When the sun dipped, Ned thanked him and took the haul back to the quoll. It still couldn’t rise, but its eyes were sharp, and at the sight of Ned it gaped its jaws in a wide yawn before snapping at his hand. He dropped an egg onto the straw. The quoll sniffed at it. Twitched its whiskers. Grabbed the egg with its front paws, lifted it to its snout and cracked it open with a hard bite. It plunged its nose into the opened egg and licked at the contents with energetic hunger. When it was finished Ned dropped in the other three, which it devoured even faster. As it ate, its wounded leg remained still, stretched out in the crate at a stiff angle. Fragments of brittle shell clung to its face fur. Yolk clotted the pinkness of its nose.

~

There seemed no end to the rabbits, no matter how many he harvested from the forest. Soon he began running out of rafters to hang their skins from. The summer burned on. Blood and sunshine filled his days.

At this time of year the heat could turn and ruin a pelt in hours. He could no longer wait for Jackbird’s father to take him to Beaconsfield, so he began filling a sack with skins and cycling into the town. Old Singline came to expect him; haggling became a formality; money piled in the dust beneath his bed. It was thorough work: rising early, riding to the vet’s, trapping and shooting and skinning, riding home, working in the trees, checking fruit, riding to town, riding home, fossicking for eggs, feeding the quoll, trying to be useful to Maggie around the house and yard. It left his eyes red, his body sore. He liked these days—liked how they hollowed him out.

When he was drained like this he took care to hold on to his secrets, to not reveal the quoll’s existence to Maggie or his father, or let his boat fervour slip out his mouth. But even in his exhaustion, keeping the secrets wasn’t hard. Maggie was still remote and muted, and didn’t ask him much. And he was seeing less of his father. The old man was rarely in the orchard when Ned returned from the vet’s, or near the shed, or in the house. Occasionally Ned spotted him in a far paddock, closer to the river, but otherwise he had no idea where the old man was going. He didn’t try to find out. He figured his father was still upset with him for the business with the mare, and Ned thought it best to stay out of his way. Usually he only saw him at dinner. All Ned had to do was chew his potatoes and stay quiet.