Ned felt himself lifting, swelling. Felt a specialness claiming him that he had not sought. He nodded, shook the man’s hand and watched him pick his way through the bracken back to the orchard, a clever smile on his thin lips.

These pulses of pride never lasted long. Ned wasn’t shaped to be impressed by himself. Once the visitors were gone he pivoted away from his self-regard and back to the river. And of all the adults he took to see his boat, the reaction he enjoyed most was Telle’s. She, of all people other than perhaps his father, knew the effort he’d put into obtaining it. So when she saw it and slowly raised an eyebrow, slowly drew on an impressed smile, Ned felt not pride but something simpler. A particular kind of happiness: the kind that felt earned.

He told her the story of it, his words coming faster than with the others, without artifice or caution. Told her how he’d known there was something wonderful under the old paint from the moment he saw it lying on Falmouth’s dirt. How the boat had spoken to him, guided him. How when he sailed it, he felt like a fuller version of himself. How he and Callie had used it to take the quoll to the forest on the eastern shore.

Telle smiled. ‘Leg healed up all right, then?’

Ned remembered it darting into the green-dark canopy. ‘Yes, indeed.’ He grasped at the memory and found a chasm within him, ringing with echoes of teeth, of blood.

‘Well. That’s something.’ She knocked a fist on the boat’s hull. ‘And so’s this.’

They walked back to the road. Telle looked over at the rows of apple trees. ‘Tell your father I said hello.’ She kept walking, not slowing down. ‘Tell him he’s not friendless.’

~

Days of sailing, nights of planning. Ned’s trip to the river mouth began to solidify. For a while he thought he’d take Jackbird, but soon realised he didn’t want company, that the journey required solitude. He decided that on the day of the trip he’d leave in the morning and make for one of the sheltered white beaches he’d glimpsed in the northern bends. There he’d build a shelter and spend the afternoon exploring the nearby clearings and forests, taking in the fauna, the topography. He’d catch fish in the river, and at night he’d cook their white-flaking flesh over a fire that he’d also sleep next to, under the bright-scattered stars, in a swag that had once belonged to Bill. He’d rise at dawn, get straight in the boat and keep sailing north until he reached the river’s end.