PROLOGUE

Pirates Bay, Tasmania

The boy gasped for breath, hair in his mouth, before the next wave slammed him back against the bottom. He tumbled, the fizz of bubbles around him.

Back to the surface. Another desperate breath. Stinging eyes searching for land. In the pre-dawn light the ocean was a roiling grey, the dark gumtrees so close . . .

Knocked under by another wave, bull kelp tangling around his limbs. He clung to it as the current sucked him away from shore. His hands were so cold he couldn’t grip the kelp, but he wrapped slick loops of it around his wrists, adrenaline and fear giving him strength.

The water receded in a rush of whitewash and for a moment his head and torso were above the water.

‘Help!’ he called, voice raw.

A crash and he was under again. He held his breath, wrists locked in the kelp, until the rushing water had passed.

Above the sound of the wind and the waves, a dog barked.

The boy pulled himself forward. He could feel sand beneath his feet.

When the next wave came he let it carry him forward in the swirl of sand and silt. He spun, over and over. Arms tangled in kelp. Forehead scraping rock.

The water pulled away, but he rolled until he found a crevice in the coarse rocks on the shore. He gasped for salty air, the sound of breaking waves close by. He wasn’t out of danger yet. He dragged himself forward, grazing skin, all strength gone from his legs, the wind cold against his bare back.

A German shepherd splashed into the rockpool beside him, barked, nudged its nose under his arm.

The boy dug bleeding fingers into the rock as the waves surged over him again, the dog yelping.

Rough hands seized him under his armpits and picked him up.

‘I’ve got him!’ the man shouted. ‘Here, he’s still breathing!’

The dog shook its fur and licked the boy’s bleeding shins, its barks mixing with human voices. They were crowding him now, carrying him off the rocks, onto the sandy beach. The man laid him on his back, putting an ear to his chest.

The boy opened his eyes, crusted with silt and sand.

‘He’s alive,’ said a woman. ‘Thank God, he’s alive.’

She was right in his face and he pulled away, coughing, scrabbling on hands and knees, backing himself against the panting dog. The stink of wet fur and seaweed.

Still these people crowded around him. ‘Easy, mate, easy,’ said the man.

The boy’s grazes stung, his body ached. He shivered from the cold, his heart pounded. He needed to run . . .

The sight of the woman holding out a towel broke through his panic, and a new thought reached the surface of his mind.

These people have come to rescue you.

You need their help.

He forced his struggling breaths to slow.