There was the time my brother climbed up the kauri tree and refused to come down. He was eighteen years old, and naked. The tree was at least a thousand years old, and so tall we could barely see him nestling in its lower branches. Night fell, and Tane didn’t budge.
My father said, son, get down here or I’ll whip your arse. I said, Tane, aren’t you getting cold? Tane said, oh, but I can feel the moon on my skin. Eventually, it began to rain, so we went home.
When I came back the next morning, Tane was gone. But when I wrapped my arms around the kauri’s trunk, his heart beat in my ear, and his breath stirred the leaves above. Remember me, he whispered, his moon-lips cool on my forehead. I hear him still, when storms tumble over the Tasman.
Eileen Merriman’s awards include second in the 2015 Bath Flash Fiction Award, commended in the 2015 Bath Short Story Competition, and third in the 2014 & 2015 Sunday Star Times Short Story competitions. Her work has previously appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Smokelong Quarterly, The Island Review, Literary Orphans, the 2015 Bath Short Story Anthology, the Sunday Star Times, F(r)iction, Takahe, Headland and Flash Frontier. Her young adult novel, Pieces of You, will be published in 2017 (Penguin Random House). More information can be found at her website: eileenmerriman.co.nz
–Art by Ashley Holloway
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