When he came to the clearing where the child had gone, the bad feeling was already well ahead of him.

The boy, Whelk, was there in the open, looking back over his shoulder at his own small footprints in the ash. Tiny whirls where the air was hot and escaping. He had walked into the centre of the clearing, high trees all around him. A little smoke still rose from the place where the fire had been, and even several yards back the Surveyor could feel the warmth of it on his face.

The ground must be glowing hot under the boy’s feet, but he was paying no heed, and seemed unaware of the Surveyor watching him. He reached his fingers into the gloom, seeking balance. A misplaced step could crush through the powdery surface. A burnt foot would slow everybody down. The Man would be displeased.

The Man was often displeased.

The charred timbers splayed outwards: the Surveyor saw now that Whelk was standing in the ghost of a hut. The air was thick with menace: no birds, no breeze. The rest of the party were out in the bush around them but there were no voices. The world was dumb and blurred as he watched the boy, and he felt as though he had been struck over the head. In the white powdered ash he saw an iron door latch, sooted black.

The barrel and breech of a rifle. Bottles standing in a crate now burnt away.

The smell of it was powerful, recent. Not the smell of a cooking fire, of the burning grasses, of the pyres he’d seen that these people made for their dead. This one was just timbers, but it hadn’t started of its own accord. There would be people.

He called Whelk back from the clearing, and the boy looked up at him, returning from wherever his mind had gone to…

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