Brindabella did not want to tell the Old Wombat about what had happened. She felt she couldn’t bear it if he was sorry for her. She lay down wearily under a paperbark tree and stretched herself out.
‘Oh, nothing special,’ she replied carelessly.
‘You look tired, joey,’ squawked the largest of the galahs, peering down at her as he held himself upside-down on the branch.
‘You’re quite mistaken. I’m not at all tired,’ said Brindabella, flicking her ears. ‘It’s just too sunny around here. I prefer to lie in the shade, that’s all.’
She closed her eyes. She did not feel like talking to anyone.
For the next few days, Brindabella didn’t venture out. She stayed near the burrow and the burnt stump and trailed around after the Old Wombat, listening, watching, trying to get to know the other animals and birds.
But she found it hard to make friends. Brindabella had a manner of snapping her answers to simple questions, and she could not stop reminding the others that she was no ordinary kangaroo.
‘I don’t see things the same way as you do,’ she would say to them. ‘I’ve had a different experience of life, being brought up by humans.’
‘Brindabella thinks she’s so special,’ she heard one of the frill-necked lizards whispering to another. ‘Too good for us!’
Brindabella flicked her ears. Let them say what they liked. She couldn’t help how she was.
‘Ah, Brindabella,’ the Old Wombat said with a sigh as the evening fell and the music of the bush changed in the twilight. Brindabella was pacing up and down, unable to sit still. He shook his head. ‘You certainly are a special case. I wonder what will happen to you?’
‘Really, he’s worse than Billy-Bob,’ thought Brindabella with irritation. But she would not let herself think about Billy-Bob. This was her new life. She would never go back to the house—never!
‘I’m perfectly all right,’ she said. ‘I won’t be here for very long, anyway. Soon I will find my mob and go to live with them.’
‘How will you find them?’ the mother possum asked her curiously. ‘They could be anywhere.’
‘Yes, well,’ said Brindabella. ‘That is so, but you must remember—’
‘I know, I know,’ said the possum with a yawn. ‘You are no ordinary kangaroo.’
Brindabella felt the other animals were laughing at her. Just as she could not bear anyone to feel sorry for her, she could not bear to be laughed at. She took off into a thicket and burrowed herself into the leaves and prickly branches. She preferred to be alone.
‘Pender never laughed at me,’ she thought with a sudden passion. ‘Not once did he laugh at me.’
Pender. She wondered—was he missing her? And Billy-Bob—did he think of her? But these were not things she would allow herself to think about for long. At night, though, sometimes she dreamt about Pender…
Several nights later, Brindabella stood alone next to the burnt stump. The other birds and animals, the Old Wombat included, were asleep or elsewhere, busy with their own concerns. She looked up at the huge navy-blue sky, covered with thousands and thousands of spiky stars. The moon was the thinnest slice of white, like the curved edge of a petal. The wind blew cold and crisp, and there was music in the breeze, rustling and humming. Brindabella raised her delicate nose and breathed it all in.
‘This night is different somehow,’ she thought with wonder. ‘It’s different to all the other nights that I have been alive.’
Inside, she felt her blood swim with a mysterious excitement. What was happening? It was as though everything around her was growing and singing with life. Suddenly she forgot how lonely she was—she felt full and rich. Tonight, she was sure, she would find an adventure!
Without stopping to think, she hopped away into the darkness. Every leaf shone in the moonlight. Her ears twitched back and forth at the hundreds of tiny sounds from the undergrowth. She scrambled up a hill and slid—almost tumbled—down the other side.
She had reached a part of the bush that she knew by instinct she had never been in before. Brindabella bent down, sniffing. She moved forward more slowly. There was a smell that didn’t belong there. It belonged back at the house—something human. What was it?
She stepped to one side and then suddenly—clack! She felt something clamp tightly over the tip of her tail!
‘Ay-ay!’
Brindabella leapt away in shock. There was something attached to her tail! She twisted her head around to look at whatever it was. It was metal—some strange metal contraption had caught hold of the end of Brindabella’s tail, biting her like teeth.
‘No!’
Oh, she was angry. Her beautiful, perfect tail! She shook it hard and jumped up and down, trying to get free. Where had such a horrible thing come from? Fortunately, it had only grasped the very tip of her tail. She kept jumping and hitting the ground with her tail, and in a moment she had shaken it right off, and the contraption clanged away down a stony slope.
Brindabella sat, panting and shocked. She looked over her shoulder at her tail. It didn’t hurt, not really, but the trap had taken just the tip of it.
‘My tail!’ Brindabella was desolate. ‘My lovely tail!’
‘Are you all right?’
Brindabella suddenly realised she wasn’t alone. There was someone else there, watching her in the cloud of night.
‘Who’s there?’ asked Brindabella, sitting up, forgetting about her tail for a moment.
She blinked. There was a thump and the low bushes shook.
Out from the thicket hopped a kangaroo. The kangaroo was young, only about her age from the look of him. His fur was thick and brown-grey in the moonlight and his ears were black. He stopped when he saw Brindabella, then hopped forward a few paces.
‘Hello,’ he said.
She was too surprised to reply. And she felt—why, she felt nervous! Why should she be nervous of a kangaroo?
They waited,
