The Hana Du Rose Mysteries Collection

LOGAN DU ROSE-6

Logan drank three full cups, unable to rid the thirst in his heart. After the fourth the nurse confiscated the cup. “Stop now,” she said. “You’ll upset your stomach again.”

They filled a cup for Miriam and walked back to Rangi’s cubicle. Logan’s stomach roiled in protest at the water, the stress and the awful sense of loss. He realised he should have held onto the spark of light harder. Not Rangi. The girl-on-the-train. He punished himself, falling over the damn shoes and not watching where he was walking.

“What happens now?” he asked the nurse, his voice tight. “I promised to take him home.”

“There’s a process,” she said, beginning the formal spiel. “There’s no need for an autopsy so his body should be released fairly quickly. Where does he need to go?”

“Aotearoa,” Logan replied and at the confusion on her face, translated. “New Zealand.”

“Oh,” the nurse said, drawing out the word. “That will take some organising. Do you have insurance?”

Logan shook his head at the same time as Miriam began to wail. He jumped and the cup of water slopped its contents onto the tiled floor. Yanking back the curtain surrounding Rangi’s cubicle, he witnessed his mother, plunging into the darkness of a private hell where even the strongest medication couldn’t reach her.

Aotearoa -HomeLogan stood on the ridge with the urn in his fingers, his uncle’s ashes safely inside. A thousand dollars lighter, the envelope nestled against his backside, prickling through his jeans pocket. The New Zealand sun shone on the back of his head, its early morning glory picking him out on the dusky landscape as the Tasman Sea churned before him in the distance. His bare feet kicked up dust as he placed the urn at the edge of the precipice and took a step back.

Logan Du Rose straightened his back and bent his knees, placing open hands on the insides of his thighs. The guttural sound broke from between his lips as the ancient Māori words exploded from his chest. His arms raised high in the air as he slapped his thighs, feeling the sting as he broke into the haka of his tribal line. His right foot slammed the earth, raising the dust and causing birds to clatter from the surrounding vegetation in complaint. Holding his arms out to his sides as though reaping, Logan pulled them back to his chest, smashing his palms into his pectorals until it hurt. He put his heart and soul into the anthem which his forebears created, performing it alone on a deserted mountain for a man he barely knew.

“E Ihowā Atua, O ngā iwi mātou rā!” he cried, his voice deep and carrying.” He got into his rhythm, isolation and embarrassment no longer a bar to his emotions. The haka merged seamlessly with the national anthem in a cry of grief and anger. “,” he shouted. Her face swam before him and he pushed the grief aside, the loss too great to contemplate as the hated train carried her and her yellow dress away. “Manaakitia mai, Aotearoa.” God defend New Zealand.

Logan finished and sank to the ground, only Rangi’s ashes witness to his promise to himself. “I’ll go back,” he hissed, his chest heaving from altitude and exertion. His father’s horse grazed nearby, tack clanking as the gelding picked through the untouched grass. “I’ll make more money and go back. I’ll find her and bring her home, so help me Atua, I’ll do it.”

Logan sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Did you like that, Uncle Rangi, the national anthem just for you?” He collapsed onto his backside and flopped backwards, feeling the hard stalks through his ripped tee shirt. His mind wandered down the mountain to the buildings below, dilapidated and empty, his parents busy turning the place into a hotel at a steady pace. At least his father was, anyway. Miriam took to her bed after the flight home, heavily sedated and making no sense.

The family had gathered, horrified by Rangi’s cremated ashes in the simple urn. It was the only thing the fourteen-year-old could afford in a mere twenty-four hours of faking his mother’s signature and dealing with British authorities.

The family wanted his body. They had it.

The Du Roses were never satisfied.

Logan sat up and fumbled with the urn, unscrewing the lid and peering into the dusty cavern. Only a tiny amount remained, the rest scattered over a family plot at the urupa. The ashes had carried on the wind, dusting the photos of a twenty-year-old Rangi who left New Zealand and looked nothing like the corpse in the hospital bed.

“Sorry there’s not much of you left, Uncle Rangi,” Logan apologised, leaning over the precipice. “They didn’t want me to have even this much, but I told them I’d promised.” He’d stood his ground in the ensuing fight, impressing the males in the whānau as he found some hidden spark inside himself. Mana oozed from the fourteen-year-old as he’d faced down his angry relatives, his grey eyes flashing with an ethereal authority.

They’d backed down.

He’d won.

Logan slithered on his stomach and upended the jar. “Welcome home, uncle,” he said as the wind whipped the dust into its folds and scattered it over the dense bush below. “Say hi to Kuia for me, please and save me a good seat at the feast in Hawaiki. Thank you for your mana too, uncle.”

He sat up, an old head on young shoulders. He clambered to his feet before tossing his final comment into the wind to follow Rangi’s ashes. “Give Kuia a message for me,” he said. “Tell her Logan Du Rose keeps his promises.”

His olive fingers snatched up the urn and fastened the lid, securing it in the pocket of the saddle blanket. With a final look behind him at the land he’d owned since the age of five, Logan bounded onto the back of the gelding. A flick of the reins and the grip of his bare heels pushed it into a swift canter which created tracks in the long grass. At the crest of the mountain he glanced up at the trunk of an ancient kauri tree blocking his route to the bush, its branches creaking and bending in the breeze. He paused to stare at the names carved high into the trunk. His keen eyes searched for his own name he grinned, the new moko tattoo on his shoulder smarting beneath his shirt.

Pushing the gelding into a break neck descent, Logan hollered in satisfaction, speed negating the ache in his heart and the painful last vision of his Circle Line girl.

The tangata whenua shifted beneath the earth, the Du Rose ancestors stirring and readying themselves for the coming storm. Their chosen son slipped and slid down the treacherous slopes of the mountain, a portend of his life’s journey ahead.