“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured as if she could hear him. He took off his helmet and tossed it to the ground. “There’s so much you don’t know, but I have to keep you safe. This is the only way. I’m sorry.”
The creature lunged and he leapt into its searing embrace, pouring his Colour into the twisted monster. It screeched in agony as Gordan’s essence drove into its core, shattering the soul that helped its impure body cling to life.
Fire raged around them, engulfing their bodies.
He knew he was only buying her time. Destiny would lead her home. He just hoped he’d taught her enough that she would understand how to find her way.
With his last breath, he sent his love to his daughter…and a prayer for her future.
* * *
I’ll never forget the sound of that knock on the door.
A man and a woman stood on the porch, both wearing navy-blue police uniforms—their vests laden with radios and cameras, and light-blue shirts underneath their bulletproof vests.
“Elspeth Quarrie?” the woman asked, taking off her cap.
I nodded, the scent of burning eucalyptus thick in the air. The air quality had been terrible for the last month, the smoke haze from the fires covering Sydney from top to bottom.
“I’m Sergeant Peters and this is Constable Guthrie. May we come inside?”
Yeah…I’d never forget that day. What I was doing. Who I was waiting for. What I’d been dreaming. The Christmas Day I’d just spent with my dad. Just the two of us.
I’d just graduated university and my whole life was ahead of me. The television was turned onto the news, my mobile phone was open on the government emergency app, and the air conditioning was running at a breezy twenty-two degrees Celsius. I should have been working on my resume, but my mind was elsewhere.
I’d never dealt well with the heat. Neither had my dad, but we lived in one of the hottest and driest climates in our changing world—Australia—and with it came certain dangers. Venomous snakes and spiders were one thing, but the constant threat of drought and fire was a reality no one could escape. Not even the big cities could ignore the looming smoke on the horizon anymore.
Bushfires had been raging across most of the country for months, and my dad was out there, fighting the impossible inferno with the thousands of other career and volunteer firefighters.
As an environmental scientist, Dad’s skills were in high demand during the emergency. He could predict shifts in air currents and weather patterns that were useful on the ground. He could look at the growth in a forest and the curve of the land to know where to best put in containment lines. He coordinated back burning that saved towns from being completely wiped off the map. Knowing where the fire would leap or where the embers would blow was crucial in saving homes and lives.
After the first month, he came home looking like he’d aged a decade. Soot was permanently caked under his fingernails and his eyes were… Well, he looked haunted by the things he’d seen.
Two days later, on Boxing Day, he was packing up his uniform to hit the ground again. He was the only person I had in the entire world. Why did he have to go?
I have the power to help, he told me. And when the Earth and her creatures cry out in pain, we should answer with our whole hearts.
So when the knock came on the front door, I already knew who stood on the other side.
The visitors the family of firefighters dreaded most during the summer.
It was the sound of your entire life being torn out from under your feet.
* * *
That night, I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Things went that way for a couple of weeks, even as flowers began to show up at the house, along with letters from the government and casseroles from the neighbours.
We’d kept to ourselves, but it seemed Dad had been loved by many—no matter how secretive he thought he’d been.
Dad never spoke about my mother or his home in Scotland. He never talked about his family or what his life had been like before we came to Australia. I never knew what happened to my mum or why we’d come here. It was as if our lives had begun the moment he carried me off the plane.
I’d shared everything with him. Not just the adventurous Scottish spirit that ran through our blood, but the things I dreamed about and the future I saw for myself. It was him and I against the world, but I was all grown up now and with age came the unfortunate responsibility of knowledge.
I searched through his things, looking for a birth certificate, a photograph, or a scrap of paper that would tell me where he’d come from or who my mother was. I found nothing—not even a secret diary or a hidden compartment. For all his accolades and achievements, my father was a ghost.
I was a ghost.
I stopped looking for work. I stopped caring. I didn’t know how to go on without him.
So, I walked. At first, I took the train into Sydney and wandered around the markets and the harbour.
I watched people go about their business, wondering where they were going in such a rush. Did they have someone to go home to? Friends? Family? Kids? None of those things had ever been in my life…at least, not for very long.
I was a terrible friend, always enjoying my own company over that of others. Any friendships I did have fizzled out pretty quickly, and it was the same with boyfriends. Either they were only interested in one thing or I couldn’t connect with them. Life was a mould, but I
