“Then how can you ask it to change colour? Who are you talking to?”

“The great dream of the world—that’s how my granddad put it. Everything is connected, so when you ask the whole of it all for a favour—with the right words, and the right amount of respect—oftentimes, it will do as you ask. So your clothes changed colour, while the clothing itself was made from root and leaf and briar, convinced to take another shape.”

“Is that how the blind man caught you?” Lizzie asked. “You said he used a binding word.”

Timony gave a glum nod. “The great dream of the world grants favours through its grace, but if you know the true name of a thing, and if you have power and the will to use it, you need ask no one. You simply take and do.”

“So, even though you don’t know him, the blind man must know you.” Then she had another thought. “You told me your name.”

“I told you my speaking name—it’s not the same.”

“Oh.”

She was vaguely disappointed in that. But then it made perfect sense. Why should he trust her? They’d only just met and hadn’t some other stranger gone and nailed him to a tree with wooden spikes?

“I should have remembered,” she said. “Somebody else told me about the whole business with names.”

“But it’s a cold soul who uses such advantages against another,” Timony told her.

As though responding to a cue, they heard a sudden hubbub of voices from the direction of the glade.

Oh god, Lizzie thought. The bogans were finally back. She looked around for where she’d dropped the knife.

Timony dropped to his hands and knees.

“Quick!” he whispered. “Stand above me.”

“What?”

“If you want to live, you’ll do as I say. Now, without question.”

Lizzie hesitated only a moment longer before doing what he’d told her. She swung a leg over so that she was straddling the crouching doonie, then gasped as he changed under her, transforming into a small brown pony that was still large enough to lift her feet from the ground. She grabbed onto his mane to keep her balance.

Hold tight, a voice said inside her head.

“But . . .”

Too late. Before she could register the shock of his changing shape, of his voice inside her head, the pony that had been Timony dashed toward the wall of thorns and briars. Lizzie stared wide-eyed, wanting to jump off, too scared to let go. She heard a cry from behind them, then everything went grey, the forest dropped away, and they were somewhere else. A place of thick mists, filled with the salty smell of the sea.

Crap, she thought. I forgot the knife.

Bogan Boys