‘Who says I want to be a lawyer?’

I was careful. ‘You applied for a law degree.’

‘That was last year. I was just a kid. I always preferred art.’

Lips are so sensitive! Once again, I remembered the grazed knees and tears. When had he become so brave? ‘Won’t they scar?’

His upper lip twitched. I always said the wrong thing.

‘It won’t matter. As long as the hardware stays in.’

How could scars matter? He was eighteen and emo and unhappy, and imagined he’d be eighteen and emo and unhappy forever.

‘You were in my room,’ he said. ‘I saw you in the window.’

‘I was looking for you. It’s nearly time to go.’

After moving food around his plate for a while, Caleb pulled a hair straightener through his fringe until it hung flat over his kohl-lined eyes. He was increasingly like one of the anime characters from his bedroom wall – black-haired, white-faced boys, and girls with long hair the shades of feathers. Wide-eyed and startled, they gazed in disbelief at his mess.

‘Do you think we’re ready?’ I asked him, my beautiful, strange child. ‘I’ve checked the water pump.’

‘And blocked the drains? Jack said that was the most important thing.’ Caleb looked thoughtful, trying to remember the rest of the advice he’d received. He always took Jack Laskin seriously.

‘Tennis balls. Yesterday.’

Every water-safe vessel in the house, even Caleb’s old blue plastic baby bath, was full of water. My hose was attached to a tap at the side of the house, with an extra one on standby.

‘Fire won’t come here. It won’t reach our house,’ Caleb said.

‘You’re very sure.’

He began to smile, but when the expression reached his new piercings, pain washed over him. Dots of blood appeared around the hardware. Speaking, he slurred. ‘Remember three years ago?’

‘Yep.’ He’d been fifteen. We’d just moved here the last time bushfire came near. I’d discussed preparations with Grade 6 at the school where I taught, brainstorming the importance of fire, of humans first domesticating flame, of the Aboriginal use of fire to hunt, for agriculture, for bush regeneration.

‘Fire didn’t reach us then.’ Caleb looked out at our neighbour’s house, and dropped the straightener, then sprang after it, perhaps more anxious about seeing Rosie than he would admit. ‘We should check on Sean and Rosie.’

Maybe he was sick of me staring at his injured lip.

2

CARDEA | Goddess of Change and Hinges

Protector of the house. Her influence could prevent danger from entering the home, and she could open things that seemed permanently closed. Cardea was often portrayed in the act of walking through a door.

Rosie Henderson and her son Sean lived next door. Brown ivy clung to their brick walls and to the gate from which Sean used to swing, before the accident. Her lawn was a shaggy brown mess. Asphodels, yellow-white onion weed flowers that would soon infest the creek bed, had already taken over, seeded themselves and died. Caleb was responsible for mowing the lawn and he’d missed random clumps like random patches on his chin when shaving.