Tohunga-tā-moko [Jesse Fforde]

[Manaia (DELETED 11043)]

The fog rolled in just as the plane skidded to a halt on the tarmac. All ten passengers began to stir, some of them standing to stretch. The flight from Toronto to Harper Rock had been short but eventful; they’d been menaced by a big lightning storm and a lot of turbulence on the way. The excitement had been too much for Bart, who had been awake for over nineteen hours on the flight from Auckland to Toronto and who was afraid of flying anyway. Less than halfway through, he downed a couple Benzos and a plastic cup of cheap white wine from the pretty blonde flight attendant.

Let it never be said that Bart didn’t know how to fly in style.

When the plane landed, Bart was still drooling on the armrest. Mana tried to shake him awake. He grunted, but his eyes stayed shut and he barely moved. Passengers began to file out with their carry-ons, and even the cabin crew looked anxious to get off the plane. She had no choice but to call on an old party trick Bart himself had taught her once—a surefire way to tell if someone’s passed out, dead, or just asleep. Left hand on his shoulder, she drove her second knuckle into the tenderest part of his chest and twisted. Gasping “****,” Bart shot up.

“We’re here.” Mana grinned. She peered out the window at the descending fog and the black sea of trees beyond. “Look, Bartie. Vampires.”

It was noon by the time Mana and Bart had found their AirBnB in Swansdale, but the sky was still dim and the fog was still heavy in the air. In July. Harper Rock certainly looked like the place to find vampires, if there ever was a place for it. Mana regretted only bringing one jacket.

“I’m going out,” said Mana. “Going to scope the place out and see what there is to see.”
“Careful,” Bart muttered. He’d decided to sleep of the wine and pills, and that was going to take at least another fifteen hours, by Mana’s reckoning.
“Yeah, no worries,” Mana said. “She’ll be right. See you in a bit!”
Bart yawned and settled under the covers. Mana locked the door behind her.

After a few minutes of walking, Mana found a line of shops and a retro-cool tattoo shop that had SERPENTINE scrawled across the front in typical tattoo font. She caught her reflection in the window; her moko called out for some company. Mana stood there, hands in her pockets, considering it. She’d always gotten a tattoo for every place she’d ever visited, but normally they were stick-and-pokes by her or Bart. This time, though, the shop called out to her. The red vinyl and checkerboard opened its throat to her and sang. She went in, rang the bell.

“Hello?”

[Jesse Fforde]

WEARING

There were some days that Jesse couldn’t sleep.

Mostly it was the days that his—their, he must remember—bed was empty.

It wasn’t so much the emptiness that concerned him. He’d never been that kind of person, needing the company of someone else, unable to get comfortable without a companion in the bed with him. No, that wasn’t someone he inherently was but more someone he had become, though it wasn’t the physicality that he missed. It was more the extenuating circumstances, the worries and woes that plagued his mind. That pessimism crawling back in and setting up camp. It concerned him. He didn’t want to go backwards. He didn’t want to be that desperate, weak, depressed man who’d tried to force people to like him so that they would stay. No one liked the weakness of depression. They didn’t know hot to handle it. So they called it pathetic. They didn’t know how to help, so they didn’t even try.

So Jesse didn’t sleep, despite being mostly fine. Depression didn’t lick at his heels nor drag him down when his eyes were open, when he was focused on something else.

So he focused on work. The sun still harmed him if he walked out in it but with the use of tomes and fadeportals he could travel across the city and avoid the sun completely. He was ensconced at the back of the tattoo parlour, hidden behind the barricade of his desk, bowed down over a sketchbook. The light that peeled through the front windows was dull. There were clouds and there was thick fog, though Jesse didn’t risk going to stand on the footpath to admire the eerie scenery it created.

The bell over the door jangled and Jesse ignored it.

A voice called out, and he ignored that too—at least until he realised no one had answered it. Glancing up, he realised that Laya had left her post. She was not at the front desk where she should have been, taking appointments and answering the phones. What the hell was that thrall good for, anyway? With a sigh—crankier during the day, given his body naturally wanted to be asleep but he was denying it—he stood and meandered across the glass floor and to the front desk. Ink slathered his arms and his neck; black jeans clung to his legs, at the bottom of which silent feet were housed in scuffed docs. The shirt—totally boring normal human—was worn for irony.

”Can I help you?” he asked, brow arched, waiting for the totally boring normal human in front of him to react to the unnatural aura she’d be slammed with.

[Manaia (DELETED 11043)]

The Maori believe that a person's tā moko, their markings on their face and on their bodies, are always there, right under the skin. From the moko on her chin, down to the markings on her raperape, her puhoro, these were all done by a tohunga-tā-moko, a sacred moko artist that could see through your skin to the markings beneath.

The woman who had done all of Manaia's traditional tattoos was a holy soul, and had a strong but peaceful kind of energy that spread out and hugged all the four corners of a room when she walked in. It was the complete opposite of the man in front of her, who just standing there with his eyes on her—what eyes!—made her mouth and her throat dry, and her knees feel like they'd had all the marrow sucked out of them.

She blinked, fast, and looked around the place for an exit. Was she having a panic attack? Mana hadn't had one in years. What a time to suddenly start having them again.

Somehow, Mana found her voice. "I was just...lookin' 'round," said Mana, Kiwi accent thick on her tongue, which felt swollen. "You the—the—" She gestured around the walls. "This your place? How much for a tattoo?"

Mana breathed. Counted back from ten. Counted her fingers and toes twice. My name is Manaia Marie Smith. I'm from Palmerston North, New Zealand. I am in Harper Rock, Canada. Her heartbeat steadied, though the fear was still there, still squatted over her chest like a great toad.

The man might have said something, but Mana didn't hear. She said, instead of waiting for an answer, "Yeah, nah, sorry, can I have a glass of water first? I been up eighteen hours. I'm parched."

[Jesse Fforde]

There was always a point that Jesse watched for. A point where a human either found an excuse to escape the shop or swallow their fear and remain. It looked different on every human. Fear manifested in different ways depending on the person and their previous history with it. Jesse loved to watch, to try to figure out what that history entailed.

It was the sound of the heart beating in their chest which was a solid giveaway. No matter how good an actor a person might be, no matter how best they are able to school their features, that heartbeat told a different story. He could hear it in this woman’s chest, now—the staccato soon steadying to something a little more respectable.

”A hundred is the base cost, first hour. Then fifty an hour on top,” he informed, though he soon realised the words had either fallen on deaf ears, or ignorant ones. He couldn’t blame her. Laya wandered back in through the glass doors that connected the bar to the tattoo parlour, the thrall’s eyes wide with the reprimand she expected but probably wouldn’t receive.

”I’m sorry! I had to go to the bathroom,” he said, her cockney accent tempered by the years she’d lived in Canada. The woman had been particularly helpful to Jesse when he’d needed to solve a few backhanded financial issues, and Jesse had enthralled her to force her to work for him instead. She was handsomely compensated, not that she’d have a choice. She was the best damned financial advisor he’d ever had, and was probably wasted at the desk.

”It’s fine, Laya. You want to help this customer while I go get her some water?” he said, stepping back from the counter to give his thrall access. As much as Jesse liked to play with a human’s fear, when it was a potential customer it was best he stick to the tattooing. He slipped out from behind the counter and through the door Laya had come through.

Laya visibly relaxed as soon as her boss was out of sight.

”Don’t mind him, love. How can I help?”

[Manaia (DELETED 11043)]

The air came back into the room the moment the man left it. Mana gaped at his back, and then, realizing that the woman with the blonde hair was talking to her, she closed her mouth. "Sorry - I just. I'm just still kind of jet-lagged and..." She trailed away with a wave of her hand and a sheepish laugh. Cleared her throat. "Could I get a tattoo?" Mana said, finally getting to the point. "Something that says 'Harper Rock'."

Mana turned to look at her peaky face in the mirror. She rubbed her hands against her cheeks, trying to get the blood flowing back into them. She ran her hand over her mouth and chin, down her moko, and then into her hair to fluff it up, suddenly hyperaware of what she must have looked like to Laya and her boss, standing there gawping and looking like she needed a five-hour shower. "Sorry - I mean - do you have any designs I can look at? That'd be great."

[Jesse Fforde]

Laya laughed, the sound soft and joyful. She wasn’t making fun of the woman, far from it. She instead found amusement in the idea of a tattoo that says ‘Harper Rock’, and the notion that her ‘master’, for lack of a better word -- Jesse Fforde himself -- would be the one giving the tattoo. Laya leaned conspiratorially against the bench, casual in a way she got away with.

”Probably something to do with vampires, then, I’d say. Or zombies? Even just the Quarantine symbol would say it all…” she said. Even now she was getting ideas -- like a postcard, happy and cheerful colours with ‘Harper Rock’ diagonally down the middle in cursive writing, over scenes of destruction and seductive bloodletting in the background. That would probably require space, however, and might be far bigger than the woman intended.

”If you’re struggling in his presence, maybe start with something small,” she said, dragging one of the folders from under the glass counter top and sliding it in front of the woman. Inside were the numerous (and by numerous, there were hundreds) of flash designs that her boss had drawn up. There were plenty of snakes and snake themes, plenty with fire, but there were a few that stood out.

Notably, a set of lips with fangs. These, Laya pointed at. ”Maybe something like this…?”

In the bar, Jesse took his time. It was best to let Laya handle the transactions, and Jesse would come back just to do the inking.