I swung, tugged at the blade, swung again. Hard work. I didn’t care. It helped take my mind off the choice I had to make. Did I fight, and possibly kill? Or did I refuse, and seem a coward? Uncle Niall said that as long as I did what I believed in, I could be proud. But how did I know what I believed?

Uncle Niall chose to fight — in the South African war, the Boer War, against Dutch rebels. Grandmother and Grandfather didn’t want him to join up.

‘We’ve little tae thank the English for,’ Grandfather Angus said. ‘They drove many of us from our land.’ But Niall went, because his friends were enlisting — and because it was going to be a great adventure, he told me once. He came back with a smashed shoulder from a Boer bullet, which means he can’t work on a farm any longer. That’s why he and Aunt Ngaio run the flax mill just outside town.

He came back to his own horse, too. I haven’t yet told you the famous story about Chieftain. Too many other problems to think about . . .

I’d started cutting the totara in one of its knottiest parts. I hadn’t examined it properly; how foolish. But I had to keep going now. I chopped, heaved at the axe until it came free, heard myself grunt. Usually, the rhythm of work helped me think. This blasted tree was stopping me from thinking! I just couldn’t make up my mind.

I paused to take deep breaths. Something moved upriver. A man crossing on a horse. Rawiri, Hahona’s son. He’d offered to help me clear the bush for our orchard, but his mother wouldn’t let him. Ever since her husband was killed by a falling tree while he worked in the next valley, Hahona has believed the bush is taking revenge on Maori people who sold their land.

Rawiri’s family have always been friends with ours. Hahona and Mother got into trouble when they were young because Hahona lent Mother her pekapeka, the carved greenstone bat she wears around her neck. It was like letting a sacred treasure pass out of her care, and her mother, Areta, came storming over to our place to get it back. The girls meant no harm; Mother had lent Hahona her silver bracelet from Scotland, with its thistle clasp. That’s one of our treasures, I suppose. Lily Sheffield has a silver bracelet, too; I wager hers cost more.