They tramped up the overgrown track in the damp dripping forest. When they rounded the bend, she could see her favourite tree up ahead: an enormous swamp gum, fifteen strides round and ninety metres high, its crown lost in clouds. The trunk reared like a vast bark highway, and halfway up, small branches poked out like antlers. At the base of the tree, Kurt stopped and lit a cigarette. Resting his pack on a buttressed root like an elephant’s foot, he leaned against the trunk and blew smoke in the air. Miki slipped the rifle from her shoulder but was afraid to put it down; she knew how paranoid Kurt was about moisture and rust. At home, he usually cleaned the rifle in his locked room under the shop, but sometimes he used the kitchen table; that was when she’d seen how gently he handled it, the way you might hold a baby.

He looked at her now and chuckled. ‘Here, give me that thing. It won’t go off, you know. It’s not loaded.’

Relieved, she handed the rifle over then wandered around the huge trunk, running her hand across the woolly bark, listening to the hush of wind in the leaves. Around the far side, a fire scar had cut a chasm into the heartwood, an opening large enough for a human to enter. The tree reminded her of childhood visits to the bush up behind the farm on Sundays with Kurt. Beyond the back fence, among a bower of ferns, there had been a tall tree with a scar in it too. Miki used to like playing there with Kurt, acting out stories from the Bible. Once, they had been Samson and Delilah even though Miki thought it was sinful. Kurt had gone along with it until she produced a pair of scissors to cut his hair, snipping off a chunk before he realised what she was doing. He’d yelled and broken free of her poorly tied ropes and snatched the scissors, tossing them into the bush. She remembered the look of horror on his face, and it still made her smile. They’d spent hours searching for the scissors and arrived home late, covered in mud and leaves. Father had been furious.

Now she hooked a hand around the curved edge of the scar and ducked inside the hollow. Within the tree’s thick skin, it was dark and quiet, dense with the sweet scent of rotting wood. Her feet sank in a soft bed of crumbled debris, and when she peered up she could just make out a small circle of light way above where the tree’s crown had blown out. So far away. Closing her eyes, she heard a faint whisper: the tree sighing out secrets, breathy stories of ages past, wind and weather, black people sliding through the bush. If she held her breath, she could feel the heartbeat of the world.