When it was finally out, they stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, surrounded by clumps of soggy towels, surveying the now-even-blacker wall above the fireplace. Mrs. Wilson sighed, patting her bosom. “Good thinking, you. It’s lucky I have a kitchen left to cook in.”

Mathinna helped her clean up the mess. They dumped the wet towels in the sink, mopped the floor in front of the hearth, and cleared the table. When they were finished, Mrs. Wilson said, “Now where did that creature of yours get off to?”

Instinctively Mathinna reached up to her neck, but of course Waluka wasn’t there. He must’ve slid away when she sprang to her feet, but she had no memory of it. She looked in the rush basket, under the old wooden cupboard, behind the breakfront where the bowls were kept.

“Hiding in a corner, no doubt,” Mrs. Wilson assured her.

But he wasn’t.

Mathinna felt a sudden coldness—a sickening alarm. Waluka didn’t stray. He was afraid of everything. But the fire . . . the tumult . . . Her gaze drifted toward the doorway, which Mrs. Wilson had thrown wide when the room filled with smoke. She could make out something . . . something in the courtyard.

She moved as if in a trance through the doorway and out into the cold air. As she got closer, stumbling over the cobblestones, her eyes fixed on the small white lump.

Matted fur, a trickle of red.

No . . .

When she reached it, she collapsed on her knees. She touched the soft body, slick with something viscous. It was broken and bloody, its eyes dull, half open.

She heard a low growl, and then a shout: “Move away!” She looked up, her vision murky with tears. Montagu’s dog was charging toward her, nose down, trailing a chain that clanged along the cobbles, Montagu waving madly behind it. “Bloody hell, get away from that thing or Jip will eat you too!”

Mathinna lifted the small possum, cradling him in both hands. He was still warm. “Waluka, Waluka,” she keened, rocking back and forth. When the dog bounded up, snarling, she staggered to her feet and lunged at it, baring her own teeth. A guttural howl traveled up through her body until she vibrated with it. She howled until the dog backed away and the convict maids dropped their baskets; until Mrs. Crain burst through the servants’ door of the main house and Mrs. Wilson came running across the courtyard; until even Lady Franklin emerged on the balcony above the green drawing room, with a look of mild annoyance, to see what all the fuss was about.

For months, Mathinna felt the ghost of Waluka’s presence. The weight of his body on her shoulders, his soft, warm belly and shallow breath against her neck. The tap of his paws on her skin when he ran up the length of one arm and down the other. The bony ridge of his spine as he lay next to her in bed. The possum had been her only remaining link to Flinders—his beating heart linking her to her mother, her father, Palle, the elders around the fire. And now that heart was still.