Elias Voss lands in Hokitika with a satchel of
charcoal sketches and no money, fleeing a
scandal in London where his bronze rugby players
were exposed as forgeries. He takes shelter in
the old post office turned storage shed, where
the town’s last living elder, Hinekura, leaves
him a brass clock on the table — its face
cracked, hands frozen at 3:17, the hour the last
land war ended. No one speaks of it. No one
touches it.
The clock doesn’t tick. It unmakes. Anyone who
brushes its casing loses a memory — not the
event, but the feeling. A farmer forgets why he
planted kōwhai. A schoolteacher no longer
remembers her son’s laugh. The town’s children
avoid the shed. The clock is a relic from the
1902 land confiscations: a colonial gift meant
to measure time while erasing loss. The rule
bites when Elias, desperate for materials, pries
a gear loose — and wakes with no recollection of
his wife’s face. He remembers her name. He
remembers the shape of her hands. But not the
warmth. Not the scent of kawakawa tea on her
breath.
He starts carving. Uses scrap iron, driftwood,
rusted fencing wire. He remembers the feel of
rugby leather from his youth — the way the ball
gripped under wet fingers in Taranaki, the roar
of a crowd that didn’t care if you were Pākehā
or Māori, only if you gave everything. He
sculpts the trophy from the clock’s innards: a
korushaped cup forged from its mainspring, the
base shaped like a taniwha curled around a rugby
ball, its eyes two polished hōtō (pounamu)
shards taken from Hinekura’s old necklace. He
doesn’t know why he’s making it. Only that the
clock’s silence is louder than any scream.
On the eve of the local centenary match — the
first time the old township team plays since the
’87 drought broke the club — Elias carries the
trophy to the field. He places it on the
scorer’s table. The crowd murmurs. A boy touches
the base. His mother gasps — she remembers her
father’s voice singing a waiata as they walked
home from the dairy. An old man, who forgot why
he quit rugby after his brother died in the
trenches, grips the cup and weeps without
knowing why.
The clock shatters on the shed floor, its gears
scattered like fallen leaves. The air smells of
wet earth and burnt brass. The trophy glows
faintly, warm as a newborn’s hand.
At fulltime, the team wins by three points. They
don’t lift the cup. They kneel beside it. One by
one, they touch it — not in triumph, but in
thanks. Elias doesn’t speak. He walks back to
the shed. Hinekura waits. She places a single
kōwhai blossom on his palm. He doesn’t remember
her name. But he knows, deep in his bones, she
is home.
