He placed the meat near its jaw. It gave no indication that it noticed. Ned stood there, watching the quoll’s harried breaths, feeling himself swell with panic. He suddenly felt that Maggie was right in everything she’d said about him. When he was able to look away he placed a second piece of rabbit flesh in the crate, then left, almost running.

That night, after he had gone to bed, he heard his father and Maggie talking.

‘At least take her to the vet,’ she was saying.

‘Not an option. You know that.’

‘The limp will get worse.’

‘She might shake it off.’

‘More likely she’ll go permanently lame and we’ll have to shoot her.’

‘Possibly.’

‘And that doesn’t worry you?’

Ned heard a hard sigh push through the house’s boards. ‘Choices aren’t thick on the ground, Magpie.’

‘You could get Ned to do the shooting. He wouldn’t mind.’

‘That’s enough.’

‘Mum would—’

‘Don’t.’

A chair scraped, hard enough to dig scratches into the floor. A door closed. A tap ran. Lying on his summer sheets Ned felt the panic and loathing that had come to him in the shed return, fizzing through his body, burning up his stillness. He could not sleep for all the trouble in his head.

7

7

THE NEXT MORNING he did not go shooting. He did not check his traps. With the sky still stained purple by the dawn he marched to the stables, where he cooed at the injured mare until she ceased jittering and let him dress her with a saddle and bridle. As he led her to the driveway he saw how pronounced her limp was, so he walked slowly, letting the mare set the pace. He told himself that she was a sorry, damaged thing. That she wasn’t a stallion.

Before he left the orchard he tethered the horse by the shed, went inside and grabbed the quoll’s crate. He couldn’t find the strength to look into it. Instead he wrapped an old strap around its top and base, knotted it tight and carried it outside, where he secured it to the saddle with another strap. He shook the crate, checking to see that its movements were not too severe. When he was content, they continued.

They made it down the driveway and out onto the road without being detected. Soon they crested the hills nearest the river, passing the two-room primary school he and Jackbird had attended together. A tall, wide-limbed oak leaned over the weatherboard building, heavy with foliage, picture-book verdant against the blond paddocks and blue-green stretch of eucalypts and paperbarks that ran down to the water. No one had yet thought to cut these natives down and plant a European orchard—the land was too rugged, the trees too dense. Even in these early hours they leaked their summer oils, shimmering the air, thickening the light.