WHEN YOU NEXT open your eyes, you are still in the sandstone quarry, but now you are surrounded by the people who were pursuing you. The man who had the spear is lifting a big rock above your head. He says something in a firm tone. His eyes are grim.
You brace yourself for the rock to land on your head – the final blow that will end your suffering and your life. But the man with the muddy hair reaches out and stops him. They argue.
You manage to look down. Your skirt and petticoat has been ripped away, to reveal an open wound: a fragment of broken bone sticks out of your thigh, blood pulsing out around it. The blood feels warm and sticky. A wave of pain lifts you like a boat. You close your eyes.
YOU OPEN YOUR eyes. You smell roasting chicken, and your stomach rumbles. Maybe there will be some left from the master’s dinner and you’ll share it with Molly.
But all you can see are pink clouds, and then a concerned strange face. You realise there are hands on you: hands pressing your thigh; hands holding you down. You writhe in pain. Hands grip your ankle, and there is a flurry of talking, a very strong pull, and then … relief. Your thigh still hurts, but the agony is gone.
You lift your head a little to see your helpers tying your ankle firmly to a branch splinted down the side of your leg. Your skirt and petticoat have been mostly ripped away. What’s left is red with blood.
The blood is still rising and draining from your thigh, unstoppable as a spring. Someone takes a blood-soaked pad of bark from the wound and presses down a new one, to try to stem the flow. You feel overwhelmed by dizziness. You close your eyes.
YOU ARE HAVING that same dream you’ve had since you arrived here: the woman’s voice singing, in lilting, knotted strands of voice, worn with time. You go to follow the song, then realise it’s right around you. You have found the song. In your dream, you look down at the bracelet in your palm, and it’s whole again.
YOU OPEN YOUR eyes. There are stars above you. You can hear a quiet breeze in the leaves. Someone is pushing warm chicken meat between your lips. As you chew, they also let a little water dribble from their cupped hands into your parched throat.
You try to reach down to your petticoat hem, although your petticoat is not there anymore, of course. You want to hold your bracelet, as you did in the dream. It’s agony to try to move.
A warm, grandmotherly face appears above you. She pats your arms and holds your hand.
‘I have a gift for you,’ you whisper. ‘A bracelet in my petticoat – I want you to have it. Please.’
She strokes your hair gently back from your face and begins to sing the song from your dream. There are tears in her eyes.
Everything blurs, as though the scene were an ink picture with water tipped over it. You feel a creeping coldness, despite the fire, the meat and the song.
‘You tried to save me,’ you whisper. ‘Thank you.’
You don’t know if the old woman understands your words, but both of you understand that life is spilling from you steadily, running out. Broken bones can heal, but too much blood has flowed out of the wound, and there’s not enough left to keep you alive.
All pain falls away, and it’s just you, the old woman, the song and the stars. You close your eyes.
To return to your last choice and try again, go to scene 23.
You duck back into the kitchen. You notice that your hands are trembling slightly.
Molly is looking at the bloody potato and the peeling knife. ‘Did you do yourself an injury?’ she asks.
‘Oh … yes,’ you say absentmindedly. You’d forgotten about your cut.
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost, lass. Surely a little cut’s not upset you that much?’
‘Oh, it’s not that,’ you say. ‘I just saw—’
The words catch in your throat. Molly ploughs on busily, without noticing.
‘The master has invited Mr and Mrs Wright and Mr Jenkins for dinner tonight – important guests apparently. I’ll need you to fetch two chickens and have Joe wring their necks so we can get to plucking them straight away,’ she orders.
You gulp. There were six chickens to begin with. Two will be dead for tonight’s dinner, and another was just spirited away by the curly-haired boy.
Do you need to tell Molly what you just saw? Pretty soon, people will be asking why there are three chickens left, instead of four. Not to mention that the fat hen the boy took was a good egg-layer.
You don’t want to admit to Molly that you witnessed a crime and then let the culprit get away with your best chicken. And there’s more … you remember the boy’s dimples, his young, brown eyes locked on to yours, and you admit to yourself that you don’t want to get him in trouble, either.
You’ll have to make up a story – maybe a tiger took it! You’ve heard of these striped, dog-like beasts that roam Van Diemen’s Land, though you’ve never seen one, and you’re not sure a tiger would steal just one chicken and then disappear without a trace.
You curse yourself. If you lie to protect a native boy, a thief, you’ll wind up in trouble again. It’s better that Molly knows what really happened – she can’t blame you for not tackling a stranger who was armed with a knife. If you tell her truthfully what happened, the missing chicken can’t possibly be blamed on you. You can’t
