Keepers of the Lost City

1 The Black Soil of Nekenhalle

Lewis and his son, Gary, labored for hours to clear the thick brush from the obscured route that led up to the peculiar entrance of the rock.

“Hurry, boy!” Lewis cried, clenching his jaw while the spear-thistles cut through his calloused hands. With great toil, the big farmer held fast to a handful of stems and thorns, waiting for his son to catch up. They were halfway up the steep hill, working their way up through the dense shrubbery that grew from arid soil and loose rocks. “Gary, move!”

“I’m trying, dad! For God’s sake, my boots are slipping with every step, man! Why do we have to do this now?” he bitched, gasping for air as his unfit lungs screamed under the labor of climbing the incline. “Maybe if we wait for a cooler day…”

“Crikey, boy, you want to wait for a cooler day round Moana? It is not the temperature that makes you suffer like this and you know it. Maybe if you had less than three plates of food and got of your lazy ass once in a while, this kind of stuff would be easier.”

“I got plenty of exercise when I was in Wellington,” Gary retorted through uncomfortable tufts as he slowly tightened the gap between him and his father.

“Oh, yes, Wellington,” his father scoffed. “That was two years ago and you played a bit of rugby. It hardly makes you Bill Best, does it?”

Gary hated it when his father started the Bill Best stuff. Apparently the legend of the annoying hero stemmed from somewhere in their family, a century before sometime. Lewis Harding raised his two sons on the premise that their grand ancestor, who was known by this name, was the benchmark by which the men in their family should be tested. Never once did he allow them any slack, using Bill Best and his mythical abilities to consolidate their ineptitudes.

“I played first team, I’ll have you know,” Gary attempted a futile comeback, but his father paid no attention to his whining. The sun was setting in an hour and he needed the path open by nightfall, so that he could move down the rusty tractor he found abandoned in the mouth of the rock face. Gary reached his father and grabbed hold of a handful of weeds for anchoring, before he brought his right arm forward and slashed the barricade of thorn bush ahead of them with a machete. Severing the hardy stems, the blow sent particles of leaf and stalk flying. They pinched their eyes shut for the sap splattering on their faces and spat out some clumps of dry dirt that assailed their lips.

“Okay, now the bigger one up there,” his father ordered. Gary bore forward, subconsciously out to prove to his father that he could impress. With the explosive power his rugby coach trained them with, he leapt up to the menacing bushes a few meters above them. It was the last obstacle between them and the gaping dark hole in the hill. Within its edges, Gary could finally discern the brick brown contraption his father had hyped about all day. Since they started surveying the small farm two months ago to find suitable agricultural terrain, the new owner and his younger son had been scouring through tough overgrowth.

From fence post to fence post, they were busy marking Lewis Harding’s property. Fertile sediment covered the floor of this mountainous area which was a few kilometers from the town of Moana. Lewis had inherited the farm called ‘Nekenhalle’ from a distant relative the year before, but what first struck him about the place was the unusual gravel. Even under the dense growths of weeds and small trees, thorn bushes and loose roots, the soil was dark — almost black. Black soil, like that which surrounded volcano turf, had been known to be immensely fruitful. Here was no different. It was not the shade cast by the bushes, it was the very color of the sand. On hot days, the sand was especially prone to absorb the sun’s heat more effectively than other types of soil. However, to the eye it was rather disheartening, reminiscent of coalmines and their torturous hue.

As the original Maori learned to modify the available soil for fern root production, they left the land ripe for the right tending. Lewis knew that, with a bit of hard work and careful planning, his new farm could yield considerable crops. Most of all, he wished he could turn his farmland into lucrative vineyards, but with his limited knowledge of agriculture in general, he thought to first start modestly.

Enhancing the ground composition by adding materials like wood ash and vegetable matter, he reckoned could take advantage of the already fertile land with little chemical interference. According to his local research, like asking other farmers, Lewis learned that the addition of gravel, fine sand, and the necessary potassium/ magnesium balance, he could be sitting on a goldmine.

“Alright, hang on!” Gary yelled with a grunt as he aimed the slated blade of the rough machete at the base of the thorn bush. Lewis closed his eyes, pursed his lips and waited for the thwack. Nothing sounded. He waited, but he heard no impact. Reluctantly the farmer slowly inched his lids apart, yet there was no clap or dusty puff to go with his son’s awkward position on the ground.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, annoyed at Gary’s tardiness. The young man was sprawled across the dark gravel, his ginger hair full of the brush’s debris, but his eyes were wide open, fraught with terror. “Gary, get up and chop the bloody thing free. We don’t have all day for your bullshit.” His son did not respond. It was as if young Gary wanted to make himself as flat as the ground he was lying on, but he dared not budge. “Gary!” Lewis roared. “Get up, for Christ’s sake!”

“Dad,” Gary whispered. “Dad, don’t move.”

“What?” Lewis scowled impatiently. “Give me the bloody knife. I’ll do it myself.”

“Dad, listen to me,” Gary growled under his breath as the dust swirled up under the force of his words. “Listen, for once in your life. Don’t… fucking… move.”