The Serpent's Skin

best behaviour after today’s performance. Get the hay into the bales.’
I turned and stared.
‘That look might work on Mum.’
‘Dad,’ I got out.
‘No, I haven’t told him about you attacking Mother Gabriel yet. But if you don’t get down this minute, I will.’
‘Dad’s gone too.’ My voice ribboned up with cut and blood. ‘Drowned in the dam.’
‘Don’t be stupid. He’s in the training yard.’
Breath hiccupped back into me. I jumped down and doubled over with it, clinging hard to the rail as if I couldn’t trust my bones to stand me up. Tessa rolled her eyes, hand on jutted out hip, waiting. ‘Finished?’ she asked.
The crow took off in a great burst of black. It circled once above the pointy white of the gum’s twisty finger branches. I wheeled out of the shed, ignoring Tessa’s shouts at my back, and ran to the training yard, heart knocking at my insides. I saw the grey brumby through the scrub first. She was straining and kicking, wild to be back where she’d come from. Dad was hanging on to the rope around her neck, weighting her down. He kept up his murmuring, eyes never shifting, steady on the brumby as if it might break the spell if he looked anywhere else.
‘Didn’t you hear me callin ya, Dad?’
‘Pipe down,’ he worked into his run of smooth to the Grey.
‘Did ya?’
‘I heard you bellyaching.’
‘Then?’
‘I can’t be bellyaching back. You can see I’m in the middle here.’
I folded my arms and planted my feet.
He didn’t look over. He was right inside himself, like it was all calm and peaceful in there. The Grey bucked high against the sky, cutting the clouds in half. Dad kept his voice soft and low, like a slow-running creek. Moving forwards to let her buck but holding steady so she couldn’t get too far. Like dancing. And then the mare started listening with one ear. Like she wanted to get some of that slow and soft in Dad’s voice inside her. I’d seen him do the same with Mum once or twice, when Mum had been upset. Dad could tame the wild out of anything. He was a marvel; everybody said it.
The Grey stopped hiking back against the sky. Stood, quiver still. So Dad didn’t move either, just kept eye on eye, murmuring how it was all good. Better to be off out of the wild, be here where it was safe, where she’d be looked after. The Grey twitched. Flicked her tail. Dad with his lullaby words. The brumby breathing easier. Dad leaning in, unwinding the rope from his wrist and taking it in his palm where she could see it. Her not backing away.
It looked dead easy. But it was the hardest thing, getting inside yourself enough to tame a wild horse. I couldn’t do it. I would be all out there, filled up with the brumby, and feeling all its terror and panic, and in the end we’d both want to take off back to the mountains she’d come from.
Dad rubbed the rope against her neck. She strained away, but let him too.
‘Good girl, good girl,’ he crooned. ‘Done for today, girl.’ He backed away, taking her with him, one careful step and then another. Anchored her rope to the peg beside the water trough and slipped through the fence. I came around to his side. Stuck my hand through the fence to pat the Grey. She reared back and whinnied.
‘Git.’ Dad slapped my hand away. ‘That horse has had enough, losing everything and coming to a new place and having to learn new things without you rilin her up.’ He tipped his hat to shoot me a quick grin. ‘She’ll need a bit more time to get used to little savages like you.’
I rubbed my hand where he’d got me, grinned back.
He poured oats into the food trough, shaking the bag empty.
‘How was school?’ he said.
‘Good,’ I said, just like every day.
He grunted just like every day, back to the business of getting on and turning off the hose to the drinking trough. The Grey thirsted at the water, snuffling it up.
My shoulders lost most of their tense. I jumped them up and down, circled my neck. So now, if those others didn’t dob me in about Mother Gabriel, I’d be right.
‘Get up to the shed and help your sister set up for the milkin.’
‘Mum call?’
He grunted again. This time with an edge, warning me.
‘Did she?’
‘Get off with ya.’
Which I took for It’s none of your business what your mother did or didn’t do.
‘If she called, you should tell me right now.’
‘I’ll tell you when I’m good and ready.’
I put my hand up to my forehead to shield my eyes from a sun that wasn’t there. Squinted him a good look as he wound the rope around his arms in a circle, nice and neat. He sent me back a look that was all flat-out warning now, nothing but edge, but it was too late: I smelt the spit of guilt on him and I had to know if maybe it wasn’t my fault Mum took off.
‘Did you blue with her? That why she left without saying goodbye?’ I asked.
He stopped sharp in the winding, stabbed eyes all over me like he knew what I did and that it was all me in Mum’s going away so sudden. I went inside myself, tighter and tighter.
He dumped the rope over the tall of a post and slapped at the rail with his thick palm in a rhythm like there was a bit of music playing somewhere. I was stuck between the hoping it wasn’t all me and the not wanting him to be so twisted up. He angled slow away. Good as forgot I was there. But he hadn’t. His voice came low out of the hunch of him. ‘I love your mother. She’s my moon and my stars.’
‘I know, Dad,’ I said, my heart bursting with a sudden sorry, cause I did know.
‘I’d do anything to protect