Witi Ihimaera - Sky Dancer

“What has she taken?”

Skylark showed him the almost empty bottle of pills. “A cocktail of speed and alcohol.”

“How many? What dosage?”

“I don’t know. She also took some before the show. There could have been other stuff she added to the mix. I wasn’t there to see.”

Dr Goodwin made some additional examinations, and noted the track marks on Cora’s arms. “She’s an habitual drug user? This has happened before, hasn’t it.”

“Yes. My mother was in rehab.”

Dr Goodwin swung into action. He sent the bottle of pills to the lab for analysis. He telephoned the rehab centre where Cora had been treated and asked them to send her medical details. Skylark started to panic when she saw a television news crew arriving. She put on her best little-daughter face.

“Please, doctor, if the news gets out why Mum’s really here, they’ll crucify her,” she said. “The judge was lenient the last time. He might not be so kind this time around. Won’t you help us?”

Dr Goodwin took stock of the situation. “Okay,” he nodded. “Let people believe what they’ve already read, shall we? If they think your mother’s condition is due to a concussion arising from a fall, so be it.”

By midday Tuapa was a-buzz with talk about Cora Edwards and her sensational accident in Bye Bye Birdie. Those who hadn’t been at the performance were furious to have missed out on a great event in Tuapa; goodness knows, the last time that anything of note had occurred was when Jackie Fraser had, at fifty-three, given birth to triplets. Those who, like Flora Cornish, had been there told and retold Cora’s fall as if it was a replay of a rugby game: the staircase (“It shouldn’t have been so high”), the fall (“It’s a lesson never to wear high-heeled boots”) and the shock as she fell (“We all screamed”). At least Flora’s version wasn’t as dramatic as Ronnie’s. Having initially thought badly of Cora for ruining his production, his unexpected elevation to “well-known director” status gave him a more significant spotlight.

“You know what it’s like in the theatre,” Ronnie said in a hastily arranged on-the-spot television interview. “Opening nights especially can be very stressful for everybody, cast and crew. But on this occasion there was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Something about interpolating Madonna into a musical about the 1960s. One should never tamper with the theatre. It only brings misfortune. When I saw Cora at the top of the staircase I just knew she would fall and when she did, right before my eyes, I knew …” The television cameras caught moisture in his eyes and trembling lips. “I knew it was all my fault. Because of me, my leading actress is in hospital, the dearest woman I ever knew …”

Up in Manu Valley, Hoki watched the interview with relief. The publicity diverted attention not only from Cora’s overdose.

“If they only knew,” Hoki said.

A bigger and more dramatic event was taking place away from the gaze of Tuapa township, away from the news media, in the ripped sky above Manu Valley.

Boom.

At every loud report of the shotguns the seabirds scattered. Kawanatanga urged them back to the attack. He wheeled like a dark nightmare. Not until all the seabirds were through the ripped sky would he too penetrate it.

Boom, boom . Bella and Skylark had returned from Tuapa Hospital and taken over from Hoki. They were firing the shotguns where the seabirds were blackest.

“How’s our ammunition holding out, sister?” Hoki asked.

”We’re fine for today but we’ll have to get supplies for tomorrow.”

“Is this the only way to stop them getting through?” Skylark asked.

“No,” Hoki said. She pointed further down Manu Valley. “I called on my hawk earlier this morning to help us. He and his eyrie are doing their best. In the old days the hawk ruled the skies. But today, with the majority of the Great Forest gone, their numbers are small.”

“So, really, it’s just us,” Skylark said. She did not see the look which passed between Bella and Hoki:

We must pray that Skylark divines the pattern and the part she has to play in it.

The seagulls regrouped, diving and cackling and trying to swoop past their guard. Skylark sighted and pressed the trigger of her shotgun.

At that moment, Arnie arrived. He clutched his chest dramatically. “You got me, Skylark!” he groaned.

“What a pity,” Skylark sighed. “Just a flesh wound.”

“Be like that,” he said. He greeted Bella and Hoki, and looked up at the ripped sky. “Bloody hell —”

High above his head something shimmered like a bizarre silver cross. The cross had been created when Cora’s match fizzed vertically up the sky and then horizontally to form a short crossbar. If you hadn’t known what it was, or known where to look, you’d have thought it was just a strange trick of light. However, every breeze or puff of wind opened the corners of the cross like flaps of a tent. That’s when you saw the other side of the sky. Black. Awful. A hole big enough to drive a car through. Whenever that happened, seabirds screamed and plummeted into it, pulled through by some centrifugal force, winking out. One moment there. Next moment gone.

“I guess seeing is believing,” Arnie said.

He stepped forward for a closer look and a sense of sickness and vertigo overwhelmed him. He was staring into a dark abyss. Far down was a kaleidoscope of seabirds — those which had managed to get past Bella, Hoki and Skylark — plummeting, stabbing and wheeling back to the beginning of Time.

“Even as I was driving up here and saw the seabirds coming up the valley I didn’t want to believe it. I still don’t want to believe it,” he said.

“You know about all this?” Skylark asked.

“Ever since I was a kid and used to live with Auntie Bella and Auntie Hoki,” he answered, as if that explained everything. “I used to think it was a fairytale — until now.”

“I should pinch you so that you’ll know you’re not dreaming,” Skylark said. She had meant it to sound like a joke but it came out mean, and Arnie glowered at her. Trying to patch things up, Skylark added lightly: “Come to think of it, you could pinch me too and we’d both know we’re wide awake.”

But it was too late. “I would be so into that,” Arnie said. He turned from her and opened the small backpack he had brought with him. Inside was some cordial and sandwiches.

“Thank you, Nephew,” Bella said, tucking in, trying to calm Skylark and Arnie down by acting normal. “This is hot work. What brings you up here?”

“The hospital has been trying to get Skylark all morning. Obviously you three have been too busy up here to hear the phone. I volunteered to come and pick her up.”

“Has something happened to Mum?” Skylark asked, her eyes pricking with tears. “Can you take me back with you now?”

“I might think about it,” Arnie answered.

Bella put down her sandwich and glared at Arnie. “That’s enough, Nephew. Can’t you see how worried Skylark is?”

Hoki saw her chance. “I’ll take you,” she said to Skylark. “We can have a good talk on the way. Can you and Arnie hold the fort, Sister dear?”

Hoki began to make her way down the cliff face. Skylark followed her. All this stuff was getting so hard to take and, halfway down the cliff, her anxieties about Cora made her stop for breath. Would Mum recover? If so, how long would it be before Mum’s next relapse? Was Mum involved somehow in all these weird prophecies about the birds? “Oh Mum,” Skylark wailed, “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

When Skylark and Hoki were out of earshot, Bella pulled Arnie’s ears.