‘She say you are welcome, here on the mountain,’ Boja translated. ‘She and the other women chief will take you into the forest. Show you the trees.’

As he spoke, and Nogi watched, Rika felt as if she were transparent and this woman could see her greed, her covetousness. And still Nogi smiled.

Back at the house, Leonard prepared his notebook and Boja gathered up the cameras. They were to record the cloth that day, filming it in the sunlight with the artists who’d come from distant villages.

‘Janape will stay with you,’ Leonard said. ‘Boja’s sister. You’ll like her, she’s smart. She should do more school. I’ve offered to help, but she says no. She’s not married, which is unusual at her age.’

‘She doesn’t look so old,’ Rika said. Janape was coming across the dance ground towards them with a small girl in a headdress of white cockatoo feathers.

‘She’s old not to be married here.’

‘Why isn’t she?’

‘Hard question for me to ask. Boja shrugs when I ask him. It’d take a woman anthropologist to find out. One should come up here. The women have a lot of authority.’

The young girl in the white feather headdress came up onto the platform with Janape. She was about twelve years old, maybe less. Looking into eyes that were small jewels, Rika asked what her name was, and the girl took her arm. Another deep breath.

‘Lilla,’ Janape answered for her. ‘Small girl of daughter of Nogi chief. Nogi is her granny.’

‘Your granny too?’ Those eyes. Those dark eyes full of light.

‘All the same. My mother, sister of Lilla’s mother.’

‘The same family,’ Leonard said. ‘You can see the likeness.’

‘It’s the eyes,’ Rika said.

‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’ He turned, smiled to Janape. ‘You will look after Rika here?’

‘All the same,’ she replied with a pretty laugh. ‘First we do the medicine. Later I take her to the gardens.’

‘Very good,’ Leonard said, pulling his hat low over his brow. ‘Excellent.’ He touched Rika’s cheek. ‘Shout out if you need me.’

Rika watched him cross the dance ground, the amorire. When he turned to wave, she could see his pleasure at having her there. Fear pressed up in her. She could smell it. How was she to tell him, when he looked at her like that? Perhaps, after all, a letter would have been better.

In the quiet of the house Janape opened the box from Tobias. She took the notes he’d written, counted the jars and bottles, and arranged them on the floor. Pills. Liquid medicines. Powders. Bandages. Sugar water for children with diarrhoea. Iron tablets for pregnant mothers. Rika, watching, could imagine her in a laboratory, that intelligence turned to test tubes and experiments. She was sitting on the mat, and beside her Lilla was making shapes on the floor with her finger, turning to Rika in query, asking this large white spirit with strange hair and no language if she understood the alphabet she drew for her.