Linda, listening to evening gathering outside, remembered how the sound had seemed anchored to the roots of the world. “Is it dangerous?”

“Of course it is,” said Sylvie Spicer sharply, reappearing in the doorway. “Dangerous itself, and dangerous because of those looking for things like it.” She looked Linda up and down, in a familiar way, and sniffed. “He must have known you were hers.”

“Mum left here before I was born,” said Linda. “Dogs don’t live that long. Do they?”

“You know it wasn’t a dog,” said Mrs Spicer. “My family’s been settled here a long time, Linda Aberdeen.” Her green eyes flashed, as if she expected Linda to challenge that claim. “We aren’t given to wandering. Something like this has been around a long time too. People vanish. It changes. This pale one has been here since your mother arrived. Since David disappeared.”

“I thought he went to war.”

“War?” said Sylvie, contemptuous. “He went up to the top paddock—him and his dogs—and only his horse came home. Never a bit of use afterwards.” She looked severely at Linda. “Blood calls to blood.”

Linda studied the photo in her wallet, slid it back into her bag. “You’re saying that … creature ate David?”

“In a manner of speaking,” said Mrs Spicer, with a thin smile.

“I’ve called that nice Mr Scott,” said Mrs Spicer. “He’ll drop you in Woodwild. The Stockman’s Arms is still open, last I heard. If they’ll take you.”

“Thank you,” said Linda, measured. The woman was unbalanced—by loneliness and grief, perhaps—and Linda wasn’t going to antagonise her unnecessarily. But she wasn’t going to stay. “I’ll wait by the road.”

“You don’t want to walk it in the dark,” conceded Mrs Spicer. Linda could have done without that thought.

She shouldered her bag and strode away, furious and—yes, miserable. Stupid! She had a family. Winston and Patricia, the extended, extensive network of Aberdeen brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. And yet … the creature had known her. What if—only for the sake of a story, mind—what if it had understood when she said she was family? Out there all alone for years and years, never able to come in, watching its people grow old and die?

The last light threaded thin and gold through the trees by the creek, flinging long blue shadows over the tossing grass. It smelled of distant smoke, of new-broken leaves and—although the creek was dry—dark water. Starveling country, her mother had called this. Whatever the truth of it, her mother had wanted to be from somewhere else.

Linda stood in the paddock, between the creek and the fringe of trees that hid the road. The sky was mother-of-pearl.

“Hello?” she said to the fading light, feeling foolish. She cleared her throat. “I only want to talk.”