Free Death of a Whaler by Nerida Newton

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    â€˜Do you know then?’ he asks eventually.
    â€˜Know?’
    â€˜Where she is?’
    â€˜Karma?’
    â€˜Yes,’ says Flinch, trying not to sound frustrated.
    â€˜Oh,’ says the woman. ‘Karma. Yes. She’s probably at the concert. Follow the music, man.’
    The woman goes back to scrubbing the pot.
    When he steps out into the field again, he hears it clearly. A cacophony of drums, strings, horns and what he suspects might be bagpipes. The sound billowing out like hot air from one of the larger yurts. When he gets nearer he is relieved to see that Karma is standing outside it, her back to the darkness, her face lit up with the glow of the lanterns inside.
    He sidles up to her. He wants to touch her. Instead he leans forward, so that he is close to her ear.
    â€˜Hello again,’ he says.
    She inhales sharply through parted lips. He notices her hand skip to her breast.
    â€˜You startled me! Here.’ She hands him a few hot pieces of pastry wrapped in a scarf. ‘They’re veggie pakoras. Delish.’
    Flinch, suddenly realising how hungry he is, doesn’t bother asking what a pakora is, even though he’s never heard of one before. He’s had a steak and three veg, fish and chips, meat pie kind of upbringing. But in this atmosphere, he feels braver than usual, and he bites into one and finds its spicy, buttery heat tasty and somehow comforting.
    â€˜C’mon,’ says Karma. ‘Let’s go and sit down.’
    They squeeze through the crowd, into the heart of the yurt, engulfed by the thick smells of sweat and hash. Karma heads towards the stage, on which a bald black man is singing in a language Flinch has never before heard, a language, it seems to him, born first in music. He recognises the yearning in it. The black man is accompanied by a shirtless man playing animal-hide drums, and a woman blowing into a wind pipe. They reach a space just off to the side, where Jed and Matt are sitting cross-legged on some cushions. Jed is smoking through the pipe of a hookah, his eyes shut, inhaling deeply, one hand resting upturned on his knee. Flinch, reminded of the fat caterpillar on the mushroom in Alice in Wonderland , smothers a grin by sucking his lips in.
    â€˜Hey, man,’ says Matt.
    Jed opens his eyes and then shuts them again slowly, a reptilian gesture both lazy and cold.
    â€˜Hi,’ says Flinch. Feels a piece of pastry fall off his chin.
    They sit down on the cushions. Matt takes a shrivelled joint from the pocket of his vest and lights it, squeezes his eyes shut as he inhales. He passes it to Karma, who breathes it in, coughs with her lips closed. She passes it to Flinch, and he takes it between his fingers and thumb, as he has seen them doing. He smoked a cigarette, once, on the fishing boats. He was sixteen. He had refused offers of beer, so one of the blokes said that there was no law against smoking at his age, and handed him a lit cigarette. Flinch, wanting to impress, had drawn hard and long, and ended up coughing and spluttering and losing the cigarette overboard, to the great amusement of the crew. It wasn’t so much the tobacco as the overwhelming reminder of Audrey, of being like her , his mouth puckered, breathing out smoke when he spoke, that made him feel nauseous.
    But the joint smells and looks different. He puts it to his lips and draws in tentatively, swallows down hard on the smoke. He coughs a small cough and his eyes water but the others don’t seem to notice. He hands it back to Matt.
    The black man and the woman with the wind pipe have left the stage. The drummer remains, pounding out a steady rhythm that resonates through Flinch like a heartbeat. Six women in brightly coloured loose skirts and bare midriffs walk onto the stage. Slowly they sway in rhythm to the drumbeat, then start twirling in circles, dancing, arms above their heads, the silver bands around their ankles glittering in the candlelight and