It used to be that the verges of the Runagate-Woodwild Road were lined with flowering lantern-bush, studding the scrub with clutches of coloured stars: white, golden, crimson and violet. Handsome, if you didn’t think about it too hard. It came to this country as a garden shrub. Once it got here, it grew faster than any plant had a right to. Strange, what chooses to flourish here. Which plants. Which stories.

Those glorious vines strangled trees and bushes and blocked creeks. They poisoned animals, and crept under houses to force the floorboards off their beams. Old Pinnicke would put on an ancient dinner jacket and a German helmet to fight through them, when he went out in the evening to bring his milking cow home.

It grew faster than it could be cut; it burned slower than everything around it. People tried dragging it down with chains, digging it up, burying it, poisoning it. Scientists asked for grants; politicians offered rewards to anyone who could kill the stuff.

By the time Terrence—my husband, then—and I saw our Jim in seventh grade, lantern-bush was strangling Woodwild.

The mayor—also president of the Woodwild Progress Association—announced at a town meeting, by flyers printed in pungent purple ink on the school’s mimeograph, by word of mouth and an advertisement in the STAR, that anyone who could rid Woodwild and its surrounds of the pest would be given five hundred dollars, the region’s gratitude, and a memorial hall.

Subscriptions raised the reward to a thousand dollars, but no one claimed it. Woodwild resigned itself to its fate. Graziers started to leave for country where lantern-bush hadn’t taken root or wasn’t so virulent. Businesses starved.

Woodwild gave up on science altogether. And that winter, he arrived.

He drove up the Runagate-Woodwild Road in his station wagon—not a car for rattling over corrugations—throwing dust over the tangled hedges of lantern-bush, which was in flower. It was always in flower.

Vines were climbing over the sign that said:

WELCOME TO WOODWILD.

HEART OF THE BUSH.

“A FRIENDLY TOWN”

He drove past it, straight up to the gate in front of the veranda where old Hilda Damson sat with her dogs, half-asleep. Where the rest of the Damsons were, I don’t know—never where they’re wanted. Then without asking directions, or permission, or even nodding, he turned, took the right track and pulled into Woodwild.

He had pale hair. He himself was so pale he almost glowed, as if he spent all his time inside. That way all over, I promise you. Beautiful. Well, I wasn’t so bad myself, although you should have seen my hair! His name was Darryl. That was all I knew.