He hoped she’d say yes, but she shook her head. For a moment he waited, not for anything to happen but for a feeling to come over him, something that told him he was ready, that he was doing the right thing. No such feeling came; he felt only a lack of rhythm in his pulse and breathing, and rising nausea. Before it could bubble out of him, he ripped off the crate’s lid.

The quoll came out fast, all muscle and colour. No suspicion, no trepidation. A vigorous leap onto the moss and loam, its nose twitching at all the cleanness. Paws padding at the dirt, tail ruddering left and right. It turned to Ned, nose still working at the air. Expecting food. When he offered it none, when he did nothing but stare and grip his breath and clench his jaw, it turned to the nearest tree. It leaped onto the trunk and began climbing, fast and assured, laddering up the bark with natural authority. The spots on its pelt shone against the wood like a patterned moth, a living quilt.

At the first branch the quoll paused, sniffed. Opened its mouth, showed its fangs. Ned felt Callie beside him, whispering something he couldn’t hear. He couldn’t hear anything. He wasn’t breathing. The quoll closed its jaw and turned back to the trunk. It blinked up the tree, into the higher limbs and denser foliage. Ned rubbed at the heat flooding his eyes. When he removed his fingers, the quoll was gone.

17

17

NED DIDN’T TALK about the quoll often in the years that followed. He didn’t grow into much of a storyteller, and when there were opportunities to bring up the subject, he chose not to. When it came to him while he was snorkelling, as the leatherjacket tried to skewer his palm, he couldn’t find a way to convert the experience into meaningful language. At other times when he remembered the quoll, he worried that the men around him wouldn’t understand. While working on the mainland, where quolls had nearly been exterminated, the rouseabouts would have asked why he hadn’t killed it. The loggers toppling the White Knights would have flung wet bottles at his head. The saltwater stock workers would have just stared. The men he hired on his orchard would have wondered why their employer was wasting their time with childish recollections. It was only Callie whom he could speak to about the quoll. Only she had known the touch of its company. Nobody else could come at it.