In the Land of the Long White Cloud

didn’t know how she was supposed to manage everything. But she didn’t see a way out either.

    Gerald Warden could not hide his delight that Gwyneira and Lucas had arrived at an agreement so quickly. He fixed the wedding day for the second weekend of Advent. That was the height of summer, and part of the reception could take place in the garden, which still needed to be fixed up, of course. Hoturapa and two other Maori who had been hired especially for the purpose worked hard to plant the seeds and seedlings that Gerald had brought back from England. A few native plants also found a place in Lucas’s carefully planned garden design. Since it would take too long for maple or chestnut trees to grow big enough, southern beeches, nikau, and cabbage trees were planted so that Gerald’s guests could take a stroll in the shade in the foreseeable future. That didn’t bother Gwyneira, who found the native flora and fauna interesting. It was finally an area where her proclivities and those of her future husband overlapped, though Lucas’s research focused primarily on ferns and insects. The former were found primarily in the rainy western region of South Island. Gwyneira could only wonder at their diverse and filigreed shapes from Lucas’s own well-executed drawings and in his textbooks. However, when she saw a living example of one of the native insects for the first time, even hard-bitten Gwyneira let out a scream. Lucas, ever the most attentive of gentlemen, rushed immediately to her side. However, the sight seemed to fill him with more joy than horror.
    “It’s a weta!” he said, getting excited, and poked at the six-legged creature that Hoturapa had just dug up with a twig. “They are perhaps the largest insects in the world. It’s not uncommon to see specimens that are eight centimeters long or more.”
    Gwyneira could not share in her fiancé’s joy. If the bug had only looked more like a butterfly or a bee or a hornet…but the weta most closely resembled a fat, wet, glistening grasshopper.
    “They belong to the same family,” Lucas lectured. “More precisely to the ensifera suborder. Except for the cave weta, which belongs to the rhaphidophoridae.”
    Lucas knew the Latin designation for several weta subfamilies. Gwyneira, however, found the Maori name for the bugs more appropriate.Kiri and her people called them
wetapunga
, which meant “god of ugly things.”
    “Do they sting?” Gwyneira asked. The bug didn’t seem particularly lively and only moved forward sluggishly when Lucas poked it. However, it had an imposing stinger on its abdomen and Gwyneira kept her distance.
    “No, no, they’re generally harmless. At most they sometimes bite. And it’s no worse than a wasp sting,” Lucas explained. “The stinger is…it…well, it indicates that this is a female, and…” Lucas turned away, as always, when it had to do with anything “sexual.”
    “It’s for laying eggs, miss,” Hoturapa clarified casually. “This one big and fat, soon lay eggs. Much eggs, hundred, two hundred…better not to take in house, Mr. Warden. Not that egg laying in house.”
    “For heaven’s sake!” Just the thought of sharing her living quarters with two hundred of this unattractive bug’s offspring sent chills up Gwyneira’s back. “Just leave her here. If she runs away…”
    “Not walking quickly, miss. Jumping. Whoops and you have
wetapunga
in lap!” Hoturapa explained.
    Gwyneira took another step back, just to be sure.
    “Then I’ll draw it right here on the spot,” Lucas gave in reluctantly. “I would have preferred to take it into my study and compared it directly with the images in the field guide. But I guess my drawings will have to do. You’d also like to know, no doubt, Gwyneira, whether we have a ground weta or a tree weta here.”
    Gwyneira had rarely cared so little about anything.
    “Why can’t he be interested in sheep like his father?” she asked her patient audience, consisting of Cleo and Igraine, afterward. Gwyneira had retreated to the stables and was grooming her mare while Lucas sketched the weta. The horse had worked up a sweat during the ride that morning, and the girl did not want to pass up the chance to smooth her coat, which had since dried. “Or birds! Though they probably don’t hold still long enough to let themselves be sketched.”
    Gwyneira found the native birds considerably more interesting than Lucas’s creepy crawlies. The farmworkers had shown and