poutini’s spiritual essence crept through her veins. She and the taniwha both wept. Her feet stilled, now looking as if carved. Soon she would turn entirely to stone, and shatter, and the tourists would all get a piece to take home. Āhua couldn’t watch.

  She took several steps backwards, away from Tumuaki, and turned to look at the transfixed crowd. Even the guards were staring, though they saw it every day. Āhua scanned the many upturned faces.

  There.

  Tama had positioned himself on a small rise next to the booth that controlled the production. He was watching her intently, waiting for the signal. She flexed her fingers. The light in the sky grew brighter. She took the long silver kōauau from her kete and nodded.

  Now.

  As Āhua shook the kōauau, it telescoped out into a steel taiaha with a faint click, and as Tama brought up the barrel of his AR15, the light in the sky grew blinding, accompanied by the harsh scream of engines. As one, the crowd screamed as four jet-black helicopters tore overhead and a volley of rockets slammed into the monorail at their back, incinerating the sinuous white carriages in a series of brilliant flashes.

  Tama began to fire in tight bursts into the clusters of guards. Āhua moved with a feeling of release, lashing the blade of her weapon into the chest of the nearest guard, cleaving his breast-bone with a metallic snap. She sliced another across the temple as she spun, then felled a third with a bloody thrust to the throat. They were dead before the first wave of molten glass from the explosions hit the ground.

  Then she was sprinting through the smoke, head down, tearing into the next corpus of guards in a silver blur. Someone screamed at the guests to take cover. She heard the suppressed thump of Tama’s semi-automatic, felt the huff of displaced air as rounds tore past.

  Blood and fire filled her nostrils. Centuries of anticipation swarmed in her veins.

  Overhead, the huge twin-rotored helicopters swung wide and circled back around. As Āhua moved through the chaotic crowd towards another body of guards, she glimpsed the great whipping steel cables beneath each helicopter, and the familiar shape of her own iwi insignia on their sides.

  Tama disappeared into the production booth. Two shots. An instant later the animatronic Waitaiki ceased her struggles. Poutini lay down on the river bank, with just his chest rising, eyes blinking, gone into some holding pattern. The epic soundtrack of taonga pūoro cut out, leaving the crackle of flames, the vicious rattling thump of heavy-calibre fire from the helicopters, and thrilled screams from the crowd.

  In the thick of the melee, something flashed into Āhua’s vision. Without conscious thought she twitched the head of her taiaha up and felt a jarring impact. Another blow came in low and fast, and she found herself back-pedalling furiously, fending off lightning-fast strikes about her head.

  Tumuaki. With a mere pounamu shimmering in his right hand. She spun on the ball of her right foot, sweeping the head of her taiaha towards his belly, then at the last instant flashed the broad blade down into his head.

  He danced sideways and parried with a glancing blow, then struck hard with a back-handed grip. Āhua rolled away and turned, coming back to standing, taiaha quivering in her hands. Did she really want to hurt him? She pukana’d, a high-pitched yip, and sprang forward. Tumuaki was expecting the attack, raised his mere to parry, but he hadn’t expected her strength. She smashed the weapon from his hand, stepped forward and flicked the tongue of her taiaha around to rest against his carotid artery. The feathered collar of her weapon danced in time with their breathing. They were eye to eye, slick with sweat.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  “Taking Waitaiki home,” she whispered back.

  The air around them erupted in a whirlwind of downdraft as the choppers came in to land. Warriors in black fatigues jumped clear and forced the remaining guards into the dirt. Tumuaki was herded in with the rest of the tourists and guides.

  The blades slowed, the din lessened. The cockpit of one opened and Āhua’s great-uncle Tūhākari stepped down, wrapped in a long kahukurī, flanked by his own personal guards. He strode towards Āhua through billowing black smoke, pressed his nose to hers, then pulled her into a brief embrace.

  “Well done,” he shouted in her ear. “We’ll get that filth off your face. You’ve earned your real moko kauae today.”

  She had to fight a strange urge to pull away.

  From another helicopter the engineering team deployed. Women in scuba gear slipped into the river, trailing steel cables and slings. They’d drilled the manoeuvre dozens of times, knowing they only had minutes before Ngāi Tahu scrambled a reactionary force.

  Then the engines powered up, the rotors whipping faster and faster until they disappeared. The air buckled and shimmered from the heat of the exhausts. Tūhākari stood with his head bowed at the water’s edge, chanting low and fast. The cables came taut. Slowly the choppers began to rise.

  With a grinding, ripping rumble accompanied by a high and drawn-out scream, something began to rise from the waters. The helicopters’ engines howled under the load and the aircraft rose higher and higher until the tremendous form of a woman breached the surface and came to hover above the boiling creek.

  The real Waitaiki was as large as a whale. She lay on her side with her legs drawn to her chest as if sleeping. Her face was peaceful. Her hair swooped away in the direction of the current, chipped and scarred where a millennia of storms had torn fragments off and sent them tumbling into the sea. The pale green-grey inaka of her skin gleamed.

  Āhua fingered the pounamu around her neck with a blood- flecked hand. Her taonga had come from this river, which meant it was part of Waitaiki herself. She thought of her tribe’s plans to return her to the bay at Tūhua.

  Her phone chimed.

  There’s no mana in running like a dog with a weka, her kaitiaki said in her ear. Kill and eat every person here so your victory is complete. Or cut your ties.

  Āhua stared at Papakura’s face on her phone. She couldn’t understand what was happening. Her avatar simply delivered messages from her own system.

  “You’re meant to be my kaitiaki,” she stuttered.

  I’m your twenty-third great-grandmother. Cut the tie. She belongs here. So do you.

  “You’re a simulation.”

  I’m a child of Te Rorohikotākata, the Kāi Tahu AI. If she leaves there will be two generations of war. Your children’s children will be consumed by fire.

  “I don’t have children.”

  But you will.

  Āhua looked up from her phone. Tumuaki was staring at her across the smoke.

  Āhua walked to the water’s edge and gazed up at the greenstone goddess. The scream of engines made it hard to think, but she’d made up her mind. She sheathed her taiaha behind her back, jumped to catch the nearest cable where it ran underneath Waitaiki, then hauled herself up until she was standing on top of the great stone figure. The downdraft blew her hair in wild tangles.

  *

  In her ear, Āhua heard Papakura begin to chant, something so ancient she barely understood the words. The karakia had been passed down from tohunga to student for generations until the chain of transmission broke with the missionaries, but the words had been transcribed into the archive by a Pākehā in 1834. The tribal AI had finally retrieved the chant from the archive after centuries lying dormant, and turned it back into speech. The syllables resounded with undiminished power.

  Āhua unsheathed her taiaha, and cut the silver umbilical in two. The helicopter bucked skywards like an ejector seat with the sudden release of tension. The cable whipped high into the air, catching in the light before snarling up into the rotors. The helicopter did a lazy backflip, then plunged towards the valley floor. Āhua leapt to the ground and rolled clear as the mother of pounamu crashed back into the river, pulling two other helicopters in and down. As their rotors touched, the guests wailed. Smoking fragments
of blade strafed the tussock with a vicious hiss. Both helicopters plummeted into the river, and the third broke across the rocks with a roar. Suffocating heat flared over Āhua’s face. The pilot of the last chopper hit the release on his cable and climbed free.

  Āhua looked for Tumuaki and found him struggling in the grip of a soldier. In a few strides she was there. She pulled the mere from her own war belt and threw it back-handed. It caught the soldier behind the ear, dropping him to his knees, then she whipped it back into her hand by its cord and offered the weapon to Tumuaki, handle first. He cracked the soldier across the head.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I changed my mind. Waitaiki’s home is here,” she said, glancing up at the remaining helicopter. “We need cover.”

  “The production booth,” Tumuaki replied. “There’s an entire facility underneath.”

  They moved fast through a tableau of grappling soldiers and guards, lit by a dozen burning fires. As they reached the production booth, instinct made Āhua look up. A gust of wind cleared the smoke. Stalking towards them through the flames, gaze fixed, gun levelled, was Tama.

  The bullet tore across the top of her thigh as she rolled behind the booth. Blood welled from the cut. Tumuaki was at her side, pressed into the dirt. Shots ricocheted overhead.

  To her left, a guard lay sprawled. A rifle hung from his hands. “There,” she said. “Grab it when I say. Go!”

  She hauled herself up and lunged to the right. Bullets whined. Tumuaki crawled to the guard’s side and swung the rifle around, leaning it on the dead man’s chest. His shot snapped into a boulder, spraying Tama with shards of rock. He dropped, clutching his face.

  “Muskets made all the difference, eh?” Tumuaki yelled.

  “I’d rather have a real taniwha!” she yelled back.

  “We do!”

  Overhead, the roar of the helicopter grew, and Āhua heard the sickening thump of heavy-calibre fire. The chopper dropped down into her line of view, skimming the tussock, and swung side-on to expose the open door where the gunner sat. Directly behind the helicopter she saw Poutini’s huge motionless form, stretched out like a small hill.