But then there was the forest behind the vet’s place: a forest of tall ferns and bright fungus, of steady soil and thick-trunked trees, of clear streams and cool shade, of unknowable, intricate depths. A place of dark-eyed wallabies and fat-faced possums and flickering wrens and eagle-sized ravens and swarms of rabbits beyond counting, beyond thought. A place so thoroughly non-paddock and non-river and non-orchard that, when he picked his way through its structures, Ned began to unmoor from the leafy dirt and drift away from the version of the world he knew. A wave of prickles needled through him. He felt a shifting beneath his flesh: all his pain and shame and anger and sorrow would peel off his nerves, steam from his bones and fry off his skin.

He was getting up earlier now, before the sun rose, while the ground was cool and the paddocks dark, before Maggie was awake, before even his father was knocking about the kitchen. He’d strap his rifle to his back, fill his pockets with bullets and ride his bike to the vet’s, bumping over the corrugations in the gravel. He’d reach the property before the light did. At dawn he was checking the traps he’d set the day before. By the time the sun had fully risen, his hands were full of death.

It seemed to Ned that these forest rabbits were in a rush to escape the summer. Each morning he’d find at least two of their corpses in the teeth of his traps, sometimes three. He’d skin them at the edge of the garden and hurl the bodies far into the trees.

After he’d stashed the skins in his bag he’d move through the forest, towards the small clearings that lay within its interior. Here other rabbits inched over the grass, grazing at pace, their cheeks swelling in the low light. Ned stepped quietly, made sure he was obscured by the darkness of the ferns, waited. He’d raise the rifle and pick out the fattest animal, the cleanest fur. Missing was difficult, although occasionally he managed it.

The clearings would yield an extra three or four rabbits. When the last of them had blinked into the bush he began making his way back, no longer bothering to land his feet quietly. It was in this part of the day, his bag heavy with pelts, his body shaded by blue gum and silver banksia, that he felt the unmooring, the needling, the shifting. The burning away of his emotions, until he saw only the forest around him, and felt only the weight of his bag and gun, and the warmth of the morning.

Back at the garden, he’d find the vet drinking tea on a bench by a rosemary bush. He’d shake the skins at her. She’d raise her mug. In the trees, ravens picked apart his kills.

~