Free Fire Fire by Eva Sallis Page A

horse was loving, her huge black eye soft and sweet, blowing gently through her perfect nostrils onto Ursula’s cheek. Sometimes she did everything Ursula asked, leaping and quivering.
    Ember was, except in springtime, always too thin. For a while she was allowed to eat a quarter of what the cow got, since the cow had four stomachs.
    Ursula twined her legs and arms around Ember’s hot copper body when the horse was grazing, making sure she didn’t take too much grazing time with riding. She read books, stretched like Mowgli along the horse’s back, elbows propped against the broad rump. She sneaked extras in hay and bran and cooking oats to secret rendezvous points with her impatient beast. Ember became thinner and increasingly snarky.
    Then Acantia noticed her staring ribs and angry eyes (the horse’s, that is).
    â€˜That horse will have to be sold. You have obviously lost interest and cannot be trusted to look after it properly.’
    Ember’s feed bill was added to Ursula’s account to pay back when she was a grown-up, and Ursula began to resent every mouthful the cow ate.
    Ursula planned the great escape into the outback. She would live the life of a bushranger, simple and free (hunted intermittently by Acantia and her Troopers).
    But in her heart she knew that if she really escaped there would not be room for two. She would be leaving Ember behind.

    Ursula sat beside Gotthilf helping him milk the cow. He told her a joke about a woman’s letterbox and a postman and a letter. He was angry when she didn’t get it and told her what rape really was. Ursula was sceptical. She needed more than a delinquent’s word for that. Gotthilf screamed at her suddenly that she was mentally retarded and didn’t know anything. He was crying with rage. His tears dropped into the milk and for a moment made a bluish space before they disappeared.

    They bundled into the kombi, stacked it up with blankets and headed off for the Murray. Acantia checked out properties along the way, pointed out Count Ugolini’s vineyards and said odd and gentle things now and then, like, ‘ We’ll be OK’. Ursula wondered if those who would not be OK included the other kids and her father at home. Acantia also bought unusually unhealthy food when off alone with them. Pies and pasties and beer-battered fish. Sometimes there were leftover chips which they fed to the seagulls, happy with the wonderment of stomachs so full that chips could be given away. Acantia enjoyed it and enjoyed the children enjoying it. It was obligatory to be happy.
    They were all very happy to get home. The children bounced on the bench seats, hooted and screeched as they crept along the winding track and the encroaching bush swallowed the kombi:
    We are home
    we are home
    we are himmy home
    we are home.
    The kids who stayed home had it better. As soon as Acantia left, Pa howled joyously and raced off to the shops and bought olive oil, margarine, bread, salami, jam, lemons and anything else suitable for the occasion, raced home again and threw together massive piles of food: hacked-up chunks of bread and salami and, ‘ Simbalabim! ’ conjured huge salads. They gathered around and helped themselves, oil dripping off their happy chins. He grinned and served and chewed with his mouth open, while they did their best to compete and stuff the lovely lighthearted day into their mouths as fast and as securely as they possibly could.
    Then they would wander outside into the sun and bask or gather around a huge fire and doze, thigh to thigh, stinking and steaming into the humid air, while Pa tuned his viola in the auditorium and played dances.

    They met their Uncle Lochie, Acantia’s brother, once. He looked a little like Count Ugolini, for he was male and grown up, but otherwise resembled Acantia. He was seen to be a man of daring, dash and derring-do. He stayed for a day and influenced their thinking for three years. It was