Outside of those mornings in the forest he was exposed to an uncontrollable stinging in the folds of his mind, of the same kind he’d felt while searching for duck eggs. To counter this, he avoided thinking about anything that brought on the sting. The war. The school year that awaited him. The mare. The quoll. Maggie, ice hammered from metal ships, northern seas of endless chop. The rush of Toby’s smile, and how soon they might see each other. His father. How his father, after he’d read Toby’s letter, had asked Ned if anything had come from Bill. The blank fissure in the old man’s face when Ned had shaken his head.

He wrestled all of this from his mind, and replaced it with dreams of trapping, of hunting and, most frequently, of the boat that was drifting closer to him with each fur-smeared trap, each blood-wetted bullet.

Sometimes Bill—tall, soundless, inscrutable—crashed past these visions of the boat. He wouldn’t let Ned’s thoughts remain on the surface of the water, so Ned would dive beneath it. He’d run to the river and return to its floor, thrashing through the current’s nag, thorns in his eyes, choke in his neck, ugly strokes pulling him to the dark sand, to coldness and cleanness.

~

Later in the week he saw more ravens, this time on the edge of a clearing. He was taking aim when his eyes were drawn upwards to jagged flashes in the sky. Three of them were harassing a white goshawk, mobbing it as it arced through the blue. The combat appeared both vague and choreographed; the ravens flapped, darted, stabbed, while the hawk evaded each attack at what seemed like the last possible moment, gliding away from its glossy assailants without seeming to pay them much attention. Their shapes, their ferocity, their movements: it brought to mind the battles Ned had read about at school. Hoplites wrapped in leather and bronze, jamming spears into the spokes of chariots. Muddy knights hauling maces through fog at tinny helmets. Cavalry officers pulled from their mounts by vengeful sepoys. Sailors blasted off rigging, thumping onto softwood decks. Redcoats spilling powder. Bayonets thrusting up from trenches. Slouch hats shot from sweating scalps.

On the way home, with this violence still in him, he crossed through Jackbird’s property. The day was clear. Other birds now wheeled through the cloudless sky: black cockatoos, seagulls, swamp harriers.

It did not take him long to find her.

Callie held the shotgun low as she watched a hawk circle a far paddock. It was smaller than the goshawk Ned had seen that morning, smaller too than a swamp harrier. Some kind of falcon or sparrowhawk. Callie didn’t seem interested in shooting at it.

When she saw him, Ned came to a stop. ‘Seen any duck eggs lately?’

She shook her head. ‘Plenty of chicken eggs. What do you want duck eggs for?’