The Raven's Nest

By Nisaba Merrieweather

As Australia is terrorised by the Kidney Killer, Esther visits her murderer and writes down the life of a dead man, from being kidnapped as a child to dying horribly half a century later. This book is a deep look into loneliness, memory, ghosts, mental health, and the alienation of older women in modern society. And crime. People get to die.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Jul 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9780228890263

Nisaba Merrieweather

Nisaba Merrieweather was born in 1960 and is not yet dead. She started writing at eight but quietly got rid of everything written last century. She writes philosophy, fiction and mysticism, and has won or placed in a large number of online poetry competitions. She has been an active member of the Outback Writers' Centre since 2021.

Book preview

- 1 -

Esther shivered and drove a little faster. She was running late, and her murderer would be impatient. Nobody likes to keep their murderer waiting. The road unfurled before her, a grey ribbon looping between low, eroded hills, rusted barbed-wire fencing and the occasional merino. She had come to know this stretch of road extremely well. She couldn’t imagine any future in which she didn’t drive it many, many times.

Not a fan of air conditioning, she had both the windows open, but even with tyre-noise, it suddenly seemed too quiet. She hit the button and suddenly Robert Plant was in the car with her, screaming at the top of his lungs, as Jimmy Page’s double-headed axe cut through her thoughts. They were nothing like Jethro Tull but they were some of her Rock Gods anyway, and kept her company as the kilometres clicked away beneath her.

Jesus, you’re old, she suddenly thought ruefully, and they were old when you were young.

She slowed when she saw the signage, and set the cruise control to exactly one kilometre more than the speed limit. Old, perhaps, but mischievous.

The big iron gates were still big iron gates. She punched the code to the staff carpark, now memorised, into the keypad, and they groaned as they pulled back for her. She didn’t know why she bothered using the favour and the spot they had given her – she still had to walk through a maze until she reached the normal visiting reception, like the friends and families of the rest of them. She pulled in, killed the music, killed the engine. Locked the car, buzzed the staff entrance. The door opened. She stepped into the corridor, then stopped. The guard who met her looked slightly familiar, and smiled at her.

Here to visit Gandalf?

Yep.

She emptied her pockets into the tray and stepped through the metal detector. At his nod she picked up most of her stuff and shoved it into the locker.

What is that? the guard asked.

Home-made cheese.

He gave her a look that said she should have known better. He made it disappear.

Oh well, she said, enjoy it later. Has he been waiting long?

Not long but he’s a bit twitchy.

Oh, no. She should have started speeding earlier. Another walk, two more locked doors, and she was in the visiting hall. Tables scattered here and there, some with prisoners, some with visitors, some with both. She looked for the beard with the grey stripe, and sat down opposite him. There was a silence.

How are you, orright?

Yeah. You okay?

Not bad. Shit happens.

Talk to me about this week‘s shit," she said. There was another silence.

Wanna see my new tatt? he asked.

Sure, she said cheerfully, not wanting to see it. He twisted around, pulled his singlet free of his shoulder, and showed her: a badly-drawn sunflower on the back of his shoulder, but in the centre where there should have been seeds there was an open mouth with black lipstick and blood dripping from the vampire-fangs.

Very nice, she conceded, very nice indeed. Does that mean anything? He had been teaching her the language of jailhouse tattoos.

Not in here it doesn’t. It does to me, but.

He stretched back expansively. Last time you came you were asking about what happened after the fucker died. What do you want to know, this time?

Well, he was with you for seven hours before it happened, the cops know that from the towers that your phones were pinging off. And you spent all of that time in or near your flat. The neighbours didn’t hear any fighting till right at the end. So you must have talked, and even been friendly, even if you were just pretending. What do you remember talking about?

Well, he turned up early, around noon, so I sent him for some bread. The fucking idiot got wholegrain, but I was hungry and the baked beans were already boiling. Then we had breakfast.

There was a silence. He had to be the one to talk. So she asked: How do you like them? Chilli powder? Pepper and salt? Grated cheese? As is?

He grinned at her. Not like a murderer, like a mischievous little boy. Food of the gods, mate, food of the gods. Why mess with something that’s already perfect?

He took a couple of long breaths. Then we talked about his sister’s boyfriend. The guy’s a headmaster. Can you believe that – a headmaster! And wears jeans with poncy shoes and shirts. Who does that? He wouldn’t last two minutes here. We talked about him for a bit: where he hangs out, what he drives, why his sister hates him.

She tried not to lean forward too eagerly. Why does she hate him?

He looked smug. Can’t tell you that. That’s a story for another time. Talking of time, I’ve had enough. Where’s the cheese you promised?

Wasn’t allowed to bring it in.

He sighed and stood up. Her usefulness to him was over for another day.

She barely noticed leaving the visitors’ hall and going outside. She had the next stage – and it was the day itself! They had had breakfast. Baked beans on wholemeal toast. Gandalf was probably a bit angry even then, because the toast wasn‘t white bread. And the victim had a sister, who hated her partner. Gold! It had taken months.

She drove home elated, with the Rolling Stones hanging out of her car windows, all bare chests and flailing instruments. And the little red rooster was off the hook.

- 2 -

It rained overnight, and the ground was nice and soft, perfect for an extremely unfit person to dig. The beauty of retirement, she thought, and the beauty of being widowed, child-free and having sold in one town and bought in another, was that you could reinvent yourself completely. And so she had: she had reinvented herself into a gardener, and all her new neighbours assumed she had always grown borders full of flowers and planted trees. An odd-shaped couple of hectares was no farm, but was large enough to plant what she wanted, when she wanted, and keep the nearest neighbours at a bit of a distance.

Today it was young carob trees. A decade earlier she had discovered the rapture of picking up fallen carob pods from the ground and chewing the pods, and had wanted a tree of her own ever since. But because they were dioecious, buying one was worthless, and because plants that were small enough to handle hadn’t flowered or fruited yet, buying only two was also likely to result in no pods. So she had ordered five, on the basis that at least one was going to be a different gender to the other four.

She was planting them near a fenceline: she envisaged an ever-growing collection of fruit trees along her boundary, eventually becoming a marker, an avenue, a distraction to and shield from the eyes of passing drivers. The citrus that had already gone in were a little over a metre tall, the carob saplings half that, and slower-growing. It would take years, but she had the rest of her life.

The rain was evaporating out of the soil so the air was heavy and sticky, and as she jabbed the spade in and piled up dirt nearby she sweated freely. The five little trees looked on inscrutably. As she worked on the second hole, a bird came crashing to earth. It fell suddenly and from nowhere, startling her. It was a raven, its throat-ruff full and healthy-looking, its gleaming black feathers still iridescent in the weak morning sun, its eyes as blue as they were before it died.

She didn’t suppose many birds died in flight. It hadn’t been feeling sick, then. It must have been feeling fine right up until, racing through the air, a sudden brain haemorrhage or heart attack hit it. She hoped it was dead before the ground slammed into it. She picked it up tenderly. Nope, no muscle tone at all. It flopped and gave in to gravity and her movements entirely. Not a twitch, not a sense of firmness in its body anywhere. It was, however, beautifully warm. And heavy! It was a large bird, it must have been well over a kilo.

She put it down gently and went back to the house. A few minutes later she was back with something a fraction the size of the raven wrapped in an old tee-shirt. She dug the second hole quite a bit deeper, placed the wrapped object in the bottom of the hole, then laid the raven’s body over it. Dead animals – and people, too – are good for the garden, she reflected. The proteins they are made of break down into nitrogen as they decompose, and their bones are full of calcium. Terribly good for the soil.

Who was it, she thought, trying to remember. Was it the Incas or the Aztecs who buried a fish at the highest point of their corn- and bean-fields as an offering to the gods to ensure fertility? And when they observed everything around it growing better than the rest of the field, they must have known their magic had worked. Well, the raven was beyond help before it ever fell out of the sky, but she could make it useful in death.

As the morning grew hotter and more humid, she kept digging. She did not plan to stop moving until the five trees were in the ground.

When she finished she was aching and sticky. She thought, once again, how much she hated gardening. She put the spade, with soil still clinging to the blade, back in the ancient shed and glanced around. This must have been the original house, once. Not much bigger than a garage, it had two doors, one small window and a huge fireplace at one end. The walls around and above the fireplace were sooty, and the chimney rose like a silent brick sentry, looking out over the main house. She could imagine a woman trying to cook in a pot resting on a slab of stone, perhaps, in the centre of the fireplace, some of the smoke escaping the chimney and adding to the oppressive summer heat. She tried to imagine raising children without electricity or running water, and with only an outdoor pit as a toilet. Thousands of women had done it. It must have been hell.

One of the reasons she hated gardening was that even if you wore gardening gloves, even if you were only using a spade and not touching the ground at all, your hands ended up with soil on them. Gardening-dirt was different to dirt-dirt. Gardening-dirt couldn’t be brushed off, as dirt-dirt often could. It couldn’t even be washed off properly. Gardening-dirt got right into your pores, lodged itself deeply between the sworls of your fingerprints, wedged itself firmly under your fingernails, ingrained itself into your flesh like a tattoo and almost as permanent as one. And it dried your skin out like nothing else she’d ever encountered.

She stood at the bathroom sink in the main house, scrubbing with a brush designed for household cleaning, and the good tea-tree soap. She took a retired toothbrush to her nails. Then scrubbed again. Then the toothbrush again. Still grimy. She found a stout but small knife that Tim had used for carving wood when he was alive. She had none of his carvings left, not even the mallee-root skull-themed walking stick, but she had the knife, and had all the memories that centred around it. She unfolded it, and inserted the vicious-looking tip of the blade under her nails, dragging so as to pull the dirt out without slicing herself up.

She could feel him grinning as he watched her.

By the time she felt clean enough – which was very far from clean – her skin was parched with that gardening-dryness. She put a few drops of avocado oil on her hand, and worked it in thoroughly for a few minutes. Nothing else worked. She was greasy when her phone rang and June’s name came up.

Hi, mate, June said. I got a day off. Want to have lunch?

Yeah, why not. Sushi?

Twenty minutes later she was in town, sitting in the sushi bar. June bounced in. As usual, Esther waited until June acknowledged her. Young, pert, vivacious, well-dressed, smelling of pretty perfume … everything she hated in a woman. And yet Esther was deeply fond of the youngster. They chose sushi rolls, seaweed salad, grilled eel, a pot of tea.

So what’s been happening, Esther asked, and how’s Gary?

Gary’s an idiot. He’s using me. He probably planned it all those years ago, right from the start. Work just long enough to make me think he’s doing his bit, then lose his job and live off my money.

Esther raised an eyebrow. Oh yes, went on June bitterly. He’s got a fine life. Applies for a job every so often so that I think he’s trying, then just kicks back and does nothing. Bloody hell, isn’t that why you marry an older man? So that they have the work and the money and the house thing all sorted out? Sometimes I feel like shiving that guy! Out of her innocent young mouth, a mouth that had never spoken to a murderer, it sounded incongruous.

Esther kept her face completely expressionless. After a moment she said: A raven fell out of the sky at my place this morning.

You’re shitting me!

Not at all, no.

What happened?

Like I said, it fell out of the sky. I think it must have had a heart attack while it was flying. Landed right at my feet – I was out in the garden. It died in my hands.

What did you do?

Buried it, of course! Well, what else do you do? Suddenly both women were laughing.

Later, they were walking down the main street. Esther liked old second-hand shops filled with junk that might occasionally yield an unexpected treasure, whilst June liked shops with elegant dresses, expensive shoes, handbags that had never been used. Both of them valued the friendship: in Esther’s shops June was polite, in June’s shops Esther was polite.

June sat down to try a gold stiletto on her long, narrow foot. She looked up, a thought occurring to her. Have you seen your murderer recently?

Yeah, just yesterday.

How was he?

He talked a little, but not enough.

Have you got enough to write yet?

Not nearly enough. He’s clever, he’s playing with me. He hints at things he doesn’t tell me about so that I’ll come back.

June put the shoe back in the box. You know I think you’re wasting your time. It’s been ages. I’ll kill myself if I try and dance in those. You’ll never get a book out of him. What I really need is another pair of black court shoes for work.

What you really need is a new pair of ice skates. You own more shoes now than I’ve owned over the whole of my life. Get ice skates again, and start working on building up your ice addiction.

June laughed dutifully at the old joke. We need to get out of here, Ess. The checkout chick probably only heard the words murderer and ice addiction. She raised her voice and leaned slightly towards the counter. Murderer and ice addiction.

Esther grabbed her by the upper arm and steered her out onto the footpath. Bloody hell, June, I’m new in town! They might believe you!

When Esther got home it was raining again. Just gently, not drumming on the roof as it had overnight. It was always good to listen to June’s chatter, but it was even better to get back to the silence of her own home. Tim touched her lightly on the back.

You never play music at home, he complained.

You’re dead, remember, she countered tartly. He faded into the background. She flicked on the kettle and dropped a teabag in her cup. She could still feel Tim in the silence. As the water heated, she relented. She had always kept his CDs separate from hers. Rodriguez, she thought, and sure enough, Cold Fact was one of the first CDs she came to. Turned it on, went to make her tea.

Sugar man, won’t you hurry, ‘cause I’m tired of these scenes. For a blue coin, won’t you bring back all these colours to my dreams?

All the blue coins in the world aren’t going to bring you back, Tim, she thought. Bloody hell, you should have made a will as soon as you knew you were terminal. And looked after yourself better. Maybe seen a doctor occasionally. Even eaten some decent food once in a while, not just fried eggs and McDonalds. If I was happy to wake up to your medical emergencies in the middle of the night, I would have been more than happy to feed you decent food. But no, you just let yourself die, didn’t you.

"Sugar man, met a false friend (you were a true friend, Tim) on a lonely, dusty road. Lost my heart, when I found it, it had turned to dead black coal."

Dead black coal. She switched off the music abruptly, the silence loud in her ears. She stomped to her library, opened the laptop, then a document, and stared blankly at the screen. She wasn’t going to be able to write today. She gulped down her tea like water, scalding her mouth and throat.

Well, perhaps if she couldn‘t write, she could edit. She had plenty of unfinished projects to work on. The problem was, once she had done the research, and gone on to have a fair idea of the structure of a work, it would start to feel complete in her mind, and she’d never get around to finishing it off properly. But she no longer had an infinite supply of decades stretching out in front of her. Merely years. It was time she knuckled down and did some of the real work.

She looked at the document and started re-reading.

A few hours later, she realised she was straining to read an over-bright screen in a dark room. Once you hit forty, time really started rattling away from you. She tried to stand, and found herself stiff. She moved slowly, stretched carefully. Not only dark, the house was getting cold. She limped, turning on a couple of lights and flicking the kettle. The house felt relieved – it wanted and needed her attention and appreciation. There you go, she thought to it. See? I hadn’t forgotten you, and I still love you. She felt loved back.

She turned on the TV: 7.30 was on. Her head was still muzzy from reading and writing – she couldn’t focus on politics and outrage. She turned the TV over to Spicks and Specks. Immediately, Tim was sitting on the lounge next to her, grinning.

Managed to get any real work done?

Not really. Too much on my mind. And it’s a difficult subject.

I thought you’d be pleased to write the ghosts out of your head.

It’s painful, she said. A gale of laughter came out of the television and flooded the room.

Childhood always is, he replied. Tell you what, why not write some of mine? Less painful for you, and interesting. Oooh, Look What They’ve Done to my Song, Ma! My favourite segment. Shut up, woman, and watch!

- 3 -

The next time she went to see Gandalf she was late again. Flustered, she had fled the house as soon as she realised the time, then got caught up in roadworks. Once she was free she floored it, and made good time. By the time she checked in, she was only twenty minutes late.

He greeted her with blazing eyes. What the hell? Who’s doing who a favour? And you can’t even be bothered being on time?

She wasn’t afraid of him, she noticed with interest. Instead, she felt shamed. She hadn’t felt this degree of shame since she was fourteen, and The Thing had happened. I’m sorry, she said as she slipped into the chair. Internally, she stomped down hard on the memory, refusing to let it come to her notice.

Sorry! Will that give me back my precious time?

This was probably not the moment to mention that he had prevented his victim from ever having any time, precious or not, again, and that in fact, deals or not within the prison population, he currently had plenty of time. She had always been able to see a dangerous snake coiled up within him, slumbering. Now it was wide awake, making eye contact with her, and hissing. At any moment it might lunge forward from one of his eye sockets, to sink its venomous fangs into her face.

She waited. He stretched and slowed. Then he met her eyes again, but differently. With what? Concealed humour? All right then, we’ll talk. But first, you have to answer me a question. Truthfully.

He could ask anything. Esther was full of dread. But what could he do? Follow her home and put a brick through her window? Okay, she said.

He nodded towards her hand. That’s a wedding and engagement ring. Talk.

Confused she looked at him.

I don’t want your whole life story. Just the interesting bit.

He died slowly and painfully. I’m just getting used to living alone. It wasn’t a lie. Tim did die slowly and painfully. He had nothing to do with the rings.

Gonna remarry?

I don’t think so. Most humans are too much trouble. Are you married? Single?

Single. Can’t cheat, can’t let the good ones get away.

She smiled. Well, that’s very practical. Now can I ask …

He scowled. No. You didn’t tell me enough about the interesting bit. You don’t look like the sort to be married to a scumbucket who would get themselves tortured to death. So he died of cancer? Or how?

Hepatitis C. She paused. There’re new treatments now, but they didn’t work on him, and it turns out that he had a resistant strain that can’t be treated. She paused again. The silence was a vortex, sucking the words out of her. Honestly, I don’t know what you want to know about it.

How d’he get it? Dirty needles?

She didn’t look like the sort to be married to a scumbucket who would get themselves tortured to death, but she looked like the sort to be married to an addict? Probably. Probably said nothing. It wasn’t really a lie, was it?

How long?

Got it as a teenager, it took thirty-five years to kill him.

Died at home or in hospital?

She winced. Should she tell him the story about how she rushed him to hospital, they intubated him to try and control the haemorrhage, and he died in a coma four days later? Or should she tell him the story where he said no, he’d been to hospital too much, he just wanted to bleed out at home holding her hand? It seemed to be crucial to be honest with him, but both versions were real. Both happened.

I’m terribly thirsty, she said. Do you want a vending machine coffee?"

Yeah, why not. She got up and went to the machine, coming back with two white plastic cups of some unutterably foul liquid.

Let’s try that again, she chirped as she returned from the vending machine. Hi, Gandalf. How are you? How was your week?

He accepted the coffee. Same-same. How was your week?

It was an old-lady-week. I watered the flowers and made scones for my neighbours.

So same-same, then?

Pretty much. They smiled at each other for the first time. So do you want to tell me anything in exchange for that revelation?

Ask me something.

All right. Do you … regret anything?

Fuck no, he bellowed. A girl a couple of tables away looked over briefly, then turned away. He lowered his voice. At least, not about offing him. But I should have been clever about it.

How so?

Lady, everyone I’ve known all my life has had a criminal record as long as your arm. Me, I never did. I’m about a hundred times as smart as anyone I ever met – well, probably only twenty times as smart as you – and it’s only dumb people that get caught. People that make stupid mistakes. Because they are stupid. Or didn’t take the trouble to think.

You got caught, she pointed out quietly.

Yeah, because I didn’t think. I let myself be ruled by emotion just that one time. Just one time, I acted without thinking first. Just one time. And because of that, there was DNA everywhere, instead of nowhere, if I’d been clever. And getting rid of the deadshit’s body got my car clocked on camera, because I was still wound up and I still wasn’t thinking. So yeah. I regret something. I regret not acting as smart as I really am. I regret not holding back that day, and planning it properly. He slapped the table. Wanna know something?

Sure.

You know that brown iodine stuff for injuries, Betadine or whatever it’s called?

Yeah?

Fun fact: if you splash it around your house, tables and walls and things, then wash all of it off, then wash it again, then use that blue forensic stuff on it, it flashes up just like blood.

No! She was genuinely astonished.

Oh, yes. You can buy that online. Try it. You can write it off as research for your book. And when you’ve tried it, leave it a couple of weeks and try again. It’ll still flash up like blood.

She always had Betadine in the house. As she got into the car to drive home, she made a decision to try that out, one day.

- 4 -

As the past grew longer, the future shorter, and most of the constraints of a working life had been lifted from her, Esther started breaking from a lifelong sleep routine of rising before dawn and falling into bed reasonable early. Tim seduced her into the late night lifestyle by turning on the TV at ten at night, to watch late night science fiction, which meant that early mornings became harder and harder, and as she slept late, early evenings became harder and harder, too.

Since she retired, the late night lifestyle ironically became harder to maintain, while early mornings were still out of the question. She developed a routine of pottering around in the mornings. That could be computer games, or, since moving, working in her garden. Morning showers were getting later and later, and the day didn’t officially start for her until after the shower. Sometimes she’d nap for a couple of hours in the afternoon, and mostly she would be sunk in her favourite chair in the evening, too close to the TV for hours. Dozing off in it would be her cue to stagger off to bed … then the act of going to the bedroom and undressing would wake her up again. And some nights, she’d eschew everything, and be in bed not long after sunset, sleep for eleven or twelve hours, and still need to nap the following day.

Most of her career had been horrible. But it had at least supplied money and regulated her sleep-patterns. And when Tim was around and she was only working part-time, he did the regulating: she needed to be awake before he rose in case of any medical emergencies, so that gave her days some pattern. When he finally died, the burden of care was lifted off her, but the loss of a sparking mind was a huge thing to bear. And worse, there was no longer a regulation at all of her hours: no work, no Tim.

His shade had suggested she write about his past, as she had said writing about her own was too painful. He had told her so many stories, but she’d let time elapse, and had forgotten most of them. She went out to her frog-pond. Tim would have loved it. It was deliberately modelled on the word-picture he painted of a meditation he’d had at Samhain one year towards the end of his life, where he went and visited his late mother in the Otherworld, and found her sitting beside a natural, bubbling Beer Spring which tasted, as he said, better than Coopers.

The frog pond didn’t run with beer, it ran with water. A couple of centimetres would evaporate every day from the surface, so every few days she’d top it up with the hose from the rainwater tank when she was gardening. Tim never lived to see this house or the frog pond, but she had deliberately filled both of them with things that were to his taste. And hers. Her taste changed wildly after she met him.

The urge was getting stronger. Yes, she would write some of his stories. What was the worst that could happen? If they came out dreadfully, she could easily delete them. She had forgotten so much, anything she could record might be worth saving.

For whom, though? He had no living relatives. It was the nature of the start of his life, that he was alone (aside from her) at the end of it. Just a lonely, wandering sack of DNA that didn’t share any part of its personal code with anyone. Yes, she would. She went inside and made some tea, then went into the library.

Timeus Aesop was born in a small town outside Vancouver, the fourth of six children to two alcoholic parents. There were endless noisy fights, regular visits of police under siren at least two or three times a week, and about a fortnightly visit of an ambulance. The fifth and sixth child, a pair of female twins, were taken away from the family in hospital an hour after the second one was born. It would be easier that way, the authorities told the angry and weeping woman. Little Timmy didn’t care. He was eighteen months old, and a neighbour was keeping an eye on him and his older siblings, making sure they were bathed and fed as their father drank in the living room.

Little Timmy thus got to keep his status as the beloved baby of the family. His mother adored him … and drank. His father acknowledged him … and drank. His mother and his father fought. One day his big sister got between them, and instead of the parents suddenly realising and pulling back, a punch was swung that connected with her instead of with the other parent, and she was rushed to hospital with a brain injury that would trouble her until she died in her forties. Each parent claimed it was the other who had hit her.

Tim would always remember the climate of constant fights, but that was the only fight he really remembered. After that, his father left the house. Tim’s older brothers went to school daily, and on the weekends went down the road to visit their friends and be fed by their mothers. Tim’s sister, brain-damaged, stayed at home and got fat and had tantrums. Tim’s mother kept drinking and screaming. Tim spent a lot of time in the backyard, talking to trees and the one shiny white rock.

Once a month or so, Tim’s father would visit. The older boys remembered what he was like more clearly, and didn’t want to go with him, but Timmy didn’t really remember too clearly, so he was happy to go with his father. They’d go to parks and climb trees and eat ice creams. Sometimes they’d go to the boat-building company where the father worked, and look at boats he was working on. The last few times, it was an impressive boat, a fifty-foot ketch suspended in the air in a huge shed. One day this boat will be ours, said his father once. To the little boy, it looked like a giant ocean liner, and made him feel deliciously small.

Timmy enjoyed these visits with his father. He enjoyed the camaraderie, he enjoyed being alone with someone who loved him, he enjoyed being scooped up and carried as if he weighed no more than a feather when his legs were tired, he even enjoyed the roughness of the stubble on his father’s face and the chemical smell of metabolised alcohol with every exhale. It was the same smell his mother’s breath had – but while his mother stank, his father had an aroma.

One day when they were walking along the river with ice creams, his father said he would have the boat soon, and would he like to go for a sail to a place called Australia? Timmy was five and not even in school yet, and had no idea. He thought Australia was just a town further down the river, and the sail would happen on one of his one-day visits with his father. He agreed, happily.

She couldn’t write any more that day. She remembered the pain and loss on his face when he was alive, telling her that story. She saved the document and went to cook herself a piece of fish.

- 5 -

It was a fortnight before she could get back to the prison. La Niña was back in town, and her property was low-lying, making her as concerned about river levels as everyone else in town, so she was staying at home and fussing a lot about the garden, when she wasn’t sitting on the covered