Fishing for Taniwha

by Annette Edwards-Hill

We had next to no visitors in the valley and it was from the peddler I first heard the news. As I picked darning thread, needles, and soap from the goods he carried on his mare, he talked.

“Mr. Thompson at Waipātiki says he’s near Wairoa now. Keep your doors locked,” he’d said.

Then he looked at Ena and Roland who were swinging on the gate, watching him intently as they did all visitors. “Keep those children inside, don’t let them wander. When is Thomas back?”

“He only left two days ago,” I replied.

“I’ll see you again in a week or two. Good day.”

Then he’d left, mounting his horse before he was out the gate, galloping towards the hairpin track that would take him back up to the main road, the bags on his mare flying up in the air with each step she took. His business done, he headed inland away from the dead end of the ocean.

The night before Thomas signed the deed for the land, he asked if I minded living so far away from other people, the port, the shops, the railway lines.

“When I’m at sea,” he said, “it will just be you and the children.”

I enjoyed the silence, living away from the constant noise of the town, the smell of the crowds, the muted night sky.

I was lonelier the few months I lived in Napier, and then before that, on the ship. Six weeks below deck, feeling my stomach in my throat each time the boat was lifted with the swell of the ocean. Thomas didn’t understand, sea captains don’t get seasick, or spend long days between sleep and meals with only the expanse of the ocean. All he saw was a start point and an endpoint, a deadline, goods to keep afloat.

I’d never seen the sea until the ship left the muddy and docile waters of the Thames and ventured into the ocean. It was vast and foreign. When I disembarked in Napier the waves towered over the land. Out here, I felt the sea suck at me every time I left the valley, turned the corner and saw the endless expanse of water, the waves pounding the sand, the menacing white lines, the rips.

Ena wanted to fish so after the peddler left, we followed the bridle track out to the waterfall. The valley was silent, the roar of the ocean muzzled by the westerly wind, the river barely trickling into the estuary. The track had washed away in places. I lifted my skirts to step over the spaces where the track had been, holding Roland’s hand tight in my own. We heard the gush of the waterfall before we saw the white torrent of water. The sun sat on the top of the hillside. I squinted to find the point where the sky ended and the water started. We sat on the flat rock on the edge of the pond. Ena unwound the string from the long piece of driftwood she’d been carrying. She tied it around a piece of last night’s mutton and cast it into the water as she peered into its depths.

“I’m going to catch Taniwha,” she told me.

It was warm on the rock. Roland swayed around, put his feet in the water. Then he lay back in my arms. I closed my eyes. My mouth was dry and my face hot when Ena woke us, gesturing at the northern end of the beach.

“What is that?” she asked me.

In the distance I could see long spindly shadows, men, horses.

There was a farm ten miles up the beach, near where the Waikare drained into the sea.

“It’s probably the shepherds,” I said, “cooling the horses off.”

We watched for a little longer and then we turned for home.

“No Taniwha today, Mama,” Ena said.

“Not enough wind for Taniwha,” I said gesturing at the hazy blue skies. We started the walk back along the track.

I stopped and turned to look at the beach. The shadows were closer and now clouds of smoke sat over the land where it jutted out into the sea. The mouth of the Waikare River was on the other side and then further beyond that, the Mohaka.

Were they burning off bush? But there wasn’t any bush left to burn. There had been weeks of the bitter smell of burning kānuka and mānuka drifting in our direction two months earlier. The landscape was still razed and blackened.

Should I have paid more attention to the peddler’s warning, he’s getting closer?

I first heard the stories about Te Kooti from the Māori who lived at the pā in Mohaka. Sometimes they crossed our valley, stopping to drink from the river or swim when the ocean was calm. One of the women came to my gate and said he was a prophet, a maverick—and a murderer, she’d added. He’d led a group of rebels who’d attacked a homestead up near Wairoa. I half listened as I watched her children feeding grass to the hens. I thanked her and didn’t think about it again.

Then Thomas came back from one of his trips. He’d skippered the Sunderland from Napier to Wairoa, taking supplies to the army who were fighting Te Kooti in the Ureweras. He’d taken the boat too close to the coast and had been fired at from the beach. Men on horses waded out into the break of the surf, “miles off” he said. Months later we heard families had been slaughtered in Gisborne.

It was quiet and still when I went to bed that night. I watched the red sky turn to grey and then black from the kitchen window. I woke in complete darkness with the wind howling around the house. I listened to the sounds of the trees, every tiny leaf rustling. Then I heard thunder. It tapered off into the sound of horse hooves, beating in the far distance, then coming closer. I froze. Men on horseback. I thought of the peddler’s warning, watch your children. There was a short sharp noise, like a gunshot. Then the noise receded.

What would I do when he arrived? Where would we go? It was miles to Waipātiki, the closest settlement. We could hide in the woodshed, we would wait, but then they would find us. I would have to walk the children into the sea. Hold their hands as I dragged them into the swell, the spit of the waves washing their faces, fighting against the white foamy crest of the sea as the current pulled us away. Would our bodies be washed back upon the beach, for Thomas to find? Would we be pulled up the coast and heaved up on the sandy peninsula, or south, on the stony beach of Napier? Would someone find us, know to tell Thomas? Would I have time to leave a note?

When I slept, I dreamed of the sea, the waves pulling me from the dry sand, dragging me back again and again. I awoke airless and gasping.

The next day was warm, the skies blue and blameless. The only signs of the storm were the fallen branches on the back-door step, the wet grass. There were no signs of horses, of spent bullets.

The wind howled again that night and rain lashed the bedroom window. Then between sleep and consciousness I heard the hooves, pounding, closer to the house. I lay frozen, my eyes open. But there was nothing to see in the blackness. I thought about taking the children into the sea. We wouldn’t need to take anything with us, my skirts, the heavy fabric of my dress would weigh us down.

I kept the children inside for five days, only letting them outside to feed the hens and collect the warm eggs from the nesting boxes. They watched me as I scrubbed at muddy marks on their clothes, then hung the washing out to dry in the stifling heat of the day. The children, bored, begged me to take them out. I shook my head.

I heard the horse coming up the track, the hooves steady, lazy. It was the peddler.

“You’re early,” I said.

“Did you hear?” he asked as I picked pennies, shillings out of my purse to pay for matches and flour. “Te Kooti raided the pā at Mohaka. Riding a white horse, they say it is the horse of the second coming.”

“Where is he now?” I asked. The biblical reference made me impatient.

He waved his arm behind him. “Gone, didn’t come any further.”

I thought about the shadowy figures we’d seen miles up the beach, the thundery storm of horse hooves.

I took the children back out to the beach the next day. The storm had left the sea a mess of brown water and foam. There were mountains of seaweed on the beach, a smell of rotting vegetables and the buzz of flies.

“White horses,” Ena said.

I looked up the beach searching for men, for Te Kooti, but there was nothing. I looked at Ena who was pointing at the sea and I realised she was talking about the white crests on the swollen ocean. White horses, just water.

Thomas’s horse was in the paddock when we got home. The children ran inside the house. I stopped to untie my boots, shake the sand out of my dress. Thomas came out the front door, Roland on his shoulders, Ena holding his hand. He reached his free hand to touch my face. His hand was warm, gritty from weeks on the ship.

After putting the children to bed I found Thomas at the kitchen table cleaning his rifle.

He looked up at me and said, “We were shot at. Near the river mouth.”

“Te Kooti?” I asked.

“The pā was attacked, set on fire. Sixty dead and the family up by the homestead were killed, the three boys while they were playing in the river.” He paused then said, “Ena said you kept them inside this week.”

“I thought Roland was getting sick,” I said. “He was sniffling. There was a storm.”

“I was worried about you and the children, out here on your own. He got very close. He headed back inland.”

I was about to tell Thomas about the nights I had lain awake, listening to the storm, the noises of horses and gunfire. Then I looked outside, at the closed in valley, the path down to the sea. It was quiet, silent.

“Ena went fishing for Taniwha,” I told him.

He smiled. “Catch anything?” he asked.

“No, but we’ll go again tomorrow,” I said.

About the author

Annette Edwards-Hill lives in Wellington, New Zealand, close to the ocean but out of the tsunami zone. She has been published in Flash Frontier, Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand, Gravel, Headland, Fictive Dream, Spelk, Reflex Fiction, the UK NFFD Flash Flood, the 2019 Bath Flash Fiction Anthology, and others. She was nominated for the Best Small Fictions and the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and shortlisted for the New Zealand Heritage Writing Awards (Prose) in 2018 and the Sargeson Prize in 2020. She can be found on Twitter @netwards.

About the illustration

The illustration is Entrance to the Bay of Islands, New Zealand by Augustus Earle, painting, 1827. In the collection of the National Library of Australia, Canberra, Australia. In the public domain.