Page 81 of Just Say (Hell) No
“Ah,” Mary said. “Got some sadness to me, have I? Is that what you didn’t want to say?”
“Maybe. I just know what I see, and maybe some… feelings about that. I’ve got a bit better at knowing what the color means, over time.” She didn’t mention Marko’s grandfather. She’d remembered that Aborigines didn’t speak of people who were dead. But his grandmother had told Marko the story about her mum running behind the truck, and surely her mum was gone. Although how would she know?
Nyree tried to imagine losing all trace of your family and tribe. Your whanau and your iwi. Your whakapapa—your genealogy—traced back over hundreds of years. The place you’d come from, the beach on which your ancestors’ waka had landed after that first long-ago voyage from Hawaiiki, the homeland. Your mountain and your river. She tried to imagine all that, and couldn’t. It was part of her, like it was part of every Maori, the connection to your place and your people. Losing it would feel like some vital organ being ripped from your body.
Like deep purple. For vision, seeing beyond what your eyes could take in, and for sadness. And for the strength to bear it.
“Ah, well,” Mary said. “Life is sad, eh. But good, too.” She put a hand on Marko’s cheek again. “Go show your girl the stars. Doesn’t matter whether you can see them up there or not, they’re still the same stars. Better to see them, though. It’s good that she sees the colors. She knows her Dreaming, I think.”
Marko kissed her cheek and said, “I’m out with the sheep with Dad early tomorrow. Sleep well. It’s good to be home.”
No place more different than Northland than this, he’d thought before they’d come. Nyree hadn’t been the only one who’d been nervous. Now, though, lying on the hillside above the house, a thick blanket under them and a sleeping bag over them, looking up at that other world, thousands of tiny lights forming patterns and splashes across the black background, with the shining pathway that was the Milky Way, the blurry white of the magellanic clouds, and the silent presence of the mountains, threat and livelihood both, surrounding them—he realized he’d been exactly wrong.
“Different” was the city. “Different” was Auckland and Dunedin, buildings and light and people that crowded out the stars. The mountains, and the sea? Two parts of the same thing. The living world.
Nyree sighed beside him and said, “Beautiful. Like a dot painting itself. This is a special place.”
“Mm.” He had his arm around her, and her head was on his chest, the two of them an island of warmth in the cold night. And when they were too cold even under their sleeping bag, he took her back into the house, all the way to the little room in the attic, with the sloping ceilings he’d banged his head on so many times growing up, and made love to her.
Slow and sweet and tender, the opposite of the wild night before. Too many feelings bouncing around inside him, and only one way he knew of to let those feelings out.
Nyree’s face in the starlight. Nyree leaning down for a kiss, her hands in his hair, stroking over his shoulders like she couldn’t get enough of him. Nyree rocking her slow way to fulfillment with his hands and mouth helping her along, touching everything he could reach, trying to let her know how glad he was that she’d come with him, and how warm it had felt tonight to have her leaning against his knee while the music and his family and her presence filled the empty spaces inside him. He didn’t know how to say it, so he told her with his body instead, knowing it was better than any halting words he could have come up with.
He let her wrap him up, too, in her hair, her kiss, her own stroking hands, her soft skin, and, always, her changeling’s eyes that looked all the way inside to the color of him. He knew she saw him, and he didn’t mind, because he also knew that the man he was worked for her.
Maybe he wanted to say it after all, though, especially when she’d reached that first gasping orgasm, her head thrown back and his hands covering her full breasts. Looking like the best thing he had, and feeling like it, too. And after that, when he’d moved over her, had his fingers laced through hers and her arms stretched over her head, when her mouth was open and her eyes were closed, and everything she felt was there for him to see…
Marko’s a ‘Show, don’t tell’ type of fella.
Probably true.
Nyree woke early the next morning, but only because Marko had woken earlier, before the sun had risen. She dressed in the postdawn chill, then headed downstairs in search of tea and warmth.
She found both in the kitchen. Nothing here of the high-end, bare-surface flash of Marko’s. White cabinets, some with glass fronts showing off colorful mismatched plates and bowls. Burnished bronze door pulls, ancient dark-wood flooring, and a few wooden stools set at a center island. Over the sink, a vase under the big window held dried flowers that she’d bet had come from the garden, and in the corner, beside a huge round oak table and chairs, a wood stove sent out warmth.
And the stooped figure of Mary frying bacon on the stove set into that island, whisking eggs in a bowl and adding milk. She looked up when Nyree came in, her face seaming with her smile.
“What can I do to help?” Nyree asked.
“Get yourself a cup of tea,” Mary said. “You can do the flowers, maybe.” She nodded to a basket of dried lavender and roses on the table, their stems tied together, and a collection of larger and smaller bags beside them, already filled with the fragrant mixture. “Put the old stuff in the bin, and do the new ones. Lavender in the little ones, and both in the big bags. Livvie does that for the guests. The little ones in the drawers, the big one in the closet. Makes it smell nice, eh. Nicer than sheep.”
Nyree said, “Surely you’d rather do that and let me cook.”
“No,” Mary said. “Cooking’s what I do. It’s good to have something to do. Good to move, too. I’m not going to get any straighter by sitting down.”
Nyree got her tea, but moved basket and bags to the counter to work. “Marko has this,” she said, “this kind of counter. Only whiter. I don’t like them normally, don’t want to look at the cupboards while I eat, but I just realized they’re nice for visiting while you cook.”
Mary nodded, but didn’t answer. The silence stretched out, but was comfortable all the same, and Nyree busied herself with the sachets and let herself relax. After a few minutes, when Mary was slicing bread, the old lady said, “Different for you here, I think. The mountains.”
“Yes,” Nyree said. “But you were right about the stars, that they’re the same wherever you are. I’ve missed the stars in Northland. I didn’t know there was a place where you could see them this much better.”
“Same as me,” Mary said. “When I came here. The stars were the only thing that was the same.”
“Where were you,” Nyree asked cautiously, “in Australia?”
Mary’s lips didn’t tighten, but she may have gone a shade more still. “Madura Plains, that was the station. Edge of the Nullarbor, that was. The desert. Oh, it was brown, brown, brown. Dead. A bad place, that Nullarbor.”
Nyree nearly shivered. Her worst nightmare, living her life without color. “It isn’t green here, either, though.”
