Ka Mua Ka Muri

by Sandra Arnold

IT WAS HARD to see on this road in the clinging dusk. She could barely make out the silhouettes of the old pit heaps towering above the rooftops in the distance. They had once been familiar landmarks in the district before the coal mines were closed and the heaps demolished and recycled into road construction. Though not before one uncle had died of silicosis and another when the mine shafts collapsed. She used to have a ritual when she was young, peering out the window from the upper deck of the bus on her way home from school. As soon as the bus reached the top of the hill and the pit heaps became visible, she closed her eyes and made a wish that she could grow wings and fly over their peaks, over the landlocked town with its soot-blackened buildings, over the forests and oceans to…