Diana Pho - Steampunk World

Aroha swallowed as she heard the engines of the airship over the wind. “I thought it was a love story, but now it seems poor Hinemoa might not have had a choice. Where did you get it from?”

Ruru held the flute up, so she could see how small but intricately carved it was. “I found it,” he said simply.

The instrument of the most famous love story in all of Aoteroa’s history, and he held it like it was a weapon—which he had turned it into. Aroha suspected he must have found the burial site of the lovers. It did not belong to his iwi .

“That was made for love,” Aroha said, pointing to the flute. “It wasn’t meant for vengeance.”

Ruru glanced up, behind her, to where the airship was drawing close and closer. “It depends on how you play it.”

Aroha held out her hand towards him, trying to keep her voice unemotional. “Tutanekai’s love and yearning shouldn’t be used to kill. Let me return it to his people so it may be re-buried with him.”

Now the airship engines were very loud. Aroha didn’t know who was on it, but she understood that once it came close Ruru and the flute would disappear.

Ruru shook his head. “Utu was exacted for you, Aroha. Among others, but for you most of all. We have to use what we have, just as our people have always used what we have.” He pointed to the airship. “Your own tribe know that.”

Aroha could feel the tearing inside her; the two parts of her heritage pulling at her. What was left in the middle? Anything at all?

Both parts understand vengeance, but at the same time she remembered her role, the oath she had made to protect the people of this land from the strange, the unusual, the bizarre. Despite her own personal feelings, no one should have the power of Tutanekai.

“Give me the flute,” she said, pulling her taiaha . The short three-foot tube extended out with a hiss.

His eyes widened when he saw her innovation up close, as she spun it around and directed it at him. He met her first attack with a parry of the rifle he quickly snatched up from against the rock.

Her taiaha hissed with its internal power, jetting steam into his face, and he backed away blinded for a moment. When he regained his vision, Ruru actually looked upset. “You are attacking your own people? I am setting wrongs right!”

“It is a different age,” Aroha said, as she swung her taiaha for his legs. “You cannot be judge of all things. None of us can.”

A ladder unfurled from the airship above them. Ruru glanced up at it for just a moment, and Aroha knew that she had only that moment. Distracted as he was, she could have had the killing blow, but instead levelled a blow for his head, and when he jerked out of the way, she stepped in and snatched the flute from the waistband of his piupiu .

Their brown eyes locked as her fingers tightened around the delicate piece of bone. “You have had enough utu,” she shouted to him over the roar of the airship engines. “Tell my father, so has he. We are done.”

Ruru let out a laugh at that, and then turned and leapt for the ladder just as it pulled it away. His fingers locked on the rungs, and then he climbed up and away.

Aroha did not look up as the airship moved away. She had not seen her father in years, but he had his life in the clouds, and she had one on the ground. Just like Rangi and Papatunuku, the sky father and the earth mother. Somewhere in between was a place for her to stand, and she just had to find it.

It took Aroha a couple of weeks to return to Wellington and the district headquarters of the Ministry. It was the fault of a rather roundabout trip she took. She knew she was a mess of mud and stank sorely, but the idea that had begun worming its way into her head would not be put off.

Miss Tuppence let her into the Regional Director’s office, with only the slightest of winces at her appearance, so perhaps it was not that bad.

Anderson looked up from his desk, his bright blue eyes roaming over her condition. “Agent Murphy, I see things must be urgent with you. I take it your mission was successful?”

This was going to be the hard bit. “Yes, sir. It turned out that a Maori nose flute with unusual properties was being used to extract utu on some rather nasty people.”

He placed his pen carefully down on his desk and steepled his fingers. “And I take it you apprehended the suspect and got hold of this flute?”

She looked him directly in the eye. “Actually Regional Director, the perpetrator escaped, but I did manage to make sure he no longer had the flute in his possession.”

Anderson waited for her explanation in a way that was rather unnerving.

“Unfortunately,” she said with the steadiest of voices she could manage, “the artifact was smashed into pieces in the process.” She did not tell him that it had been returned to Tutanekai’s iwi , to be buried with honor. As far as his ancestor’s knew the flute was merely a tapu item, sacred but with no mysterious powers. She had not enlightened them on that, just as she was not enlightening her superior.

“Well, that is a shame,” the Regional Director said, picking up his pen.

Aroha did not move.

“Is there something else, Agent Murphy?”

She swallowed hard, thinking of her torment at taking such a sacred object, and how she was stuck between the worlds of her parents—but perhaps that could be put to advantage.

She stood a little straighter, resting her hand on her taiaha under her cloak, gaining strength from that touchstone of tradition. “Director Anderson, in all my travels, I have noticed that there is something missing from the Ministry.”

Her superior’s dark eyebrows pressed together. “You have had a sudden dose of insight. Do tell, Miss Murphy?”

“I believe there is a better way to handle the acquisition of dangerous objects.” Her fingers rested on the breast of her coat where the flute had so recently ridden. “Rather than barging in and snatching away objects, might a softer, gentler approach be not the best way, with a position made especially for it?”

He leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingers on the desk between them. Morning sun spilled over the pile of papers. “And what would you call this position?”

Aroha smiled. “I believe we could begin by creating a liaison agent. Someone who could be a bridge between the Queen’s Ministry and the tribes of Aoteroa.”

“And that,” he said with a tilt of his head, “I presume would be you?”

Aroha raised her chin just a fraction, feeling the pride of her ancestors whisper in the back of her head. “Yes, sir, that would be me.”

For a long moment she feared the Regional Director would brush off her suggestion. However, finally he let out a sigh. “We are a long way from Headquarters, Agent Murphy, but I will take your suggestion under serious consideration.” His gaze focused on her. “I can see that you have the particular…experience and qualifications for such a role. I will give the HQ Director my recommendation. I don’t think they comprehend our ways are different down here.”

She smiled at that. Perhaps there was hope, if they could understand each other just a little.

“Thank you sir,” she said. “I believe I can make a difference.”

He dismissed her, and as she turned to go, she thought of Ruru and the Ngati Toa airship, and wondered what the days ahead would bring.

“Martha is to wind up the worlds every day. Sergio must polish the big organ. Misa is to tend to the plants in the hothouse— and Lina, finish the last project.”