Katherine Mansfield Sparkling Prose 2024 – Long List
I come home tired. The last hard push up the hill. The key sticks in the lock, as usual. One day I’m going to turn the key too hard, and the key will snap and the end of it will be stuck in the lock forever. Two useless halves of a whole key.
I moved into this house a year ago when my life turned unexpected. It’s a family home, deep in among the trees, so far up the hill it is practically in the sky. If the key broke, if I couldn’t get in, I feel like the whole house would float away without me. My nanna said it was just here for those who need it.
The key turns and I push open the front door and walk into my house.
My house is made of wood, old wood. Wooden floorboards, wooden walls, wooden ceilings. Wooden dining table. Rimu and rātā and pine. I don’t know why there is so much wood, but I like it. The trees speak to me of their lives gone by.
I drop my bag near the leg of the dining table and shuck off my shoes. I skate along the floors in my socks without lifting my feet. Inside the house is dark and shadowy. The wood cricks and creaks, alive and breathing. I am in the belly of a great being; it smells of old wood.
I feel very light, now that I’m home at last. I skate and float and let my arms move around me, I spin and slide and pirouette. I leap. For a warm moment, I am just another breath of air in the belly of home.
I end up cross-legged on the floor, in one of the rooms. I am tired; it was a long day. But I don’t know why I should feel so very tired; everyone has long days. Everyone else seems to find it much easier than this. I stare at the grains of wood in the wall in front of me and follow the pattern for a long, long time, until I’m lying on my back staring at the ceiling, at careful carvings in dark wood.
My mother sits down beside me. She’s getting old; it’s difficult for her to get down to the floor. She puts her hand on my forehead. ‘You have a temperature, e kare, what have you been doing?’
‘I’m tired, Mama.’
‘Of course you’re tired, you’ve been far too busy.’
‘Not really.’
‘Hmn.’ She sits there and strokes my forehead and I stare up at the patterns in the wood.
‘Ooh, I’m old, I need to move off this hard floor.’
‘You’re not old, Mama.’
She has to turn onto her hands and knees; she clings to the doorframe to pull herself to her feet. I watch her upside-down, over my eyebrows.
‘Why don’t you get some furniture, e kare? Some cushions at least?’
‘Mm, I don’t want to.’ The only furniture I have is the dining table, because it came with the house. I like the empty rooms; there’s so much space for the house to breathe.
My mother goes into the kitchen and turns on national radio. I don’t really hear what they say, but the voices echo around the wooden house, through time; my entire life in those pips for the hour.
I hear her clattering pots and pans, running the tap, putting the jug on. Thanks, Mama. Always cooking food for me while I stare at the ceiling.
I decide to get up. Getting up the normal way seems too boring to bother, so I place my hands behind my shoulders and push myself up until I’m a bridge, balancing on my head and my feet, staring at the door upside down. The world upside down is magnificent. Then my socks slip out, so I roll over and walk the conventional way: sliding. I never lift my feet in this house unless I’m dancing. The last light of the day has gone, but the house is still warm, holding memories of sunlight.
There’s a block of yellow light shining out of the kitchen door, and it smells of cumin. I stand in the dark looking at the rays of light and the cumin particles dancing. The words on the radio stack up in weird patterns I don’t understand; the rhythms gallop out around the room.
My father sits at the dining table, doing the sudoku in the light from the kitchen. He’s glaring at it through his glasses on the end of his nose, his long legs stretched out under the table. He’s not thinking about the sudoku. From the frown lines on his forehead, I think he’s probably thinking about me.
I sit down beside him and light the candle on the table.
‘Ah,’ he says, leaning back a bit. ’Much better.’ He scrawls a number into one of the boxes.
I don’t like sudokus. Why would you fill all the empty squares with numbers? The end result is displeasing to me. Leave it blank, please.
The candle is beeswax. I watch the wax liquify, turn to flame, flame to air. I breath in the scent of destruction.
I hear a skittering and look up to see a korimako on the curtain rail. The korimako is on the rail and it is looking at me. It hops along two steps, and then it flies down and lands on my arm. It clings to my sleeve with sharp, delicate claws. Balancing with its beak, it pulls itself up my woollen jersey and past my hair, into the gap between my shoulder and my neck. It is very soft – soft feathers against my neck, a little cold beak. Its heartbeat goes so fast, so fast.
‘Hello,’ I say, softly. ‘How did you get in?’
My mother comes out of the kitchen with kawakawa tea. The smell of it is so decisive. She jolts to a halt for a moment when she sees the korimako on my shoulder. A flicker of sadness and then frustration chase across her face. But just for a moment, then her face smooths over, and she looks very calm.
‘This will help you,’ she tells me. ‘Drink it up.’ I don’t like kawakawa tea, but, for her sake, I will drink it up.
‘Where’s my tea?’ my dad jibes softly.
‘Make your own, I’m cooking your dinner,’ she says, prodding his shoulder. There’s a faint smell of burning coming from the kitchen. I see her eyes resting on the korimako on my shoulder. Then she sniffs, and hurries back into the kitchen full of light and sound.
There is one room in my house that is very full. It is stacked full of things. I can’t open the door all the way. So many precious things that I can’t throw away.
Tonight, that room calls to me.
I slide down the hallway with the korimako still nestled against my neck. The door of this room is kept closed. The handle is a bit dodgy. I lean on the door, shoulder it open against all the weight of the things behind it.
He is sitting in the middle of the floor, on a beanbag, reading a book, with a lamp.
‘Hello,’ I say. ‘How was your day?’
He smiles up at me. ‘So so.’ I know his face better than I know anything else.
‘Did you do anything exciting?’
‘You always ask me that.’
‘Alright, where are you now?’
‘Somewhere very cold. There’s a lot of ice – blue, white, clear ice. I can feel it all moving.’
I reach out to catch his hand, and it is very cold. I think of the glacier where his body disappeared. ‘Why do you keep coming back to me?’
He nods at the korimako, nestled against my collar bone. ‘You have my heart.’
My fingers lift to the soft feathers. I can feel the tiny heart beating so very fast.
‘Why don’t you join me?’ he whispers. So quietly it could be the creaking of the wooden walls.
My breath catches in my throat; I feel heat behind my eyes. ‘Mm, I don’t want to,’ I mumble. It has taken me a long time to say those words.
‘Please. I miss you so much.’ His eyes are blue as ice; they wind into my soul like ice screws. I don’t know why I opened the door. Why must I always come back to this room? The korimako shifts against my neck, its claws scratching, its beak tangled in my hair.
‘I have to go.’ I tell him, and I pull my hand from his grip. I heave open the heavy door, let it slam shut behind me, and lean my back against it.
Candle. Wood patterns. Tree leaves. Dad bent over the sudoku. Dust motes in rays of light.
National radio. Something bubbling on the stove. Wood creaking. Mama humming.
Wood grains. Mama’s hands. Warm air remembering sunlight.
Beeswax burned into air. Cumin vapourised.
Kawakawa tea.
That is a breath in.
When I release it, I am empty, and there is no korimako nestled against my skin. I slide my way back to the dining table, where there is just the candle and the dark, and my parents who want only to look after me.
National radio is still playing in the kitchen, sounding the pips for the hour. Nanna’s old wooden house creaks as it gently rests deeper in among the trees. Here for me while I need it.
Tōrea Scott-Fyfe (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Ngāi Pākehā) spends her summers working in Te Rua-o-te-Moko | Fiordland and her winters writing in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Her work has recently been published in Headland, the New Zealand Alpine Journal and Huia Short Stories 15. She co-edited Turbine | Kapohau in 2023. Last year she gained a Masters of Arts in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. She is working on a novel that intertwines pūrākau with her own experiences of wilderness, whenua and belonging.