Alexa pushed her shoulders against the bus seat the next morning, the vibration from the rough and curvy road like a fifty-cent motel massage. The bus was transporting them to Te Anau Downs, where they would catch a boat to the start of the hike.
Rounding a curve, the bus slowed, then halted. Three orange cones blocked half the narrow road where the pavement had collapsed into a fast-flowing roadside stream.
“Damage from the storm,” Charlie said.
After waiting for an oncoming car to pass, the bus crawled toward the cones. Alexa held her breath that the remaining road—possibly undermined by the gushing water—would hold. The Māori elder had warned of grave danger.
The road held. She exhaled and thought of yesterday’s bones.
Teeth had told the tale. And the caskets. Several had Māori carvings in the wood: spirals—Tiki, fish. It was as if she could feel the etchings, worn and subtle, on her fingertips now.
Under Mr. Blackburn’s and Dr. Luckenbaugh’s watchful eyes, she had examined the skulls and teeth. She replayed the scene in her mind. The opening of each coffin. The sweet waft of earth and must and mystery. The empty eye and nose sockets. The macabre grins. The teeth preserved.
She snorted.
Charlie, who’d snagged the window seat, frowned. “What?”
“I was just thinking. Death is excellent dental care.”
“You are so weird.”
“Want to know why?” He hadn’t shaved again, and his hairstyle wasn’t so quiffy.
“No.”
He was still a little touchy that she’d been working so much. She really didn’t blame him.
“Teeth decay while we’re alive, right? Like now, from the syrup you slathered on your pancakes at breakfast.” She had ordered “brilliant bacon and egg butty,” a sandwich of bacon, drippy fried egg, and onion jam. She would have to expand her palate more often. “And the bacteria in our mouths. The sugars and bacteria that cause decay don’t survive death. That’s why teeth are so resilient.”
Charlie seemed to consider this. “There are minerals found in tooth enamel. So teeth are like rocks.”
Not really, Alexa thought.
Charlie shook his phone. “I can’t get a signal.”
“I told you there’s no cell reception. I only brought mine to be a backup for my camera.” She said it like “no biggie,” but being cut off from the outside world made her nervous. The whole hiking thing was making her nervous. “Hey, Charlie…” She waited until he slipped his phone into his pocket. “Yesterday, when I was looking at those bones…”
“And I was stuck in the car like a kid…”
“The Māori elder told me looking at them could bring me misfortune or danger.”
Charlie’s eyebrows went up. “That’s BS. You don’t believe that, do you?”
She scratched her ankle. “No.”
The first casket had held a surprise. She opened her mouth to tell Charlie about it, but then shut it. The bones had a right to privacy. Nestled in the crook of the adult skeleton’s arm was an infant so young that the fontanelle was visible in the skull. Mother and child. The sight had touched Alexa’s heart, made her think of her own mother cradling her, loving her, protecting her—and then up and dying of cancer when Alexa was six and Charlie two.
She avoided eye contact with Mr. Blackburn and Dr. Luckenbaugh as she gently manipulated the adult’s jaw so that she could examine the teeth.
“No sign she had dental treatment,” Alexa said. An examination of the pelvis would confirm the skeleton was female, but Alexa was pretty sure.
Dr. Luckenbaugh took notes on her pad. “That’s a clue. New Zealand’s School Dental Service began in the 1920s. It was years later before it reached Māori children.”
Mr. Blackburn sighed. Alexa could smell his peppermint breath as she counted the mother’s teeth. “The wisdom teeth are erupted,” she said. “So the remains belong to someone late teens or older.” The teeth of children are a fairly reliable means to estimating chronological age, but after the eruption of the wisdom teeth, it was harder.
She poked a lateral incisor. “I see minimal signs of decay. No Coca-Cola cavities.”
Dr. Luckenbaugh frowned. “No what?”
“Sugary drinks cause cavities. These teeth indicate a healthy diet.”
“The precontact Māori lived on fern root, fish, shellfish, birds, and some crops,” Dr. Luckenbaugh said.
Alexa retrieved her magnification glass from her crime kit and studied the teeth again. “There are also flat wear planes.”
“Eh?”
The elder startled her. She explained. “There is flattening of the molars.”
“From chewing fern root, probably,” Dr. Luckenbaugh said.
Alexa tongued her own molars. “Fern root?”
“The rhizome of the bracken fern. It wasn’t very nutritious, but it was available year-round. Even boiled, roasted, or pounded, it was hard to chew.”
Sometimes Alexa’s cooking was like that. She moved to the next intact casket. That skull was missing several teeth—maybe lost prior to burial—but the remaining ones were in good shape, and the molars also showed flattening. An hour later she had examined all nine skulls, plus the infant’s. Given the condition of the teeth and the use of caskets, her best estimate was that the burials took place between 1900 and 1930.
Dr. Luckenbaugh nodded. “The artifacts confirm that. I removed them so they wouldn’t influence your judgment.”
“Radiocarbon tests can give you a more definite answer.”
“No need,” the elder said, folding his arms across his chest again.
“The road will need to be rerouted,” Dr. Luckenbaugh concluded. “Thank you for this information.”
Alexa thought reinterring the bones quickly was a lost opportunity.
As if reading her thoughts, Mr. Blackburn added, “There is nothing to be gained from further violation.” He then spoke in Māori to Dr. Luckenbaugh. Alexa recognized urupa, the word for burial ground. He bowed his head.
She looked for a final time at the casket that held the mother and child, closed now to prying eyes, and knew he was right.
***
Getting to the Milford Track was complicated. Dr. Luckenbaugh had rushed them back to the airport to catch their eighty-minute flight to Queenstown. At the Queenstown airport, they rented, at Charlie’s insistence, a sporty red Mazda. He drove the two hours from the airport to Te Anau, leaving his grudges behind, and managing the left side of the road well.
They spent the night in side-by-side rooms at the Explorer Motel in the village. She supposed they could have shared a room, but, well, she hardly knew her brother. A Christmas here, a wedding there. Her two visits to meet her nephews. Benny was the first baby she had ever held. She didn’t like the way the month-old infant had howled in her arms, waving his tiny fists. Mel had scooped him up like Alexa was pinching him. Alone in the motel room, she completed her reports on the skeletons and emailed them to her boss and Dr. Luckenbaugh, with whom she had exchanged business cards.
She and Charlie would have plenty of time to bond during the hike. They would share huts for three nights with other hikers; no tent camping was allowed. Each hut held forty hikers, and they were usually full. She shuddered.
This morning, after their caloric breakfasts, they drove to the Milford Track Visitor Center. “Good morning,” Alexa said to a dark-haired ranger. “We’re checking in.”
“Welcome. From the states, eh?” He was young, maybe Māori.
Charlie nodded.
“Weather is fine today. Rain is forecast for tomorrow.”
Slogging through rain did not excite Alexa. She had only been backpacking one other time: a high school Appalachian Trail new-boot nightmare. Her heels had blistered, ruining the experience. Not this time. She looked down fondly. Her sturdy boots were broken in.
“What name is the reservation under?” he continued.
Alexa panicked. Her friend Mary had made the reservations. “Um. Horomia.”
“Who’s that?” Charlie asked.
Alexa kept quiet.
The ranger filed through a stack, humming tunelessly. “Eh, here we go.” Then he stared at Charlie. “You don’t look like a Mary.”
Charlie looked at Alexa. “What gives?”
“Oh, well, I was supposed to hike with Mary, but she…” Mary Horomia was the one friend she had made during her fellowship at University of Auckland. Mary had been excited to show her around, and they had decided on hiking Milford Track when the semester was over. She had died in a car wreck, just two months ago, and Charlie was her understudy. Only he didn’t know that.
“…she had a car accident. My brother, Charlie, is filling in.”
“Highly irregular.” The ranger clicked on his computer. “It says here that Ms. Horomia is a New Zealand citizen, and Ms. Glock has a work visa.”
“That’s right,” Alexa said.
The ranger squinted at Charlie. “But you are not a citizen of New Zealand, mate, is that right? And you don’t have a work visa?”
“Right,” Charlie said.
A heavy woman, maybe fifty, with thin blond hair and a double chin, spun a rack of postcards on the other end of the counter.
“There’s a price difference,” the ranger explained. “Hut reservations for Kiwis and visa holders are seventy dollars a night. For international visitors, it’s a hundred forty a night. That will be an additional two hundred ten dollars, please.”
Alexa blanched, but dug out her credit card. She hoped Charlie wouldn’t ask about Mary. Her friend’s death was a raw spot; she was still grieving.
A postcard fluttered to her feet. Alexa picked it up while she waited for her credit card, and studied it: VISIT TE ANAU GLOWWORM CAVE. “Maybe we’ll go here after the hike,” she said to Charlie, showing him the picture.
“Give the woman her card,” Charlie said.
She handed the postcard to the woman who opened her mouth as if to smile, revealing a small gap between her top teeth, but then shut it.
“Here are your tickets,” the ranger said. “The huts are almost full—there are thirty-five people in your cohort. The hut master will collect tickets each night.”
“Hut master?” Charlie asked. “That sounds kinky.”
The ranger laughed. “If kinky is mopping loos and trail work, you’re dead on. This is only the second day the track has been open since the storm. There are downed trees blocking the path in several places.”
“But is it safe?” Alexa asked.
Charlie rolled his eyes.
“Yeah nah. You hike at your own risk, of course. We get thousands of people each season.” He handed them their tickets and a map. “Write in all the hut books, though. Leaving a trail helps us find you if something does go wrong.”
Alexa didn’t like the sound of that.
The ranger pointed out the window to a bus. “Just two buses a day. Milford trampers only. This one is about to leave. It will take you to the boat. After the boat ride, you’ll start the hike.”
Plane, car, bus, boat. All that is missing is a train, Alexa thought.
The bus driver pulled the doors shut after Charlie and Alexa boarded. They found side-by-side seats halfway down the aisle, stowed their backpacks on the overhead rack, and braced themselves as the bus pulled forward.
“Stop,” a man behind them called.
The postcard woman was running across the parking lot, her open raincoat flapping like bat wings. The driver halted and opened the door. “Your lucky day.”
The woman was huffing from her parking lot jog. She slid her pack off and sat across from Alexa and Charlie.
With a lurch, the bus of Milford trampers pulled out of the lot. Kiwis used the word tramp instead of hike. And track instead of trail. Alexa swallowed, checked her cheap watch, and leaned back for a catnap.
Charlie nudged her shoulder ten minutes later. “Look at the waterfall.” He hadn’t mentioned the hut tickets. Probably because she’d paid.
The water crashing over a cliff caused her heart to race. It looked so powerful, so indifferent. Her mind was leaving the skulls behind.
A college-aged woman bounded down the bus aisle and leaned over Alexa. “You don’t mind, do you?” She thrust her camera toward the window.
Alexa shuffled her hiking boots to make room. “Have you seen Dad lately?” Alexa asked.
“Dad and Mom spent Christmas with us.”
The burn scars that flowed like an ugly stream across Alexa’s back, hidden from anyone who didn’t know her intimately, tightened. She shuffled her boots again, forcing the college woman to back up and leave their space. “Rita is not your mom.”
“She’s the only mom I’ve ever known. You’re the one who has a problem with her.”
Her back scars were a barometer. The greater her stress, or anger, the more they constricted. She took a deep breath. Dad’s marriage to Rita was a long time ago and a hemisphere away.
The light in the bus faded, eclipsed by dark trees on either side of the road.
“Who turned off the light?” Charlie asked.
“They’re black beech,” floated a voice from behind. “Endemic to New Zealand.”
The owner of the voice, a lightly bearded man, smiled pleasantly when Alexa turned to see who had been eavesdropping. His accent meant he was endemic, too. She was pleased another Kiwi besides Postcard Woman was on the hike. Mary had said mostly foreigners scarfed up the reservations. “Black beech sounds like a fungal disease,” she told him.
“You’re right,” the man said. “They’re prone to sooty mold.”
The wheels of the bus crunched across gravel. Out the window Alexa saw a gray lake, gray mountains on the far side, and chunky gray ducks churning the still surface. A long single-file boardwalk stretching into Lake Te Anau looked too much like a pirate’s plank for Alexa’s comfort.