He landed on hands and feet, jarring all his joints, and sprawled a moment in the hot sand, glad to feel the sun on his back. No dark at all; no dank chill. But Uncle Davy had turned the ute.

Jack leaped up and galloped after it, hopping at times to spare his leg. But the ute pulled out in a shower of leaves, as if something swifter than a limping boy was after it. It pushed into the broken trees and roared off.

At the edge of the pines, where the air was sticky with the smell of resin, Jack bent, gasping for air, then turned. The light was golden around the sawmill. He half-expected the buildings to have fallen into the earth, but they squatted, broken and unwelcoming. His leg hurt; sand caked the seeping blood, and one foot was bare. His chest was bruised, and his leg too. He rubbed it and felt the bottle still in his pocket.

In the warm light, the glass was dull. But it wasn’t empty. It had a chalky-silver lid, and when he shook it next to his ear, it made a sandy whisper. It had words on it, too, like the POISON bottles, but this one said FARRIER-something. Part of a paper label clung to it: OOD FOR BEAST AND MA. On the other side of the bottle was a lump in the glass: a skull and crossbones. Even better than POISON. Not FOOD FOR BEAST, then. He’d take it to school. Even the teachers would be interested. The historical house might want it. Maybe it would be valuable, and Mr Alleman would interview him for the STAR.

Jack squatted on his heels in the sparse, sharp grass near the trees, waiting for his uncle to return. Evening was arriving. The light grew richer, the trees behind him darker. It would be smart to stay at the sawmill, but he didn’t want to be near that deep black emptiness.

Long leaves trailed over Jack’s bare shoulders as he limped down the track, like spiders and ticks crawling over him, however much he tried to shrug the feeling off. Branches cracked in the twig-misted depths of the overgrown pine plantation, then a roo drummed the ground, and it was silent again.

Jack fidgeted with the bottle, warm beneath his fingers. Maybe no one remembered the sawmill was there, and no one would look for him. But there had to be a real road nearby. Once, trucks would have carted the timber away. Or maybe his uncle was waiting at the gate, laughing.