Telegram Home by Kirsten McKenzie

Author:Kirsten McKenzie [McKenzie, Kirsten]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780995117099
Publisher: Squabbling Sparrows Press
Published: 2019-07-27T22:00:00+00:00

The Journey

Aroha’s innate sense of direction had no trouble sending her south, but she hadn’t factored in the seventeen hundred men the Governor of New Zealand had building a road to link Auckland to the mighty Waikato River. At almost every point on her journey, gangs were sawing through the magnificent native forests, determinedly clearing scoria whilst itching to go to war. Rifle shots rang out through the countryside, causing Aroha to stumble, as if someone had shot her. Her mind fumbled with geography. She’d been living in Auckland far too long, and the landscape she’d travelled through years ago, bore no resemblance to the scarred world she walked through now.

Her soul ached for her husband Wiremu, killed at the behest of the Jowl brothers, but life itself was fleeting, and Wiremu’s spirit would live on through his daughter. Now it was the flayed flesh of her home tearing at her heart. Tree trunks lay rotting on the edges of the desecration, the limbs of mother earth torn from her soil, left to decay. And all around her were the sounds of the oppressors — the English soldiers.

Aroha travelled on old traditional paths, skirting the more obvious signs of progress by the English, but the babe was fussing and she needed to find somewhere more settled to rest and take stock of her situation. Tiredness threatened to overwhelm her, and that’s when mistakes happened, potentially leading to her death, or worse. Aroha shifted the woven basket, relieving the chaffing on her shoulders. The baby whimpered and Aroha shushed it using her finger as a makeshift pacifier. The baby sucked greedily on her slender finger. It would only distract her daughter for a moment, she had to feed the poor thing, but with the two of them huddled deep in the undergrowth, hiding from the men carousing only steps away from them on the new road slashed from the land of her ancestors, they had to hide. She whispered in her daughter’s tiny ears, smothering her face with maternal kisses. The sound of the soldier’s revelry grew fainter. She couldn’t be sure what they’d do with her if they found her in their alcohol fuelled state and she didn’t want to know. To them she was nothing — a pest in their house and they wouldn’t think twice of disposing of her the way you would a rat, stomping it underfoot and discarding it for the dogs to devour.

Since the death of her beloved husband Wiremu at the hands of the Jowls, Aroha Kepa travelled under cover of darkness, spending her days cloistered in dank grottos of storm-tossed trees and knotty undergrowth. The land provided both food and shelter if you knew where to look. There’d been times she hadn’t walked alone, joining other Māori making the pilgrimage south for whatever reason. No one shared their stories, they merely travelled in the same direction. History wouldn’t remember well those who fought for the other side. It was better to keep to oneself, taking sides a dangerous position.

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