Kaitangata Twitch

by Margaret Mahy

  ‘Support at last!’ responded Mr Gallagher, sending an approving glance in Kate’s direction. ‘Right! We need to organise. Some voters might be blind sheep, but there are plenty of us who can work out what’s just around the corner.’

  Meredith thought of saying something, and then decided she might as well save her breath. Kate and Mr Gallagher had a way of coming out with whatever it was the other one was about to say, which closed them in a world of two. Perhaps it was because Kate had been an only child for five years, or perhaps, thought Meredith, you could inherit views of the world just as you could inherit golden hair.

  ‘Music practice, Meredith,’ her mother reminded firmly, meaning it. Meredith put the binoculars on the window ledge. She had heard enough and seen enough to go on with. And, like her dreams, her music had surprises in it . . . surprises that even her family did not know about. Indeed, it sometimes seemed to Meredith that her dreaming and her music melted into each other, one making the other stronger.

  3

  In the beginning Meredith and Rufus had begun taking dancing lessons together, but Rufus had quickly turned out to be much the better dancer. Meredith had gone on to take piano lessons (‘Right hand, left hand . . . don’t thump the keys, Meredith’). Sitting at the piano, she felt she was getting closer to finding just what it was she really wanted to do. But there ahead of her, was Kate – always Kate – older and officially musical, standing in the doorway and shouting, ‘Haven’t you finished yet? I’ve got to practise too, you know.’

  At school Meredith was part of a recorder group (‘Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!’ yelled Rufus, thumping at her bedroom door as he went by) and then when she was about ten her father came home, looking almost shy, yet secretly pleased with himself. He had bought her a flute.

  ‘You’re really good at the recorder,’ he told her. ‘I think you should try something with a bit more . . . more substance.’ The flute worked well for Meredith. Now she and Kate could be partners rather than rivals for piano time. They played duets together while their parents sat side by side, their arms around one another, listening proudly. (‘Thump! Thump! Squeak! Squeak!’ yelled Rufus, leaping and spinning across the room behind them.)

  A year ago Meredith had been walking on her own along the beach below the Zigzag, kicking stones and making up half-songs under her breath, when she heard faint, lonely music coming out of nowhere. Round and mellow, it was the sort of sound a full moon might make if it decided to sing. And there was the moon, lifting up over the hill like a magical pumpkin, flicking the ripples of the sea with fingers of light. The sound went on in a wandering way, feeling almost like part of the evening, part of the air.

  Meredith stepped around a projecting rock, a remnant outflow from the old volcano that millions of years ago had made the crater that was now their harbour. There, sitting on a log on the sand, was her great-uncle from down the road, Lee Kaa, playing on a saxophone. It curved down in front of him like an upside-down question mark.

  Lee saw her almost at once, and stopped playing. He waved a hand at her.

  ‘Hello, cuzzy!’ he said. All relations were ‘cuzzy’ to Lee. It saved him having to remember names.

  ‘Keep on playing,’ Meredith said. Lee Kaa grinned and played again, inventing a mellow sound that rose and fell, wound in on itself and then straightened out again as he went along. Meredith listened.

  ‘Have a turn,’ Lee said at last.

  ‘Great!’ said Meredith, eager to make that mysterious sound herself. But the saxophone felt awkward and heavy as she tried to find the best way of holding it, and the sound she made broke the spell. She spluttered . . . hooted . . . then she and Lee both laughed.

  ‘Not too bad for a first time, mind you,’ Lee said. ‘You’ve even got a feel for the fingering.’

  ‘I play the flute,’ said Meredith. ‘It’s different, but it helps. There’s a lot more stretch to the saxophone, though.’

  ‘Keep on trying and you’ll soon get the hang of it,’ said Lee Kaa. ‘Hey! No reason why you shouldn’t have something from our side, is there?’

  He lifted his head and listened.

  ‘Me-e-eredith!’ someone was calling from far down the beach behind them. ‘Me-e-eredith!’

  ‘Someone’s mum! She’s looking for you,’ Lee said unnecessarily, and walked with her back down the beach to meet her mother and Rufus taking their own kind of evening walk, with Mrs Gallagher strolling along looking at the moon, and Rufus leaping and cartwheeling like a spirit of salt and seaweed.

  Every now and then, on the long evenings during that particular summer, when she wasn’t hanging out with her best friends Sharon Ponty and Kirsten Appleton, Meredith would wander down to the beach, with sharp slopes rising on her right, and sea and the dark shape of Kaitangata on her left. Every now and then, Lee Kaa would be there, sitting on his log and playing the saxophone in the last sunlight or under an early moon. He always let Meredith have a turn and, slowly, she found she really was getting the hang of it.

  ‘Better and better,’ said Lee. ‘Long way to go, but better.’

  Back at home Meredith said, ‘Mum, I want to play the saxophone.’ Her mother gave her a sudden sideways look, sharp, amused and knowing.

  ‘You’ve been listening in on old Lee Kaa,’ she said immediately. ‘Great, isn’t he?’

  Her father ran his fingers through his red hair, making his curls stand on end.

  ‘But what about the flute!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re doing so well. You and Kate sound wonderful together.’

  Meredith did not argue. Deep down she liked the idea that she was doing something . . . not outside family life, exactly, but somehow off to one side of it. If she took official lessons she would probably have to follow the notes written in lines on a page of music. She would have to put up with Rufus banging on her door and hooting. There was a lot to be said for playing every now and then in the evening with Lee Kaa as her teacher and her only listener . . . unless you counted Kaitangata, that island lying like a secret, strange tear on the moonlit cheek of the harbour.

  4

  ‘Well, I reckon the old man’s going round the twist,’ said Rufus, talking tough.

  Meredith looked over her shoulder at the door to the sitting room, then made a hissing sound as she slotted a blue dish into the draining rack.

  ‘That’s steam coming out of his ears,’ she explained.

  ‘I mean it’d be great having McDonald’s on this side of the hill,’ Rufus went on, drying a spoon with far more care than he needed to because he wasn’t really thinking about it. ‘Mum’s pretty good when it comes to gardening and donkeys, but she’s not great at cooking – she burns a lot because she’s always running outside to water something . . . so if we could just shoot along and get a few Big Macs . . .’

  ‘Even if there is a subdivision,’ said Meredith, ‘it’ll be ages before they build a McDonald’s here. You’ll have left school by then.’

  Rufus looked grumpy at the prospect of having to wait so many years for junk food. He searched around for something else to complain about.

  ‘And why don’t we get a dishwasher?’ he went on. ‘A lot of really good people have them. Even forest-and-bird people who recycle stuff, and grow herbs, and . . . and eat wholemeal bread.’

  ‘You know why we don’t have one,’ said Meredith. ‘Mum and Dad have got us to wash up for them.’

  ‘They’d get one if they had to wash up themselves,’ said Rufus. ‘I’ve had more practice at washing and drying than anything else in my life.’

  ‘You’re not just drying that spoon,’ Meredith said severely. ‘You’re polishing it.’

  ‘I mean, I like living here,’ Rufus went on, dropping the spoon hastily into the spoon drawer, ‘but it takes ages to get anywhere. It wouldn’t hurt if the city was just a bit closer . . .’

  Kate, coming into the kitchen, overheard him.

  ‘Don’t you dare to wish for anything like that,’ she said fiercely. ‘The bay’s just great the
way it is.’

  ‘But you go to college,’ said Rufus. ‘You get into town five times a week. Kids like Allan and me have to hang around here, day after day, day after day . . . boring, except for when Mum takes me to dancing lessons and the supermarket. Same old people, same old blah-blah-blah. There’s nothing to do.’

  ‘We can paddle out to Kaitangata,’ said Meredith. ‘We’ve got canoes.’

  ‘Oh, big deal!’ Rufus cried. ‘Canoes! What if I want to go somewhere trendy – to video parlours or to one of those skateboard places?’

  Kate groaned.

  ‘A video parlour! What a loser!’

  ‘You know what? You’re turning into a grown-up,’ Rufus pulled a face, mimed a woman’s curves with his hands, then minced around the room, walking on tiptoe as if he were wearing high heels. ‘Dear oh dear! Fun is so bad for kids,’ he said in a high-pitched voice. Then he flopped back into being himself again. ‘Nothing ever happens here,’ he said, mournfully. ‘Boring!’

  ‘You’re the boring one,’ said Kate, sliding out of the kitchen quickly. They all had homework, but Kate’s was so serious that she was let off dishwashing duties.

  ‘Anyway,’ Rufus went on, ‘when we’re grown up, I’ll hang out in the city, dancing and going to cafés and video parlours, and you can paddle around in your canoe, dream, dream, dream.’ His expression changed. ‘Hey – have you had any good dreams lately?’ he asked.

  Rufus loved to hear about Meredith’s dreams. She had stranger dreams than anyone else in the family, and she remembered them in great detail, and could tell them like stories after she was awake. Through inventing and dreaming, asking and answering, she and Rufus had once made up a whole dishwashing serial – a true soap opera – that went on night after night.

  Now Meredith scoured the bottom of a frying pan, plunging her fingers deep into the tangled, metallic threads of the new pot-scrub.

  ‘The enchantress has a new enemy,’ she said, in her storytelling voice. ‘His name is Sirfustian Marswell, and he uses the heads of gnomes to scrub out his pots.’ She swung her hand, the pot-scrub like a tiny head covered in wiry golden curls right in front her brother’s face. Rufus yelped and stepped back. As she acted out this little horror moment, Meredith felt her face turning tight and chilly, as if it had truly become the face of a merciless enchantress.

  ‘Did you really dream that, or are you just making it up?’ Rufus asked.

  Meredith let the enchantress expression fade away, and went back to work on the frying pan, inventing aloud as she did so.

  ‘The enchantress is more powerful than she used to be. These days she has a voice like a saxophone. And she has the power to summon. She calls, and you have to come.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Rufus.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ said Meredith, making her voice deep, mysterious and a little threatening, ‘because the enchantress wears a summoning ring.’

  She held up her hand, and now something gleamed on her middle finger. Rufus’s mouth dropped open slightly. Then he shut it firmly again.

  ‘One ring to bind them all,’ he said, for over the winter the family had read The Lord of the Rings aloud, and Rufus felt he knew all about rings of power.

  Meredith laughed.

  ‘One ring to scrub them all,’ she said, for the ring she was showing him was a single, golden, curling wire that had detached itself from the pot-scrub and cunningly twisted itself around her finger. ‘The enchantress has power over dirty dishes. She never, ever has to wash up, because she has the power of call and command. You know how people – the bossy ones out there’ (she pointed in the direction of the sitting room) ‘say “Meredith, will you come . . .”’ (Meredith made her voice spooky and remote) ‘“. . . will you co-o-ome and clear these dishes off the table!” or “Just stop arguing and do those dishes, Rufus!” Well, the power of call and command is in this ring. Whoever you call has to do the dishes for you. Even Kate, if I called her. Kate! Kate! Ka-a-te!’ she wailed three times.

  ‘It’s not much of a power,’ said Rufus. ‘Not like striking enemies dead, or being able to project yourself through space.’

  The kitchen phone rang shrilly. Kate came rushing into the room.

  ‘It’ll be for me,’ she said.

  ‘Nick Chambers,’ cried Rufus mockingly, dancing out of reach.

  ‘Go on! Get lost!’ yelled Kate.

  ‘We’ve still got to wipe down,’ Rufus pointed out virtuously.

  ‘Get lost!’ Kate repeated, holding her hand across the mouthpiece of the receiver. ‘I’ll wipe down. OK? Out! Or I’ll wipe you!’

  ‘Is Nick a proper boyfriend?’ Rufus asked Meredith as they went through into the sitting room. ‘Or is she just practising?’

  Meredith shrugged. But Rufus suddenly turned on her, flinging out arms like sudden wings.

  ‘Hey! It worked!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘What worked?’

  ‘Your ring! You held it up, and called Kate, and she came rushing in to wipe down. She’d never do that unless she was under a spell. Use it first thing tomorrow and she’ll do all the breakfast dishes!’

  ‘Wow!’ said Meredith, looking at her finger. ‘I’ll save this ring for ever.’

  ‘I’ll get one too,’ said Rufus.

  ‘You can’t just take any old pot-scrub wire and make a magic ring out of it,’ objected Meredith. ‘The wire has to choose you. And it chose me because I can dream power into it. I’m the family dreamer. You’re just the family dancer.’

  ‘Dream!’ she said silently to herself. ‘Call! Command! Be the enchantress!’ And, drawing herself up, she felt her body fill with a power that came so quickly and easily it astonished her. But perhaps, thought Meredith, the power was not really hers.

  Flick! There it was again. That sound that was not only a sound but a heartbeat too. And, as that Flick! twitched in her head once more, it was as if a finger (she had a picture of a child’s finger for some reason) had crooked and beckoned, and something deep in her brain had trembled in reply. But then she told herself to forget about the Flick! and forget the ring, too, because, after all, being the enchantress with the ring of golden wire – an enchantress who could play the saxophone – was just one of those games that make washing up more interesting. There was nothing real about that enchantress, nothing at all.

  ‘Homework!’ her mother was calling.

  ‘It’s Friday,’ cried Rufus. ‘No school tomorrow.’

  ‘Get it over and done with and then you’ll have the weekend to yourselves,’ said Mrs Gallagher. ‘I hate that mad scramble on Sunday night.’

  ‘Dishes and then homework,’ wailed Rufus. ‘Slavery!’

  ‘It would only be slavery if you’d had to cook your own dinner,’ his mother said.

  So it was homework, followed by family reading, then bed, and at last a drifting into sleep.

  5

  Opening her eyes sharply next morning, Meredith saw Saturday taking over the world. A faint golden blush crept across her ceiling, while shadows of leaves suddenly worked their way out of the wall beside her to dance a few inches from her nose.

  Sitting up, she looked at her hands then bent her knees, patting them through the blanket. All of me here! she thought. And it’s Saturday.

  The night before, Meredith had decided to start her Saturday by paddling out to Kaitangata, climbing up to the very top of that punching fist, and standing on the clenched fingers of stone. She needed to remind herself (and the island too) that it was only an island, and that it did not hold her prisoner in the sand. After all, Kaitangata was her favourite lonely place in the entire world, and she wasn’t going to let a nightmare ruin it for her.

  Rolling over sideways and grabbing her jeans from the wobbly table beside her bed, she dressed quickly while those leaf-shadows trembled on the walls around her. Hearing her footsteps, the dogs whined and snuffled from behind the laundry door but she ignored them sternly, not wanting any company, not even the company of dogs, that particular morning.r />
  Six o’clock . . . and outside, there was a faint movement in the air, a movement too small to be called a wind just yet. Out beyond the line of green fur marking the edge of the lawn (otherwise known as the End of the World), the tide was full in; the water shone as if the softly stirring morning air had carefully polished it. The hills of the bay and the knotted hump of Kaitangata rose out of that glass, but also hung, reflected, below it. Perhaps the island of her dreaming was that other, looking-glass island.

  ‘Hey!’ called a voice. Rufus was out on the verandah, pulling on yesterday’s blue sweater.

  ‘I’m not doing anything interesting,’ Meredith said quickly, sliding a look back over her shoulder. ‘Only canoeing over to Kaitangata.’

  ‘Me too,’ he cried immediately.

  ‘Last night you said it was boring,’ she reminded him. ‘I’m having the blue canoe!’ Rufus cried, leaping from the verandah without bothering about the steps. He hit the ground running.

  ‘Whoever gets there first has the blue one,’ Meredith cried back, launching herself across the slope of lawn and onto the Zigzag.

  ‘My turn! My turn!’ Rufus yelled, and he kept on yelling at Meredith’s elbow, even though he didn’t stand any chance of passing her. The Zigzag, cutting down between dense scrub on high banks, was so narrow that it was almost impossible to crowd past anyone running ahead of you. All the same, Meredith sped on as fast as she dared, swinging left, swinging right . . . left again, right again, and sliding around the sharp corners, because the sliding and swinging was good fun. She burst out onto the beach, well ahead of Rufus, and leaped towards the tumbledown Gallagher boathouse. By the time Rufus caught up with her, still panting ‘My turn! My turn!’ as if the words were a rhythm to run to, Meredith had grabbed the loop on the prow of the blue canoe and was hauling it out onto the sand.

  ‘Mi-hi-hi!’ Rufus gasped, but he didn’t try and pull the canoe away from Meredith. Instead he slipped into the boathouse to grab the yellow canoe – the second-best one.