Trading Rosemary Read Online Free PDF

dizzy.
The monster in the tent got him, and the trees are covering his bones and waving their arms, pointing with mottled mossy fingers and a distant, woody curiosity.
What is that
, they say, the small white trunks all scattered across out dirt.
What is that?
    “And you,” said Rosemary to the oldest brother, who was standing quietly behind the others, leaning against a window. “What can I do for you?”
    “I went camping once,” he said meditatively. “Those two weren’t interested in the real stuff. They wanted me to go and bring back memories for them.”
    “Last time I’m doing
that,
” said the youngest. “Hay fever and insect bites and blisters. He burned his fingers failing to light a fire, and came back halfway through with an absolutely
brilliant
sunburn.”
    “You should have seen him trying to fix his dinner,” said the middle brother. “It was positively embarrassing to witness.”
    “It wasn’t like I thought it’d be,” the oldest brother admitted. “I was hoping for more communion with nature, less being attacked by it.”
    “In that case, I think I can help,” said Rosemary.
    The Port’s Water Race that channeled through the Longwood Ranges was ridiculously overgrown, and Rosemary cursed it both under her breath and at the top of her lungs. At least for most of the track, the way forward was clear. The race, constructed centuries past for diggers to get sluicing water for the local gold mines, was a large ditch burrowed out of solid rock and, even if clogged in places, the overall direction was obvious.
    Unfortunately, Rosemary had come to a point where the blockage was so complete her sense of direction became compromised. There appeared to be a fork in the track, with two possible directions. One way was well trampled, as if other walkers had gone before. The other, across a river and up a steep bank, had a rag-hung tree that usually signified the correct path but no actual evidence of any such route.
    “Just make sure you stick to the track,” a local pub owner had told Rosemary the night before. “Some of those old mines are naught but deep holes in the ground, and all covered up by now with ferns. You fall into one, nobody will ever find you. That’s if you don’t break your neck on the way down.”
    Uncertain, Rosemary took the former option, on the grounds that if she was wrong, the apparent path meant that other people had been wrong first, and that was always comforting. An hour later, as night was approaching, she was forced to realize that being wrong in company was still being wrong. There was no proof of the channel, and no sign of the conservation hut she had planned to spend the night in.
    Unwilling to wander in darkness through the deep-dimpled landscape, Rosemary found a fallen tree and built a lean-to against it, cutting fern to weave the shelter from and for bedding. She was not afraid. There was no wildlife that could hurt her, and the weather was mild, with stars pouring over the trees in spider waves. Morepork owls cried in the night, and Rosemary could hear them hunting, hear the small rustles in leaf litter, the damp, clean smelling litter of beech leaves and black humus.
    The next day she was able to navigate her way to the promised hut, through mud that came over her boot tops and sucked at her socks. Beside the hut was a small ancient dam. Trees surrounded its pond; podocarp beeches and silver birches, their branches bent to the water and doubled back in perfect reflection.
    It was the quietest, most beautiful place Rosemary had ever seen. She stayed for two days, seeing no one but birds, the glimmer of fish, and the occasional quiet deer sipping the water. It was as if she was the last person left in the world, and the woods and the water were such that she did not mind.
    “That,” said the oldest brother in satisfaction, “is perfect. Thank you.”
    “Thank you,” said Rosemary. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
    “Why not stay for lunch?”