Chapter 5 Miracle #2
“You’re welcome. You’re going to repay me by appeasing my curiosity about how you traveled from New Zealand, I mean, Aotearoa to South Georgia and how you ended up inside the rock.” She glanced at the fragments of rock still littering the worn brown carpet. “The gargoyle.”
“Why did you call me George?”
Nyree grinned. “That’s what you want to know,” she teased. “Of all the questions you might ask.”
“Yes.” He didn’t return her smile, but he didn’t give off creepy vibes either.
“I called you George because I didn’t know your name. Now I’ll address you as Tāwera. I enjoyed talking to you, even though I might’ve sounded a little crazy. Giving you a name made you feel more like a friend.”
He nodded, his gaze thoughtful. “I understand. Now it is my turn to talk. I lived with my tribe and was a successful warrior. My father was an important tribal leader with an influential position. My older brother, Rāwiri, was also of great consequence, especially given his age. He was a tohunga—an expert—of tattooing. He is…was gifted and did my tattoos. We had different mothers. Rāwiri’s mother died in childbirth, and our father took my mother as his wife. Rāwiri was jealous of me.”
Nyree sipped her coffee. “What happened?”
“I fell in love with the woman my brother coveted and wanted for his wife. I knew Rāwiri had approached Aroha’s father, and her father approved the match, but Aroha and I… Rāwiri told me he understood and would stand aside to make his brother happy.”
Nyree leaned forward, captured by the story. “What happened?”
“We planned a European marriage, with the ceremony the missionaries favored. A few weeks before the wedding, Rāwiri came to me and offered a gift between brothers. He told me he bore me no ill will and hoped we would always remain friends. Aroha and I were pleased because we didn’t wish for family tension. ”
“Did he lie?”
“He did. His gift to me was a special tattoo. He showed me the design, and it was magnificent. He called it a wedding gift, but it was a curse. Too late, I realized this.”
“How did the tattoo become a curse? Did he tattoo something else? Something offensive?”
“Worse, he wove a curse into the tattoo. When I went to Rāwiri’s whare the night before our wedding for the final small part of the tattoo, the curse knit together and sucked me into the piece of stone he had sitting by his firepit.
The agony that came with joining the various strands of the curse contorted my face and limbs.
I fell unconscious, and when I came to my senses many hours later, Rāwiri had imprisoned me within the stone.
“Rāwiri spoke with me and joked. He knew I heard him and told me this was what happened when one attempted to go against a tohunga. Aroha visited to ask Rāwiri if he’d seen me.
She came the next day—the day of our wedding—and she was crying because she thought I didn’t wish the marriage any longer.
Rāwiri comforted her in his arms. He held my Aroha and told her he was there for anything she needed.
The entire time, he was watching me with this sly smile that was full of evil. ”
Nyree didn’t understand why one brother would inflict that sort of torment on another. “Why wasn’t he honest?”
“Rāwiri always held himself aloft from others. It was part of what made him an excellent tohunga tā moko, but once he’d cursed me, I remembered others speaking of bad luck after receiving a tattoo.”
“Your brother did the same to them?”
“Perhaps. Rāwiri cursed me, so maybe he did the same to others.”
Nyree stood. “Would you like more coffee?”
“Please,” he said, extending his cup.
It occurred to her if he came from an earlier time, he wouldn’t understand indoor plumbing, and she made a mental note to show him how everything worked.
He’d eaten food, so she presumed his body would function in the same way as hers.
He was still transparent, though. So many questions for Manu, including ones of cursed magical tattoos.
“Can I watch you make this drink?”
“You can do the work while I tell you what to do,” she said. “It’s interesting the way you can hold objects, although you still look like a ghost.”
“A spirit?” he asked.
“Yes, I wonder if you’re visible to others or just me.” Nyree talked him through making coffee for both of them, and they returned to the lounge to drink it. “Tell me what happened next.”
“I remember the pain and excruciating torment. The agony receded once he’d confined me to the stone.
After our wedding day passed, Rāwiri took me or rather the stone into town, probably to dispose of me.
Perhaps toss me in the sea. He met two sailors who wanted tattoos.
Sometimes Rāwiri would lower himself to tattoo the visiting sailors to earn coins, so he usually took his tools with him whenever he walked into the township.
While he was tattooing the sailor, his friend noticed me.
He asked to buy my stone, and Rāwiri sold it to him as a souvenir of his visit to Aotearoa.
A few days later, the sailor left on his ship, taking me with him.
He sailed south, and then he moved to a sealing crew in a distant land.
It’s difficult for me to tell you where we went, but we followed the seals and the whales.
Mostly, he worked for sealers, but he fished for whales at the last place. ”
“What happened to your sailor?”
“As he grew older, he became less nimble. A wave took him by surprise. He dropped me, and I never saw him again. I remained where I fell until you found me.”
Nyree stared at Tāwera, curious about the history and events he’d witnessed from his prison. “Do you think your brother knew the curse could break?”
“No, he’d be furious to learn his magic failed,” Tāwera said without hesitation. “He must never learn I am free.”
Nyree bit her lip, tentative, but she had to give him the truth. “Tāwera, you last saw your brother in 1780. We’re in the twenty-first century now.” She hesitated. “Your brother and his family will be long dead. Aroha.”
Tāwera blinked. “I hadn’t considered this. You’re right. Rāwiri and Aroha would no longer live. What am I going to do? All these years, I’ve wanted revenge, but if there is no one left, I have no purpose.”
“Not true,” Nyree said. “You live for the moment and enjoy what life you can have now.”
“But how do I get home? I have no boat.”
“We have other methods of transportation. If other people can’t see you, you’ll be able to walk onto a ship and travel to South America. From there, you transfer and fly to New Zealand.”
His brows rose. “A flight?”
“Yes, men invented a machine that flies across the oceans. We have lots of ways to travel that are faster than walking.”
“How will I learn these things? Everything is different. Your clothes, your food, and the way you live. Since you fished me from the sea, many things have astonished me. In my time, we walked or paddled our wāka around the coast. We hunted or grew our food. It did not come in those things you call packets.”
Nyree scowled. “You’ll also need money. I’d give you some, but Ari stole most of what I’d saved.”
“What is money?”
“The same as the coins you mentioned that the sailors gave your brother. When we want something—maybe food or clothing or to travel on a ship or airplane, we must pay money for the goods.”
“It is like trading our surplus goods for something else from another tribe?”
“Yes, that’s correct,” Nyree said. “I understand how disorientating my world must seem to you, but you’ll find some things are the same.
We use machines and computers to do tasks that once might have taken days or months to complete, which means we have more leisure time to do things we enjoy.
I go walking or take photos.” Nyree patted Tāwera’s forearm and lifted her fingers from his skin as quickly as she’d placed them there.
Tāwera sucked in an audible breath while Nyree fought the need to wrap her arms around him to experience the sensation again.
She’d tingled, and it had been like a sharp slap—the foreign rush in her blood and the physical surge of desire.
When she risked a glance at him, he seemed equally shocked.
She backed up and forced herself to calm.
Tonight, she’d write an email to Manu and pray he’d get back to her with answers because she had no idea of what to do with this handsome taniwha ghost.