The Serpent's Skin Erina Reddan (affordable ebook reader .TXT) 📖

the eye sockets of the lamb with the tip of my finger. I wouldn’t want Mum’s bones to be here, kicked around and left for dead. I was glad she died in a hospital where there was somebody to look after her.

The craw of a crow came long and sharp. I looked up and found her standing bold as bold on the short limb of a stunted tree in a crease in the hill. Not much got a hold on living in this gully, so I reckoned good on the tree for giving it a go. The crow gave another long moan across the valley. Against the greys and pale winter greens there was a slice of orange on the ground under the tree. I stopped breathing. Mum had an apron with oranges on it. I knew it couldn’t be; Mum died in a hospital with all the doctors and nurses, not here, all alone and forgotten, but I was up and running over there before my brain could tell me otherwise. The lamb’s skull, forgotten, bumped away down the hill. The crow took off in a hell of a panic seeing me rushing hard at it.

I could tell, way before I got there, but I kept going anyway because I couldn’t stop, my feet kept running, as if the devil was after me. My chest was burning and heaving, but still I kept going.

At the tree, I collapsed over the torn strip of faded orange ice-cream container and cradled it to my heart as if it really was a piece of Mum. I hiccupped out a strange wailing that sounded like it belonged in this place of old skulls and dry bones, so I let it go and go with nobody to hear but the dead. I wondered if Mum could hear me, and decided she had to because she was an angel now. After a while, the animal in me faded away and I was just crying normal, thinking about Mum and all the good things we did. I was the lucky one who got to sit beside Mum when we shaved the hair off the dead pigs last spring. She gave me one of her aprons, not the oranges one, and I tied it around me good. She had to tie Philly’s for her. I got to the stool beside Mum first and Mum cuffed at Philly for whingeing about it.

That day it was a cold coming-out-of-winter day so I had my gumboots close to the flame under the old bathtub. Mrs Tyler told me to worry about my boots melting, so I dragged them back under me. But when she looked away I scooted them to the flame again, keeping my hands close to the water warming in the tub.

Then the ‘look outs’ and ‘mind your noggins’ as Dad and Pete came in loud, hefting one pig over our bathtub, and Mr Kennedy and Mr Tyler brought in the second for the other tub. Pete pretended to drop his end on Tessa’s head and she screamed. Then the laughing and cuffing and carrying on, and the worrying about being splashed. Mrs Tyler put the radio on to 3XY for music. Tim grinned at me. It was all ABC and Blue Hills where Dad was concerned, but he couldn’t argue with Mrs Tyler, over to help. Then the razor blading. Philly nicked herself straight away. I shook my head. Mum told Philly to get herself a Band-Aid from the packet on the bench and get back on the job. I hid my smile in a tricky bit on the stomach, getting in right close. Mum patted my hair back behind my ear and told me I was doing a real good job this year, not leaving one hair behind and that would make the butchering and the cooking that much easier. I was all warmed up on that and I folded my boots under my stool. In the nick of time, I’d say, because they did feel kind of melty.

She had a winning way with her, Mum did. That’s what Dad called it. She’d always roll her eyes and swat him, tell him he was carrying on. He’d just laugh, dodging her tea towel and get in there past it to tickle her, her pushing him away and laughing back. But Dad was right. Mum was magic. And he’d never have hurt her and left her here to rot because he’d never do anything bad to her. I felt a flush of hot that I’d even for one moment thought it. I scrunched up my face, though, because there must have been something wrong or why’d she tell him she was leaving him?

Suddenly there was an almighty crash just along the way on the far side of the boxthorns. I jumped to my feet, fright spiking through me. Backed away hard into the tree. Then I saw it was only a roo as it gained the ridge and bounded away. But I was all jangled and rawed up, and had had enough of all those dead things, so I took off the other way. I ran and I ran and in the end I saw that I was running to the top paddock where Dad kept the Grey.

Dad said you can’t name a brumby until it’s broken in. You could only name it when you knew it, through and through. So it had to be special and not any old Tricksy or Daisy. Dad had told me I could name her this time. Only with Mum and everything, he’d probably forgotten. But I’d thought of a name already.

I saw that I was running towards her because it was time she got that name, broken in or not. Ever since the police came, she’d been thundering from one side of the short paddock to the other. Dad saying she’d have to wait with everything he had on his mind. I reckoned it was because there was no pool