Read The Bone People for Free Online Page B

trek'll soon be over." She edges carefully past him. "It's colder up here than I thought.
    I'm going down to get you a hottie."
    This godzone babytalk. Hottie lolly cardie nappy, crappy the lot of it, she snarls to herself. But what to say
    that the kid'd recognise? I'm gonna get you a bedheating hotwater bottle?
    She's back with it as the boy arrives at the doorway.
    "Go in, then. It's not as bad as it looks."
    Actually, she is proud of this room. The bed and roofbeams are hand-adzed totara, and the floor is covered
    with palecream sheepskins. There is a double-windowed oriel, and the glass is a shallow summer sea,
    aquamarine and pale beryl green. A lot of leaded panes like jewels. One could sit on the broad sill and absorb
    sun and sea alone.
    "Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas," she quotes blandly, seeing his star? fixed on the window. "I'd open them and show you a forlorn fairy or something except you'd probably die of
    pneumonia soon after."
    Silence. "Well," she says, "here's the hotwater bottle, there's the bed. Get under the eiderdown.on top, you should be okay. The toilet is through that door," pointing, "you want anything else?"
    The child shakes his head numbly.
    It hasn't taken long for the rot to set in. Suggest I know he's tired, and he's ready on the instant to flake.
    "Right. If you do, come downstairs and ask; otherwise, I'll come up and wake you round seven. Sweet dreams
    meantime," and she walks slowly out the door but speeds down the stairs.
    "Ahhh," stretching long and hard, "peace and tranquillity."
    Freedom from overseeing eyes.
    It is now early evening, dark sky outside studded with rain-washed stars. The rain has eased to a thin drizzle.
    She drinks another bottle of stout, but her hands become restless. She gets down her golden guitar, and plays
    low languorous chords, watching the night grow deeper all the while.
    But she keeps on listening with one ear for any sound from upstairs.
    Blast the brat, he's beginning to haunt me.
    An enemy inside my broch... a burglar ensconced here.
    and it suddenly occurs to her that the child may really have been stealing and has been playing for time ever
    since.
    God o Hell, my jade.
    Ahh, come on!
    He's not old enough to know greenstone from greywacke.
    But what say someone else has heard about it, some local brand of Fagin, and--
    She lays down the guitar and pads swiftly upstairs.
    Past her bedroom. Listen. Not a sound.
    Into the library.
    There's a drawing light on the desk. She takes it to the full extent of its cord, and shines the light onto the
    chest. She opens the lid, her heart thudding. On trays in the pale pool of light, a hundred smooth and
    curvilinear shapes.
    Two meres, patu pounamu, both old and named, still deadly.
    Many stylised hook pendants, her matau.
    Kuru, and kapeu, and kurupapa, straight and curved neck
    pendants.
    An amulet, a marakihau; and a spiral pendant, the koropepe.
    A dozen chisels. Four fine adzes.
    Several her tiki, one especial -- so old that the flax cord of
    previous owners had worn through the hard stone, and the
    suspension hole had had to be rebored in times before the Pakeha
    ships came.
    A very strange pendant she had picked up long ago on Moerangi
    beach. As always her hand goes to it, stroking it, I am here,
    I am here.
    Jade of my heart, your names a litany of praise; kahurangi;
    kawakawa; raukaraka; tangiwai; auhunga, inanga, kahotea;
    totoweka and ahuahunga
    It's all there.
    She derides herself, You idiot, did you really think that, that scarecrow would pinch your precious hoard? Ea,
    you ought to give the berloody lot away....
    She says softly,
    "It's becoming too precious. Too important. To care for anything deeply is to invite disaster."
    She picks up the curious pendant one last time, to fondle and admire before she goes downstairs.
    At seven precisely the radiophone buzzes. The operator answers her "Gidday, and Hooray" with "Miz
    Holmes, there's been some kind of holdup."
    "O," a