The Kākāpō Count

The road ended at the water.

Elias had not quite believed it until it happened. For two days, Uncle Tama's old van had rattled south and west, through farmland, then through hills, then through mountains so steep and close that the road had to squeeze between them like a thread through a needle. And then, very early on the third morning, in a grey drizzle that seemed less like rain and more like the air itself being damp, the road simply stopped. There was a small car park, a jetty, a wooden hut with a noticeboard, and beyond that nothing but water and mountains, the mountains going straight down into the water and, Elias supposed, straight on down underneath it.

"Fiordland," said Uncle Tama happily, climbing out and stretching until his back clicked. "End of the world. Best place in it."

Uncle Tama was Elias's mother's younger brother. He was large and cheerful and had a beard like a hedge, and he sang while he cooked, very loudly and very badly, which was why, he said, he always volunteered somewhere far away from other people. For the last six years he had been the volunteer cook for the kākāpō count on Te Motu Kōtuku. This year, for the first time, Elias was coming too.

It had taken a lot of arranging. There had been forms. There had been a health check, and a letter from school, and a long phone call between Elias's mother and somebody called Mere Tipene, who was, Uncle Tama said, the lead ranger, and the most important person Elias would ever meet, and who did not, Uncle Tama said, suffer fools. At the end of the phone call Elias's mother had put the phone down and looked at Elias for a long moment.

"Three weeks," she had said. "No complaining about the rain. Do exactly what Mere says. And whatever you do, do not lose anything on that island, because she will find it, and she will know it was you."

Elias had promised.

Now Elias stood at the end of the jetty with a backpack that had been checked and emptied and checked again, looking out at the water. It was very dark, nearly black, and absolutely still. Far out, a long way off, a ribbon of white mist lay along it like a scarf somebody had dropped.

"There," said Uncle Tama, pointing.

A boat was coming out of the mist. It was small and blunt and white, with a blue stripe and a wheelhouse at the back, and it came on very steadily, without hurry, leaving a long silver V on the black water behind it. Painted on its bow, in neat letters, was a single word: Kōtare.

"Hemi," said Uncle Tama. "He doesn't say much. Don't take it personally."

Hemi Rāwiri brought the Kōtare alongside so gently that it barely kissed the jetty. He was a short, broad man in a woollen hat and an orange jacket that had faded nearly to pink, and he looked at Elias, and at Elias's backpack, and at Uncle Tama, and nodded once.

"Boots," he said.

They took their boots off on the jetty. Hemi scrubbed every one of them in a tub of something that smelled of swimming pools, and checked the soles with a torch, and then went through both backpacks again, pocket by pocket, while Elias watched, astonished.

"Seeds," said Uncle Tama quietly. "Mice. Ants. Anything. One pregnant mouse in your bag, and that's the island gone. Every bird on it." He shook his head. "Not on Hemi's boat."

Hemi found a single grass seed in the cuff of Elias's sock. He held it up between finger and thumb, and looked at Elias for a long, silent moment, and then dropped it into a little plastic bag and sealed it.

"Good," he said, which Elias found extremely confusing, until Uncle Tama explained that it meant he had found it here, and not there.

Then they were aboard, and the jetty slid away behind them, and the Kōtare turned out into the black water, towards the mist and the mountains and the island where, Uncle Tama said, some of the last kākāpō in the world were waiting to be counted.

The trip would take three hours. Elias could go and stand at the bow, out in the weather, and watch the sound unroll ahead. Or Elias could squeeze into the warm wheelhouse beside Hemi, who did not say much.