*****
Lachlan King wasn’t sure at what point the real world fell away and what could only possibly be a waking hallucination born of exhaustion and terror settled upon him. A guttural roar plucked from some dark and hungry creature of the mists erupted from him. He imagined the rope in his hand growing longer, the pounamu lighter, perhaps even sharper. This allowed him to swing the short rope with its sharp, heavy load harder, faster, sending bodies both unmarred and sliced open by his emerald blade scrambling around him. The walls and roof of the wharekai ripped open, sending shreds of timber and thatch in all directions. Through this maelstrom of madness, Lachlan knew the power of Hei Matau, the hook that had pulled a nation from the sea, a tool fashioned of the same ancient magics that Maui had used to weave ropes to slow the very sun in its race across the sky.
In that moment he was, he knew, quite lost in a safe and convenient insanity wherein the rules of the world no longer applied, lost where myth and legend replaced the rational and the real. The hook dipped, carving a line in the dirt floor as it howled about its deadly arc, and Lachlan wondered in passing if he spied thin liquid, bright red and bubbling, seeping up from the flesh-pale gouge it left in the earth.
Then he was running, the hook still whirling overhead, his voice a harsh cry echoing off the mountainside as he pelted past the furious eyes of the tekoteko that overlooked the wharenui, legs pounding as he reached the lake shore.
A quick look over his shoulder told him that he was not alone. Pulling himself from the wreckage, Frank Ascot was hot on his heels, his face a livid mask of blood.
Lachlan ran. The mist hung thick in the air where the waterfall spilled free, near the few small trees that clung to the cliff-edge. Lachlan envisioned himself swinging the hook on its rope, wrapping around one of those stunted trees, and swinging through hundreds of feet of shadow, his fine feather cloak spread out behind him like the wings of some nightbird, like the great eagle Hokioi in his rage. With a quick tug he would shear through his anchor tree, reel the hook back to himself, and ride the Pacific winds all the way back to England.
He was Maui, a legend of flesh who could break the rules of the world, the laws of the Empire, spit in his father’s face.
It seemed so perfect, so unpredictable.
Then he saw it; a great, looming brown eye with its pupil of blazing white as it swelled up from the glowing fog.
“Away with you, taniwha!” he barked, a mad sound, and swung the hook out and over his head. “Fear me!”
“Sir? Is that you?” came an uncertain call from the fog.
Reality slammed home, but already it was too late. The hook flew true and deadly, slicing a thin tear in Barry’s bizarre construct and wrapping itself around the poles that held his would-be escape vessel aloft.
Hot air shrieked from the balloon, sending the dirigible spiralling out over the void. It was all Lachlan could do to wrap both hands around the rope before he was lifted from his feet and pulled over the cliff face, leaving Ascot’s furious screams behind as momentum and gravity whipped him around in dizzying circles. Above him, Lachlan could hear Barry swearing over the hissing and whining of the slap-dash airship.
“Hold on sir,” Barry yelled. “I’ll have this sorted in a two shakes of a dog’s hind leg.”
Lachlan couldn’t answer. It was taking all his strength just to hold on as they plunged from the hole in the world where the river shone, down into the well of shadows.
“Sir, I’m going to put her down, nice and easy,” Barry called with impossible optimism, as the craft fell sideways in sickening arcs across the sky.
The bush-clad valley spiralled nearer. When they hit the ground and the propane tank sheared open in a flurry of sparks, it would all be over, and for nothing. Lachlan looked up to where the gash in the canvas fluttered and snapped.
Sometimes, we must be bigger than we really are.
They dropped into the mists.
Summoning what was left of his flagging strength, Lachlan reached over his head and stretched, pulling himself up the rope one aching foot at a time, feathers billowing behind him like dark wings. The rope was wrapped right around the balloon’s metal poles, pinching it in the middle so that it appeared like a bloated figure-of-eight. The hook dangled in a loop of its own making an arm’s reach from the tear. His focus intent on the artefact, Lachlan climbed past the tractor cab, refusing to contemplate the empty space below him. Wrapping a leg hard around the nearest pole, daring to let go of the rope with one raw, blistered hand, Lachlan lunged out and grabbed the hook’s smooth edge.
Maui did not care for the rules of the world. Maui had cast a rope to catch te Ra, the sun; had thrown a hook which pulled a land of plenty from the sea. Lachlan King was not Maui, was not made of the same stuff as that ancient hero, but he was the son of knights long dead, and he could be more than his father had ever dreamed he might be.
Lachlan tugged the hook towards him and began to haul in the rope, drawing its length through its own loops, his eyes straying to the high glow of sunlight that slid, breath by breath, towards darkness.
Perhaps a little insanity lingered. Time for te Ra to catch itself a fish.
Lachlan hooked the coil over his shoulder and slid down the pole, ignoring the pain in his palms, hitting the hansom platform with a grunt. The roar of water was loud in his ears now, the mist shadow-shrouded except for the propane’s glow. The unseen earth rushed ever closer.
Lachlan lashed a hasty knot through the base of the cannon-armature, wrapped one arm around a gun-barrel and hurled the rope up and out, towards the disappearing sun. He braced himself and hoped that, in this modern world, there was still room for the making of legends.
“Sir?” Barry’s concerned voice seemed very distant, lost in the mist, as the rope flew away from him.
The dirigible jerked suddenly and snapped backwards, nearly tossing both agents into the mists as its descent was violently interrupted. Both men clutched onto the gun platform for dear life as it swung pendulously to and fro. Between the roar of the waterfall and the swallowing mists, Lachlan and Barry were blind and deaf, bobbing in the fog, hanging with no visible means of support, the propane flame illuminating nothing but white all around.
“For goodness’ sake lad, turn off that light before they find us,” Lachlan chided.
“Sir, what just happened?” Barry asked, struggling to secure a foothold.
Lachlan closed his eyes and let a smile wrinkle his exhausted features. “I believe that we just caught the sun.”
Barry squinted over his head. “Are you sure? Because I think that looks like some sort of swing-bridge up there. I don’t suspect it’s likely to hold this weight for long.”
Lachlan took a deep breath, feeling the strain in his shoulders. This night wasn’t over yet. “Let’s get out of here with what we came for, lad. I’ll tell you what I can on the way.”
“Righto,” Barry agreed, hauling himself up the hansom to grasp the rope in one hand, and reaching out to Lachlan with the other. “If we can make it back to where the tractor was, sir, I believe I left the billy there. We might have time for a nice cup of tea.”
“That,” Lachlan breathed, “would be quite divine.”