Free Dark Horse by Honey Brown

long sheets from the gutters, while the insects swarmed and as the water ran in ever-widening channels across the shed floor.



W ings and husks and curled-up little spider corpses were the only signs that the swarm of insects had been, and gone. The rain had stopped. Fog lowered like a stage curtain, resting heavy on the ground and screening out the hut, the trees, the mountaintop, the sky, the sun, the world beyond the mountain.
    Sarah and Heath were confined to the shed and the camping ground. Tansy, tethered to the tap beside the water tank, was an ethereal shape in the mist. She was grazing on the long grass around the tank. The thick air concentrated each sound, every tear of grass and each chew of Tansy’s were audible, as were Heath’s limping, squelching steps.
    He was carrying loads of wood up from the pile beside the hut and stacking it to dry in the shed. He disappeared into the mist, reappeared, no complaints about his knee slowing him down or hurting him. Sarah could see that he’d carted plenty of firewood in his day. He dumped it, tossed it, lifted it with sure hands.
    The potbelly was blazing hot. Sarah had woken and stepped down from the van to find Heath stoking the fire. With the same proficiency he was showing now, he’d opened the vent door, emptied the ash, arranged some kindling over the few remaining coals, and had the heater ablaze in no time.
    Sarah stirred a saucepan of pumpkin soup. This morning they’d have a bowl each, and a Salada cracker in lieu of bread. Responsibility for rationing their supplies had fallen to her, probably because she’d discovered the van. Her movements gave away that the soup was ready. Heath stopped what he was doing and came across.
    He’d put on a dry shirt, teamed with the shorts he’d slept in. He was wearing his boots. The pairs of socks were in rows drying by the fire. A five o’clock shadow was appearing on his top lip and jaw. When slim people dropped even one kilo it showed, and he looked leaner than he had the night before. Perhaps she looked thinner too. Sarah felt hollow.
    Heath sat down at the table. Tendrils of mist wound into the shed. The bulk of the fog billowed along the shed opening, bulging inwards.
    ‘It’s got that all-day feel about it,’ Sarah said. ‘There won’t be any helicopters if it stays like this.’
    ‘Have you been down to the hut?’
    ‘I went in there yesterday. Why?’
    ‘There’s a heap of timber and scaffolding that hasn’t been used. I was thinking,’ he sniffed and jerked his shoulder, ‘I can rig up a rough yard for Tansy if you like?’
    Sarah sat down in front of her soup. The table was square, the size of a café table. Rust dotted the foldout metal legs. She’d moved the Christmas hamper goods and put them with the other food inside the van. She’d cleaned away the workmen’s rubbish, wiped away the dust.
    ‘Oh,’ was all she said in response to his offer.
    ‘We could use the scaffolding as a fence. I don’t think it would be that hard to do.’ Wet fibres of bark clung to his shirt. He sniffed again – the cold air was making his nose run. He ate a spoonful of soup. ‘With the planks of timber, I can make a fence inside the shed, and cordon off that end bay, then she’ll have a stable and a yard.’ He put down his spoon, and pointed to where he meant, moving his hand to indicate a square out front of the last bay of the shed. ‘She won’t have to be tethered all the time.’
    ‘How long do you think we’re going to be here?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ He went back to his soup.
    Sarah crumbled her dry biscuit into her bowl. Heath must have liked her method; he copied.
    ‘If they do come and can’t rescue Tansy, have you thought about what you’re going to do? We’ve probably got to build a yard. No matter what happens.’
    ‘I was imagining I would stay with her, until the creek recedes enough for her to be led across.’
    ‘That could be ages.’ He stirred in his biscuits. ‘If