If they went north, towards the river mouth, they found bends and bays meeting paddocks that sloped down to the shore. The smoke of coastal villages hung in the air. White beaches called to Ned from both the physical world and his dreams. He noted the ones along the river, began planning nights he’d spend on their sands, nights where he’d watch fire spit green flames from salt-drenched driftwood.

If they went south the river was straighter, wider, revealing a bigger sky and more of the world. In the distance, mountains fudged the horizon. From his shining deck he could see the forest behind Telle’s garden. See the shape of it in its entirety, matching the close-up sketches he’d made in his mind while walking through it. On the eastern side he saw another forest, one that mirrored the western one he knew. Similar trees and colours spread back from both banks. There was a symmetry to the contours of the land on each side; crests rose in synchronicity, and streams fed into the river from similar angles. It was as if the two forests had once been whole, and were forced apart by the coming of the saltwater. Although where the one behind Telle’s ended in a belt of farmland, the eastern forest climbed a hill, then the foot of a low mountain, then dipped and spread across land beyond sight.

Ned pointed this out to Maggie, as well as the other things he saw: low-flying pelicans, gulls working at schools of baitfish, the treacherous currents he’d learned to avoid, a fur seal’s dark flipper raised as if in greeting. At all of this she smiled and murmured encouragement, never withdrawing her fingers from the water.

Taking Maggie out on the river swelled Ned with the feeling of being useful, of being impressive. Of doing something worth talking about. With her in his boat the world seemed right, and better things felt inevitable. The summer would break. Rains would muddy the dust. The orchard would drip with healthy fruit, just as the requisitioning ended. The mare would gallop unhindered. Toby would come home bored and whole, and word would finally come from Bill. Their father would rise and be restitched into himself. All of it would happen: everything proper, everything good.

~

At the end of his first week of sailing he found his father burning sheets of newspaper outside the house. They weren’t meant to be lighting fires. There was a ban: the temperatures, the lack of rain. A stray spark could lick the valley into hell. Yet flames tongued William West’s boots, snarling through newsprint.