The Wind City Read online

  “Steady now,” he said, almost a hiss, face contorted in fury. When his eyes were fixed full on her and his teeth were bared the effect was disconcerting, the sharp slivers in the fishlike hole of a mouth stripping what remained of the humanity from his face. In this light she could see that his eyes weren’t true-black, not like Hinewai’s; they were a slick-shiny dark green, like wet sea glass. Too large for his face, and so were his teeth. All in all he was terrifying.

  She just reached out and ruffled his hair. “Hey!” he said, swatting her hand away and scowling. She grinned.

  “It’s kinda rough,” she said. “Like seaweed.”

  “You’re lucky I didn’t bite your hand clean off!” he said, snapping his teeth.

  She crossed her arms. “You’re lucky I’m talking to you at all,” she said, frowning. “You sunk my boat. And you just forced the change on me, didn’t ask or anything; it doesn’t hurt to ask things, Whai! Jeez, I know you don’t like humans, but you could maybe stand to learn some manners.”

  He, rather to her surprise, shrugged. “Fair enough,” he said, then looked around, cringing a bit and squinting. “Wait, fuck, it’s day time, whatcha doing out in the day time, something wrong with you? Magic don’t work right when the sun’s in the sky. And it scorches something awful. Blech.” Grumbling, he took off one of his woven bracelets and played with it, sharp-clawed fingers tangling and untangling strings. He chanted under his breath, something slow and rhythmic as waves. When he was finished he slumped back exhausted and looked at her expectantly. “Well?”

  Tony shrugged, not sure what she was supposed to be looking at.

  “Good,” he said, looking proud. “You ain’t human. You shouldn’t be fooled by things that’d fool them.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with humans. They’re cool,” Tony said, and he paused and then grinned at her.

  “Ha! So I’ve got you all believing now, have I? Knew I could wrangle it.”

  “Kinda hard not to be all believing after being all, ‘Rarg I am a monster rarg I shall eat dolphins and also apparently punch people in the face really hard raaarg.’”

  “Dolphins are damn tasty,” he said, and she waved her fist threateningly. He half-raised his arms in supplication. “No time for chitchatting anyways,” he said, and he stood up and offered his hand. “You want I should ask afore I tangle you in things?”

  She took his hand and heaved on it as she stood so that he stumbled a little. “Heheh,” she said. “And yeah.”

  He nodded. “’Kay,” he said. “I need your help.”

  “What with?”

  He started striding. “C’mon,” he shot back over his shoulder, and she blinked and tagged along behind.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as they walked along the wide pavement. Sun shone over Port Nicholson. They seemed to be heading more or less in the direction of Civic Square.

  “Somewhere better for this kind of talk. ’S past time we got you to the Hikurangi, I’m thinking.”

  “The what?” Tony blinked. Actually, that sounded kinda familiar. “… Isn’t that a mountain?”

  Whai grinned at her. “There’s more than one side to things, mostways,” he said. “Nothing is one thing only. Ain’t you learned that yet?”

  They walked, and she started to understand what he meant, a little: there he was all blue skin and sharp limbs, obviously either inhuman or just really elaborately costumed, and either way that should’ve drawn notice (and admiration, for the second one – this was Wellington after all, and people were themselves here). But hardly anyone looked at him, and those that did didn’t seem to notice anything strange, not after a second look.

  “Can’t people see you?” she asked, curious. “It’s like, they look but their eyes just slide right off.”

  They climbed a long flight of concrete stairs above the lagoon and crossed the City to Sea Bridge, an ornate span of metal and wood and art. There were a few more people here, and Whai scowled at them. “Shouldn’t be able to take notice of me at all, ’specially not if I don’t want ’em to,” he said. He scowled up at the midmorning sun as well. “Salt and sand but I hate the day time.”

  She tried not to laugh at how irritable he was, all petulant and sulky. Not a morning person, she decided.

  The bridge dropped down towards Civic Square, broad and spacious, carefully elegant with little squares of grass and plenty of benches. The town hall was on one side and the city art gallery on the other, with the library at the far end and a silvery ball with fern patterns hanging on thin wires overhead. Tony had always liked it, though she had to squint at the light glinting off it. People were everywhere, relaxing and studying or eating sandwiches or dozing on the glass, and even there, there in the square with its bright sunlight and milling groups of people, no one noticed.

  If she wasn’t careful she found it happening to her, as well. Like, if she wasn’t actively thinking that hey, here’s this atua guy, and he’s real – if she wasn’t actively thinking that, he just kind of blurred, or well, no, not blurred exactly, more sort of just… wasn’t there. Just a presence by her side. She turned to look at him and for a second he was a rangy young man with dyed hair and pierced ears and eyebrow and a crooked but blunt-toothed smile, just a normal guy in a damp T-shirt – but then he was ponaturi, alien and unsettling and way too real for the everyday location and also nowhere near real enough. She could only ever see him as one or the other, though, no matter how much she tried to reconcile the two, to squish them together somehow.

  “Well yeah,” he said impatiently when she asked, and then he said, “Wow you’re thick. Your head’s all dense and slow, ’s like oil in the water.”

  Tony sighed. “You know,” she said, “it’s the second time someone’s said that to me today?” Not in quite the same words, granted. Hinewai didn’t have quite Whai’s gift for dragging sentences into back alleys and then knifing them a lot.

  “Well I didn’t mean it,” Whai snapped. “Idiot.” He worried at his lip. “Uh. Sorry. ’S been a long time since I’ve had anyone to mess up over. Manners, like you said. I know you’re not stupid. You believed me a bit too quick, but we’re kin, you and me, that’s the working of it.” There was a pyramid ahead of them, or two halves of a pyramid, really, with the path running between them. Whai came to an abrupt stop, looking at it.

  She nearly bumped into him. “Hey,” she said.

  He fixed her with an intense stare. “You wouldn’t fall for tricks, right?”

  “Tricks?”

  “As in, the kind pulled by a trickster,” Whai said. “As in: Māui.” He regarded her. Then started walking again, and said the last part without turning around: “Seen enough friends and kin die due to him, not exactly eagersome to see it again.”

  “What?” Tony said. What. What what what. “… Māui? There’s – Māui’s real? As in, there’s an actual Māui? Oh my god, that’s… wow.” She thought of stories her uncle had told her of the trickster who fished up the whole North Island with his grandmother’s jawbone, who stole fire for mankind, who slowed down the sun. After he and his companions had caught the sun they’d beaten it with clubs, she recalled, and that was weird to think about, like – people actually beating up the sun?

  It was a big concept, anyway, because it was Māui, not some weird sea elf race she’d never heard of. This was Māui, there were a hundred stories about him and…

  Her grin slipped away. “People died? He killed people?”

  Whai didn’t answer for a while, and she thought maybe he hadn’t heard, or maybe hadn’t wanted to hear. They walked on. For a moment she thought they were going to enter the library, but instead they turned and took the path running beneath that entrance, and walked for a few metres before Whai stopped again. They were in the slightly covered walkway between the library and the art gallery, now, cheerful and serene, and the bright blueness of the water in the shallow pools to their right contrasted sharply with the droop of his head all hangdog and defeated, his shou
lders bony beneath his thin damp shirt.

  “Been trying not to think about it,” he said.

  She stepped forward, because he looked so sad that it made her heart hurt and she wanted to help him. She wasn’t sure he’d welcome a hug, though, so she rested a hand on his shoulder lightly, just testing the waters; he said, “Cool,” quietly, and she squeezed him close and he clung to her like a drowning man. Seen enough friends and kin die, he’d said, and he always called her sea-sister.

  He shoved her away after a few seconds, clearing his throat. “Anyway,” he said, and went on walking. “Māui probably ain’t up to much, there’s been no sign of him doing anything yet –”

  “How do you know he’s here at all?”

  “I knew him. Well, knew who he used to be. Doesn’t matter. The important thing’s to get you settled, make sures you get to know everyone.” He smiled. “The others’ll love you,” he said, sounding satisfied.

  “Others?”

  “We’re here.”

  He nodded at the bulk of the library looming to their left. The sloping walkway they were on clung to the building’s side, running parallel to Harris Street. And ahead of them were the streets that led to other places in the central city, or along either side of the waterfront, or into different suburbs. That was one of the things Tony had loved about Wellington when she first moved here, that all the streets in the central city were so compact, all the important places in a few minutes’ easy walking if you could figure out the tangle of roads. They’d sprung up and changed as the city grew, as it was shaken by earthquakes, as the roads were needed first for horses and then trams and now cars. She liked the library too of course, even if the late fees were kind of ridiculous. There were good books there and all, but…

  “Last time I checked,” Tony said, “and, I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, I never really knew much about this stuff. But last time I checked the library kind of definitely wasn’t a mountain.”

  Whai snorted. “Oilhead,” he said. “Course it’s not. But it’s a learning-house. Those’ve got power.” He tilted his head, looking at the pillars supporting this side of the library – they were shaped like nikau palms, tall and wide and wrapped in steel. Mostly they had gates between them, but where the sloped walkway merged into flat ground there was a pair of pillars with an empty space between them. Whai stuck his hands in his pockets and sauntered through, then raised his eyebrows at her. She followed. He took a step or two back and pulled a hand out of his pocket and waved it at the space they’d just walked through, with the walkway behind it and the library behind that. “’S there.”

  “I know it’s there,” Tony said. “It’s a building. They’re pretty big.”

  Whai sighed. “Look,” he said, in a fond voice, like he was talking to a very small child, “past.”

  First she poked him in his shoulder. He staggered to the side and glared at her incredulously. “Why,” he said, all injured dignity. “Why wouldja even do a thing like that?”

  “Because superstrength!” Tony said. “Does your shoulder feel, like, more than usually bruised? ’Cos I’m pretty sure I have super taniwha strength now. That’s a thing that’s happening.”

  Whai stuck his hands in his pockets. “Children of the sea are meant to be all even-tempered,” he said, to no one in particular. “All calm and cold and strong beneath, waves chewing at rock. You’re letting us all down, Tony, that’s what’s happening here.”

  “Mm,” Tony agreed, and poked him again in the same spot. He winced, and then tried to pretend that he hadn’t. Tony laughed.

  “Are you gonna look or aren’tcha?” he said, impatient.

  “What am I meant to be looking at?”

  He waved again at the space between pillars. “It’s a café,” he said.

  “I – what?” She blinked. “Whai, there’s nothing there. We were literally just walking there. Also: what?”

  Whai shrugged. “Iwi atua needed a place to meet,” he said. “Place they could be themselves, like. Café seemed as good a thing as any. Don’t have to hide what you are in there. It’s a sacred place, sorta – not tapu exactly, just. Good. It’s safe and true and real, ’s a refuge.” His smile turned dreamy. “Mean kai, too. They know better than to cook things what weren’t never meant to be cooked. You should try the whelks,” he added over his shoulder, as he hopped onto a small pole midway between the pillars, and then hopped off it and disappeared.

  Tony stared after him. At the walkway where he should’ve been standing, but wasn’t. He’d just jumped into nothingness. That was magic if ever she’d seen it.

  She gathered her courage. She was scared, in some part of her – people had died? – and she had no guarantee that other atua were anywhere near as friendly as Whai was, either, and Whai himself wasn’t exactly harmless. Those teeth weren’t made for smiling with.

  But. All these people. All these new people to meet, all these new opportunities, this whole world she’d never known about. She was scared, sure, but the curiosity was far stronger than that.

  She crawled into the corner of her mind that was ancient and terrible, and looked with it, feeling the strength of the land through her feet. There was an empty space, a walkway with red paving stones with the wall of a library behind it. And then – then there were trees, a whole forest of them, deep and green and inexplicable, stretching out as far as she could see. She reached out to touch one. Her finger came to a stop against the bark. It felt rough and scaly and earthy, it felt of nothing at all.

  “Oh, neat,” Tony said, and stepped through into the Hikurangi.

  Steffan lived in a house perched on the side of a hill. Both house and hill were far too large for his tastes.

  In all honesty he’d have been happier with a flat – the house was lovely and all, but it was far too big and he was the only one who lived there. It was disconcertingly empty at night time, and his neighbours made hardly any noise at all. He filled the rooms with absentminded scholarly clutter, to try to make up for it. The only real effect this had was that now when he heard weird noises in the night and edged cautiously towards them he had twice as many things to trip over.

  But his parents were funding his studies, mainly, and if they wanted him to have a spacious house that was technically in the central city while still being all but inaccessible so as to prevent distractions, well, he wasn’t really in any position to argue. He would’ve managed well enough on scholarships and student loans, but, well, the amount it cost for people without New Zealand citizenship to go to university here was obscene, in his case at least. So. He was obligated to his parents, and they just wanted what was best for him, so in his lonely house he remained.

  Though he did wonder whether, if he had an apartment in the city instead, Saint might’ve found it in his heart to drop by occasiona – “Stop that,” Steffan told himself tiredly, running his hands through his hair. “Think of physics.”

  He dutifully thought of physics. He thought of physics for quite a while, actually. It wasn’t hard, because mostly physics was all he thought about.

  Still, though. Once he’d worked his way diligently through all his overdue assignments (he didn’t actually have any overdue ones, but he liked to finish most of his assignments as early as he could. Before they were assigned, if possible) and gotten halfway into a daring new theory about the nature of small particles before stalling, he found himself… well. Lost. And not the kind of lost that came with weird island shenanigans, crashing planes, polar bears and slowly disintegrating story quality, either.

  At that point it was two a.m., so there wasn’t much he could do about it.

  The next day, though, he swallowed his not inconsiderable pride and called his best friend again, despite Saint’s flimsy excuses, because goshdarn – goddammit, one of them had to take steps to fix their friendship and it was pretty obviously not going to be Saint.

  “I got your text,” Steffan told him.

  “My what?” Saint sounded distracted. “Oh. What d
id I even text you?”

  “‘Tgdpdp,’” Steffan recited, carefully enunciating each consonant, “‘a nptdp’. What’s that supposed to mean, exactly?”

  “Probably something about monsters? I was a little scatter-brained at the time. Hey, interesting fact, did you know my flatmate’s a monster? Well, I say is… ”

  Steffan snorted. He pushed aside some books from the couch so he could sit down as he talked. “That’s a little hyperbolic, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, Steff. Oh, Steff, you precious rule-abiding butterfly. It really isn’t.” There was a muffled sort of noise, like Saint had moved the phone, and the sound of Saint talking to someone; then his voice became clear again. “Listen, uh, could we do this some other time? I sort of have things to do that are absolutely legal.”

  Steffan groaned. “Okay, fine, just – I just think we should meet up. Could you give me a simple yes or no?” Saint didn’t immediately reply. Steff sighed. “Well. Fine. I’ll be at the Pelham for several hours on Saturday, most likely. I’ll be working but if you want to stop by you can – Saint, would it kill you to at least try for once? Do you have any idea how much work I should be doing? I’m trying my best to keep in contact and you’re just gossiping about nonsense. This really isn’t very fair.”

  “Hey, hey,” Saint said, lofty and lazy. “I have work to do too, you know. It’s important stuff. You think I could stop at just killing one giant? That wouldn’t be very proactive of me. My ghost friend’s telling me there’s all sorts of monsters I gotta take down.”

  Steffan rubbed at his temples and thought very irritable thoughts about vexing friends and why did he even bother. “So you’re busy with this, then,” he said. He frowned down at one of the dirty coffee cups on the table. “Giants and ghosts.”

  “Yeah!” Saint said. “Glad you understand, pet.”

  You used to drag me on ridiculous adventures, Steffan wanted to say, and yes, half the time I hated it, but – but – at least it was something, no one at university’s as easy to talk to as you are and it’s not like that’s even setting the bar very high – “There was a time not too long ago when you were occasionally very nearly plausible,” he said instead, tight and sharp. “Oh, how I miss that time. Those were the days!”