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there?’
    I laughed openly in her face. ‘A man? Mother, ask anyone, ask my Uncle Hector, he will tell you no, that I wave to the boats passing by, then turn and walk the other way.’
    Perhaps she did ask Black Hector, because for a time she left me in peace. Then she started asking again, ‘What takes you to the boats, Maria? It isn’t natural.’
    ‘Walk with me, mother,’ I would say, and one evening she did. But she had become so stout, addicted to butter and to cream mixed in her potatoes, that it proved too much for her and she had to rest a long while before she could return. We sat on the banks of the river as a boat laden with timber passed. The men aboard waved to us. I sat with modest downcast eyes, only raising my hand for a small acknowledgement. ‘Good evening, ma’am, a nice night for a walk,’ they called to my mother, and did not give me second glances.
    We made our way home as the shadows slid towards the edges of the earth. I bade her goodnight, took my candle, and climbed the stairs, a steep sharp incline up to my room under the roof.
    As I had expected, she did not ask to come again, and appeared to accept my nightly ‘taking of the air’, as she called it. She said that I looked well, and sometimes when I sat by the fire she would pause as she passed me and place a reflective hand upon my head. I had a good head of hair in those days, a light gold-brown and very thick. It was something else she was proud of, though she never said so for fear of making me vain.
    Branco liked my hair too. When I speak of shadows on the land I speak also of him. Branco merged with the trees and the fallen logs where the bush had been cleared, he slid in and out of that landscape as if he were one of the wild creatures that inhabited it. At first neither my uncle nor my mother, nor the ferryboat men, nor any of the people whom I met on my rambles were aware of his presence. And because I was able to turn aside each enquiry about my solitary walks, no oneever thought to ask how long it took me from the house to the riverbank, or back again. I understood guile without ever having been taught it. Perhaps Branco and I taught it to each other.
    I don’t know why I went with him. I wanted someone different from all the others, that’s the only thing I can tell you now. My mother believed in bad blood; that is an explanation I cannot accept. I think it went outside of us: the old people were breaking up, the changes had already begun.
    Though not for girls like me. We were expected to stay inside the community.
    I don’t know why it had to be me that broke away. They thought I was crazy. They think, still, that I am a witch too, and that is where the bad blood comes into it.
    But it began simply enough, with a man and a woman in a kind of innocence which turned to power over each other, and knowledge.
    I didn’t know much about men, but I felt I had been waiting to find out for a long time. I was very impatient. I think he was shocked. At first he thought I was mocking him, but as I insisted he grew bolder. He seemed to circle me, touching me as if I was fragile, but to every touch I responded with such vigour that he could do nothing but return my passion. So one thing led to another and it will come as no great surprise to say that I became, before long, what is known as a fallen woman. The nights of prowling around each other came to an end, my desire knew no bounds; I would walk to the riverbank and underneath my skirt I would wear no garments, the quicker to allow him into me when we snatched each other into the shadows. We didn’t say much and made no great noise of passion, for I had not thrown all caution to the winds, if only to protect myself for more meetings with him.
    And yet in a way we exchanged some feeling, something which I still think of as loving words and endearments. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of his face in the evening light, looking at me in a curious kind of way, as if I was a strange