Fires of Change (The Fire Blossom Saga #2) - Sarah Lark

Part 1

MISSION

RUSSELL, NEW ZEALAND (THE NORTH ISLAND)

ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA

1863

Chapter 1

“Are we there yet?”

Mara Jensch was in a bad mood, and she was bored. The journey to the Ngati Hine village seemed to be taking forever, and even though the landscape was beautiful and the weather was good, Mara had seen enough manuka, rimu, and koromiko trees. She’d had enough of rain forests and fern jungles. She wanted to go home, back to the South Island, back to Rata Station.

“Just a few more miles,” Father O’Toole replied. He was a Catholic priest and missionary who spoke good Maori and was taking part in the expedition as an interpreter.

“Don’t whine,” Mara’s mother, Ida, reprimanded. She glanced disapprovingly at her daughter as she guided her small brown mare next to Mara’s gray one. “You sound like a spoiled child.”

Mara began to pout. She knew she was annoying her parents. She’d been in a bad mood for weeks. She hadn’t enjoyed the journey to the North Island at all. She shared neither her mother’s enthusiasm for wide beaches and warm climates nor her father’s interest in mediation between Maori tribes and English settlers. Mara saw no need for mediation. After all, she was in love with a chieftain’s son.

For a while the girl drifted off into daydreams, wandering over the endless grasslands of the Canterbury Plains with her beau, Eru. Mara held his hand and smiled at him. Before her departure, they’d even exchanged tentative kisses. Suddenly, a cry of surprise shook Mara out of her fantasy.

“What was that?” Kennard Johnson, the representative of the governor who’d hired Mara’s father for this mission, listened fearfully, his eyes on the woods. “Could they be spying on us?”

Mr. Johnson, a short, rotund man who seemed to be having difficulties with the many hours of riding, turned nervously to his two English soldiers. Mara and her father, Karl, had privately laughed at the man for bringing bodyguards. If the Maori tribe they were going to visit was inclined to kill Mr. Johnson, it’d take an entire regiment of redcoats to keep them from doing so.

Father O’Toole shook his head. “Must have been an animal,” he said reassuringly. “You would neither see nor hear a Maori warrior. But we’re quite close to their village now. Of course we are being observed.”

Mr. Johnson turned white as a sheet, and Mara’s parents exchanged knowing looks. For Ida and Karl Jensch, visiting Maori tribes was nothing unusual. If the two of them were afraid of anything, it was the possibility that the English settlers would panic. The Maori called them pakeha. Mara’s parents knew that violence between the Maori and the pakeha was seldom initiated by the tribes. It was much more likely for the Englishmen’s fear of the tattooed “savages” to result in a foolishly fired shot that would have terrible consequences.

“Above all, stay calm,” Karl Jensch advised.

Aside from Johnson and his soldiers, they were accompanied by the two farmers who had made complaints against the Ngati Hine in the first place. Mara regarded them with all the resentful eyes of a young woman whose romantic plans had been thwarted. Without these two idiots, she would have been home long ago. Her father had wanted to be back at Rata Station for the shearing, and he’d already booked the sea crossing. But at the last moment, the governor’s request had arrived, asking Karl to help resolve the conflict between the two farmers and the Ngati Hine as quickly as possible. It should simply be a matter of comparing a few maps. Karl had done the surveying himself when Chieftain Maihi Paraone Kawiti had sold the land several years ago.

“The Ngati Hine mean us no harm,” Karl told the men. “Remember, they invited us to come. The chieftain is just as interested as we are in a peaceful solution. There’s no reason to be afraid—”

“I’m not afraid of them!” declared one of the farmers. “They should be afraid of us!”

“They probably have fifty armed men,” Mara’s mother remarked dryly. “Perhaps armed only with spears or clubs, but they know how to use them. You would be wise not to provoke them, Mr. Simson.”

Mara sighed. During the five-hour ride, she’d had to listen to three or four similar exchanges. At first, the two farmers had been noticeably more aggressive. They seemed to think that this expedition had more to do with punishing the natives than finding a solution. Now, drawing near to the village, the farmers seemed tenser, more subdued. That didn’t change as