“We’ll give it back, then. Tell Mr MacGregor the traps were empty.”
Izzy’s voice. Where had she come from? Her swoon lifting, Tea flinched away. Izzy must have come as her canine self. Don’t look! A shiver coursed along Tea’s skin at the glimpse of naked flesh.
“Yes,” Tea murmured, holding the dead eel close, mindless of the slime and mud. “Give it back. That will do.”
“Go on, then,” Izzy urged, her bare arms wafting into view.
The sound rose in Tea’s mind, the resistance now cut through. She made a hsk hsk hsk in the back of her throat, and the water roiled a welcome.
She lowered her hands in the water and sandy skin coiled around her wrists and fingers, flesh more pliant than she expected from their sinuous lengths. Mouths formed bubbles of surprise. Teeth gripped their companion, tearing and pulling it under, a grand feast. The same teeth nipped her fingertips but did not pierce. A thanks, a welcome, a commitment. Respect returned.
“Izz, look.”
Tea brought her hands up into the almost-gone light dappling through the trees. Her tan skin melded at the wrists with thick, oily, black-green leather, the webs between her fingers elongated. Rubbing her hands together produced an approximation of the hiss that had held her all week. She closed her eyes. It felt like submerging her hands in the damp sand on a beach or running the fingertips across a thousand blades – one grain or tip would be an irritant or cut her, but all together the sensation made her vital, a spun strand of something bigger than herself.
When she opened her eyes again, the eel skin was gone, and her hands were normal. No, not normal. Just human. This is the new normal now.
“What am I?” Tea whispered, all the fight drained from her.
The eels thrashed around their meal, snapping the water with their tails. It sounded like gunshots in a far-off place.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Izzy said softly. “We only want to help you understand. Become the best you.”
“You’re one of us now,” Grant said, patting the patient Clarissa. The horse blinked.
Using the long fern fronds to her best advantage, Izzy was careful not to come into Tea’s full view. Tea caught a glimpse of warm brown curves that made her curve in a little on her own.
They’d better move. The boss expected two, not three to return. How would Izzy get back to the cottage in this state? The water whispered reassurance; of course, she’d had a lot of practice.
“We three are tipua. We find strength in our animal forms. Our strength is whaiwhaiā. But you, Tea, are different. While Grant and I have forms that speak of the solidness of land, yours comes from the movement and change of water. You are taniwha.”
The first two Māori words didn’t mean anything, but the third spoke of something deep that had always been waiting. Tea wanted to flinch away, but the pressure of the water pressed her towards it. She caressed its sandpaper hide, the oily length of it. Here she was, in all her terrible glory.
Monster.
5.
Tea drowsed, letting Morgan carry her through the hissing, crackling day. The sun lulled her into a tranquillity that hadn’t washed over her for weeks, months, years. She could almost forget a war was going on outside these hills. Or inside her skin.
She cracked an eyelid. Nothing but dogs huffing and shimmy-ing around her ankles, sheep, brown grass, rocks protruding like bleached bones, and Izzy rocking gently in her saddle.
“How far now to the upper pasture?”
Izzy squinted at the sun. “Get out the map and compass. You tell me.”
Tea frowned at the map. That tone of voice from Mum or Mr MacGregor put her back up immediately, but from Izzy, it made Tea dig deeper for the competence she expected from her.
A fly settled in her neck sweat, and she wriggled her shoulders to flick it off. No. It wasn’t a fly, it was Izzy’s contemplation. Why did she look at her like that?
Izzy jogged her horse, Carmine, over and reached to lay a tanned hand on the map, then pointed at a rock formation. “See that? That’s there.”
Tea measured it out with her fingers. Her hands were the same peachy sun-brown they had been when she left the farm that morning. No leathery scales creeping up her wrists, turning her into something she was not.
“Another four hours?”
“Sounds about right.”
Tea licked her upper lip, and the tiny ripple of moisture grabbed her. Proximity to blood that moved like hers pulled her along without thought, poking along the rough edges of Izzy.
Izzy jumped and grinned at her, then reined Carmine around to whistle up a dog to chase down a wandering sheep. Tea tipped down her floppy hat to hide her blush and folded away the map.
That was careless. Everyone deserves their secrets.
That had sounded like Robbie’s voice. She sometimes thought in his voice; what would Robbie do? But now, he sounded so close. This was the first time the voice had come through since that night at the creek. But how, with him so far away? When it had happened before, she always thought it was him whispering in another room or, when he wasn’t around, her imagination.
Morgan grumbled, thirsty.
Tea shook up her canteen, shaking away the strange thoughts about her brother in her brain. “It’s so dry out here.”
“Then find us some water,” Izzy called back.
“The next creek isn’t until the mustering hut.”
Izzy threw a look back over her shoulder Tea found hard to read. “What are you waiting for? The world is made up of water. Your body is water. Blood, piss, and everything else.”
“Izzy!” Tea laughed. She’d never heard a girl swear before she came to the farm. So bad and so good at the same time.
Izzy pulled Carmine to a halt and waited for Tea to catch up. “If you’re serious about your tipua, then you have to learn to work with it. I learned quick I couldn’t ramble through life hoping it would all just happen. I didn’t want to become a dog or show my real skin in the wrong situation.”
Tea’s neck prickled and shoulders tensed, a familiar reaction to criticism. Izzy was right, however. It was too dangerous to be herself.
“But I don’t know what to do.” Tea pulled Morgan around to bring a line of sheep back into place.
“You’ve got us. Me and Grant.”
Tea flinched at the idea, but let it settle over her like the hot air.
Izzy kept on. “Grant, he’s best with the ground beneath his feet. Me, I think it’s the night air. For you, it’s what happens when you touch the water. Those eels came to you. They’re usually vicious little buggers, but they want to know you.”