She seems quite relaxed, so I decide to risk the question that’s been worming away at me. ‘Am I ready? To go get her.’

‘No.’ Her face is expressionless.

‘But I’m passing all the tests, aren’t I?’

‘There’s still one test to go. You know what it is.’

I do. Darkness like you have never known. My skin tingles with sudden goosebumps.

‘Tonight,’ she says.

‘The test is tonight?’ I ask.

But she’s already walking away. I watch her go, a ball of dread unravelling in my stomach.

After breakfast, I join Dad in the front truck, and he steers us over the cattle grid and out of the Millimba showground. I hate leaving the place where I last saw Mum.

‘I wonder if we are making a parallel universe now, by deciding to take the highway rather than Canmore Road?’ I say.

‘Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll never know.’ Dad leans into the steering wheel to turn us onto the narrow bridge across the river.

‘Well, what things have made parallel universes for us, do you think?’

‘Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. You know, when I was twenty I planned to visit my cousin in Melbourne, but he got measles so I didn’t go. Next day, my friend gave me a ticket for Potts’s circus, and I fell in love with circus and got a job here and met your mum. If my cousin hadn’t got measles, you wouldn’t exist! And, another example … when I first met your mum – fifteen years ago – she was thinking about going travelling, to London and Paris. If she’d gone, she and I would never have fallen in love. And I guess that would have created a whole other parallel universe.’

I never knew Mum wanted to go overseas. I wonder what else I don’t know about her?

‘The problem is that now I don’t want to make any decisions or do anything that might send things off in a bad direction,’ I say. ‘Then I think maybe I should do things, in case they’ll stop bad things happening. Like I should have woken sooner and stopped Mum doing her spell.’

‘Ah, that’s no way to live, sweetheart.’ He rubs my leg with a rough hand. ‘You can’t think about it too much. You’ll tie yourself in knots. All you can do is live your life and make your decisions based on what’s best for yourself, for others and for the planet.’

I offer him a jelly snake from the packet we keep in the glove box. ‘So that’s your version of the laws of magic?’

‘I guess so.’ He tucks a red snake behind one ear.

‘And if you do that, then everything will turn out well?’

‘Not always. But you can’t worry about that. Just be kind, be honest, be true to who you really are.’