"More
than five years on from that fateful morning when I first spoke to
Charles Cranston, the man who fell down a ravine and changed my life,
the report on the 'Ondwa' site is still locked away in a filing
cabinet somewhere. Despite our going to great pains to make it as
scientific and objective as possible - no ghosts and spirits and no
psychic phenomena - it didn't go down well.
Too
many people didn't want to know; it was too hard to swallow, it rocked
too many boats and upset too many theories."
This second novel by New Zealand writer, Donald Armstrong,
explores the idea, suggested by recent rat bone research, that people
lived here before the great Polynesian migrations of around the twelfth
century - people who, given the unstable nature of the land,
disappeared leaving little or no trace.
"Suddenly
there was an earsplitting crack, like five times five spears of white
light hitting the earth and a huge boulder split off the side of
Yudri's Rock and crashed into the back of the Spirit Dwelling, making
the whole roof bounce up and down on the walls. Then momentarily the
rolling stopped and then there came two enormous jolts, and then another
and another - and then nothing."