In the Land of the Long White Cloud

to his girl.
    “I see,” said the judge drily. “A Maori girl. Did the pretty little thing have a name and a tribe?”
    James seemed to think for a moment. “She didn’t belong to a tribe. She…it would be too much of a digression to explain here, but she came from the union of a man and a woman who never made their bed together in a meeting hall. Their union was blessed anyway. She was born so that she…she…” He searched for Gwyneira’s eyes. “So that she could dry the tears of a god.”
    The judge frowned. “Well, I didn’t ask for an introduction to heathen conception ceremonies. There are children in this court. So the girl was banished from her tribe and nameless.”
    “Not nameless. Her name is Pua…Pakupaku Pua.” James looked Gwyneira in the eyes as he spoke the name, hoping that no one was looking at her just then because she turned pale then blushed. If what she believed was correct…
    When the court recessed for deliberation a few minutes later, she hurried through the rows without excusing herself to Gerald or John. She needed someone who could confirm what she thought, someone who spoke better Maori than she did. She ran breathlessly into Reti.
    “Reti! What luck you’re here! Reti, what…what does
pua
mean? And
pakupaku
?”
    The Maori laughed. “You should really know that by now, miss.
Pua
means ‘flower’ and
pakupaku
…”
    “Means ‘little’…” Gwyneira whispered. She wanted to scream, cry, dance with relief. But she merely smiled.
    The girl was named Little Flower. Now Gwyneira understood what James had meant with his entreating look. He must have met Fleurette.

    James McKenzie was sentenced to five years in prison in Lyttelton. Naturally, he was not allowed to keep his dog. John Sideblossom was to take care of the dog if he was so inclined. Judge Stephen could not have cared less. The court, he emphasized, was not responsible for pets.
    What followed was horrible. The bailiff and court usher had to tear James away from his dog by force. The dog bit John Sideblossom as he was putting a leash on her. Afterward, Paul described with perverse delight how the thief had cried.
    Gwyneira did not listen to him. She had also not been present for the reading of the sentence; she was too agitated for that. Paul would have asked questions had he seen her in that state, and she dreaded his often frightening intuition.
    Instead, she waited outside under the pretense of needing fresh air and to stretch her legs. In order to escape the mass of people who were waiting in front of the building for the judgment, she strolled to the other side of the courthouse—and had a final, unexpected encounter with James McKenzie there. The condemned was twisting in the grip of two burly men, who were dragging him by force to a waitingprison-transport coach. Until that moment, he had been struggling bitterly, but at the sight of Gwyneira he calmed down.
    “I’ll see you again,” he mouthed. “Gwyn, I’ll see you again!”

10
    H ardly six months had passed since James McKenzie’s trial when an excited little Maori girl disturbed Gwyneira, who was in the midst of her daily work. As usual, she had had a busy morning, clouded by yet another confrontation with Paul. The boy had offended two Maori shepherds—and right before the shearing and the herding into the highlands, when they most needed every available pair of hands. Both men were irreplaceable, experienced, and reliable, and there wasn’t the slightest reason to offend them simply because they had used the winter to take part in one of their tribe’s traditional wanderings. That was normal: when the stores the tribe had laid up for the winter had been used up, the Maori moved on to hunt in other parts of the country. Then one day the houses on the lake were deserted, and no one came to work with the exception of a few trusted members of the help. New arrivals among the
pakeha
found it odd at first, but the more established colonists had long since gotten used to it. It wasn’t that the tribes just disappeared at random; they only left when they could not find anything more to eat near their villages or had earned enough working for the
pakeha
to buy something. When it was time for sowing the fields, and there was plenty of shearing and herding work to be had, they returned—as had Gwyneira’s two workers, who had no idea why Paul was rudely berating them for their absence.
    “Mr. Warden has to know we come back!” one of the