"So you picked up the techniques, but not the spirit of it?"
The question was unexpected. The silence had lasted so long that she thought she must have bored the man with the length of the quotations. She answers,
"Since the techniques really concern spiritual development, I didn't pick up anything except enough physical knowledge to make me extremely dangerous in any fight with anyone who isn't an aikido expert. I'm good enough to take the beginners… I started out with a cold temper, fast reactions, a killer instinct, as well as Maori ancestors… all of which makes me someone to avoid when I'm in a nasty mood. Don't worry," she says grinning, her teeth shining red in the light from the open firebox door, "the philosophy is over for the duration, and I promise never to fight you again. Not without serious provocation, that is. Like not eating this superbly cooked meal… oops, the chops seem a bit crisp-"
"I like burnt chops," says Joe. "Get some clothes on, honey, and we'll dry your hair after tea. Where do we put the bathwater, Kerewin?"
"Chuck it out the door."
After he has done so, he asks without preliminary, "Did you wonder whether that pain might be a consequence of sort of misusing knowledge?"
"I did, but I discarded the idea. Deity tends to exact revenge in more subtle ways than that."
"Yeah?" He doesn't sound convinced.
When she woke for the second time, it was nearly midday. She stretched cautiously, but all the pain had gone. "Downright peculiar," she said, and got dressed.
The Gillayleys were gone from the bach. The bunks were made, the breakfast dishes washed and neatly stacked to drain and dry.
"Kia ora!" read the note, and Simon had written it. "We are making lunch. See you. Arohanui, H H."
Joe's dictation, I'll bet… only he would end it, Hohepa and Haimona.
It was still drizzling outside. No fishing for a while yet, she thought, staring at the sea, and sighed. Another day inside… smoke, and card games, and guarded talk, and everyone looking sideways at each other-
Despite the overt friendliness and reconciliation of last night, she can't believe the former delight in each other's company will be there. Sooner we finish this stay, the better, she told herself, opening the door to the new bach.
Joe swings round and grins. Simon isn't here.
"Uh, good morning, where's…" and Joe grins more widely still. "Good afternoon to you!" he says cheerfully. "Right behind you, he's just been out for a piss."
And you passed me that close while I was doing it, Simon's mime is both graphic and funny. Like his father, he's full of smiles, and she finds herself answering them.
It might be okay yet,
her heart lightening, but even then she is unprepared for the flood of affection she feels for them both when Joe says,
"Now you're back, Himi, we can show her." To Kerewin, "It's because you said it would look good… first thing this morning, I had to put it back," sweeping Simon's hair away from the side of his face.
In the pierced lobe of the child's ear, the gold circle. Bright as the smiles, seemingly as unbroken as their friendship.
5. Spring Tide, Neap Tide, Ebb Tide, Flood
Tide In
The day is warm and the wind is light, but the sea is still rough and whitecapped.
"Tomorrow," says Kerewin, "better wait for tomorrow eh?"
Joe shrugs. He's easy, he says. The fish'll wait. "I'll try for some paua. Where's the best place?"
"Try the second arm of the reef, out where I was standing a couple of days ago. That's the only place I could see any sign of them."
So Joe heads north, the fork over his shoulder, while Kerewin goes to the other end of the beach.
"I'm going to do some sketching." She takes a pad and felt-tips and charcoals.
But she isn't drawing, thinks Simon. Sleeping yeah. It can't be sunbathing. She's lying wrapped in a rug under an umbrella.
He turns his attention back to the cliff above the black bach.
There is a hole there, two feet in diameter. He can see in for nearly a yard, then it tunnels away in a curve and the shadows become too dark to see anything. He'd like to wriggle partly in, stretch his arms out, explore, but there might be something quiet, with teeth, waiting further up.
"It's a rabbithole," Kerewin said. "There's still a few of them round here. The country holds a drive every few months with guns and dogs and a helluva hullabaloo, but there's always a couple missed it seems. Rabbits, I mean, not holes-"
They kill them then, he thinks. Maybe there's nothing down the hole now. Maybe they're all dead.
He finds a stick and inserts it cautiously. It goes into the shadowed part, but he can feel more space beyond its end, even with his arm stretched in up to the shoulder.
He goes along to Kerewin and takes her hand and shakes her awake, and begins explaining. How can I find out what's there? he asks with writing in the end. Kerewin says sleepily, "Dig it up.
you want to?"
He nods vigorously.
"Well don't expect to find anything marvellous," but tells him where to find a shovel in the boatshed. He digs for most of the afternoon before he gets to the end of the hole.
There's a round hollow, not large. It is lined with soft hair, and on that, huddled together, are two mummified baby rabbits.
He looks at them for a long time, not touching them. Sweat dribbles into his eyes, stinging them, but he stands quite still and looks.
The fur is dulled, the eyes shut and sunken. Their ears are stiff leather pieces, laid back on their dead bony shoulders.
He puts the dirt back on top of them.
I'm sorry, he thinks, shovelling faster. I didn't mean to worry you. I wouldn't have dug you up if I'd known you were there.
He fills back in all the dirt he dug up, and sits down on the pile for a rest. His hands are sore and his shoulders ache, and he's still sweating, even though the work is finished.
Joe comes along a little later, wet to the waist and whistling loudly.
"Hey, we got paua for tea, Himi!" he calls, and comes to the base of the cliff.
"What you been doing? Been busy?"
Digging, says Simon, showing how. On another piece of ground.
"Find anything in that hole?" asks Kerewin over tea.
Simon shakes his head, No, not a thing.
It's a groggy kind of dream. He knows it to be a dream even as it happens.
You're kneeling back by that hole. It's hot in the sunshine. You feel like crying, but you know something better, and you want them alive. So you start feeding them music, underbreath singing, and little by little the withered leathery ears fill out: flick flick, a tentative twitch and shake. The dead dried fur begins to lift and shift and shine. Those sunken holes of eyes and nostrils pinken slowly, like a blush stealing over, the eyes to moisten, darken, the nostrils to quiver, and then they open their eyes on you and they glow.
The music rings and swirls now, picks up like a lift of a wave, and the light has turned from ordinary sunlight to a deepening bluegreen, shot with gold… you're inside a moving wave of sound and light and quick joy, and it steadies, stays, before the motion of descent can begin, and sicken.
The rabbits shift and nudge one another, start to joust with soft brown forepaws in a glad scrabble to get free of the hole of darkness, and scatter away into the green watertight shine.
"I want to tell you," he sings fondly to Kerewin and Joe, who've holding his shoulders now, and they turn and stare at one another with delight. But-when they look back, their faces waver and change, and the wave begins to move, faster and faster, and the light is turning to night.
He can feel the wire round his wrists again. There isn't any room to move, and there isn't enough air to breathe, and the voice, rich warm powerful voice, is questioning, questions he can never answer,