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Te Tohungia o te Tane / The Mark of the Man (Part 3)

by Tem-ve H'syan (tem-ve@gmx.de)

"And how are we feeling this morning, my young warrior?" The faint strain of tension in Ketoa's overly-bright voice went completely unnoticed as a noncommittal grunt from under the eaves of the house answered him. Rangirua was clearly in no mood to talk.

Which was forgivable given the state of his face - a few days after his second session under Ketoa's deft hands and sharp chisel, his left cheek was a swollen mass of black-edged swirls cutting deeply into too-soft flesh. His eye was nearly swollen shut, and his pout was lopsided as he greeted Ketoa with the slightest nod, reclining back against the wall as soon as common courtesy allowed.

"Ah, ah. Not looking too bad. You've been very brave so far, you know? I would be tempted to say you're the perfect image of your father in this, but... he seems to tend towards foolishness these days..."

"... jjus' shut up about my father, 'lease..."

"I will, I will." An indulgent smile, a hand attempting to stroke a cheek that twitched away from the touch. Ketoa settled his hand on the stricken boy's shoulder instead. "I can imagine what it must be like to live with someone like that. And I've only tried for, oh, seven years...? Still, a better track record than my predecessor, I imagine..."

A glare from Rangirua told him in no uncertain terms that jests were not welcome. Especially not jests about his family.

"Oh, forgive me. I am hardly in a position to joke about someone I have barely known. As little as you have, I would think... she wasn't with us for very long. Yes, she wasn't."

"Ran 'way when I was born... lef' me everyone's son..."

"Oh Rangirua, no. You mustn't think that." Quick fluttering pats on the boy's shoulder, slowing down to a gentle stroke. "You mustn't think that. You are very much your father's son... as well as your mother's," he added quickly.

Rangirua would have spat if he had felt capable of doing so without drooling on himself.

"Ran 'way an' never came back..." The glare in his brown eyes was as much disappointment as anger.

"Rangirua. Boy. What you are is precious. It is you. You do not have to have your parents holding your hand to make you precious. Look at all the people of the village - all the aunts and uncles, grandmothers and stepbrothers. Have they not taken you for who you are? Without asking where your mother is and why she's not holding your hand?" He stared into the dim cobwebbed space under the eaves for a moment, if only to avoid staring into Rangirua's eyes and the doubt so evident there.

"Tell me again," he said brightly, "how the world was made."

Rangirua snorted. "'mnot a baby, Ketoa."

"That, Rangirua, is precisely the point." An indulgent smile. "Oh, silly me, I had nearly forgotten." With an elegant gesture, Ketoa produced a small package wrapped in harakeke leaves from under his cloak. "I acknowledge you are not a baby, Rangirua, but I will have to feed you nevertheless. Rest assured that I have fed great chieftains in this manner, and that I have no doubt you will be one before I'm too old to do this kind of thing to grown men like you." He unfolded the package and, with practised ease, began to finger-feed the sulking boy. "Now, how was the world made?"

Rangirua sighed. "Firs', there was Nothing, and it was called Te Kore..."

Ketoa smiled. "Too true. And I trust you to have learned your mythology well, dear boy. But answer me my question: how was the world," he gestured at the village at large with one finger smeared in kumara pulp, "how was the world we live in, the world we see, made?"

Rangirua looked puzzled. "There was... Papata...," he winced at the amount of facial movement the name of the Earth Mother required, "Papa...tuanuku. And she had married her b'loved, Ranginui, the sky, who lay with 'er. An' they had many children, six great atua they had, and they lived b'tween them..." Rangirua paused to accept another dollop of food, and Ketoa used the pause to take over.

"And yet the world was not as we see it today when Ranginui lay with Papatuanuku, now was it?"

Rangirua shook his head slowly, carefully. "'ws dark between 'em. No light."

"And quite stuffy it must have been too," Ketoa added good-naturedly, eliciting a small smile from the boy's ravaged face. "So...?"

"Tane. Tane came an' pushed with his feet un'il Ranginui popped free of Papatu...'nuku. An' there was light, an' Tane became the big tree that' keeps the sky above our 'eads." Clearly exhausted from such a long sentence, Rangirua let his head flop back against the wall again. Ketoa smiled.

"So. That's reassuring, is it not?"

Rangirua frowned with some effort. "So?"

"Think on it, my young warrior. Where would we be if Tane hadn't pushed his parents apart? You, my boy, have quite the promise to be such a tree. It's in you, trust you me. And as the earth may be far from the tree's canopy, and the sky may be frowning and thundering upon him and throwing storm and lightning at him - has that ever brought the tree Tane down? Has the sky fallen on our heads? It hasn't."

Rangirua just stared, processing what Ketoa had just said, trying to understand.

Ketoa smiled. "Your mother may be far from your head, but you are rooted in her still. And your father may be frowning upon you, but that will not bring you down. You are not your father, Rangirua. You are your own man. And you will stand as tall as the tree Tane one day, if only you allow yourself to do so. I see that in you, Rangirua. I see the great chief you will one day be. Do you see it too?"

Without a word, the boy picked up the hand that lay on his shoulder and pressed it to his bloodstained lips.

The faint flicker of disgust on Ketoa's face was too brief to register in Rangirua's glistening eyes.

"Kuai."

The voice in his ear was too close, too warm, and he squirmed away from it involuntarily, unwilling to wake up enough to find it was only a dream. The fern was tickling the back of his neck and he realised dimly that he had slept on his side, on his injured side no less. Peeling open his eyes, he rolled over on his back.

And collided with something very solid and warm.

The warm and solid something wrapped itself around him, and Qui-Gon found himself staring into a pair of blue eyes surrounded by laugh-lines and frown-lines and so so many thin black lines carved into the broad face... a face he was covering in kisses before his mind had even registered the enormity of being surrounded by the very real presence of Te Roa'ama.

The next hours were a blur, a blur of hands and mouths and urgent minds slamming against each other as their bodies did, needing to be closer, closer than their skins allowed, needing to dive into each other. Moments of frenzied tearing at each other's flesh, feeding on each other's mouths, followed by quiet hours curled up in the dishevelled nest of fern fronds, sharing what little they knew of what had happened.

Qui-Gon lifted the makeshift bandage on his hip to show Te Roa'ama his wound, and the grim nod that the man gave at the sight of the blackened cuts was enough for Qui-Gon to see his suspicion confirmed.

/ / We must be very careful, love. / /

/ / I am not afraid. Not when you're with me, matua. / /

Te Roa'ama smiled at the title. / / I will make a point of not leaving your side, Kuai mine. / / He laid a hand on Qui-Gon's side, just above where the cuts were beginning to heal into a haphazard arrangement of scars. / / Especially not this side. / /

Qui-Gon reached up a finger to trail it over his lover's soft black lips. / /You have changed too, matua. Though not as permanently as I have, I fear. / /

/ / What... oh. / / The chief grinned as his slave's fingers trailed over the thick stubble on his chin and cheeks. / / I have grown so used to you... I could not bear the thought of shaving or plucking without your hands on me. / /

/ / I, on the other hand, could grow used to this.../ / Qui-Gon lavished an extravagant kiss on Te Roa'ama's entire lower face. / / Quite an exciting sensation. And it makes you look... fierce./ /

/ / Fierce, eh? / /

Qui-Gon squirmed in wild laughter as his fierce master held him down to give him a gentle but insistent tickling.

They made no haste in returning to the village, stopping every now and then to feed their growling stomachs and their purring desires. By the time they had found their way to within sight of the kainga's dying fireplaces, it was near midnight again, Qui-Gon's mouth was stained from a rich dinner of wild berries and wilder kisses, and Te Roa'ama had been talked into keeping at least part of his newly-grown beard. Just around the mouth, Qui-Gon had said, because trust me, it feels wonderful. And maybe along the jaw... that way, I still get to spoil you by plucking your cheeks, and the wonderful spiral down there won't be half-obscured.

You forget who put that spiral there, Te Roa'ama had said, earnestly.

I don't care, Qui-Gon had said, reaching up for another kiss. It's you, and I'll have you any flavour I can get you. Drink you, he added to himself, drink you like a man about to die of thirst.

This was where he belonged.

They arrived back at the village to remarkably little uproar. That may have been because the uproar was all about what young Whitireka had seen earlier that day when she'd been out gathering berries in the wetlands by the sea. About what Whitireka claimed she had seen anyway - the village was not yet quite of one opinion as to whether to believe a girl of questionable truthfulness and definite thirteen years of age whose one defining characteristic was a desire to impress the young men of the tribe, Rangirua chief among them.

What she had claimed to see was a canoeful of patupaiarehe, the ghosts of the netherworld, with their bone-white skin and bright red hair and red eyes. What exactly they had been doing out in the middle of the day, and in a canoe at that, was not entirely evident from Whitireka's account, but the mere fact that they had allowed themselves to be seen by a mere careless girl calmed even the more timid souls into believing that this must have been a very stupid bunch of patupaiarehe indeed, if they weren't figments of Whitireka's imagination to start with.

Such were the things that kept the village gossips happy as they sat around the cooking fires in the early dusk, and the fact that the chief was back, and had found his slave, was merely taken as an everyday event. After all, Te Roa'ama could hardly go out and hunt for something or someone and not come back victorious. That was unheard of, and consequently unspoken of.

The fact that he had grown a beard went uncommented by all but the most bored of teenagers, and the fact that he made a point of always having one hand on his slave's right hip in public was universally seen as a mark of possession, and was quite favourably commented on by those who had seen how well said slave had stood up under the ritual Taking.

Only one fire heard gossip of another kind. Only two pairs of eyes were gazing into the flames there, a small fire slowly turning kauri resin into the finest blackest soot, the prime tool of the tattoo-master's trade.

As his markings on Te Roa'ama were being obscured by that abomination of a beard, and his markings on his detestable slave were being obscured by the man's misguided affection, his markings on Rangirua's face grew to a new level of perfection.

Ketoa would not be disregarded.

Chapter 18: In which Qui-Gon writes, and is renamed yet again

It was still the same piece of rope, and it still did its job admirably well, holding up the long blade-like harakeke leaf against the centre post of Te Roa'ama's house. Qui-Gon stood contemplating the waxy green surface for a few moments, hefting the broken seashell in his hand, gathering his thoughts.

Carefully, he made the incisions. Master, he wrote, frowning at the clumsiness of his hand, knowing from having watched the women at it that the cuts would wither into thin yellowish lines on the surface of the stringy leaf. It would serve as his book for the time being. It would serve as his memory.

Master, it said. What did he remember of Master?

Master was a sober grey-haired man. Master was a stern voice, a man of many talents. Master was... a teacher. Not an owner? Qui-Gon closed his eyes, shutting out the sight of Te Roa'ama's hut and his place in it. Not that he could shut out the scent of Te Roa'ama's skin infusing the very air he breathed... concentrate, Padawan.

Padawan. He carved the word underneath 'Master'. Master - Padawan. It seemed right. Padawan meant him, that much he recalled. So it meant obedience. Learning. He recalled Master being a man widely admired for... his art, his mind lamely supplied. He had no clear idea of what it was he had been learning before he came here. Sure as hells he did not remember any of it now. All he remembered was the learning, and the following. At Master's shoulder. A swirl of brown caught his mental eye. He looked down his awkward tall body and recalled what he had been wearing when he had found himself here. Trousers of some kind, pale beige and rather comfortable.

Clothes, he put down, hoping that the word would remind him of more as it would wither into brownish yellow on the matte green leaf.

Looking down had made his eyes catch yet again on the scars on his hip, still raised and reddened, but beginning to heal. They were itching, and he contemplated the white edges where old skin was dying and withering to make way for new red flesh. There had been something attached to these white bits. Some memory. Of older wounds.

He had been wounded before? A Learner who had suffered wounds. Wounds, he put down, gazing indecisively at the word. He did not recall blood, nor malice. It was not Master who inflicted the wounds, then. It was - something beyond his grasp just yet. Wounds, he thought, I remember being wounded, but no blood. And I have no scars worth mentioning. Someone must have taken care of me. Master, maybe.

Words were running out. This seemed all his memory had on offer. Four scant words with hazy images behind them, and one word that meant nothing as yet.

Llipe, he wrote, hoping against hope that seeing the unattached word before his eyes would make him recall what it stood for. It had leapt at him out of his crowded mind long ago, and not come back since. It nagged him, but every time he tried to concentrate on the concept behind the word, it faded and was replaced by the image that Te Roa'ama had first sent into his mind. All he could see when he sought 'Llipe', was 'hine', the grinning dark-skinned girl with the markings of the tribe on her chin, the one-of-many. One of many, he thought, maybe that's what it stands for. He had been one of something, something that described all of him, all of his position in this world, something he had with him wherever he was.

Wherever. He slapped his forehead. Planet. That was what had popped into his mind the other day as he had found himself tied to that tree. Planet was... it was... Planet was away, not away like the land of the Ngati Mura. Not away like the islands. Planet was away across the sky. One of many. One of many again. Something he knew of, hazily but deeply. Planet was what he believed in, apparently. Planet was where he was from, where he was one of many, where he was whatever described all of him, this one word that bound up all he was, much more so than his own little name, Qui-Gon, or Kuai - what did it matter as long as the word eluded him. The word that held him and the many and the Master and the wounds and the learning and the... force. The Force, as he had instinctively called it, as if it didn't want to be named.

The Force, he wrote, and 'Planet' underneath it, lest he forget.

Though the Force lived here too, he mused. They called it the witchpower or something. Te Roa'ama had known it when it touched him. The Force lived here too, as it lived within him. Lived within Te Roa'ama. He lived within Te Roa'ama. And he did not want to move out, move back, much though it nagged him, this past of his. He would not show Te Roa'ama this little list of stray memories. He would roll the leaf up and hide it under the ferns of his bed -

"E tuhi ana koe?"

Damn the man's stealthy step! Qui-Gon jumped at the warm voice at the back of his neck, glad to find himself restrained by strong arms clasping him to his master, his lover, his home.

Well, so much for not seeing the words.

Qui-Gon squirmed round in the big man's embrace, his smile still a little shaky. / / What? / /

Te Roa'ama raised his eyebrows, nodding at the harakeke leaf bound to the post. / / You are carving? / /

"E tuhi ana koe..." Qui-Gon said, slowly tasting the words. / / I am writing. / /

"E tuhi ana ahau." Te Roa'ama said, the earnest tones of a teacher. Master, Qui-Gon thought, and the echo of the thought caught on Te Roa'ama's mental voice as it supplied, / / I am - writing. / /

Blushing, Qui-Gon freed himself from his owner's embrace, making to take the leaf down from where it was strapped to the post, never meeting his lover's eyes. He shook his head slowly. / / Forgive me, but you are most definitely not writing... master. It is... it is nothing. / /

/ / It is something, Kuai. / / Te Roa'ama's hand grasped Qui-Gon's, stopping it from reaching for the rope, then reverently trailed blunt fingertips over the faint letters. / / What is this something? It is like nothing I have seen. / /

/ / Words. / / Qui-Gon stared into Te Roa'ama's earnestly interested face, sensing that he would not be satisfied with a short answer. / / They are things I remember. From... before. / /

/ / From your home? / /

Qui-Gon shook his head. / / I don't have enough of it to call it home. / /

/ / Home, Kuai mine, is here. / / He grasped the house-post with one hand and the boy's waist with the other, covering the healing wound with one broad warm palm.

/ / You have everything here. / /

/ / I have you here, and that is more than I have of... there. Yes. / / Qui-Gon leaned against his owner's solid form, contemplating the thin list of short words on the harakeke leaf.

/ / Words? / / Te Roa'ama probed. / / What do they say? / /

Qui-Gon sighed. It was no use keeping secrets from a man who could read his mind, and read it well. What were a few words to keep him?

"Master," he read.

/ / That one I know, / / Te Roa'ama echoed amusedly. / / You call me by it. / /

/ / It seems I have always called someone by it. Though Master is very distant. Distant and erudite. My teacher, maybe... I don't know. He called me 'Padawan', / / Qui-Gon pointed to the second word, / / and all I know is that that meant me. / /

"Clothes, and wounds," he read out, / / the thing I was wearing when you first saw me. There was more of that somewhere. And I have hurt, sometimes, though I can't recall blood. / /

/ / You're not scarred, love. What did they do to you back there? / /

Qui-Gon shrugged, eyebrows drawn together. / / I don't know. I wasn't afraid of it, it seems. I was part of it./ /

"Llipe," he said, / / I don't know what that means. Someone. All I see when I think of that word is a girl... / /

He felt Te Roa'ama's arms tightening around him. / / One of your girls... so, I have no idea what or who Llipe was./ /

The arms relaxed slightly, and Qui-Gon squirmed a little, as if to appease a potential jealousy in the big man.

/ / That is all you recall? / /

/ / There's two more words... Force, you know about the Force... these things we can both do... / /, he looked around in irritation at Te Roa'ama's amused chuckle. / / Not these things, matua. You know. The magic thing./ /

"Ae." / / I know, Kuai, I know. And the last word? / /

"Planet," Qui-Gon read out, hesitating for a moment, casting around for an explanation of the word.

Te Roa'ama picked up on the faltering in his lover's mind. / / Where you are from? / /

/ / Sort of, / / Qui-Gon agreed.

/ / Where is it? Across the sea? Is it an island? A land as vast as Aotearoa...? / /

A finger on his lip cut his agitated train of thought short. / / I'm not sure, matua. All I see in my mind is... well, this sounds silly but... there's many of them, and they're like islands, but... they're across the sky. / /

Te Roa'ama's eyebrows made a creditable effort at joining the lines of his forehead tattoo. / / Islands across the sky?/ /

/ / I know. Insane. But I can't think where else I would have that idea from, if it wasn't... well, within me... / /

/ / Oh Kuai mine, never think that I'd call you insane. Where else would those islands be if they have people like you in them, with bone-white skin, eyes like shards of sky, and minds bigger and stranger than any of the lands I have seen? Islands in the sky is where you are from, and that is what you should be. / /

A hand carded through Qui-Gon's straggly hair, turning his face so that his ear was at Te Roa'ama's mouth, the tiny hairs of the chief's new beard prickling at the tender shell.

/ / And that is what you are. See, I always said your name was too short for one as tall as you. For one as vast as you. Welcome home, Kuai-Islands-in-the-Sky. / /

"Kuai Nga-motu-ki-te-rangi," whispered the chief's low voice in his ear, and Qui-Gon shuddered in amazement and delight.

/ / I shall let them know this is your name, love. At the next speech-time, you will be named. And I shall let them know you are not to be treated as a slave by anyone from now on. Except... maybe by me. / /

Confused, grateful, homeless and home, fighting tears and laughter, Qui-Gon Nga-motu-ki-te-rangi let himself be shoved up against the post, harakeke and memories temporarily forgotten under the onslaught of his master's wondrous mouth.

Chapter 19: In which everyone eats

/ / I think you could do with a little more practice here, pet. / /

Te Roa'ama's mental voice was clearly amused, and Qui-Gon's eyes automatically darted up to the broad face to soak up the rare and fiercely warm smile. It was only the insistent downward gaze of those sharp grey-blue eyes and the exaggerated sigh that drew his own attention down towards the big man's hands.

/ / Oh. / /

The little basket he had so painstakingly woven from split harakeke leaves had come unravelled, and its component parts were flopping sadly and soggily over Te Roa'ama's massive palm, weighed down by the food they had been meant to hold. Damn. And he had been sure he had mastered the technically simple art of crockery production that the women of the tribe would perform without even looking at what their hands were doing.

Apparently there was some trick to it, he surmised, staring at the soft pale puddle of pulped fern root, liberally sprinkled with bits of dried fish, and now liberally dripping all over his master's hand. Deliciously dripping over his master's hand.

Great minds think alike, he thought distantly as he reverently bent to the task of licking Te Roa'ama's sticky fingers clean, relishing the texture of the simple meal combined so enticingly with the roughness and flavour of his wild lover's skin. Salty, hard. Thick strong fingers that had never been delicate about claiming him, grabbing, holding, spreading, thrusting inside and rubbing hard until he begged. And however much he kept trying to keep himself from begging, it just would not do. Te Roa'ama wasn't having any of it. And in his heart of hearts, neither was Qui-Gon.

Diligently, lasciviously, he licked every single one of his master's fingers clean before picking up what could be salvaged of the meal and hand-feeding his greedy master.

/ / Better? / /

/ / Much. Remind me to keep from myself savaging the extra meat. / / He bit playfully into Qui-Gon's finger, rewarded by the most adorable little gasp and mock frown.

/ / I thought you had seen quite enough of what I look like under my skin, / / Qui-Gon teased, pointing at the ends of the scars visible above his kilt, now little more than thin raised black lines edged with a faint halo of warm red.

Te Roa'ama's expression sobered instantly, and a still-sticky fingertip slowly, thoughtfully, traced the erratic lines dashed across the young man's pale hip.

/ / It's all right, matua. Well, this bit is, anyway. / /

/ / And I will make sure nobody touches you again. You are mine, Kuai, and everyone will know that. Everyone. / /

Trailing a moist fingertip over his owner's bristly new beard, Qui-Gon nodded.

/ / Speaking of him, where is he? Haven't seen him for a while... / /

/ / How observant, my one... always keeping an eye on our enemies. He left the day before yesterday, and to be honest, I'm glad to have him out of my hair for a while. It's to the south they're going, along the Great Water, to pay a friendly visit to some of the Ngai Waikato. Distant kin, back from the old days. Marriage is what they have in mind, of course... and I suppose it is about time for that. / /

/ / Marriage? / /

/ / Rangirua went with him. He is nearing the age, and I am sure once they've made it near any of the Ngai Waikato's places his face will be back to the rugged beauty he's supposed to have inherited from me. / /

/ / Ah, I've managed to convince you, now have I? / / The grin on Qui-Gon's features was silent but sang loudly in the Force.

/ / Kuai Nga-motu-ki-te-rangi. Even I, Te Roa'ama of the Ngati Wainui, shudder to think of what it must be like on the invisible islands you've come from. / / He took a deep ostentatious breath. / / Hundreds of your kind? It must be quite unbearable. / /

/ / I managed fine, thank you, matua. And they weren't invisible to me... it's just the light of the stars that's blotting them out from here. / /

/ / Behind the stars, your islands, hm? Inside the body of the Father Ranginui? Behind the eyes of the Great Ones? / /

/ / Is that what the stars are - eyes? Not... luminous bits of rock and fire? / / Is that what they are in my old world, he thought to himself, and did I ever actually bother to find out?

Te Roa'ama shook his head, gravely. / / The stars come from here, from old Hawaiki, from Aotearoa, from the islands inhabited by men. Each star is the left eye of a great man dead and returned to Hawaiki. They guard us, you see? And they guard you, on your islands behind the stars. Though I'm going to get very cross with them when I get to Hawaiki for not telling me about them. And their gorgeous insufferable people. / /

/ / You seem to have an easier time believing in these islands than I have, love. It's so... distant, so foggy to me. / /

/ / Kuai. You. You are clearly not of this land, nor of the islands that stretch to the end of the world. But there are more things in heaven and earth than just... normal people. / /

"... tangata maori. " The words echoed in Qui-Gon's head as he registered Te Roa'ama's deep earthy voice. A split second before he registered Te Roa'ama's insistent hands fisting in his hair and pulling him in for a hurried kiss, then pushing his head down towards thick and rising flesh.

/ / I know that you are real, with my head and my heart and my whole body, / / the big man's inner voice began to pant slightly, / / why should I want you to be normal? When you are mine... / /

"Mmmph," Qui-Gon agreed, enthusiastically, feeling very much at home for the time being, just where he was, between the strands of Te Roa'ama's kilt.

They had been received with all due pomp and circumstance, with a song-and-speech as befitted the young rangatira and his minder of no less chiefly descent. Ketoa was well-known among the tribes of the land, and often travelled extensively in pursuit of his art, and Rangirua was received with no less a hearty welcome, considering he was kin.

It had dawned on Rangirua fairly early on that it was not the flat lands of the Ngai Waikato they were headed for. Not with such meagre provisions, and without a bearer slave to accompany them. Not without gifts to exchange. And not going up the hills instead of down towards the Great Water and along its edge.

He was not stupid. He had asked. And Ketoa had replied that yes, they were going to visit with the Ngati Mura, and that he knew of wondrous beauties there who were only too keen to see the young prince of the Ngati Wainui, and meet him. And possibly rescue him from the attentions of little Witireka for good, and wasn't that a good thing...

Rangirua had cut him short. They were his disappeared mother's people, were they not? What good was there in going to visit them? He rudely squashed the streak of angry dread coursing through him at the though of meeting his mother's family. He did not want anything to do with them. Just like his father didn't. He spat on the ground. Great. There is no winning, is there?

You shall see, Ketoa had said, smiling serenely. And you shall like what you see.

No gifts, Rangirua mused as he sat outside the wharenui, the old meeting-house with its carved beams and rafters darkened by red ochre and old age. What magic has Ketoa wrought to win the favour of the people that should well have been bearing a grudge against us since... well, since the woman that was my mother ran away? What has he brought to placate them and to win this stately welcome...

He found himself distracted in a most welcome way as a plump, black-lipped beauty came towards him, depositing a large gourd on the freshly-swept ground. She produced some delicate harakeke food-baskets from under her arm and proceeded to fish from the large gourd the choicest delicacy the land had to offer: glistening succulent wood-pigeons, cooked and preserved in their own fat. The feast of kings, and the scent alone was enough to make the boy's mouth water, even without the beguiling smile the beady-eyed girl bestowed on him.

The basket was tightly, firmly woven. The girl's hand was smooth and delicate. He felt... greedy. Rushed. Warm. Very warm.

Ketoa had to nudge him repeatedly to get him to pay attention to their hostess, who had just arrived in a flurry of feathered cloak, sitting down gracefully on the mat prepared for her.

For all that she took up space for two, she radiated dignity and barely concealed power from the sharp earth-brown eyes to the tips of her well-groomed long hair, streaming over her shoulders and totally failing to conceal an ample bosom that was bearing up impressively despite the fact that the lady was probably in her forties. Fine streaks of grey were beginning to show above her forehead, still almost drowned by the shining oiled black of her hair, rivalling the thick black of the tattoo on her ample chin. Curled, pointy shapes, flickering up towards the full blackened lips, split in a jovial smile. The flame of the Ngati Mura.

Her voice, when she spoke, was rough and yet gentle. Flowing, with a certain tinge to it that Rangirua, in his current state, could only describe as sticky.

"Welcome, Rangirua of the Ngati Wainui. It has been... more than fifteen years, I believe."

Chapter 20: In which a Maori coup d'etat is planned

"Higher. Fuck it, Rob, push! I know you're taller than that, and you sleeping with your feet in my face for the last four months - "

"Shut up, Jenkins. If sir would deign to stretch his own bloody long arms for a bit, we'd get at them things in no time at all. And you're bloody heavy," the man called Rob informed the lad standing precariously on his shoulders, reaching for the thick nest of small round greenish fruits just beyond his fingertips. "And hurry up, or they'll be ripe. Or something."

"Relax, Rob. They're fine as they are - they eat them, you know?"

"Oh, they eat them? Your precious savages know what's good for us, right? Then I'm just wondering why I haven't followed their grand example and had you for supper, mate. They do that too, don't they? Cannibals, sandflies, bloody incessant rain. Hellhole of the South Pacific, I tell ya. Can't think why cap'n sent us ashore here, an' without the muskets, honest to God!"

"There's fruit," the boyish voice from above said, just before a small-scale hailstorm of them hit Rob's broad shoulders, "there's fresh water, and there's potential good Christian souls in this wilderness." Grinning at the roll of eyes underneath him, Jenkins added that vital half-sentence he knew Rob needed in order to be kept from hitting him as soon as they were eye-level again.

"... half of them women, I'm informed."

Rangirua was hungry. The shock had left him quite unable to eat anything much during the actual feast, and now that they had retired inside the house it would have been extremely rude to ask for food. And yet his thoughts kept straying to the delicious birds, and the no less delicious girl that had served them. Straying away from what was at hand. He found himself watching Ketoa, familiar anchor-stone in the whirlwind that this evening had become. Watching the slender hands as they twirled the knife he was always carrying, with its finely carved wooden handle and its hellishly sharp grey obsidian blade. A weapon fit for one who was not allowed to bear the taiaha, the spear-club of the warrior. A weapon fit for one whose daily work was drawing blood.

He found himself watching Ketoa, so that he didn't have to watch Kiri Kehe.

That was her name. Kiri Kehe-a-rakau-maroke. He had not even known her full name.

Had not known his own mother's full name.

The more surprising, to him, was the earnest joy with which she had welcomed him, touching him firmly, not fussing like the old aunties at home would. She had traced the lines of his fresh tattoo, and nodded admiringly. She had looked him in the eye, and he had felt he could no longer find all the apprehension and anger he had held for so long.

Of course he wasn't expecting her to fall into his arms and love him unconditionally. He was a grown man, after all, and no longer in need of hugs. Quite apart from the fact that Kiri Kehe might very well have crushed him if she had tried. But there was... respect for him in her eyes, as if he were something to look up to. As if he were indeed a young noble, a rangatira, a chief-in-the-making. As if he was valuable. It was so believable, all of a sudden.

And she was friendly with Ketoa, which helped. He had learned that she had remarried, was the second wife of a high elder, and that she had held regular contact with Ketoa through her walkabout friend, a short-haired old hag named Whane, who was a familiar sight at the village and was just as much one of them as one of the Ngati Mura, the tribe that was not spoken of openly.

Through all the diplomatic silence, the family contact had been kept. Without involving the actual family. But Kiri Kehe was well-inclined towards him, and that was what mattered now. His mother respected him, without asking. She knew.

He felt warm, thickly wrapped in something untouchable. It might well be that the too-warm cloak that was slowly slipping off his shoulders in the stuffy warmth of the house, had been a concealed present from her. Ketoa had brought it from one of his travels once.

And they were still talking, like old friends, his mother and Ketoa. The knife danced from hand to hand, piercing the air to make a point, while Kiri Kehe sat and listened, the occasional flicker in her sharp dark eyes under the carefully plucked brows.

At last, a plump but authoritative hand fell on Ketoa's wrist, and the lady spoke up.

"It is very true what you say about the wrong that has been done to me, friend Ketoa. Heaven knows, some days my Ruhu speaks of little else. These are usually the days I send him to tend to his other wife, as you can well imagine... lest he forget the numerous offspring he has planted in her field."

The slight sneer of disgust on her face was gone as quickly as it had appeared, and her noble features once again spoke of nothing but high esteem for her concerned husband. "It is what he speaks of in the recitation of our genealogies, every single year since it happened. 'Kiri Kehe-a-rakau-maroke, daughter of Te Hau Kura, nobly married to Te Roa'ama of the Ngati Wainui, ignobly wronged and driven to seek her welcome home again, daughter of Te Hau Kura, daughter of the Ngati Mura'," she sing-songed. "Hell, everyone here knows what a bastard he's been. And far better than I ever knew, I suspect. The recitations have done their bit towards becoming reality, and who am I to contest them? We are in our rights to exact revenge on your people, and we both know that one of these days we will do just that. Not in his lifetime, mind..." She smiled disarmingly, visibly projecting peace and understanding.

"And why not? Have the Ngati Mura grown to ashes so much that they can bear the weight of retribution not exacted? Have they made themselves cope with the ignominy of having one of their foremost ladies so ill-treated at the hands of an upstart warrior with little to his name but his sky-blue eyes and his big paws?" Ketoa smiled back, guessing at the answer already.

"They are weighed down heavily with the wrong done to me, and there is none here that would not gladly throw it off their shoulders and send a war party of our finest men beyond the hills to avenge it." She glared fiercely into Ketoa's eyes. When he merely smirked, she fixed Rangirua with her deep brown glittering gaze.

"But?" Ketoa prompted, inappropriate amusement tingeing his voice.

"Ketoa, you know perfectly well what's keeping Te Roa'ama safe. You lie with him, for the Gods' sake - you know what a mighty man he is."

"I do indeed," Ketoa nodded with mock gravity, rubbing at an imaginary bruise on his upper arm, "an experience we undoubtedly share, Kiri Kehe. But surely you could muster a taua, a party of good men that would stand a chance at overpowering him? He is, as you can probably imagine, not getting any younger."

"If it were only that," Kiri Kehe sighed, "I would have incited them long ago. Wouldn't even have needed Ruhu's insistent support. But you know as well as I do that this lover of yours is more than merely an unusually brawny warrior. His reputation is enough for three hundred men, and that is not counting the witchpower he has..."

"Ah, yes. The mana of a great chief tends to be boundless..." Ketoa mused. "So there is no way the armed men of the Ngati Mura can be incited to exact their just revenge on the man who has wronged you so badly, and who in truth is little more than a rambunctious puppy in my bed, all growling strength and nowhere to put it?"

Kiri Kehe shook her head, her lips a thin black line.

"A sad state of affairs indeed." Ketoa nodded to himself, slowly twirling the sharp obsidian blade between his fingers.

"Surely you have not come to tell me that, Ketoa. What is the purpose of this meeting? Why are you not out among the young with Rangirua here who is doubtless bored out of his pretty head? What have you brought this time, Ketoa?"

Ketoa cast an uneasy glance at Rangirua, mooching in the corner. "Rangirua. You know, she is right, boy. Why aren't you out among the young? Get out there and dance - I bet you anything you won't be stuck for offers."

Nodding, Rangirua levered himself to his feet. His head was too full as it was, and listening to them two talk in the stuffy warmth of the house would likely give him a monster headache. Besides, he was interested in the girl... Hineraa, was that her name? Daylight girl. Shouldn't be too hard to find in the dark.

Satisfied, Ketoa leaned in towards Kiri Kehe.

"I have brought you a way, Kiri. A way to take your revenge on the man."

"You're joking. Where would that leave you, without him? You're his second wife, as far as I know!"

"Ah, ah, Kiri," a slender hand patted the lady's knee gently, "that is but what you know. Old news, I'm afraid. I have been... supplanted." The bitterness in his voice drew Kiri Kehe's attention. Her eyebrows danced, and her lips bloomed into a surprised 'o'.

"Yes. Supplanted. Replaced, even, by a plainface little slave-boy who grovels before him and submits to his every whim. You can imagine what that makes me, Kiri."

"Rather annoyed, I assume?" The smirk in her voice was tentative but promising.

"I'm losing him, Kiri, and damn that angers me."

"Though why you'd want to keep someone like him still eludes me, even after all these years..."

"Because I can, Kiri. Because I can. Keep him, like a pet. The rush of having that big growling beast be mine, and everyone looking up at me. Me who's tamed him. Me, the born rangatira, back in place holding secret sway over him. Where I belong. Where the gods say it's right for me to be." A long pause. "And the sex isn't bad either."

"I reserve the right to disagree on that last count," Kiri Kehe snapped haughtily. "So why don't you get rid of that slave cur and be done with it? I don't see why you need me to help you with that, poor boy."

"That is precisely where the problem lies. Those oh-so-mysterious witchpowers, see? They think he's got them too now, the thin plainface boy. They're scared of him, of him taking over? And of course Te Roa'ama is absolutely besotted with the little git, never lets him out of his sight, always parading around with one hand on him somewhere. The picture of loveliness." He spat on the ground.

"What you're saying is..."

"Hell, yes. Your people wouldn't encounter resistance. The Wainui would be glad to be rid of the little plainface. And it's not like you need a fully-fledged war for all that."

"Oh?"

"He's grown slovenly, Kiri. Lying abed late in he mornings, groping his pet. One, maybe two dozen of your best, stealthy men. At dawn. No formalities. Surround the house, dispose of the slave, buffet Te Roa'ama around a bit, maybe take him captive for a while. Nothing too drastic..."

"There would be no resistance?"

"None that could not be quelled by a small war party of your men, Kiri. Hell, you know how we've been. Te Matangi and his beloved house-building wananga... and Te Roa'ama preferring to expend his energy in bed rather than in the field... we haven't trained our boys to be warriors for years. There just wasn't anyone who'd dare fight us, so there was no fighting. And trust me, Kiri, nobody would go fight the murderers of that abominable bone-white slave!"

"White, you say?"

"Yes - a freak, a stranger from some savage place. He doesn't even speak our language, can you believe that? Nobody would miss him. Look at it that way: we would all win. You would get your revenge, Ruhu would get the prestigious Te Roa'ama's mana, and I would get him under my toes again."

"Minus the mana," Kiri Kehe interjected, earnestly.

"Oh, yeah. That. But, you know... I don't need him to be chief any longer. There is another... quite capable, let me assure you. As you well know. He's got your blood in his veins..."

The lady's face brightened up considerably. "You mean..."

"Oh yes. Rangirua is quite the chieftain material. I have seen to that. Te Matangi and his lot are very much in favour of him taking over from Te Roa'ama one day. And who says that day can't be... rather sooner than everyone involved suspected?"

"My son, the new chief."

"And the old chief, my pet."

Two pairs of brown eyes glittered at each other in the darkness of Kiri Kehe's house.

"Ketoa... if I didn't hate them with such a passion, I would be very tempted to have your babies."

"Don't worry," Ketoa replied with an aristocratic smirk. "I'm not inclined to make babies. Other people's children are infinitely more rewarding. Oh, and keep him amused for the next couple of days, all right? I don't want him to know too much. Might come as a nasty shock to be the new chief, and with his face only half-finished."

"No, you're right. He might as well have some fun with our girls before life gets all serious for him."

"Oh, it won't be too heavy a burden, dear. I'll see to that."

"And I will see to Ruhu and the best of our men sitting at your feet tomorrow at dawn, Ketoa."

"My directions will be flawless. Until then, sleep well."

"And you."

The kiss on Kiri Kehe's cheek was as close as he had ever come to genuine affection.

Chapter 21: In which the one who lies with the chief lies to the chief

A perfect fit, as if the two had been made for each other. Well, they had, for all they did come from different realms of this world. The hard heavy greenstone, chipped and dulled with age and use, concealing the fact that it was quite sharp at the front edge, and the fresh manuka branch, carefully trimmed into a smooth handle, straight, pale, perfect in his hand. He hefted them both in his hands, separate for the last time, then proceeded to join them into one, adze and haft.

Slowly, as the long twine of braided harakeke fibres wound around the join, slipping easily into the grooves he had cut into the wood, he watched them become one. So like us, he thought. The old hard stone, heavy and chipped, and yes, it's got bits of grey in it, and yet revered. And the young smooth wood, light and yet so much stronger than it seemed. Although the image had one major flaw.

Manuka grew everywhere. Kuai was one of a kind.

He did not look up from his work as the familiar shadow fell on his hands. He did not have to look up to see who it was. He sensed it wasn't Kuai, and he knew that only one other would dare stand so close to him without speaking to him.

"You are back early."

"The path was smooth, and the people were genteel."

"Then why did you leave again so quickly? Nothing to be had in terms of girls?"

"Oh, quite on the contrary. I thought it best, though, to let him dance a few dances of his own, so to speak. Without the watchful parental eye. He's taken quite a shine to one of them already... and we wouldn't want to rush decisions, would we?" He leaned in to rub his cheek against Te Roa'ama's shoulder, who remained as stoic and hard as the greenstone.

"That so?" he asked, sounding more than a little pleased despite Ketoa's unwanted attentions.

"Oh yes. Leave it to the young ones to make peace between the tribes."

"Peace?" Te Roa'ama dropped the adze in his lap, frowning up at his husband. "The Ngai Waikato are talking of peace? The cheek - what reason have they ever had to be at odds with us? None, since we parted from them in good spirits, to set up here in the north -"

"Calm, love, calm. You may have misunderstood. It is not the Ngai Waikato I am speaking of."

"That is what you told me. Then who-" Te Roa'ama's rage ground to a halt at the sight of Ketoa's triumphant smile. "No."

"Yes. The likely candidate is the very sweet Hineraa, daughter of the mighty, and mighty conciliatory, Te Ruhu of the Ngati Mura. They are hoping, by this marriage, to put to rest once and for all the lingering grudge they have borne us since... you know when."

"Any word of her?"

Ketoa shook his head, compassionately. "Nothing. That said, I did not specifically ask, and they seemed happy enough to put the whole story to bed. Quite literally, actually," he added with a grin, picturing young Rangirua earning his first fumbling sexual experience in the bed of the voluptuous Hineraa. Or any of her friends.

"Is it honest you are being with me, Ketoa? The Ngati Mura - Te Ruhu is willing to make his peace with us? Offering, just like that? What of Te Hau Kura? Surely he would not agree to such a thing?"

"Te Hau Kura, my dear, has been dead for nearly a decade, and his memory speaks far less loudly than the voices of the young and alive. With him gone, and her Gods know where but certainly nowhere important, it is the best we can do to ally ourselves to them. Think about it - walking the hills will be a lot less awkward. And with you and Te Ruhu joined by your children's marriage, nobody will dare even think about attacking us. Rangirua will inherit the peace Te Matangi and you have sown, and the gods will once again lay their favour upon the Ngati Wainui."

Once the slave is disposed of, he added silently to himself.

"That is good news indeed." Te Roa'ama rose to his full height, hefting the completed adze in his right hand, and Ketoa found himself greedy for the time after, for when he would have that great beast of a man in his bed again. In his bed, and at his bidding.

"Let us have a feast in the marae when the boy returns, to celebrate the good news," Te Roa'ama rumbled, interrupting Ketoa's altogether too pleasant train of thought.

"Ah... that might be some time still, I believe. I asked him not to rush things... and the Ngati Mura are looking after him well. In fact, Te Ruhu sends this as a token of his goodwill." With a flourish, he produced a whalebone fishhook from the folds of his cloak, delicate and fiendishly sharp, hafted to a wooden end-piece with a wide inlay of paua shell green as the forest and blue as the sky. Reddish-brown feathers adorned the top. A beautiful piece of craftsmanship, and likely passed from generation to generation, if the yellowish colour of the bone was anything to go by. Yes, this was the work of his former wife's people, he believed that much. Rangirua was well. All was well.

Silently, he took the hook from Ketoa's outstretched hand, uneasy at the gratitude he felt towards the man. Clearing his throat, he raised his voice so that the few people within earshot would hear and pass on the happy news.

"Let there be feasting tonight, then, from my pots and storehouse, to celebrate the peaceful marriage of my son. Let the women cook and the men sing, for the good that has happened to the Ngati Wainui."

"That is my husband. Be joyful tonight, love. I will go tell Te Matangi and his numerous family, so that they may turn out in force... oh, and can I borrow your slave for an hour or so?" He trailed a fingertip over the traveller's stubble on his cheek, batting his eyelashes seductively.

"No." The answer was gruff. "He is mine. And he is not anybody's slave any more. As for Te Matangi, let me go tell him as it is to be my feast. As for your cheeks, get Whitireka's sister to do them for you. I'm sure she would be delighted."

Tucking the adze into his belt, Te Roa'ama strode off, leaving his husband nonplussed and fuming.

His feast. His last feast. His last night as chief of the Ngati Wainui, if he had anything to do with it.

And he had.

Chapter 22: In which everyone eats again

/ / You're not going out like that, master. / /

Te Roa'ama turned around, the tattooed frown on his face softening at his young lover's beautiful earnest face. Large bony hands so like his own were busy in his hair, the scent of Kuai's freshly-scrubbed skin filling his nostrils, and he wondered dimly when he had ceased to be Kuai's master and become his slave, devoted to him with every fibre of his being. Fibres that were being rearranged by busy hands, watched over by these impossibly sky-blue eyes.

He was at his finest - wearing the shorter and less worn of his two kilts, tied about with a brand new belt, a present from one of Te Matangi's elder daughters, made from fresh shiny green harakeke strips interwoven with dried beige ones into a pattern that was as beautiful as it was short-lived. It would offset the whalebone patu nicely, which was lying on the side, waiting to be tucked into the belt. He did not normally wear weaponry, and hadn't done so for what seemed like ages, but he knew what was proper, and for the chief to appear at a feast in anything less than all his glory would be unthinkable.

Kuai had fluffed up his beloved old kiwi-feather cloak, adorning the frayed hem with a thick fringe of the stringy yet soft plumage of the moa the hunters had caught the other day. The other day. It seemed like ages ago too.

He had unpacked the little carved box he had kept tied to the rafters of his house for what seemed even more like ages, and taken out the greenstone pendant he never bothered to wear. Kuai had frowned, then grinned at the twisted human figure it represented, all curled limbs, a beak with teeth for a mouth, and huge round eyes inlaid with shell. It did not match the paler green of the oblong pendant hanging from his pierced ear, but it did not have to. He was wearing more shades of green than an average forest anyway, what with the kakapo feathers at the top of his cloak, and the fresh harakeke braided into his belt, and the gods only knew what Kuai was doing with his hair.

It felt good anyway, those warm hands scrabbling around in his messy mane, smelling of shark oil scented with herbs. He was wearing it in his customary style, the top half tied back to keep it out of his face, the rest streaming heavily over his shoulders and back, and as far as he could tell, Kuai had not changed that. When he felt those hands leaving his head, and caught a glimpse of his still gloriously naked boy bending down to rummage through the treasure-box, Te Roa'ama ran a furtive hand over the back of his head.

Soft. But not soft as in Te Roa'ama's own unruly hair tamed by gentle hands and liberal application of shark oil. Soft as in - fluffy. The thong that held his hair neatly tied in the customary place was... furry? Dogskin. Soft, precious, long-haired dogskin tied tightly, the ends tucked in neatly. He fumbled with the bit where it merged with his own hair, and came away with a long thin white hair. White dogskin. Wherever had he got that from. A soft white patch at the back of his head, bright against the increasing grey in his own hair. Was there no end to the boy's imagination and reverence? And would he put some clothes on and stop tempting the long-suffering man with the enticing sight of his pink bottom?

He would not. Instead, he triumphantly brandished the feather he had retrieved from the treasure-box, a long, sharply pointed sea bird's feather of the purest white, and silently slid it into the tightly wound leather coil.

/ /White as a cloud. / / Kuai stepped back to admire his handiwork, tipping Te Roa'ama's chin down a little to get a good view.

/ / White as... as you, aroha. / /

"Aroha?"

/ / Love. / /

"Aroha."

And Kuai glowed.

Te Roa'ama grinned, a little helplessly, very aware of how un-chiefly the expression on his face was, finery or not. Very aware of how much he just wanted to eat that sexy slender flame of a boy whole and keep him inside himself forever, away from the envious glares of the others.

Oh yes. But first, there would be the other kind of feasting.

"I'm still not sure it's a good idea, Rob." Jenkins poked around in the embers of the dying campfire, pretending to try and find another of the tuberous roots they had roasted in there, with moderate success.

"You're scared? Hey, Jenkins, wait till I tell the lads about that one. They'll be pissing themselves with laughter, mate. Big Henry Jenkins acting like a little girl at the thought of a few scrawny savages!" Balfour, Peter Balfour. Of course. Bright red hair, pointy nose, sharp biting tongue. No senior to any of the other sailors, but he always got what he wanted. Somehow.

Jenkins sighed. "Look... it's not that I'm scared. I just... I just don't see why we're going inland to... well, to... what're we doing there?"

"Food," Rob interjected, between bites of the stuff. "Plants, beasts. The richness of this country is not all on this shore, Henry. There's... there's fowl, and fruit, and..."

"Bloody savages," Jenkins cut in, miserably, poking around in the embers to cover up his unmanly fear.

"Yeah," Balfour spat into the glow, making the embers hiss. "Girls. Like you."

Rob snorted, amused. "That's one way of seeing it. If we do meet them, who says we're going to run across a bunch of armed men? Could just as well be sweet girls welcomin' us. Bare-breasted, brown-skinned young maidens, eh?" He laid a soothing hand on Jenkins' shoulder, who flinched.

"Besides, there's exploration. How would you feel being one of the first Englishmen to have made contact with a new tribe? They might end up worshipping you," Rob continued, a winsome grin on his face, "you'd be important."

"They might end up killing me," Jenkins retorted, less forcefully now. "And me not even knowing what for."

"Food," Balfour snorted. "What say you, Miss Jenkins, if we all took a musket each off the boat, would that make you feel safer?"

"Excellent idea," Rob agreed, beaming at Jenkins' reluctant nod. "I was going to suggest that anyway. Makes the hunting easier too, if we're all armed, all three of us."

"And a gunshot speaks more clearly than any savage babbling war cries at ya," Balfour concluded, spitting into the fire one last time before it went out, leaving the three men in soft grey barely moonlit darkness. "Muskets it is, lads."

"At dawn tomorrow. When the forest wakes. Night, lads." Answered by a pair of affirmative grunts, Rob Greene snuggled down on top of his coat, dreaming of exploration and captaincy and fowl and handsome young savages.

There was a hole in the song. Not that the earnest young woman with the severely tied-back hair wasn't singing it properly. She was, as far as he could tell - long narrow melody lines carried out to the fire-lit sky on the back of her low metallic voice, sped along by her hands telling the story she was singing in gestures both graceful and forceful. She was one of Te Matangi's many daughters, and she commanded the rapt attention of everyone present, even Te Roa'ama who sat cross-legged on the ground near the fire, framed by his husband and his slave, radiating regal beauty as he followed the age-old song.

The song that had a hole in it.

Not intentionally - Qui-Gon was sure there wasn't a second when the woman had not been singing it with all she was worth. But there had been a second when she just hadn't, well hadn't been there. He wouldn't have noticed if the bit where her song should have been had just been void, and would have attributed it to his wandering mind. And that mind had reasons enough to wander seeing as he still didn't understand the words she was singing, and more importantly, seeing as the man next to him was slowly driving him mad with his sheer presence.

But the bit where her song should have been had been filled with... noise. Dull noise, sounding more mechanical than anything should have a right to sound. Just a second, a fleeting moment punched out of his consciousness. He remembered having such moments before, once maybe or twice, but they had been shorter and less... well, less memorable. Hadn't they? Had they... been there at all?

Qui-Gon shook his head, eyes irresistibly drawn towards Te Roa'ama's noble profile as he earnestly listened to the woman singing from across the fire. He physically felt the holes in his mind being filled up by his lover, his scent, his voice, the way his lips looked, glistening faintly with the scented shark oil he had rubbed onto them. The warm rough glow in the back of his mind, more soothing than the fire right in front of him. And hotter.

There were no more holes in the rest of the evening. Te Roa'ama's face lit up looking at him, full of promise. Te Matangi rose to his feet slowly, as if making a point of displaying his venerable old age lest anyone should have forgotten that it was he who was largely to blame for the Ngati Wainui's existence.

Heads nodded in quiet assent as he launched into a speech that seemed to feel familiar to most of the assembled, his warm cracked voice swooping at the words like a bird of prey, in elegant, economical movements that never failed to impress. His long cloak with the patterned border slipped off his shoulders as he gestured confidently with the short carved stick he held in his right hand, eyes fixed in the middle distance, looking at nobody, speaking to all.

/ / He is recounting the history of our people, / / Te Roa'ama whispered in Qui-Gon's mind, having picked up on the blank expression on his lover's face. / / From the days of the Great Canoes to the days when a young man with lots of confidence and even more children decided to set up his own tribe and move north... and take with him all his friends and all those who liked the idea of living at the Great Water./ /

/ / Is that how you came to be called the Ngati Wainui? / /

/ / It is indeed. Though I don't know how long that name will hold, given the respect that man commands among us... sooner or later, we will be named after him, as our founding ancestor, I think. / /

/ / Named what? / /

/ / Ngati Matangi. / /

/ / Oh... / /

Te Roa'ama grinned. / / He is more or less my adopted father. The keeper of craft lore, and the builder of houses. The mind of the entire tribe, where I am but the body. / /

/ / Oh. Yes. You're but the body. Have I managed to suck you so brainless, huh? / /

Te Roa'ama's clearing of throat to hide an involuntary moan went unnoticed by Te Matangi, who was just getting into his speech now, picking up speed and gesturing into the gloom by his feet, where an indistinct round shape was lying on a bed of fresh leaves on top of a mat.

Qui-Gon strained to see what it was, closing one eye to shut out the glare of the fire. It looked like... a skull. A... head. With hair. And skin. And tattoos. And no eyes.

Alarmed, Qui-Gon tugged on Te Roa'ama's hair, eerily like that of the dead head.

/ / What, aroha? / /

/ / That... skull. What...? / /

/ / Te Tiru-no-maunga-wera. His tuakana. His elder brother, / / Te Roa'ama added, seeing the horror on the young man's face turning into incomprehension. / / He keeps him well-revered. Matangi rescued him from enemy hands back when they were both young. Unfortunately, Te Tiru was already dead at the time. / /

/ / So he... preserved the head? / /

Te Roa'ama nodded, a little puzzled at his young lover's apparent incomprehension. What was so odd about keeping mementoes of your loved ones? Especially if in doing so you could keep them from being desecrated by enemies?

/ / So that he may look upon his brother's face and keep him with his family, yes. / /

Qui-Gon swallowed, chancing another glance at the head on its leaf-strewn mat. It had a slightly disgusted expression on its face, but that, Qui-Gon surmised, was largely due to it not having eyes any more, the lids being squinted shut, and the mouth open in a sneer despite efforts to close it with a stitch across the middle of the black lips. The head was baring remarkably even and white teeth, and the thick hair lying coiled on the mat was a deep black. The man must have been young when he was cut down.

/ / Is that what your people do with their dead? / / Your people, Qui-Gon thought, why am I saying 'your people'? Why did they not feel like my people there for a moment? I'm at home here, am I not? Concentrating on Te Roa'ama's answer, he felt the odd feeling fade to nothing. He was at home here, with Te Roa'ama.

/ / Only the revered ones, and the slain enemy chiefs. We put them up on stakes and mock them long after they're dead. You should have seen Rangirua when he was a child - quite the fierce little warrior he was, screaming at the dead heads... all long buried now, along with the wars, of course. And we haven't had a head embalmed for a long time - Te Matangi, gods bless him, continues to grow older and wiser, and as for slaying in battle, that has become a near-forgotten practice... / /

He smiled at Qui-Gon, lips closed, consciously dispelling the image so visible in the boy's eyes: of his own, Te Roa'ama's, head, cut off and preserved in oil and smoke, the tattooed lines of his face preserved for eternity.

/ / May it stay so. May you live to be older than Te Matangi, mine... / /

Te Roa'ama grinned. / / Do you know what you're letting yourself in for, aroha? / /

/ / Oh yes. You, with a mane of snow-white hair. Softer and thinner, gentler as your brutal strength fades away... / /

/ / You have a problem with my brutal strength? / / The teasing glitter in the darkened blue eyes made Qui-Gon's mouth water.

/ / I didn't say that. / / Defensive, but squirming ever so slightly.

/ / I'll show you who's master, / / Te Roa'ama's mental voice rumbled, and they both knew that the answer to that was no longer merely one name.

In the end, Te Roa'ama showed everyone who was master, and who was no longer slave. When the women had sung again, and the turn was his to speak, he rose to his full impressive height, white feather shining above his head, and announced to all and sundry that peace would be made with the Ngati Mura, that his son was to be married to a noble girl of that tribe, and that Kuai Nga-motu-ki-te-rangi was to be treated as a common man of the tribe now, and no longer a slave.

At least that was what Qui-Gon knew he was going to say. He still couldn't make out much of what he was actually saying, except for the names. He had found himself watching Ketoa's face for the wince of righteous indignation at the honour bestowed on him, the plain-faced slave boy, and found nothing. Not even when Qui-Gon clearly heard his own name, longer now than ever before, ring out across the fire in Te Roa'ama's authoritative voice. I sound like one of their ancestors and noble warriors, he thought. I sound like one of them.

And Ketoa's face remained calm, pleased even. And he murmured assent and nodded along with everyone else as Te Roa'ama stepped down and sat down between his old lover and his new one again. And he did not even try to capture Te Roa'ama's attention, thoroughly captured for the rest of the evening by his delicious ex-slave.

The delicious ex-slave could not find it in himself to worry. He felt fulfilled - the holes in his mind being filled by Te Roa'ama's earthy presence, the hole in his stomach being filled by the smoky meats and tender roots and sweet sticky berries of the feast, humbly accepted from the chief's thick fingers, with a glance that was anything but humble.

A sharp tug on his braid pulled him back to the real world.

/ / I'll teach you to keep calling me master. / /

Qui-Gon grinned. / / Yes, master. / /

Chapter 23: In which strangers arrive, and breath departs

His senses were wide awake, though his body was pleasantly heavy and drowsy. Yawning and rearranging himself gingerly on the mat-covered fern mattress so as not to disturb his slumbering lover, Te Roa'ama rested his head on his shoulder and let his senses take their lead.

He smelled the light drizzle putting out the last of the night's embers, leaving a thin blanket of smoke over the marae outside. And he smelled the warm fresh sweat of his lover who had thrown off most of the cloak he had used for a blanket and lay sprawled on the mat, rivalling its polished paleness and softness.

He saw the greyish light of an overcast morning filling the small rectangle of the door, saw the grey in his own hair as it hung into his eyes, dishevelled and still shiny with the oil Kuai had massaged into it. And he saw the exquisite long lines of Kuai in sleep, thin black braid trailing down one shoulder, and the flower he had tucked into it last night wilted and brownish now, the colour of old blood, beautiful against the soft pale skin.

He heard the distant chattering voices of the women heading for the gardens and the boys and men heading for the woods to replenish the food supplies squandered in last night's feast, heard the pitter-patter of children's feet as they ran to keep up with everyone else. It seemed he was the only one still in bed. Well, him and Kuai. And he heard Kuai's deep soft breathing, loud in his ears.

He felt the chill of the autumn morning touching his face and shoulders and wondered why he had not felt the cold last night, not even long after he had moved away from the fire, not even long after the fire had died. And he felt the easy languid warmth radiating off Kuai's sleeping form, and he knew why he had not felt the cold.

And he tasted the warm sweaty spot at the nape of Kuai's neck, where the hair was beginning to grow out. Tasted slowly, gently, not wishing to wake the boy up yet. Not when he was such a feast asleep.

Carefully and with a look of disgust on his face, Henry Jenkins touched the growth that looked like a tangled beard of brown snakes.

"See, it doesn't bite. Grab hold of it, thrust a foot in, give me one hand, and Bob's your uncle," Rob encouraged from above him. "Oh, and throw me your musket first. There's a good lad."

Embarrassed, Jenkins hauled himself up the steep bank, clinging to the aerial roots of the overhanging pohutukawa tree.

Coming down would be easier, and he wished he were doing just that already. Though of course he wouldn't let on.

Kuai's skin... he felt quite certain that if he was ever trapped in a hopeless situation with no food nor escape, he would quite happily suck on Kuai's skin until death took him, and die a happy man. Salty, soft and moist, and so very him... Te Roa'ama licked his way from the nape of the boy's neck to the even softer spot behind one ear, breathing shallowly, watching for the first signs of Kuai's awakening.

The boy slept on, blissfully ignorant, a small smile twitching on his dreaming lips.

Bolder, Te Roa'ama trailed his hand down the warm flank, coming to rest at the small of his back, and began to tease the top of Kuai's crack with two gentle blunt fingertips.

The tip of a taiaha peered round the trunk of a large tree, followed by a pair of watchful brown eyes set in a fiercely tattooed face. Then a pair of bare feet, stealthy as the oppressive chilly morning air.

Then another pair of feet. And another. And another...

The fingertips got bolder, creeping towards that enticing narrow space between the firm buttocks. He had a comfortable resting place for his palm now, just on Kuai's tailbone. Slowly, he let his fingers slip along the sweaty, tender skin.

Was the boy breathing harder now? Or was he hearing things? Still, it would not do to have him wake up on anything less than a scream of pleasure.

Moving imperceptibly slowly, Te Roa'ama levered himself off the mattress, working up some spit.

"Did you hear that?"

"What, Jenkins?" The annoyed undertone in Balfour's voice was all too plain. "For Christ's sake, this is a jungle. It's full of 'did you hear that'. Which particular one did you have in mind? The cicadas? The birds? The groaning of old wood? My god, calm down, Jenkins, and do us all a favour. Besides, you've got a musket. And that makes the loudest 'did you hear that' of them all."

Biting his tongue, Jenkins trudged on, convincing himself he had not just heard the whisper of a human voice.

Te Wakaatua, son of the great Te Hau Kura and keeper of his considerable mana, glared as only a deceased chief's son can glare.

Silently, the offending warrior slipped to the front of the group, to the most dangerous position.

Stealth was paramount, and he would not have his reputation tarnished with a less than successful raid.

Qui-Gon screamed as he found himself torn out of his rather pleasant and fuzzy dreams and impaled on something hard and scalding hot.

Oh, that felt... wonderful.

Gasping, unable to form words with Te Roa'ama on top of him, driving the breath out of him and pounding his brain into a blissful mush, Qui-Gon struggled futilely, revelling in the man's iron hold on him, dizzy with his own glorious helplessness as Te Roa'ama sank his teeth in Qui-Gon's shoulder, moaning his savage pleasure into his lover's willing flesh.

It couldn't last. A few more earth-shattering thrusts, and Te Roa'ama was coming, burning hot inside him, squeezing Qui-Gon's throbbing cock and balls relentlessly until he too gave in and screamed his completion into the mattress, shattered, filled, fulfilled, and utterly ready to go straight back to sleep.

He woke up to screaming again.

Not his own.

Startled, he raised his head, blinking.

And found himself looking directly into the point of a taiaha. Two taiaha. Opening his mouth to speak, he decided wisely to close it again as his eyes started taking in the scene.

/ / Master? / /

/ / Kuai... / /

The voice was weak, muddled. Instinctively, Qui-Gon turned his head to seek its owner, causing the two spear points to press more tightly into his throat.

There. There was blood. On the floor. Seeping from a wound at Te Roa'ama's temple, Te Roa'ama who was lying on the floor, fighting a losing battle against them, against ten, twelve men holding him down, ten, twelve spears and clubs and feet and voices, it was all too bright, too bright.

They had torn some of the walls down barging into the house, ten, twelve of them, and the two threatening Qui-Gon himself. Three, he amended as he felt a rough length of rope being pulled tight around his wrists, lashed to his ankles in the most careless fashion, and he was unable to fight back if he didn't want to end up speared in the throat.

"Matua! Te Roa'ama! Aroha... noho konei..."

He struggled for all the actual words he could remember, shouting to his lover until his breath was knocked out of him by a casual foot to the midriff. Aroha, he heard in return, weakly as Te Roa'ama's voice was muffled by a hand over his mouth, yet another hand, too many hands, strange hands that had grabbed his love and were making sure he stayed put. They were binding him too, as best as they could given how many hands it took to keep the fiercely struggling body down. The back of Qui-Gon's head was buzzing, noise filling the place where Te Roa'ama's mental voice was, as if the man was desperately trying to crank up the connection, to stay within his one's mind.

Qui-Gon screamed and lunged for the nearest foot, trying to bite it in terror and anger.

The foot connected solidly with his throat, and the scream died.

Then, what was left of the doorway darkened as another man came in. Not running, not terrified. Not even jerky with the rush of war.

He came sauntering in, slowly, with that casual strut of his that had so many girls mooning after him in vain. He smiled, nodded at the grotesque number of warriors in the remnants of Te Roa'ama's house. The he sauntered over to the less prestigious of the two captives, and Qui-Gon's heart stopped.

Ketoa.

He kept smiling, saying not a word. Or maybe he was being drowned out by the buzz in Qui-Gon's head, there where Te Roa'ama was, shaken badly by the blow but still very much there, wordless but close, warm, good.

Ketoa advanced, calmly, took one look at Qui-Gon's twisted bound body on the ground, and kicked him square in the face.

His own scream was a pathetic croak, drowned out by the sickening crunch of bone breaking as he tasted, smelled blood seeping from his nostrils, filling his head with the dreadful iron taste.

Louder than his own scream was that of Te Roa'ama, in the back of his head, close, very close, enraged, and he saw from the corner of one squinted-shut eye how he was struggling against his captors, nearly getting to his feet before being knocked down again, closer to Qui-Gon.

Louder still were the triumphant shouts of the enemy warriors, taunting, roaring their cowardly victory to all beyond the ruins of the house, to all who would hear.

Louder still was the explosion that shattered the air from a short distance away and caused a body to slump to the ground wailing, a mere step away from where Qui-Gon lay on the ground curled up away from Ketoa's vicious kicks. The crack split the air in two, and stunned all the voices into silence, silence only filled with the moaning of the wounded men, Te Roa'ama, Qui-Gon and the fallen warrior. Then, a voice rang out from across the marae, strained and hoarse, out of breath from running.

"They've got one of us, they've got an Englishman!!"

Qui-Gon did not trust his senses, muddled senses overfull with the taste of blood and the buzzing in his head. Had he heard voices? Had he understood words? Were there really three men, pale-skinned people like him, running towards the house waving... blasters? What... what were they? All he could see was the warriors freezing in terror, then shouting at each other as one man, a jumble of terrified syllables and discarded weapons, and all too scared to even flee, they stood rooted to the spot as the strange white men advanced, running, panting... Force, find the Force...

He saw the twisted mask of impotent rage that had been Ketoa's face, then saw the obsidian knife slashing at his throat a split second too late, then he saw nothing any more.

Saw nothing, but continued to breathe. Someone had thrown himself between him and the knife. There was a solid wall of body on top of him, smeared with the blood from his nose.

There was more blood. He felt it trickling down the fallen man's chest, seeping onto his skin, mingled with the scent that was too familiar, too real, and too silent. The buzzing in his head was fading, and Qui-Gon realised, horrified, that he was still conscious.

Conscious and drenched in Te Roa'ama's blood.

Screaming, he kicked and struggled against his bonds, biting into his wounded lover's flesh in an attempt to keep him here, keep him awake and alive, barely noticing the knife, in white hands, slicing through his bonds, batting away the concerned hand as he wrapped his arms around the fading body, the mental voice barely an echo in his head.

/ / Master... master... aroha... aroha... / / His own voice incapable of anything more than choked sobs and cries, wordless cries, anything to reach into that head that was slowly, heavily falling into his lap, blood no longer trickling from the caved-in temple. Blood washing warmly, steadily from the deep long gash across the man's throat.

He pressed his hand to the gaping wound, and found it drenched in red a second later. He scrabbled for the Force, for anything he could move, could give, could do, and found nothing that was not too little, too late, and drenched in red too.

He thought he heard, believed, with every last fading ounce of strength he had, the echo of his words in the numb back of his head.

/ / ... aroha... / /

Louder than all the commotion around him. Louder than all the silence that descended in the back of his mind as the sky-blue eyes in the marked beloved face faded to sightlessness. Long before the blood had stopped flooding him with all the life force this man had held for so long. All the life that had drained from him in just one moment of cold cruel mindless emptiness.

Gasping for breath through his broken nose, his choked-up throat, Qui-Gon sank down on the body of the man who had been his home.

The blood on his forehead was warm. Warm home.

Something inside him broke, and he gratefully slipped into cold merciful unconsciousness.

Chapter 24: In which Qui-Gon is not all there

HMS Artemis, on-board log Qui-Gon Jinn:

"My nose has opened up again. A sure sign that I'm healing, if only in body - the first thing to penetrate the swollen and torn tissues was the stench from a keg of supposedly fresh whale meat. Besides that, not much gets into my head. Straightening my nose is beyond hope it seems. Some reminder, that..."

Qui-Gon clutched the railing, trying hard not to think. Not to think on whether this was real, not to think on the hole that had been in the middle of the sea, invisible, a piece of not-sea in the middle of sea, there one minute (if 'there' was a word that could even begin to describe the ephemeral noise-filled bits of 'not-there' that would crop up more and more often when he wasn't looking) and gone the next. Tried not to think on where he was, and where he was going.

The HMS Artemis, and London, the uncramped part of his mind supplied, pronouncing the words with as much care as he had those words of Te Roa'ama's alien tongue.

There it was again.

He tried not to think about it, not to think about what he had lost. Tried not to think about what he had left behind in a rush, breathless and bleeding, uprooted from a place he had once come to see as his home. Only when he had found himself aboard the ship, being washed in a tub and administered a stinging liquid that made him cough and his eyes water, had he realised that he was still naked. That he had not taken a single thing with him.

He had kissed the last of the bloodstains on his skin then. The last that remained of Te Roa'ama.

He tried not to think about what would have happened to his lover's body by now. Well, not the body - he shuddered at the thought of how Te Matangi would insist on embalming his adopted son's head, to keep him around the house and take him out at ceremonies, the swirls and lines of his tattoo preserved for all eternity, lines he had caressed and kissed so many times. The mouth open in a scream, so much like Te Roa'ama's face had been in those moments of rapture... and yet so wrong, so silent. And without those eyes, those shards of sky captured in a beloved face... no more.

One more star in the night sky.

He shook his head violently, staring down at his white knuckles glistening with tears. He had been told all that had happened... that morning.

Yes, he understood their language. That had come as quite a shock to him once he was ready to accept human contact again. They spoke something that his Standard-speaking mind could decode, and they had been quite happy to accept them as one of their own, coming up with all sorts of explanations of their own accord as to why the strange lad was not familiar with things like whaling ships, the King, the Book of Common Prayer and so on. They had laughingly bandied about any number of places he might come from that would explain this marked lack of knowledge, and Qui-Gon had nodded gratefully. They didn't call him Qui-Gon either, they called him Jinn, or John, or both. Jinn-John, a sing-song sounding merrily across the ship whenever someone needed him.

He had tried to make himself useful, to pay his passage to wherever 'London' was. Whatever 'London' was. Maybe it would help him get closer to what he was looking for.

Having lost his new home, he might as well go in search of his old one.

The shirt itched, and Qui-Gon slipped a hand inside the wide collar and scratched luxuriously, idly watched by the man they called Rob, clearly the most talkative of the lot. He had been the one who had filled him in on the events of that dim morning, the morning when three of the ship's men, himself, Henry Jenkins and Peter Balfour, had set out to explore further inland.

They had come across the village quite by accident, and had been approaching very carefully until they spotted the ruined house and the noisy commotion of armed men within. And then everything had gone too fast for them too - it had been Henry Jenkins, apparently a certified coward, who had first caught sight of Qui-Gon lying on the floor, and it had been he who had discharged his firearm (a musket, Rob said. A blaster, something in Qui-Gon's mind said.), killing one of Ketoa's men and drawing attention to the new arrivals and their scary weapon that could slay a man at a distance.

The fierce warriors had been frozen with terror, and even now the tone of amazement in Rob's voice was unmistakable as he recounted how they had cast their weapons aside and fled, leaving only the wounded man and the dead man, and the one clutching the knife. The obsidian knife that broke against Peter Balfour's rusty bayonet.

Ghosts, Qui-Gon thought, glancing wistfully at Peter Balfour's bright red shock of hair. Patupaiarehe, the evil spirits of the netherworld. So that was what the girl Whitireka had seen.

But he said nothing. There was nothing to say that Rob would understand...

The ghosts had left in a rush, unwelcome as they were by the rest of the Ngati Wainui as they took up the pursuit of the ones that had raided them to kill their chief. The ghosts had retreated to their ship, and Qui-Gon, at a loss for what to think and where to go, had come with them. At least they understood his language.

They had given him clothes, a wide grey linen shirt that itched, and a pair of trousers, brown ones that reminded him of long ago. The bruising in his face had faded, his nose healed but crooked. The marks on his hip were now safely tucked away under fabric once more, the last marks that Ketoa had left on anybody.

Rangirua would just have to take over, under the guidance of the long-lived Te Matangi. He would marry Hineraa, and peace would prevail.

And he would have to get his tattoo finished by someone else.

Because Ketoa was not going to return. Ketoa had been dragged along with the little armed crowd of ghosts, manhandled aboard the ship. Balfour had told him they kept him chained below deck, and that he would make quite a sensation in the place they were going to, and that he deserved no better. Qui-Gon could not bring himself to go down there, preferring to sleep up on deck when the weather allowed, or tucked away in the aft end on the bales of spare sailcloth, among the barrels of whale oil and bundles of whalebone that the men of London would, he understood, use to make their undergarments from.

Uncomfortable in his own clothes, Qui-Gon fingered the marks on his hip. They refused to itch.

He had refused to let them cut his hair along with everyone else's, hanging on to his 'love-lock' as Rob affectionately called the thin braid behind his right ear, and growing out the rest of his hair into an untidy near-black mop. He would have grown a beard too, but decided against it for now.

With no mirror, he would not get it to look... right.

HMS Artemis, on-board log, Qui-Gon Jinn:

"Maybe Rob would understand. Am finding it increasingly amusing to watch him flitting about the deck, courting the favour of the other 'lads'. Some shun him, some don't, but just what is going on below deck I can't bring myself to

Anyway, they are just like characters to me, from a story. The ship is a setting, the ending is obvious to all but those in the story.

Maybe I am in the story "

As days and tens of days and more passed, the holes in his days became more frequent, and the sharp burning drink that the ship's cook, a fat jovial man called Fernand, administered did nothing to alleviate them at all. Privately, Qui-Gon suspected they made his condition worse, and he surreptitiously tipped the cup over the railing as often as he could get away with.

Not even the Force helped. It just disappeared in those moments when, well, random bits of the world disappeared. And sometimes all of it. And there was no longer anybody there to fill the voids.

He had not been much use as a worker recently, what with bits of rope just slipping through his fingers because his fingers insisted they weren't there, or not hearing orders because his ears said there were no orders. Fernand and Rob were the only ones not laughing. They had become interested in his condition, and had taken to watching him.

Rob had given him paper and a pencil so that he could keep a log, and he had made use of that facility abundantly. He wrote down all he could think of - his memories of Te Roa'ama's village, his memories of the place before, the daily occurrences aboard the HMS Artemis.

Even here, the pages he kept tucked into the pocket of his trousers were riddled with beginnings, and half-finished sentences ending in a patch of nothing. Ever more often.

HMS Artemis, on-board log Qui-Gon Jinn:

"The sea looks no different, when it does, from what it looked like yesterday, and the days before. We left a harbour behind a few days ago, a smelly little place full of noise a

Noisy, and full of busy creatures, bustling about as if there was an underlying grief they were trying their hardest to cover up. Balfour told me the name of the place, he returned drunk and ostensibly happy.

The name of the place escapes me. It is not home. Nor, I have been assured, is it London."

He had taken to writing down others' words, no longer trusting his own, and that was the only job he could reliably do at the moment. Fernand would not let him anywhere near the knives in the kitchen, and Rob had convinced the captain that making the new lad scrub the deck was not a good idea given that the new lad occasionally simply did not see the deck, and they did not want a good Christian soul scrubbing the wide ocean, now did they?

They did not, and so Qui-Gon, or Jinn-John, spent his days on deck, writing letters to the sailors' loved ones in his large uneven hand, putting the thoughts of grateful illiterates on paper, pausing occasionally to silently weep at words of love he could no longer say, and pausing occasionally because all that was coming out of the sailor's mouth was a bit of mechanical noise and the ship had momentarily disappeared, leaving him floundering six feet above a non-existent ocean.

It was these falling moments that had made him refuse a hammock, and it was these falling moments that made him seek sleep in the middle of the day some days, to keep him from falling out of wherever here and now was.

The captain's books and Fernand's traditional medicines had proved fruitless, as had all sorts of distraction or occupation. Even Peter Balfour's dreadful singing, and the half-learned discussions Rob Greene kept trying to involve him in did little to keep his mind where it was. If it was. At least it should be.

For someone who doesn't have much of an idea where I'm coming from, and even less of an idea where I'm going, he thought, I'm surprisingly stubborn in wanting to be where I am.

He snorted amusedly at his own turn of phrase, listened to the quiet creak of the rigging erase the memory of that sound from his mind, curled up on the pile of rope and sailcloth, and tried to be content being where he was.

And failed, because he no longer was where he was.

Chapter 25: In which Qui-Gon tidies up the place

There were so many logs, Qui-Gon thought absently, so many reports and summaries and notes and footnotes and diaries. So much to tidy up if he wanted some semblance of space in the little room. And it would not be fair not to give him that space.

There was the log he had kept himself, pencil on damp-curled paper, aboard the HMS Artemis, the ship's name scrawled across the top of each entry in bold letters, as if to remind himself. Well, he had probably needed it, at the time. Ten years ago. Nowadays, he marvelled at how he had managed to keep writing so close to his relapse.

There were the healers' logs, copies of which he had requested and been granted. There was the report Llipe had been made to file, which she had done, contritely, in front of the entire Council. Qui-Gon remembered her terrified face well. He remembered staring at it for longer than a minute before finding words to address her with. The markings on her chin had held all his attention. Natural, on her they were natural, irregular longish blotches of darker brown on her brown skin, as if a flame had licked along her chin. Hine, he had thought.

There were Padawan-missing-in-action reports. There was even a list of messages that had come in during what had been perceived as unscheduled absence from Temple (he wondered, now, why he had kept the list. Surely not because he wanted to be reminded that Llipe's obnoxious pink-haired friend had sent a few flirty messages before giving up and moving on?).

There were the diaries he had kept himself, starting after his discharge from the Healers' ward. Reacquainting himself with home had been easy, too easy for his own tastes, as if he hadn't been away anywhere stranger than a routine mission or a recreational trip. His Master had been a great help, compassionate but never intrusive, and even his need to confess to the virtual pages of his dataslates had dried up fairly soon. There just hadn't been that much to confess. Life had gone on, and on.

There were logs, and reports, and diaries. And yet one was missing, the most vital of them all, the one that had held his entire mind at the time, so small, but so full. The one that had been crushed into the ground under the assault of their bodies entangled in a fierce embrace...

That I should be missing a leaf, Qui-Gon thought.

The man... him I miss too much to even put it into words.

As his hands worked tirelessly at dusting off the shelves and pallet in the small room, his mind circled around that leaf. He remembered its exact colour, its feel, how the crudely carved letters had looked on the surface. And that it had been called harakeke.

He had not found mention of the language, or the people, in any of the wide resources available at Temple or outside it. What few words he had, he had entered into any number of search droids, typed in what he hoped would represent their phonic value, finally spoken in a trembling voice. They came up blank, again and again.

He had wondered, in the small hours of the quiet nights in his Knight's quarters, if what he remembered more and more incompletely had actually been real. Had turned the thought over and over in his mind and found no way to get at it, one way or another. His rational, Jedi side told him to put it aside, to believe in hallucinogens and his unusual genetic make-up. Told him to believe in rows of little letters in a text box at the bottom of his medical file, now highlighted deep orange and linked across to all other similar specimens.

His heart, there where the tendrils of his connection to the Living Force lay, told him that no mere speeder accident could leave him with such a precise and delicately blackened set of scars. And that no dream, however vivid, could leave him with the deep sense of love and forlornness that the... episode ten years ago had.

Sighing, Qui-Gon put the last of his physical memories aside, laying them on his bed for the time being. He would find a place for them eventually - after all he had managed ten years without looking at them again. Had managed quite well. Everyone who knew him, and didn't know him all too well, would swear that Padawan Jinn had picked up where he had left off, and that Knight Jinn was on his way to becoming a great and bloody scary Jedi Master.

His own Master, privately, had suggested he consider taking on a Padawan. After ten years of wearing your heels down in the service of the Order, he had joked, you had better pass some of your wisdom on before the next planet along decides to keep you, and for good this time.

So this was why he was tidying up. There would be a boy moving into the spare room, at least until they had found suitable quarters for a training pair. He had picked him at random (at a nudge from the Force, Dooku had corrected with that smug benevolent grin of his. Even at nearly 70, he had not lost that), and studied his file quite extensively over the last few days. He did not want to get anything wrong, not overlook anything. And his academic standards were more than satisfactory, his species was compatible (a human like him, though from a different system), and Master Dooku remembered noticing him among a group of Initiates a few years ago, and had highly recommended him. The only thing Qui-Gon had not actually done yet was to meet him.

Which was why he was standing in the 'fresher now, trying his best to make himself look presentable, or at least non-intimidating. He frowned at the face in the mirror, that old man of not even thirty years, traced the deep lines on his forehead, under his eyes, branching out from beside his crooked nose. Traced the lines on the surface of the mirror, completing them, willing them to appear black as they had been, artful as they had been, beloved as they had been. Beloved as they still were.

Sighing, Qui-Gon threaded his fingers through his long hair, well aware of the first individual grey hairs showing up amid the thick brown mane, and tied the top half back in his customary style, away from his face. Nobody had questioned his growing it out after his Knighting, and nobody had commented on the short narrow beard that left his cheeks uncovered and surrounded his mouth with even brown bristles.

Nobody would comment, here. It was not like this was unheard of for a human Knight.

One of many, Qui-Gon thought. When I see myself in the mirror, I see one of a kind.

I still see him.

Qui-Gon closed the door of his quarters behind himself, vowing to add to the pile of diaries on his bed. He would most likely have to start taking notes again anyway, seeing as he now had, in all probability, a young boy to look after, to teach and guide and quite possibly suffer. A young boy who he would meet for the first time in about five minutes.

Squaring his shoulders and banishing the gloom from his mind, Qui-Gon set off along the corridor.

"Qui! Good to see you - taking your pick of the crop, I hear?" Llipe, brushing one hand over her once-more short spiky hair as if to illustrate her precarious pun. Qui-Gon nodded at her in greeting, wondering for the hundredth time how on Coruscant she had managed to convince the Council to put her in charge of Initiate junior education, as was evident from the practical haircut and the paint stains on her utilitarian skirt. Given her history, that must have been quite a feat of convincing, he thought.

"Mmh. Don't tell me you know all about it too?"

"Oh, you're in for a good one, Jinn. I've been following his progress on and off after he left my tier. He's made a bit of a name for himself while you were away doing the same for yourself on your missions, Knight Jinn. Say, you really haven't met him before?"

"Not that I'm aware of, no."

"Ah, we'll see. I bet when you set eyes on young Kenobi, you'll say 'oh, that's him. Sure I've seen him around before'. Just wait and see, Qui."

Nodding a friendly farewell and brushing one hand over Llipe's shoulder, Qui-Gon walked on, trying not to be late.

He could see the small figure leaning against the windowsill at their appointed meeting place, outside Master Dooku's rooms. Short for his age, Qui-Gon thought as he approached, observing as the silhouette in Initiate tunics began to resolve itself into a boy. The light caught on faintly reddish hair, falling about his face in gentle chin-length waves.

The face, when it turned towards him, made Qui-Gon tense all over, fighting to contain the scream tearing at his throat from within. The hair was reddish, and the eyes were grey, but -

The face. The lips. The cleft chin. The birthmarks.

All he saw was Ketoa.

Chapter 26: In which a word regains meaning

4167 Republic Standard, 24th ten, personal log Qui-Gon Jinn:

"He is totally like Ketoa. I don't know why I let myself be talked into this. The insistence. The way he tells me how things ought to be, and how he makes them so. Why this one needs a Master at all escapes me. Why this Master ended up being me escapes me even more. Some days I can't face him, him and his permanent smile with all that mind behind it, all that mind I can't read.

I am not going through with this. For both our sakes."

4167 Republic Standard, 25th ten, personal log Qui-Gon Jinn:

"Obi-Wan, his name is Obi-Wan. His eyes are grey, and lively, and without guile. His hair is reddish, and he wears the braid of apprenticeship. Sometimes I need to remind myself of these facts, because I still don't believe them.

He is a good student, maybe a little too clever for his own good. He will stick by the rules even if that means bending himself to suit them, and coming up with versions I have never thought of. It is, after all, something Jedi are brought up to do, and was I really any different, all those years ago? Master assures me I wasn't.

His name is Obi-Wan, and he is my apprentice."

4170 Republic Standard, 8th ten, personal log Qui-Gon Jinn:

"Obi-Wan got an honorary mention from Master Eeth today, in front of all the Council, for the preliminary work he did on settling the Beshan situation. Never mind that he wasn't present to take it, I'm sure everyone else will keep him informed, even though I know he won't believe me when I tell him. So self-effacing, my boy.

He was probably out in the underground salles again, working on his forms now that he's growing and there's suddenly rather more of him than he is used to. Anyway, he was nowhere to be found, an occurrence that's become more and more frequent in recent months.

Not that that worries me. Sometimes I marvel at how at ease I've become with him, letting the personal differences between us itch but not injure. He is nothing like me, and yet he worships me, pushing himself to his limits trying to live up to the expectations he thinks I have.

Well, no. He is like me. Like I was when I was sixteen. Except more advanced in his studies, more... more mature, I suppose. He feels older to me, earnest beyond his years. Striving to be a great Jedi, and I am sure that is what he will be. I'm not sure how much of that he will be able to learn from me, but I am certain he will find other sources.

Nothing if not resourceful, my apprentice. He makes me proud, my Obi-Wan."

4171 Republic Standard, 39th ten, personal log Qui-Gon Jinn:

"I'm just going to start writing words here. I've long despaired of trying to find the perfect opening sentence, haven't even written in this log for almost a year. I can't not say it, can't not admit it to myself in this most private of files, and yet I'm strangely terrified of seeing it in print on the screen, as if the words, once solidified, had a power that could make them leap off the page and make themselves heard across the room, through the door behind which my Padawan is doubtless ensconced in his studies...

You're stalling, Jinn. The fact that you're writing 'you're stalling' is proof enough.

See, I had never thought I would feel like this again. Had not known there were places still empty in this soul. Not after I'd pulled myself together so well... and it's been, what, fourteen years? Strange how I didn't notice the empty spaces until I felt them filled. Filled to bursting.

He is a wondrous thing, my Padawan. He has moved in and set up home in my mind, probably while I wasn't looking. He... no, there still aren't words for this. I'll just have to make do with clichés. He reads me like an open book, not aloud, just quietly to himself. He fits me so perfectly. Sometimes I feel like we could have whole conversations with just 'hm's and glances, trusting the other to think the exactly matching thought.

He makes me proud, and he makes me glow. He makes me want to love him.

Hells, I love him already. I'm just scared to admit it.

There, I have. Now, if only he could read that part of me too, without me having to say it. I've never been good with words, even in my own language..."

4171 Republic Standard, 40th ten, personal log Qui-Gon Jinn:

"Those long glances he's giving me, thoughtful. In the evenings, his eyes are almost blue. They remind me, and I can't find it in me to feel pain at the sharpness of the memory. Fact is, his eyes are blue then, islands of sky. And they call me by my real name.

I wish I could be certain enough to answer."

4171 Republic Standard, 42nd ten, personal log Qui-Gon Jinn:

"He said a wondrous thing today.

He said 'I know,' and I knew it was the answer. The answer to the question that wasn't a question, the answer to the answer I dared not give.

Stop being cryptic, Jinn, this is your own diary. Fact is, he... answers my feelings. And there may not be many more words to say in this log.

I suspect I won't want to find the time."

Soft panting stirred the hairs in Qui-Gon's groin. A face deliciously ticklish with evening stubble nuzzled against his spent and softening flesh, murmuring little kisses against the tender skin.

The spiky reddish head stirred a little, smiling blue-grey eyes rising up to meet his like small stars. A pair of very possessive arms tightened around his waist, nearly lifting him off the mattress. Shaking him a little as if he needed waking from his orgasm-induced limpness. His Obi-Wan-induced blissful limpness.

The sweet pink mouth, so talented and single-minded, came into view, doing what it did best. Well, second best, after what it had just done. Third best, after that and smirking. It spoke.

"Master?"

"What are you calling me, brat?"

A snort. "Qui-Gon, don't pretend you're mentally present enough to lecture me on etiquette. Not when you're shouting other people's names as you come!"

"I didn't -"

"No, you didn't." Obi-Wan nuzzled against his lover's belly, noisily blowing some really hot breath into his navel, fingertips trailing absently over the smooth black marks on the older man's hip. "But you did shout something there... made me think it meant something."

"I was shouting...?"

Obi-Wan grinned. "You most certainly were, Master," he purred. "It sounded like, well... there was a lot of 'aaaaaah' first. As is to be expected under the circumstances," he nipped lightly at Qui-Gon's flesh, "but then it ended in '...aaaarahaa'. Or something similar."

"Aroha?"

"Quite possibly. Care to be made to repeat it?" The smirk on his apprentice's face was altogether too much, and Qui-Gon pressed the grinning face against his skin, away from eye contact he was not sure he could hold.

He was quite sure he was blushing, though.

Still, who else could he be truthful with? And what harm lay in the truth of this particular word? After all, he was absolutely certain he had applied it to one worthy of it.

Taking a deep breath and stroking Obi-Wan's hair, Qui-Gon said, "Aroha. It means - love."

"Oh," Obi-Wan breathed, raising his face against the gentle resistance of his Master's hand. "Aroha." He smiled. "Aroha. Is that the word for love on your homeworld?"

Qui-Gon swallowed, then lowered his eyes, feeling the word coming into its own again, here, and now.

"Yes."

--- The End ---