But then, they were doing exactly as they had the first time they’d landed on the little beach on Sydney Cove’s western shore, except that this time Gideon was rowing the boat instead of the taciturn waterman who had ferried them on their previous journey. And this night the moon was high and bright, which would help them negotiate the steep, narrow track that would lead them to the Aborigine burial caves.Gideon guided the rowboat onto the beach, and Rian and Ropata jumped out and pulled the bow further up onto dry land. Then Kitty disembarked, holding her skirts up around her knees to avoid getting them wet, and waited while Gideon carefully lifted the box out of the boat.It was a box, that was true, but it was also a waka taonga, as Ropata called it: a place to store treasures. It measured two feet long, one foot wide and one foot high, and had been made from a teak log Rian had had milled almost two years before in Batavia. Since then, they had each taken many hours to carve into it the symbols and scenes that held importance for them, a way of honouring Wai’s memory and easing her journey back to New Zealand.
