Perhaps if I follow the riverbed, he says.

We are not near the riverbed. And you found him here.

But maybe. If I just.

He is that type of man.

~

I do not tell my husband how I strip the bedclothes from the child and sponge away his sweat. And look at every inch of his skin. How my heart races and I feel sick, certain I will find some sign that he has brought some illness from the city, as there are always whispers of. And then that will be that.

~

As he sips the bowl I hold, pecking like a bird, we have a sort of conversation. Distant though he is, I think he understands.

A robin sings outside the window.

What will your brother do, I ask, when he finds his dog?

Go back to the city.

And if he does not find it? Would he go back anyway?

He won’t stop looking for the dog.

He wouldn’t stop.

He won’t stop looking for his dog.

He wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop.

~

In the night, the boy gets worse again.

When the Water Train goes by, a shudder rattles through him. As if the train itself races through his body. A sound felt in the darkness through the air.

It makes me shudder, too, to see him.

I think the train wrenches part of him away. If I believed in souls.

~

But in the morning the boy is sitting up.

I have to go, he says. I have to find my brother.

I cannot help believing the train took away the worst of it. The illness. Dragged it, with that shudder, from his body.

Now there is a thin shake through him, as if he is animated by a faint breeze.

I have to go. My brother. He begins to open and close his fists, and I feel uneasy that I knew this was a thing that he would do.

You cannot now. I try to make him calm.

He is eight, he says. I have to look for him.

He has to look for him, before he can look after him.

I must look after him.

When I ask him what age he is himself, he lies and says he’s twelve.

He went after his dog.

I know. First you must get strong.

That dog.

My husband will bring courgettes, and beans and greens, and spinach.

He does not look as if he understands what these things are.

You cannot find your brother unless you are strong.

He seems, almost imperceptibly, to nod.

~

Look! my husband says. He holds up a nasturtium leaf and peers at me through a hole right in its centre. Caterpillars, he says with pride.

I do not understand him sometimes.

~

That night the boy goes.

He is barely able to walk, I’m sure.

He climbs out of the window.

He takes a pile of my husband’s dirty gardening clothes from the drywash basket.