The Postmaster

Autumnal colours littered the rugged hills of Arrowtown, and all the buildings across its centre street. As Tama walked past he heard the chatter of people's phones erupting in sing-song tunes all across the street as photos were taken. He dropped his bags on the hardwood floors of his office, the post office sign smiling down on him. He listened to the radio as he worked, the mismatched choice of pop songs almost radiating off the speaker. Tama scanned through the cubbies where the letters were kept, looking for any displaced ones. He found four almost instantly. The letters had been addressed to the Queenstown Lakes Council, and had ‘returned' sprawled across the front in yellow lettering.

This wasn't the only thing on the letters that was out of place however. There was a koru across all of the envelopes, and the sender... The Kawarau River? It wasn’t long however until Tama's curiosity got the better of him, and he began to open them. They were all hand written in elegant looping script, and upon closer inspection seemed to be poetry. They said things like;‘the river gets deeper every year with my tears, which are diluted with toxicity’. They seemed to be Tama thought, some sort of political epistle. It may even be some who branded themselves as 'the river’. Someone who was so delusional and self centered that they pictured themselves as some mystical god.

This whole thing greatly annoyed him, so he got out a fresh piece of paper and started writing: To ‘The Kawarau River’, It is after constant communication that I ask you to stop contacting this address. This is an official warning, and while postal regulations strictly govern the privacy of mail, your relentless stream of communication is something out of the ordinary and quite frankly concerning. I ask you to stop contacting this address and if you fail to meet with these rules and regulations you will be reported to the police. He put the letter through the delivery chute and closed the door.

It was the day after he had sent the letter when he came back to work only to find that he had received a reply. This time it barely took up a sentence and replicated its usual cosmic rant with only four words. ‘Come to the river’. Tama was so frustrated that he threw the piece of paper across the room, much to the dismay of the person who walked through the door. ‘Sorry!’ he called after them, as they walked out of the shop indignantly.

It was after hours of thought Tama hopped inside his ute and drove to the Kawarau River, exactly as the sender had told him to. He would find the person, maybe shout at them and then all of this would stop. But there was no one there. He searched across the river and nothing jumped out of the bush and ran away like he had expected. All there was, was the steady trickle of the river and the occasional scream from the nearby bungy bridge. Suddenly, without any warning the river seemed to pick itself up from the ground and lift itself over him. Submerged under the river its icy contents caused him to let out a series of high pitched screams.

Tama felt himself lose consciousness as every second under the river turned into minutes. He nearly passed out when the river spoke to him. He could barely process what was going as his vision slowly blurred. A koru erupted from the water.. ‘l am kaitiaki the guardian of this river,’ the thing said. ‘And even though I feel my life force fade I hear myself still urge you to listen to me’.

‘I don’t know what you are but please just let me live, please!’ Tama screamed.

‘Oh you know who I am, it was you after all who was challenging my protests. Now however I will challenge you. For if you do not learn to protect this land, all of Aotearoa will collapse. And with that the water dropped around him, where he was knocked out from the impact.

When Tama awoke he was back in the post office, where the familiar hustle of the streets sounded in ears.

The first thing Tama did when he woke up was pick up those letters, reading through every line over and over again. Then he pasted on new stamps and put them back into the delivery chute.