SHORT STORY

Ruru

Patchy moonlight shines through ponga fronds tracing dark lace on the muddy ground. I navigate the track balancing on the balls of my feet like an acrobat. Black mud squelches between bare toes. Everything here is sodden, the leaves, the ground, my skin. There is a smell between saltiness and rotting, dying and death, the blood of birthing.

I touch the bark of a rimu, red and flaky, and wonder how much of this forest grows on buried placentas. You see, I remember this place in the summer. In summer it is different. There is a heat rising from the ground. It is still damp -that never alters, but the warmth and moisture of the earth meet the heat of the body - join and melt. You remember that heat don`t you? You remember it?

Rain sluices over skin, cold rain. But I see banks of moss, so soft. There were stars that made the dark as rich as licorice. You held my hand and laughed when I stumbled. I was young, gauche, untutored.

The bush is ancient, there is no way here to gauge the passage of lifetimes as short as ours. We flicker through this place in less than a heartbeat, it barely registers our passing. Yet it sustains and underpins us.

This was the place, here, in this clearing. This catching of breath between the big trees that make the canopy. We caught our breath too, caught and tangled. Fierce as tigers. I would still know your hands over this distance of time and space, would recognize the slip and slide of your skin against mine. And I promised you ... promised you my silence.

Those silent unholy nights. I crave them ... still. Even though this rain washes my skin, it cannot take the taste of you from my mouth.

You never knew your daughter. I pity you for that. She was like you - dark and tall. I always planned to walk these paths with her. To watch her dance and run. She was our finest work, her limbs were strong and straight. Sometimes I called her my arrow, she flew straight from my heart. I wanted to tell her my tales of bush and birds and you. I wanted to muddle and merge strands of true history and bush magic. To tell her you were an owl who visited only in darkness. But the ruru brings warnings of death. I wonder if it was my doing, whether I netted the bird with story wishes?

I have so many questions ... did you know what would happen? Know I would be sent away - hidden? Did you know people would look at me and see shame. I didn't feel shame even when my belly began to swell. I never told - our secrets were safe.

That night the ruru came to my room and roosted in the dark corner above the bookcase. I remember it clearly. Such a small bird with sooty feathers, its eyes like saucers. Night-hunting eyes made to trap the light. Its cry was soft - ruru, ruru. I saw no signs of the panic of a wild creature caught in a place beyond its understanding. It was meant to be there. It was meant for me.

I went to our daughter`s bed. She was perfection. Have you ever felt a cold so deep that it passes all understanding? Have you tried to breathe breath into the lifeless and re-ignite the spark? Have you felt that ice on your lips and known that life has flown away?

Then came the dry times. Years spent wiping grime from other peoples` windows. Working in silence. Invisible as the spiders spinning webs in the corners of the sitting room. There was dust. I remember dust. No moisture anywhere, not even tears, just the dried bones of the long dead. History stripped of meaning.

I hear her. She runs ahead of me on the path. I know the slap of those bare feet - following the ruru - following you. And I am trailing behind. Forcing legs, no longer made for leaping, to climb. Clinging to rimu and kahikatea with hands as rough as bark.

The load lightens. My bones no longer rattle in this skin bag. I navigate the track balancing on the balls of my feet like an acrobat. Black mud squelches between bare toes. Everything here is sodden, the leaves, the ground, my skin. There is a smell between saltiness and rotting, dying and death, the blood of birthing - Ruru. We leap, spread our lace-dark wings and fly.