And he loved it. He was hopeless on water, and he didn’t care all that much. It was enough for him to be on those golden planks, free of soil, unmoored from the orchard and his family. And eventually, he started to get better. He adjusted the size and shape of the rudder so it sat more easily in the water, so it fought him less. He discovered how to make it talk to the sail, or at least listen to it. He learned how to read the mood of the weather in the movement of the eucalypts before he was loose and lost on the river. He figured out how to set the sail in order to snare the wind, and while he never caught all of it, it was usually enough to get the boat moving in the rough direction he desired. He learned how to react to a change in the breeze or current, how to tack windward, how to shift leeward. This rarely worked well: he spent a lot of time twisting about on the face of the river. And it was never long before he became stuck into the river’s swirling centre, in the mess of whirlpools that grabbed the boat, shook it, strafed it, spat it out spinning.

In those whirlpooled moments he was powerless. But the boat did not mind—it sat high in the water, it bladed cleanly through the chop, it reacted to every yank of the current with a delicate counter-step—so neither did he. And once he was beyond the whirlpools they did not matter, their power was null. He forgot them. Was free to go wherever the wind and water would let him.

Jackbird often came with him, spouting his usual ideas and schemes as he sat in the middle of the boat, away from the water. On the river his bluster was even more exposed than on land, but Ned didn’t mind. It was good to share the joy of his achievement. Good to have company. And Jackbird was smart—he helped Ned find the sandy depths good for catching flathead, helped him understand the changeability of the river quicker than Ned would’ve figured out on his own.

But Ned preferred to take Maggie. She gave no advice, requested no destination. She didn’t compliment him on his acquisition of the sail, but that was all right. She just sat there as Ned sailed them in whatever direction he could manage or whatever way the wind chose, leaning over the side, leaning on the glowing Huon pine, carving furrows into the river with fingertips.