‘Come on, Harby! Retrace your own steps. You were here! Right here.’ I stomp hard with my foot. I give his closed fist a little shake. ‘If that’s Mothga’s deertooth in your hand then Mothga was here too, wasn’t she. And then? Well? Then what happened? Just remember, at least try to remember. I don’t have the answers, Harby; you do!’

Harby’s spirit song grows louder. My patience snaps. ‘Do you want to remember or don’t you?’ A sudden wave of anger surges up in me. ‘Do you know what you remind me of, Harby? You remind me of a little kid, with his stupid fingers in his ears, going “la-la-la” to block everything out.’ I grab his wrists. ‘Blocking everything out. Running away. It does nothing. Nothing to help anyone! NOTHING!’

I shake him hard, my face close to his. ‘Listen to ME!’ I shout. Harby stops chanting and opens his eyes. His eyes that are dark as caves and night sky and bottomless wells. I look into his eyes and see my own face reflected there. I look small and lost. Just like Harby. Suddenly I hear my own words in my mind.

Running away … Blocking everything out … Does nothing to help anyone. I remember the squeak of my trainers in the hospital corridor. I remember Dara’s baby-bird mouth. I remember Beaky’s soft sorry touch on my arm. I remember the shriek of the jay and force field of heat and Mum’s cry that turned me inside out and I remember running away … faster than fast down through my forest to the river …

I drop Harby’s wrists; he rubs his skin where I held him too tightly. ‘I’ve done exactly what I’m accusing you of, Harby,’ I say quietly. ‘You’re running away too, aren’t you? You’re running away from … something … what happened here, Harby?’ I sweep my arm across the abandoned camp, Harby’s abandoned home. ‘I think you can remember, Harby … I just don’t think that you want to remember … because … because some things are really …’ I pause, I remember the tubes that went in and out of my poor baby brother as he lay so still and tiny in his little fish-tank bed. ‘… some things are just … just too … too big … too big to know what to do with …’

The whole while I’ve been talking at him he’s been narrowing and narrowing his eyes at me. Now his face is all screwed up like he smells a great stink.

‘Cholliemurrum!’ he growls at me low like a warning. ‘I. Not. Member.’ His eyes flood up with tears. He turns his back on me and starts to run, clumsy and limping, back down the mound, towards the forest; the moon makes him a long thin shadow.

‘Oi! Harby! What? Hey! Where do you think you’re going? Hey! Harby!’ My voice sounds shrill and pathetic, like a yappy little dog tied to the school gates.