Read Online Huia Short Stories 10 by Tihema Baker - Free Book Online Page A

malt biscuits along with this letter that I am to give to you.’
    â€˜You’d better come in then,’ she said, turning and beginning to walk down a long passageway that obviously led to the back of the house. I followed, grateful for the coolness and wishing I had the courage to ask for a glass of water or even one of Mother’s biscuits.
    â€˜Sit there,’ she commanded, pointing to a kitchen chair. I sat. Not bothering to glance at the biscuits, she tore open the letter and began to read, every so often sucking in her bottom lip in a way that made her look as though she was biting into a sour lemon. She snorted once or twice and when she’d finished reading the letter, looked at me. No longer intimidating, she appeared sad, and for some reason that worried me. I stood up. ‘Is there any reply I should take back to my Mother, ma’am?’ I asked.
    Mrs Anderson shook her head. Then she said words that terrified me and made me wish I could sprout wings and fly back to the farm. ‘You poor child,’ she said. ‘Your parents have done you a great wrong. Go home quickly, run as fast as you can even though I know it’s a long way. I would take you myself, but I have no available transport this day. If you find you need me, then come back, and I will help as much as I can.’
    She turned me around so I was facing the front door and gave me a gentle push. Before I knew it, I was outside, and the hot sun was beating down on me. Beginning to run, I wished I hadn’t told Henry that I didn’t need a ride and told him lies.
    I’d always been a good runner and with my long legs and thin build could outdistance my brothers and sisters with little difficulty. I flew along the roads, ignoring the dust and gravel that had seemed so prevalent on the way in to town. I fell twice and skinned my knees, hands and elbows, but I kept going. Finally, gasping for breath and exhausted, I arrived on the doorstep of my home.
    The first thing I noticed was the silence, a rarity in our house with so many children. Opening the door, I went inside. Nothing remained that said ‘a family lives here’. No toys, books or chairs, not even the kitchen table. It was swept clean with no trace of the people whom I had known all my life.
    A chasm opened at my feet, and I fell into it.

From Here to There and Back Again
    Ann French
    I was never sure if I liked Maaka, even though I had known him most of my life. We were cousins, and when his father died in a car accident, my mother took to visiting the family and helping out in small ways on a regular basis.
    At the moment the car struck my uncle and killed him, my mother claimed a glass that shattered into a zillion pieces at that precise second in our bathroom was his spirit letting her know he had departed this life. Hopefully for a better one.
    Maaka had a younger brother, Pita, whom his mother much preferred. Not that she was a spiteful or vicious woman – she wasn’t. She just liked one of her children more than the other and didn’t bother to hide it.
    If there were two portions, Pita got the larger piece. If there were two roads to be travelled, she would send Maaka down the rutted, gravelly, weed-infested one while Pita skipped and hopped merrily across macadamised smooth pathways, arriving an hour earlier than his misguided and ill-prepared brother.
    Maaka was dyslexic, which didn’t help matters. He struggled at school with writing, spelling and reading. Nothing made sense to him. It was all strange symbols from another land. Bullied at school, he was considered stupid and backward, a view often confirmed by his mother. ‘Dumb as an ox,’ I once heard her say to my mother, who had the grace to wince at the ungracious description of her nephew.
    The priests where he went to school, the brothers, beat and hit him constantly on his hands, his knuckles, the back of his head and his buttocks for daring to be slow.