Dizziness coursed through her and made the forest twirl. “Stay away from us.” Grace’s voice was tiny. Violet grabbed a fistful of Grace’s skirts and stared at the man. The girl was crouching behind a tree several yards away, the hem of her pinny in her mouth and tears rolling down her cheeks. “Where are you, angel? Violet! Are you hiding?” She scrambled out from beneath the wild creature and the knife hovering above her neck. Or he could press the blade into that milky skin beneath her chin and never have his world invaded again. Its glassy pink eyes caught the last threads of daylight. Knew there wasn’t an axe in the world that could penetrate the bush of the western highlands.ĭalton put the possum down beside her head. Perhaps the woods were shrinking, hacked away by convict axes. No place for a woman in a faded tartan cloak. Soupy fog and rain that thundered down the sides of mountains. This was a place of thick darkness, a straining moon. Rivers carved the cliffs and the earth fell away without warning. Out here, the trees were legs of giants the ferns knitted together like brambles. No one could know he hadn’t died when he was supposed to: eleven years ago in the heart of this wilderness. He knelt, one hand tight around the legs of the possum he’d pulled from the trap, the other gripping the handle of his knife. He saw it then a faint rise and fall of her chest. The first white person he’d seen in almost eleven years. A blood-flecked hand lay beside her chin. Others sprung from her head like piglets’ tails. Her hair was a mess of jagged brown curls that barely reached her shoulders tufty and uneven as though they’d been hacked at with blunt scissors. Long, spidery fingers, veins stark on the backs of her hands. She lay on her back, tangled in a faded tartan cloak. Historian and transportation abolitionist
There one lost the aspect and heart of a man’ ‘Sacred to the genius of torture, Nature concurred with the objects of its separation from the rest of the world to exhibit some notion of a perfect misery. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in line with copyright law.Ĭlick here to join Johanna's reader group and receive a free copy of Goldfields: A Ghost Story
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