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doesn’t feel he needs to hide—brazen as a
bloody Master. I move and he’ll find me. He’s too far to the left.
    RUN RUN RUN.
    But I stay still.
    Something motors down the river. Mayor Aldridge’s tinnie, I want to call out to him,
but by the time he comes my throat’ll be sliced into a second smile. No one ever
expects to die. Death is death, and I’m in no hurry for it.
    The Hunter curses. I hear him back away.
    And still I don’t move.
    I wait. I wait.
    And the hours pass.
    Slow. They pass so slow, and the reeds move around me, as a wind picks up from the
west with the dust from the west, and I can smell the river and the riverbank, and
the slow passage of time, which Dain says is just an illusion, that if I saw it as
he saw it I would know it was just an illusion.
    Catfish nibbles and I let it and don’t jump. I don’t hardly breathe.
    I wait till the Sun’s past setting, and then I move.
    Slow. Almost as silent as breath. I get to the bank. Take a step onto firm dry land,
and another. And the machete slides under my chin.

CHAPTER
7
    ‘NOT A WORD, not a squeak,’ comes the voice in my ear. Grog breath washing over me.
    I nod, feel that blade cut my skin, just a touch. My heart’s beating so fast, blood
pumping so hard I’m surprised I don’t pop.
    ‘Drop your knife,’ he says. And I drop it.
    ‘Now you’re coming along with me. Slow. There’s a boat ten minutes down the river.
You’ll walk with me.’
    ‘There’s no boat,’ I say.
    The machete presses tighter, I can feel its longing, the yearning to sink into flesh,
to cut and carve its frustrations into me. I turn my gaze a little. He has a tattoo
on his wrist, a spiral. A mark I’ve not seen before. It catches my eye and holds
it.
    The machete shivers.
    ‘Walk.’
    And that’s what I do.
    ‘Eight years in the wilderness. Time I got an apprentice,’ the Hunter says. A rush
of words after the hours of silence. ‘Eight years of solitary mindfulness. You’ll
sign my papers and then I’ll have you, even them night things respect those papers.
Nice, eh? Monster’s child groomed to kill the dark and the hungry things.’
    I’m not signing anything. I don’t care what he says, I can feel the death in him.
    Ten minutes? Twenty more like. Along the river, neither fast nor slow. Just how he
wants me to go. Once I hear a dog barking that I reckon might be Petri over at Paul
Certain’s farm. Certain would be good in this kind of trouble, that’s a man who’s
known it. But there’s a hard mile between here and there.
    The Hunter freezes up, stands there still a moment, that machete getting closer to
my veins. But there’s no more barking, and we’re walking again. And he’s mumbling
about monsters.
    Storm birds call, and it’s the kind of sound that makes you ache. Always calling.
Always storms coming, and falling away. Earliest sound I remember. Might be my last,
too.
    At this rate we’ll be walking until after the Night Train pauses on its way to the
city in the west, drops off the ice and fuel and picks up the produce. The odd head
of cattle, grain, honey and ash. Mr Stevens waiting at the signal tower watching
the east, waiting for it to arrive. Of course I’ll be dead by then, bled white and
gutted. Nothing happens in Midfield. Nothing of consequence. Not really, we’re just
the bit between here and there, between the city and the sea. My death won’t mean
much. Won’t trouble the city folk, won’t bring on much of a tear. Maybe Anne’ll miss
me. Maybe not.
    I snuffle a bit at the thought.
    ‘Stop yer cryin’,’ the Hunter says.
    Can’t even wipe my nose.
    Sometime along, we startle a few deer. It’s late in the season for them to be so
close to the river, maybe the gunshots have driven them here. They crash into the
undergrowth and leave us both panting. We stop for a second or two, before the Hunter’s
pushing me hard in the back, driving me on. A little from the river, ’cause the land
grows thick around, but we curve