The Moamancer
(A Musomancer short story)
I made up this whole story. Or, did I…?
Yep. I did. It’s fiction.
Any resemblance to anybody, living, dead, undead or reanimated is unintentional.
Written with huge respect for Te Āpiti – Manawatū Gorge, and its past and present inhabitants.
I wanted to share the natural wonder of the place with everybody, and hope I haven’t caused offence to anyone in doing so.
Please visit teapiti.co.nz to find out more about this special area.
*
ONE
I was soldering a new pickup into my Telecaster when Alex dropped round. She eyed up my sloppy work on her way to the fridge to blag one of my fancy beers.
“I see the Gorge is still closed,” she said, as she offered me one of my own brews. I nodded to her to put the beer bottle on the coffee table for me. I’d learned the hard way not to gesticulate while holding a soldering iron. Took me weeks to grow back my eyebrow and the fingerprint on my left pinkie.
“Well,” I said with a sigh, “I can’t talk about that.”
“What do you mean?” said Alex.
I shifted my position to get a better angle on the ground wire. “Just that I’m sworn to secrecy on the Gorge closure. No speaky, sorry, buddy.”
Alex slumped onto the couch and popped the cap off her bottle. “Sworn to secrecy about the Gorge? About the fact that slips on the hillside have caused the road to be closed for ages now? What’s the big secret?”
I put the soldering iron down carefully and eyed the joint I’d been working on. It actually looked like it might hold this time.
“Listen,” I said, “You’ve got to stop pestering me about this. I’ve signed paperwork with the government and everything.”
Alex blew a raspberry in my general direction. “Sounds like another one of your cock-and-bull stories to me. So, are we still on for the gig this evening?”
“I’m serious, you have to stop asking me about the Gorge closure.”
“Pretty sure I already did.”
“I can’t say another word or I’ll go to jail.”
“Cool – about this gig…”
“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you! They closed it off to traffic to allow time for the moa population to rebuild.” I threw my hands in the air. “Are you happy now? They’ve probably got my house bugged, you know.”
“The moa have your house bugged?” said Alex. “I think it unlikely. Also, for the gazillionth time: what the hell are you talking about? Moa have been extinct for hundreds of years.”
I rocked back on my heels and gave her a resigned look. “Well, now you’ve pried it out of me I might as well tell you the whole story.”
“Um,” she fiddled with her beer bottle, “I only came over to ask if you’re still going to the gig tonight…”
I stood up, popped open my beer and went over to gaze pensively out the window. “In school they’ll tell you that the giant flightless bird, the majestic moa, was hunted to extinction well before the arrival of Europeans on these shores.”
“I think I already covered that.”
“Hush! Feel the gravity of the situation. You’ll tell your grandkids one day.”
Alex nodded. “Yep: ‘hey kids, did I ever tell you about the day I had to drop my friend Jareth off at a special-care facility?’”
“For reals, girl.” I turned to fix her with a steely gaze. “Seriously. There are still a few moa left, and they’ve been hiding in the Manawatū Gorge all this time.” I plomped down on the couch next to her. “A few people knew about it, and they resolved to keep it secret, and pledged to look after the birds.”
“Wait up,” said Alex. “A few people managed to keep secret the fact that giant birds, bigger than emu, have been living twenty minutes away from Palmerston North?”
“You start to believe now, don’t you, youngling?” I said in my best Jedi voice.
“No, I start to disbelieve,” she replied, with a touch of the Sith about her. “My disbelief is strong, and growing stronger with each statement you utter. How could people possibly keep something that big from getting noticed?”
I gave it a good theatrical pause, raised an eyebrow, and then: “With the help of the musomancers, my friend. Musomancers have saved the moa. And I am but the latest in a long line of moa-helpers.” I couldn’t keep the proud grin from my face at that point.
“Now,” stated Alex, “You’ve mentioned that you’re a musomancer before.” I nodded. “You say,” she said, “that you can make magic through musical means.” Another nod from me. “You say,” she continued, “that you have already thwarted an evil mage who was about to cause the destruction of the world.” A third nod from my noggin.
“And yet,” said Alex, “there is absolutely no evidence of any of that. Anywhere. Ever.”
“Exactly,” I replied. “That’s how good I am.” I took a smug sip of amber ale. “Anyway, the government asked me to use my musomancy to cause the slips that cut off the road through the Gorge, and also to cast a spell that would keep the moa from being spotted.”
“You!” and here Alex pointed her finger at me like an accusatory blame-stick. “You caused the slips in the Gorge.”
“Yep.” I took another self-congratulatory sip.
“The slips, which cut people off from their easy access to employment and trade.”
“Um…” I gulped the beer, which had somehow got a bit stuck on the way down my throat. “Yep. Yeah, I guess so.”
“By using music-magic.”
“Musomancy.” I corrected her. “And you’re missing the bigger point here: I’m helping to save the moa!”
“Riiiight…” Alex drained her beer and stood up. “Anyway, text me later when you decide if you’re going to the gig or not.”
“No,” I exclaimed.
She turned back to me. “No to the gig?”
“No, there is absolutely no way I can take you out to the Gorge and show you the moa. I’ve signed papers. I could go to jail!”
Twenty minutes later we were at the turnoff to the Gorge.
*
TWO
Alex kicked bits of loose plastic off the dashboard of my old MkIII Cortina wagon. “Sigh…” she said. (Yes, she literally said the word “sigh”.) “This is bullshit, man. Let’s just go to a cafe.”
“Nah, nah … wait a minute, this is going to blow your mind,” I assured her as we swept like a dilapidated yet vigorous broom into the carpark that marks the start of the Gorge walking track. “You’ll see.”
I grabbed my backpack, leapt out of the car and crunched across the gravel. Alex reluctantly slouched along behind me.
As I passed under the arch with the walkway information, I paused and looked back at Alex.
“This right here is where my work starts.” I spread my arms wide and spun around in a slow arc, taking in the natural beauty that surrounded us.
“What do you mean? Is this where you pick up rubbish when you’re on Diversion?”
“No, you fool,” I grumped, deflated. “You’re starting to try my patience. First you insist that I reveal my secrets, then you act all bored now that we’re here.”
Alex rolled her eyes, as she knew this conversation was an unwinnable game. (Literally – I was keeping score, and it was already 6–2 to me.)
“This is where my bubble starts,” I said, gesturing to the completely invisible bubble that sprang up behind me. It covered roughly a gigabyte of hectares worth of ruggedly beautiful native bush; a boisterous river that could only be stepped in once according to Heraclitus; and a sizeable chunk of air, which came in very handy for the flying creatures residing therein.
“Let me guess,” said Alex. “This is a magic bubble, which protects all those moa that can’t possibly live here due to them being extinct?”
“Correct, my fledgling apprentice.”
She pointed to herself. “I’m not your apprentice.” She pointed at me. “And you’re non compos mentis.”
I got out my phone and emailed that line to myself so I could use it in a song. (Don’t worry – if the song does really well, I will definitely pay Alex a portion of the royalties. For sure.)
“You’ll see,” I said, stuffing my phone inside an ethically-
woven hemp bag and then tucking it into an internal pocket of my jacket. Alex raised an eyebrow in silent query. “Oh, the bag? Yeah, you got to keep phones away from the moa.” I started along the track into the Gorge.
“Why? Does the radiation fry their toenails or something?”
“Nah, if they get hold of your phone you’ll never get it back. They love phones, those moa.”
Tramp, tramp, tramp, we went, like a couple of trampers tramping along a track. It’s very similar to walking, but comes with more kudos.
We saw a kererū, a couple of pīwakawaka and an empty potato chip packet, which made me mad. (The bag, not the birds.) I picked it up and virtue-signalled the shit out of the place for a few minutes, just in case the perpetrator was lurking nearby.
I can’t say Alex was enjoying the day too much so far.
As we trudged along, I pulled a mandolin out of my backpack and strummed a few gentle yet very specific chords.
“I can do without that racket, for a start,” said Alex.
“No, I need to do it so you can see the moa.” I waved my picking hand to encompass the greenery that surrounded us. “My musomancy is currently hiding them from sight, but if I play just the right chords, you and I will be able to see them. You and I…” I turned and fixed her with a meaningful gaze, “…and nobody else.”
“So,” she said, “if you play the wrong chords … everybody will be able to see them?”
I gulped. “I don’t really need that kind of pressure right now, thanks Alex.” I let out a long shaky breath. “My fallback chord is always just a nice straightforward G major. Works for a lot of spells, because it’s confident and supportive, but also calming and restorative. If you’re ever in a tight spot, musomancy-wise, hit ’em with a G, I say. Now, let me concentrate.”
Alex thought for a minute. “How long have musomancers been hiding the moa here then?”
“Oooh, for at least five hundred years, I should say. As soon as someone noticed they were on the verge of extinction. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering where the old musomancers got their mandolins from, that’s all.”
“Oh, right. Good question. So, it doesn’t have to be a mandolin. In fact, traditional Māori instruments work better with the moa, since they’re native birds. They’re more attuned to things like pūtōrino and kōauau. But only experts in taonga pūoro have been trained to play those with the correct physical, mental and spiritual technique. I can only use what I know. I’m strongest on guitar, but I can get the job done with mandolin, Irish tenor banjo … heck, I can even muster a reasonably powerful invocation with an accordion if I have to.”
“True,” said Alex. “I’ve seen you clear a room with an accordion on more than one occasion.” She smiled. “Quick as a flash, you did it.”
On we trudged.
“Hey, Alex.” I pointed to a mossy tree. “Old man’s beard must go. Huh? Amirite?”
“That is sooooo last century,” she said as she brushed past me.
“Hey, you’re from last century, too, pantsface.”
“Yeah, but not the boring part of it,” she threw back at me. “Anyway, where’s these damn moa? Let’s get me moa-vated. I wanted moa out of this tramp.”
“That is all really good banter, actually, Alex. I’m very proud of you.”
“You rub off on me like a chalky deposit. It’s not a good look for either of us, really.”
I chuckled. “Chalky deposit … nice one.”
A few minutes later we crested the rise of a rising cresty bit. A ridge, I guess. Through an opening in the trees we could see across to the other side of the Gorge, where a railway track twisted and turned through the bush. Below us, the water of the Manawatū River made like Geoffrey and rushed. With the force of a thousand washing machines, the river punched its way through the ranges, keeping the Ruahines away from the Tararuas as if they were squabbling siblings being given a watery time-out.
“Hey, Alex.”
Sigh. “Whaaaaat now?”
“Did you know this is the only place in New Zealand where a river starts on the other side of the main divide to where it finishes at the sea?”
“If you’re just going to look up stuff online and then parrot it back to me, you know we could have done this back at your place, right?”
“Wait,” I said, “think about it. That means this is a place of coming together. Even though the river separates the ranges, it also unites the opposite sides of the island.”
“So you’re thinking it would be a good place to host a music festival, like Woodstock? Or you could open a refuelling station for crystals or something?”
“You’re getting close,” I replied. “I think the place has a healing, preserving magic all of its own. And that’s probably why the last moa are here. Even before musomancers came along to help, the moa were already finding sanctuary in this special area.”
As if in reply, an eerie call echoed through the Gorge. The hairs on my arms stood up. All the other sounds of the bush fell silent, as if the forest creatures were in awe of the primordial sound. It was like a cross between a goat bleat and a parrot squawk, but much deeper, like it had been put through a glitchy old octave guitar effect pedal. If you put a stethoscope to the stomach of a giant with intestinal troubles, it might have sounded something like that.
I turned to Alex, mouth open in wonder.
“Did you hear that?”
Alex shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “OK, yeah, that sounded weird. Could have been…” she trailed off, and then weakly ended with: “A rooster fighting a ram, maybe?”
“Alex,” I whispered.
“What?”
I patted the air with my hands. “Be very quiet.”
She froze, staring at me. “Why?”
“Turn around. Very … slowly.”
*
THREE
Alex raised an eyebrow. She did not look amused. But she humoured me anyway, by turning around in a slow fashion which managed to cover her long-suffering frustration with a thin veneer of compliance.
She turned to look straight at a mossy brown tree trunk that had inexplicably materialised behind her. Then, as her brain allowed her to slowly comprehend it, she realised the tree trunk wasn’t mossy, it was feathery. And it swayed gently. And it … swallowed.
She looked down and saw the tree trunk get wider and wider, until it was rather obviously a body, with two huge – and I mean huge – powerful legs.
Finally, she looked up. And up. And up. Until she saw, looking down at her, two eyes and beak, like a duck crossed with a diplodocus.
The animal’s head was about a metre above her. It was looking at her with mild curiosity and some wariness.
“Oh. My. God,” she breathed. “Jareth. It’s a moa!”
“I feel I should remind you,” I hissed back, “that’s exactly why I brought you here. Do you believe me now?”
Alex tentatively put her hand out towards the gigantic beast. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll give you this one. Can I touch it?”
“They don’t usually like being petted, but for a special person they have been known to allow it,” I whispered. “Just be aware, it might…”
SKROOOOOONK!
Alex’s legs gave out and she collapsed backwards, cowering in front of the gigantic animal. The moa let rip with another mighty call, dipped its head as if in farewell, then strode past us into the dense bush.
“…It might let out an incredibly loud, growly rumbling sound,” I finished. “They don’t mean you any harm, that’s just them saying hello.” I gave her a hand up.
“Right,” I said, as she brushed dirt and leaves off her trousers. “Time to go to a cafe, is it?”
“Are you kidding?” said Alex. “I want to see more! Are there more of them? How many?”
“Okay, okay, yes there are more moa. Many more moa. If we’re lucky we might see a few making a nest in a tree.”
“What? How the hell does a huge bird like that nest in a tree?”
“I don’t know, I think it would be very difficult. That’s why I said we’d have to be lucky. I’ve only ever seen them on the ground.”
She punched me on the shoulder.
“Hey! What was that for?”
“That was for everything! Including that lame joke you just crapped out. That was for making me think there weren’t any moa, and then standing me right in front of one.”
“Um,” I said, “point of order. I’ve been telling you there were moa here for, like, the whole day.”
“Yes, but you made it seem like you were just talking bullshit.”
“That’s just the way I talk. That’s what my voice sounds like. I’ll take the rap for the bad joke, and let’s simply chalk the rest up to the excitement of the situation.”
“Screw you, you liar,” she said, and stalked off.
For the first, and perhaps only, time in recorded history, I was at a loss for words. I tagged along behind Alex, my mouth opening and closing soundlessly.
*
FOUR
Eventually I caught up with Alex. By that time she had rid herself of some of the antihistamines – no, what’s the word I’m looking for? – adrenaline.
“Sorry for punching you,” she said.
“No problem, I’m a tough book nerd. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been punched on the shoulder I’d have enough money for a very cheap, second-hand phaser guitar effect pedal.”
She fidgeted with the zipper on her coat. “I’m sorry for calling you a liar, too. I honestly thought you were pulling my leg earlier.”
I shrugged. “I do have a bit of a rep for that kind of thing, to be fair.”
She perked up at that. “Yeah! Like when you told everyone you battled a musical dragon in a lair underneath the clock tower.” She snorted. “You doofus.”
“But that’s…” I waved it away. Not the time to get into that again. Maybe once Alex had time to reflect on the moa situation, she might start to see some of my other stories in a different light.
Because now we could hear the distinctive low, rumbling calls of several moa up ahead. It sounded like a dozen big motorcycles singing while they cooked dinner.
I strummed a few more chords on my mandolin, tweaking the muso-magical field that protected them from human perception, to make sure we got a good sighting of them.
The sound grew louder. It seemed like we were rapidly getting closer to them. Much faster than the speed we were walking. They were obviously coming towards us. In a hurry. The thunder of twenty or thirty massive moa feet pounding the earth set our teeth chattering. Their groaning roars grew more frantic.
“We need to move,” I said. “Now!”
“Are they charging us?” cried Alex.
“They don’t usually do stuff like that,” I yelled as we raced off to the left. I was heading for a dense stand of kahikatea, hoping that the moa wouldn’t be able to penetrate it. “Something must have riled them up. Run!”
The treetops in the distance were swaying. We could hear the moa growls getting louder and louder. I pelted towards the trees, looking for a gap to sneak into. I risked a quick look backward to check on Alex. She was right on my heels, thank goodness.
We were only twenty metres away, but now we could see bushes being uprooted and smaller trees pushed aside, as the first of a large group of rampaging moa came crashing towards us. One of them roared, and leapt over my head as I ducked down just in time. Alex jerked to a stop as another moa raced in front of her, its bulky body only centimetres from crushing her into the fecund mulch layer. It was so close to her that it would have whipped the hat off her head, had she been chapeaued. (She wasn’t, so that was lucky, I guess.)
As soon as it sped past, she kicked herself into motion again, racing along behind me. We were almost there.
I spotted a gap in the stand of trees – it was skinny but so were my jeans. We might just make it. I put on an extra burst of speed that I didn’t know I had in me.
“Alex!” I yelled, and turned to point the way. That’s when my foot hit a tree root, I fell face-first into a rock, and everything went black.
*
FIVE
I woke sometime later. Well, I could hardly wake up earlier, could I? I was lying in the recovery position, and my mouth tasted like dirt and kererū droppings.
I moaned and put my hands to my head. This was worse than the time I drank a two-litre bottle of Bloke-a-cola at a recording session.
I opened my eyes a little, and the sun speared into them like it was trying to interrogate me in an old-fashioned cop show. As my vision cleared I could see I was in the middle of a stand of stumpy trees, and I could hear soft chords coming from … maybe a harp? Was I in heaven? Seemed unlikely, and frankly it would be quite embarrassing, as I didn’t think heaven existed.
“Jareth, are you awake?” Alex’s voice came from nearby. “Are you okay? You hit your head pretty hard.”
“Mmrrrpphhh,” I mumbled. “I mean, pah!” I spat out some dirt and various bits of foliage. “I think I’ll be okay. Looks like the rock I fell onto had a good covering of moss, so it was spongy.”
I tried to rise but the tree trunks wavered in front of me and I fell back down.
“You got us to safety, Alex,” I said. “How did you evade the rampaging moa?”
“Well … I didn’t exactly get us away from them,” she said.
“How do you mean?”
“Look around you, buddy.”
I finally raised my sore head, and as I did, the stumpy trees that surrounded us resolved into feathery stumpy legs, and then I realised they had wrinkly clawed feet, and they were shifting this way and that.
“Um, Alex?”
“Yes, Jareth?”
“Are we surrounded by several large flightless birds of the ratite family, perchance?”
“That’s what I’m telling you, mate. Also,” she added wearily, “I’m running out of chords to play on this mandolin, and my fretting hand is getting tired. Would you mind taking over for a minute, please?”
I dragged myself up to my feet, still a bit wobbly.
Now that I could see properly, I took a second to drink in the astounding sight of a couple dozen full-grown moa encircling us, swaying slightly in time to the sound of Alex’s mandolin playing. It was a mind-blowing scene, and one that no other living person had ever witnessed. My heart leapt.
“Oh my god, Alex!” I cried, “you know what this means?”
“That we’re sharing a hallucination?”
“No, my dear,” I drew a shaky breath. “It means that you’re also a musomancer!” I wrapped her in a hug. “This is so cool!”
She laughed. “Yeah, I guess it is pretty cool. Now,” she thrust the mandolin into my hands, “Take over playing this before the moa decide to rough us up for our cellphones. I’ve been playing G major at them for ten minutes and I think they’re getting bored with it.”
“You remembered!” I said. “Go you. I think you’re a natural.”
I strummed a simple two-chord progression from G to C and back again, while Alex slumped down on the ground for a well-earned rest. She looked beat but also upbeat, as I kept the beat on the mandolin.
I changed the tune to include chords that suggested foraging, and the moa started to wander off in search of food.
We sat quietly for a few minutes, recovering. My head stopped its throbbing and settled down to just feeling very sore.
*
“Wow, that was a hell of a walk in the woods,” Alex puffed.
“And our work here is not yet done, my fledgling music-
wizard,” I said.
“Well, I’m about ready to head home and have a kip.”
“Don’t you want to help me?”
“Help you do what?” she said, brushing dirt off her trousers.
“I’ve never seen moa behave like that,” I replied. “Something scared them.”
“Could have been a tramper wandering off the track.”
“The musomancical spell keeps humans away,” I explained. “It also stops the moa from getting scared by aeroplanes or trains going past. No,” I shoved the mandolin into my backpack. “There’s only one thing that could have happened.”
I looked Alex in the eye. “There’s another musomancer in the area, and that’s what spooked the moa.”
Alex put her hands on her hips, her mouth a tight line.
“Not on my damn musomancer watch, they don’t.”
And she spun on her heel and strode off in the direction the moa had come from.