The power’s out for the third week. Margot’s boy,
Tama, coughs through the night with a fever that
won’t break, no matter how many paracetamol she
rations from the last bottle at the closed
pharmacy in Hokitika. The doctors in Greymouth
won’t come — the road’s washed out, the
helicopter grounded by wind, and the hospital’s
running on diesel they won’t spare for a Māori
kid with no iwi papers. She knows why. The
town’s still whispering about her husband’s
suicide last winter. They say he cursed the land.
They say he stole the kōkako’s nest.
She packs a satchel: tinned mutton, a tīvaevae
quilt, two bottles of kawakawa tea, and her
father’s pounamu pendant — the one he carved
from the river stone he swore was the heart of
the old forest. She doesn’t tell anyone she’s
leaving. The locals already think she’s gone mad.
The school principal called her “too quiet for
her own good.” The butcher’s wife muttered,
“Tall poppy syndrome, that’s what it is — she
thinks she’s above the rest.” She doesn’t argue.
She walks.
The bush behind the old dairy is thick with
pōhutukawa and tōtara, but the trees are dying.
Their bark peels in ghostly strips, like skin
left in the sun. The river’s gone yellow with
silt from the abandoned mining shafts. The
kōkako haven’t sung here since ’79. But Margot
knows the song. Her father taught it to her
before he vanished into the bush, saying, “When
the land forgets its voice, the children pay.”
On the second night, she finds the nest. High in
a rātā, wrapped in moss and feathers the colour
of storm clouds. Two eggs. The rules are clear:
touch them, and the land takes a life in return.
Take one, and the child lives. But the law says
you must leave the other — or the forest
swallows you whole.
She does not hesitate. She takes one.
The wind stops. The birds fall silent. The
ground beneath her feet trembles like a held
breath.
By dawn, Tama’s fever breaks. His breathing
steadies. She carries him back through the bush
on her back, the pendant warm against her chest.
The kōkako sings once — a single, clear note —
as she passes the old chapel where her husband
hanged himself. No one sees her. No one speaks.
But the school principal finds a single blue
feather on the doorstep the next morning.
The town still calls her strange. The doctor
says it was antibiotics. The dairy owner says
she’s lucky. Margot doesn’t correct them.
She plants the second egg in the hollow of the
pōhutukawa by the road. Water it with her tears.
Waits.
The next spring, the tree blooms with flowers
the colour of sky after rain.
And in the quiet hours, when the mist rolls in
from the Tasman, you can hear it — a song
halfremembered, halfreturned. Not for the
settlers. Not for the church. For the child who
lived. And the mother who paid.
