Free Sing Fox to Me by Sarak Kanake

the empty kitchen. He didn’t turn around, but he could feel Samson’s eyes staring hopefully into the back of him. After a few seconds, Jonah heard the front door open and close.
    Fine. It wasn’t his job to look after Samson. If his brother got lost, it was his own fault. Jonah had better things to do. He touched his hand to the stain. The skin was probably in the locked room, but how was he going to get inside? Maybe he’d be able to see in from the outside. The window might even be open. He was small enough to fit through most windows, no matter how narrow.
    Jonah opened the front door and checked for Clancy’s dog. She wasn’t on the doorstep. Jonah didn’t close the door. He went outside and followed the windows around the house, counting as he went. Clancy’s window … living-room window … back door, open. Jonah looked in. There was still no sign of Clancy’s dog. He kept going. Another living-room window … a gap for the linen cupboard … hallway. Then he stopped. There it was. The window to the locked room. The curtains were closed, but they seemed pretty thin. He pulled himself up onto the sill and pressed his face to the glass.
    Four hideous white dolls grimaced at him.
    His foot slipped, but he held on to the ledge. He came up onto his tiptoes and tried to see over the dolls. All he could make out was the shape of a single bed.
    The glass vibrated against his face, and Jonah jumped down from the sill. The walls shook. Footsteps inside. His granddad was up.
    Jonah darted between two dead bushes and crawled under the house. Cold and dark, but the dirt was soft. Squatting, he wormed beneath the rooms until he was fairly sure he was below the kitchen. He lay on his back and listened.
    His granddad moved overhead, dragging his sick leg.
    Something growled nearby.
    Jonah rolled over quickly. In the dark, he could just see Queen Elizabeth’s long white teeth, her curled lip, her yellow eyes and claws. She growled again.
    â€˜It’s okay –’ But before the words were out of his mouth, Queenie barked. Her voice was so loud and terrifying, Jonah didn’t even try to back off. He pushed himself up on his toes and elbows, and crawled away as fast as he could. By the time the dog barked again, he was free of the house and running towards the open gate.
    For the first time since he’d arrived on the mountain, the bush beyond the fence looked safer than the house.
    Samson was hardly ever able to walk this far on his own, and never with permission. He stopped and looked up. Light dazzled his eyes. He blinked and looked again. White tree trunks stretched all the way into the sky, long spindly ghosts. He pushed a giant fern frond out of his way. It showered droplets of water over his hands, and for a second the crease through the middle of his palm was like a real river.
    At home, his mum kept ferns in pots. ‘They add a bit of lushness to the garden,’ she always said. On the mountain the ferns were everywhere, piled over one another and draped across trees and dirt. So thick, it was like the sun had given up.
    Samson kept walking. He saw birds and nests and hollows beneath trees where insects and spiders made wide silver webs. He saw stumps covered in flowering vines. He saw dappled light and dark hollows, large rocks and huge trees. He saw drooping branches that cast shadows like cages, hollowed-out logs and new little plants growing from thick sheets of iridescent moss.
    Everything smelt like dust turning to mud, or a cocoon just as it opened.
    He’d never been allowed to wander outside by himself. His mum said it wasn’t safe. ‘What if he gets hit by a car?’ she asked his dad once, after Samson asked to go to the park by himself. ‘Or some weirdo tries to pick him up?’
    His dad shrugged. ‘Don’t they explain that sort of thing at his school?’
    â€˜I’m not comfortable with him going on his