Some afternoons Jackbird joined him in the search for duck eggs, and Ned began to see what his friend was looking for: the foliaged dents and shadowed gullies that would suit a duck’s intentions. Muddy shells began revealing themselves to him. If they found no eggs, they’d swim. Other days—sometimes the same day—Callie would appear on the property without her brother. One morning Ned found that she’d let herself in and removed the crate’s lid to stare at the quoll. He wanted to tell her to stay away. Found that he couldn’t.

The quoll was recovering well. It could now limp around the crate as its bandaged leg began to unstiffen. Its appetite was strong, for both eggs and rabbit meat, and it showed no signs of pain when he handled it before and after cleaning the crate. Its gums were pink, its teeth white and clean. But most notable was the change to its coat, which had dulled and matted after the injury. Now it was returning to the condition it had been in when he’d trapped it. All the blemishes were gone, either through natural recovery or through the quoll’s increased grooming. Straight, strong hairs covered it from snout to claw. Vigorous colour shone in the oak-wood fur, the stark white spots.

10

10

NORTHWEST OF THE river mouth there was a jagged reef. It was well known, well marked, well understood. Yet shipmasters still found its teeth.

The wrecks had been occurring ever since colonial craft began nosing their way into the river, twelve and a half decades before Ned was born. In that time many ships had been caught on the reef and subsequently torn apart as waves hammered them against the rocks. Smaller boats had been lost too: ketches, schooners, dinghies.

Ned had been hearing about them his whole life. The reasons recorded were varied: rough weather, inattention, misunderstanding the flags raised at the pilot station, drunkenness, infighting, poor reading of the tides, sabotage, rocks that reared from waves like snapping hydra-mouths. Each excuse could be understood individually; collectively, the mass destruction made little sense. Locals came to expect carnage whenever they saw sails. Orchardists like Ned’s father wouldn’t venture past the heads.

As Ned came closer to owning a boat—or so he believed—the stories of these wrecks began floating into his river dreams. The ships killed by the reef began sailing alongside him in his fantasies, holes gaping in their hulls, loose cargo and greybodied sailors bobbing in their wake. He’d try to focus on the simple pleasures behind his ambition: the wind whipping the salt off his nose, the freedom of the river’s course, the hidden places he would discover, his brothers’ expressions when they saw him out on the water.

And in the mornings, as his dreams ebbed away, the boat thirst was still thick in his blood.

~