“This won’t be pretty,” Skylark said, turning to Bella and Hoki.
“I’ll say it won’t,” Bella answered. “Why didn’t you tell us about your mother’s habit? Are there any more skeletons in her cupboard that we don’t know about?” She ticked them off: “First she’s a dangerous driver. Second she’s got an addiction …”
“It’s not Skylark’s fault,” Hoki said. “Don’t blame her for her mother.”
Skylark gave Bella an angry look. “I haven’t got time to cope with your aggro,” she said. “I’ve got to concentrate on Mum. You and Hoki should go now. Leave me with her.”
“Hoki can go. I’m staying,” Bella said.
“This isn’t like repairing the damaged wing of one of your birds,” Skylark flared.
“Don’t you think I know that? It’s going to take the two of us to handle it.” She turned to Hoki. “You go, Sister. I’ll keep an eye on things here. But one of us has to watch out for the dawn.”
And it was the Longest Night before the ascending of the sun and, with it, the heliacal rising of the planet Venus.
Hoki went to the homestead and got a thick, warm blanket. Behind the homestead was a small grove of fruit trees; beneath one of them was an old armchair where she liked to sit whenever she had a spare moment. She made herself comfortable in it, wrapped the blanket around her and kept watch on the spinning night.
“Lord Tane,” Hoki prayed, “your humble servant seeks your help. As prophesied, you have sent us a chick. But is she the one we have been waiting for? If she is, what guidance can I give her to prevent the sky from opening? Help me, oh Lord, I pray you.”
A loud scream interrupted her karakia. She shivered and wondered what was happening in the bach.
Cora was going from one screaming jag to the next, from one hallucination to the next. Screaming, laughing, crying. Bella was trying to hold her down. Skylark was sponging her forehead. Cora’s head kept whiplashing back and forth — lash, lash, whiplash. “Oh Zac —”
“God, she’s strong,” Bella panted. “I don’t know how long I can keep her down.”
Skylark was concentrating on her mother.
“For once and for all get Zac out of your life! He’s slime, Mum.”
“This isn’t about Zac,” Cora laughed. “I don’t care about Zac. What I care about is what he can give me.” She spat a huge gob of spit into Bella’s face.
Taken by surprise, Bella let go — and Cora sprinted into the next room, to the chair where Skylark had piled her clothes. “Zac left me some extra drugs. Where are they?”
“Oh no you don’t!” Skylark was hot on her heels and wrested the bottle out of her mother’s hands.
“Give them to me you little bitch.” Cora reached for Skylark, snarling, clawing at her with her fingers. Skylark pushed her mother away. Cora fell to the floor, a shocked look on her face. Then she doubled up as the first cramps hit her. Her voice took on a cajoling whine: “Skylark, honey, please, just one tab? Skylark? Please?”
“I’m sorry, Mum, no. They’re prescription poisons.”
“Just one, please? That’s all I need. Just one tiny tab? Please?”
Skylark shook her head.
Cora was on her feet again. Furious. “Zac brought them for me, they belong to me, give them to me.” They started to fight again.
Then Bella was there, standing behind Cora, feeling for a pressure point in her neck. She pressed. Cora slumped to the floor.
“Go and fill the bath,” Bella ordered. “Is there any ice in the fridge? Get it now and fill the bath with it. There’s some more ice in the freezer in the homestead. Do it. Now.”
And Hoki was watching the sky spinning, spinning, spinning with stars. The stars were chasing each other, dancing to some quirky lopsided rhythm, popping and cracking and sizzling like bizarre fireworks. Somewhere in the middle of the Southern Cross, something strange was happening.
“What is that?” Hoki said to herself. It looked like a black hole opening up and moving above the twin mountains.
Fearful, Hoki looked at her watch. Two hours to dawn.
During the midnight hours she had seen Skylark hurrying between the bach and the homestead and, through the bathroom window of the bach, Skylark and Bella struggling with Cora. There had been a piercing scream — “It’s so cold, so cold” — followed by moans and shouts of such plaintive, begging quality that Hoki had to put her hands to her ears to shut them out. Then there had been more ruckus, Bella shouting, and next moment Cora was being wrapped up in blankets to get her warm. “I’m on fire,” Cora screamed. “I’m burning up.”
For the rest of the time, Hoki had been racking her brains, trying to find an answer to the problem that confronted her. “Where is the key to open the door so that Skylark can step across the threshold and into her own understanding?” She had a brainwave. She walked back to the homestead, opened the big walnut cabinet and took out the Great Book of Birds — a set of three ledger books into which her great-grandmother had painstakingly transcribed the words from the previous copy of the original Great Book of Birds. That original copy, written by the very first handmaiden of Tane, had long succumbed to old age, brittle paper and the ravages of sun and wind. Even the transcription copy made by Hoki’s great-grandmother had to be handled with care.
Hoki opened the third ledger book and turned to Revelations. The sight of her great-grandmother’s squiggly handwriting, done in fading pen and ink, made tears come to her eyes. She had a vision of all those handmaidens of Tane, keeping the faith alive, looking after the manu whenua, passing the job down from one generation to the next, making sure the primary imperative was maintained.
There will come a time when the Sky will open again. At that time, then will the reigning handmaiden be required to fulfil the task to which we have all been ordained.
Hoki wiped angrily at her tears. This time, when she prayed again, she aimed her prayers at all the former handmaidens. “Well, thank you all so much for dumping the task on me,” she said. “You had the easy job. All you had to do was pass the message on like a parcel. But you forgot to mention how I was supposed to accomplish the task and what I was supposed to tell the chick.” Hoki opened the third ledger book. In it was the Book of Revelations. “If the answers are here,”she continued, glaring into the past, “for goodness sake show me.”
Skylark and Bella, meantime, were struggling to stabilise Cora.
“This is the worst I’ve ever seen her,” Skylark said to Bella. “How much longer do we have to do this?”
“As long as it takes,” Bella answered, as she pushed Cora down on the bed and kept her there. Somewhere inside Cora was a succubus. “Come out, damn you,” Bella said. “Come out.”
Then, around four in the morning, exhausted, Bella thought it was all over. Cora vomited yet again, and passed through the crisis point. Skylark recognised the signs and gave Bella a hopeful glance. She’d been sponging Cora, coaxing her through the withdrawal symptoms, forcing her to drink water, trying to help her to adopt the breathing techniques she had learnt in rehab, sponging her down again — and she was really beat.
Finally, Cora opened her eyes. She gave a grateful smile to Bella. She pressed Skylark’s hands.
“Thank you, Skylark honey,” she said. “Who’d want to have a mother like me, eh?”
“You’re the only mother I have,” Skylark answered. “It’s not as if I can go and pick another one off the shelf.”
Cora lay back on her bed. “I love you, honey.” Very soon her breathing evened out.
With a sigh, Bella started to clean up. “You get to bed now,” she said to Skylark.