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    Into the Clouded Sky: Taine McKenna Adventures, #6
    Into the Clouded Sky: Taine McKenna Adventures, #6
    Into the Clouded Sky: Taine McKenna Adventures, #6
    Ebook62 pages50 minutesTaine McKenna Adventures

    Into the Clouded Sky: Taine McKenna Adventures, #6

    By Lee Murray

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    About this ebook

    Taking some R&R at the site of the historic Lake Tarawera eruption, New Zealand army sergeant Taine McKenna and Private Eddie 'Lefty' Wright are plunged into a labyrinthine hell beneath the lake's surface.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSquabbling Sparrows Press
    Release dateFeb 28, 2025
    ISBN9781067015879
    Into the Clouded Sky: Taine McKenna Adventures, #6
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      Book preview

      Into the Clouded Sky - Lee Murray

      Into the Clouded Sky

      Lake Rotomahana, 31 May 1886

      Louise Sise grasped her daughter by the waist.

      Frances, full of youthful carelessness and with a personality as buoyant as her curls, had leaned over the side of the boat and was dangling a slender finger in the lake.

      Not too close, my darling, Louise said, pulling the girl gently backwards onto the wooden seat. It isn’t safe.

      Frances pouted, but, a sweet child at heart, she remained on the bench as Louise asked. It was as well, for they were moving swiftly now, the dark water skimming beneath the boat’s hull. While the lake looked smooth, it could be fickle and treacherous. Not half an hour ago, when their tour party had been setting out from the township of Te Wairoa, the tides had surged and heaved, as if some unseen monster had sighed and turned over in its sleep on the lakebed. The waves had coursed so far up the shoreline that the whaleboat lifted off the beach on the unexpected swell. The men who were to row them to their destination had been afeared, their brows coming together and their dark eyes flashing with alarm. They took to chattering, two of them even refusing to get in the craft. Given their consternation, Louise had asked her husband whether they would not have been better to delay their tour.

      Nonsense, George had said. These Māoris are too superstitious by half. The sudden seiche was merely a trick of the lake, he assured her, caused by the overactive thermal rifts the lake was famed for, the same forces that had bestowed the region with the shimmering pink and white terraces and the very reason they had travelled to the region.

      Louise had yielded to his better judgement. As a partner of Dunedin’s Messrs. Bates, Sise and Co. and a director of Donaghy’s Rope and Twine, George employed plenty of natives in his enterprises and he knew a great deal about these things.

      Thankfully, their guide, by force of her confidence, had cajoled the Māoris to row them to the southern end of the lake as planned. Laughing loudly at the men’s reticence, she had picked up the oars and thrust them into their hands, her demeanour as certain as the huia feather poked in her hair. Eventually, the natives got into the whaleboat and readied themselves to row, although not without some grumbling.

      What are they saying? Louise demanded. While she’d lived in Māoriland most of her life, leaving Prussia with her mother as a child, she spoke not a word of the natives’ language. Her husband was more proficient.

      Something about only dying once, George said, so they may as well die together.

      That’s not very reassuring, Louise said.

      George placed his hand on the small of her back and helped her into the boat. No one’s going to die, Louise.

      And he’d been right. Before long they had left the capricious tides behind them, the oarsmen’s blades flicking through the water with barely a splash. The men’s necks gleamed with sweat and the air tingled with the musk of adventure. Mount Tarawera towered alongside them, the mountain’s misshapen shoulders dark brown against the clear blue skies. Louise breathed deeply, taking a gulp of sulphurous winter air.

      All at once, Frances pointed across the lake. Look, Mother, she said.

      Louise twisted on the bench. Emerging from beneath a massive pine was an old Māori war canoe, ghostly in the light morning mist. Longer than the whaleboat, with two rows of seats, ornately carved prows graced each end of the canoe. The craft was full of Māoris, some standing up, and was near enough for Louise to see the sun glitter on their paddles. The warriors, nine of them, wore flaxen robes and feathered headdresses. Their chief, on his feet, brandished a carved spear. It was a magnificent sight, though Louise hurried to avert Frances’s young eyes, since the warriors in the canoe were almost naked.

      The Māoris rowing the whaleboat shouted and whistled. The newcomers paid them no heed.

      Who are they? asked Mrs Ralph, the doctor’s wife.

      Just some local men heading out to catch some koura-crayfish, the guide said, although her brow furrowed in a squint.

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