Page 1 of Hers to Love
Chapter One
…wind rustling through leaves … the sound of water moving across the land, rumbling over rocks and thundering down a cliff face, to crash into the pool below … a bird rises into the air as if spooked, calling out its displeasure … rain beginning to fall gently from the sky, the soft splash as it lands on the earth around her … then everything stills, as if the gods themselves had called a halt to life itself...
“…ko nui taku aroha koe, taku pepi…”
A woman’s voice, as familiar to her as her own, evoking deep feelings of love, and safety, laughter and joy. The voice of a teacher, of a guide, of an angel…
“My sweet Ataahua, beautiful by name, beautiful in life. How I will miss watching you grow up, of seeing you become a mother, watching you guide your owntamarikito master the gifts I know they will be born with. But know that I will always be with you. Always, Ataahua, I promise you. Listen to me carefully. The path you need to take is to the north. You will find the man you are looking for, the one who changed our futures. He is north, a day’s drive. He is not what you will be expecting. Yellow River … Kong … silver … you need to be—”
…a rush of wind … screaming … grandmother … grandmother … Nanny-ma!
****
“Holy shit.”
Ataahua Hemopo breathed the curse as her eyes snapped open. Her entire being thrummed with an unspent energy and a deep desire to move. To run. She’d gone into a deep meditative state, one she could only reach when she and her older brother Kaea were linked on both the physical and spiritual plane.
“Ata.” Kaea’s voice was low, and filled with an urgency she could understand. “You good?”
Still breathing deeply, fighting the adrenaline surging through her body, she whispered, “Yeah, you?”
Kaea nodded and squeezed hands she’d forgotten were clasped in his. They stared at each for a while, matching their breaths to the other as they calmed themselves. Soon, the need to run had ebbed and Ata was finally able to let her brother go. She dropped his hands after making sure he, too, was completely himself and looked around them at the forest they had called home for the past twenty-two years.
“Will it ever feel the same?” she asked in a quiet voice, the pain and loss she felt evident in her tone even to her own ears.
Kaea touched a hand to her chin and gently tugged her face back toward him. “I want to lie to you because you are my little sister, and it’s my job to shelter you from anything that would hurt you. But I think we both know that it will neverbethe same. This was our home, our sanctuary, and it was taken from us as surely as ourKuiawas ripped from our lives.”
Ata took a shuddering breath, her heart breaking at the loss of her beloved grandmother, and nodded. “I know that, I do.” Steeling herself, and pushing her feelings deep within her, she locked her gaze to her brother’s. “I heard our grandmother clearly in my waking sleep. She told me where to find the man who took her life to strengthen his own.”
Kaea’s dark brown eyes turned black, his expression harder than she had ever seen before. “She spoke to me, too. I know what path I must take to avenge her death and take back what was stolen from her.”
The two of them stood up from the forest and turned back toward their house, a sprawling mountain cabin with a large wraparound verandah nestled in the forests to the north west of the Nantahala National forest. She and Kaea had been sent here from Tolaga Bay, New Zealand, to live with their grandmother, when she had been three and Kaea five.
“We can’t fail her, Kaea,” Ata said urgently as she took the stairs that led to their front door two and a time. She opened the door and was almost dropped to her knees at the scent of lavender and vanilla that filled her senses. “God, what will we do without her?”
She looked up at her brother, and saw his gaze was locked to the floor in front of the large stone fireplace against the far wall of the living area. That had been where they had found her, lying in a cooling pool of her own blood, her sightless gaze turned toward the door they both ran through. It was as if she had been looking for them in the moments her life was slipping away, as she bled out from the vicious wounds to her neck. No matter that the room had been cleaned physically by friends and family who had mourned with them, and cleansed in a spiritual sense by a Maori Tohunga who had been a guide and leader to them during their childhood. The sight of their grandmother on that floor was burned in their memories forever.
“We will not fail her, Ata.” Kaea’s voice rang with determination and a strength so palpable she drew from it herself. “That is not who we are, or who she raised us to be. We will go east, and find this—”
“East?” Ata repeated. “No, we must go north. A day’s drive, a yellow river, and something to do with silver.”
Kaea turned toward her, and there was no missing the shock in his expression. “Grandmother told you to go north? Are you sure?”
Ata made an impatient sound. “No, Kaea, I’m sure it’s highly bloody likely that I might have misheard the woman who has been a mother to me since I was three years old. It’s not like what she had to tell me was vitally important or anything like that.”
Kaea stared at her in silence for a moment then nodded slowly. “Then that is what you must do. I will go east—no, Ata.” He interrupted her before she could argue that they should stick together. “If Grandmother told you to go north, then that is where you must go. You know as well as I do, messages we receive from the spiritual realm are sent to us for a reason. If we don’t do what is asked of us, we risk losing the future that is destined for us. And that future will be retrieving what was stolen from our family, and allowing our Nanny-ma to rest in peace.”
Ata’s heart almost shattered at Kaea’s use of the childhood name they had for theirKuia.It bled at Kaea’s words because she knew he was right. As hard as it would be to go alone and follow the path her grandmother had laid out before her, she must. It was the only thing she could do.
Pulling her courage around her like a cloak, she prepared to leave her childhood home, and head for the man who took her grandmother from her. She knew exactly what had to happen once she found him.
An eye for an eye, wasn’t that how the saying went?
