Dad and Tipene and I went out to buy a Chinese takeaway. While I stood by the car, shivering a bit in the cool evening, I pushed my hands into my jeans pockets; touched the silver bracelet and little greenstone bat tucked away there. I’d offered them back to Nana Whina and Mum when we reached the campground, but Nana Whina smiled and said, ‘Keep them until we get home, Ailsa, dear. You’ve earned them.’ I grew ten centimetres taller right then.

When we got back with the takeaways, the campground was quiet, except for people getting into another car a few cabins down. A torch shone on us as we climbed out. ‘Make sure there’s no noise after ten o’clock,’ the camp manager grunted.

‘How about snoring?’ Dad asked him. ‘We allowed to do that?’

The manager shot him a dirty look. ‘Didn’t do any good this afternoon, did you? Test got played. Cops stopped you rabble from causing trouble.’

I clenched my fists and glared. Then a voice spoke from the car into which people were climbing. ‘Leave them alone, mate. They’re all right, eh?’

It was the rugby guys, the ones who’d sneered at the woman with her sign, called her ‘grandma’. ‘They’re all right,’ the man called again.

‘Make sure you leave the place tidy in the morning.’ The manager’s torch moved off.

‘Thanks, mate,’ Uncle Tipene called to the figures around the other car. ‘Good luck.’

‘Cheers,’ the reply came back. ‘We showed those Springboks, eh?’

Yeah, I thought to myself, as our cabin door opened and Mum asked ‘You going to stand out there gossiping all night?’ I hope we showed the Springboks lots of things.

I dreamed all sorts of things that night. About the greenstone bat and the little carved panel, and the axe handle stick on Nana Florence’s and Grandad Matiu’s wall. In one dream, I was walking along the riverbed while magpies dropped bits of paua shell around me. Every time one landed, the ground trembled like there was an earthquake. Another time, I was in the old part of our cemetery, reading the really early names on graves. Helen … Niall … John … Aggie … Angus. The Waimoana River had flooded, a really massive torrent of water rushing past the cemetery. But I wasn’t scared; I knew I could handle anything.

Anything except for feeling so stiff and creaky. I ached all over. I kept falling asleep on the drive home.

The others were quiet, too. ‘Wonder if we’ll be on the news?’ Uncle Tipene said at breakfast. ‘Wonder what happened to that guy in the plane?’

‘I hope nobody was badly hurt,’ Mum murmured. ‘Do you think it was all worth it?’