‘Well, Alice,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’m Mr Chandler. Your new teacher.’
He dusted his hand on his shorts and held it out. Alice glanced at June. She nodded encouragingly. Mr Chandler’s hand hovered, outstretched. June mumbled something to him, out of Alice’s earshot. He dropped his hand. After a moment, he rubbed his chin, the same way Alice had noticed Twig sometimes did when she was deep in thought.
‘Tell me, Alice, do you happen to like books? I need a helper with our class library and I think you might have come along at the right time.’
After another moment, Alice offered her his hand.
The hours until the three o’clock bell went by as slow as cold molasses.
‘See you all tomorrow,’ Mr Chandler called as Alice’s classmates surged outside.
Alice dawdled, packing her schoolbag.
‘How did you go, Alice? First day okay?’
Alice nodded, keeping her head down. She didn’t make any friends. Because she didn’t talk. Because everyone acted like she smelled as bad as Harry. She should have kept him with her after all. Then she would at least have had one friend.
‘Are you being picked up?’ Mr Chandler asked.
‘I’m here to pick her up.’ Candy Baby stood in the doorway, chewing pink bubble gum, as startling and out of place as a spring flower in winter. Harry sat beside her, his tail wagging. Alice sniffled, beaming at the sight of them.
On their way out to the car park, as Candy asked Alice questions about her day and Harry excitedly licked her face, they passed a group of girls Alice recognised from her class.
‘There she is. The Spaz,’ one called.
‘I’m sorry, what was that?’ Candy asked.
Alice wanted to go home, to her room with her books, overlooking the Flowers. As she fidgeted with her schoolbag zipper, she heard someone whimpering. She stopped to listen. Heard it again. Wandered away from Candy and Harry. Behind one of the school cottages, she found the boy from the river, lying in a patch of bindies. One of his cheeks was bruised and his lip was split. His legs were covered in fine, bleeding scratches.
‘Alice?’ Candy called, alarmed. ‘Oggi!’ she exclaimed as she came up beside Alice. ‘Oggi, what happened?’
‘I’m okay,’ he said as they helped him sit up. He looked Alice in the eye. ‘You’re not the only one that gets picked on for being different.’
‘Spazzos love each other!’ A snigger came from nearby bushes. Candy lurched at them, shaking the branches, sending Alice’s classmates scattering. Alice didn’t care; whatever Oggi was, she didn’t mind a bit if everyone thought she was the same.
He winced as Alice helped him to his feet. She picked up his schoolbag and swung it over one shoulder then offered the other to Oggi to lean on. He was easier to support than her mother when she was hurt; he was Alice’s size.
Together they hobbled to the front gate. Candy opened the truck, stowed their schoolbags, clipped Harry onto his lead in the back, and helped Alice get Oggi up onto the passenger seat.
‘Let’s get you home, mate. Put some calendula on those scratches and bruises, and you’ll soon be right as rain. Can’t say the same for whoever did this to you, though. God help them when Boryana finds out.’
‘Which is why we won’t tell her,’ Oggi begged.
Candy shook her head as she put the truck into reverse. They rode silently while Harry paced the tray, occasionally sticking his head into the wind. As they drove down Main Street, Alice drank in the pastel colours of the shopfronts. In her mind’s eye she emerged from the sugar cane again, taking in the dress shops, the cafe with the yellow flower on the table, and the library across the street, with the librarian who had a kind smile and gave her the book on selkies. Sally. Alice tried to see her more clearly, but Sally’s face drifted away.
Just past the town limits sign, Candy angled the truck onto a dirt track.
‘How beautiful are these old giants?’ Candy said, leaning forward over the steering wheel to look up. Alice admired their white and silver trunks, thinking of her mother’s stories of places so heavily covered with snow that trees and earth and sky were the same thing. ‘Here we are.’ Candy pulled up at a small clearing by the river. Alice watched it flow. So that’s how he’d found her; the river had led Oggi right to her.
Oggi eased himself out of the truck and limped towards a small timber house with a wide, low-set front verandah, red cotton curtains and an open front door.
‘Oggi?’ A voice called from inside. The black-haired woman with the red lipstick emerged from the house. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Oggs had a bit of trouble at school,’ Candy said as she got out of the truck.
Boryana spoke a torrent of words in a language Alice didn’t understand. She fussed over Oggi’s purpling bruises and spinifex cuts. He held his hands up as if in surrender and replied in the same bubbling language. Harry barked from the back of the truck until Candy let him off his lead. He sailed off the tray and ran to Boryana’s side, yapping at her hands as she gesticulated.
‘Sorry, sorry, Harry.’ Boryana patted Harry’s head to reassure him. ‘Everything’s all right. Ognian here is a big boy who can take care of himself, apparently, and won’t tell me who did this.’ Boryana crossed her arms.
‘We’d better get going, Bory, and leave you two to it,’ Candy said, nodding. ‘C’mon Harry.’
‘What? No! You have to come in. For a quick tea. June won’t mind.’
‘She bloody well will,’ Candy said. ‘It was this one’s first day at school’ — Candy put her arm around Alice — ‘and June will be keen to hear all about it. Bory, this is Alice. June’s granddaughter. Our newest Flower.’
Alice smiled shyly, though couldn’t take her eyes off Oggi.
‘Well, now, how lovely it is to meet you.’ Boryana’s words sounded like they were coated in something thick and rich. She took Alice’s hand and pumped it up and down.
‘You and my Oggi are friends?’
‘We go to school together.’ Oggi stepped forward.
Boryana nodded. ‘Very good.’ She glanced at Candy. ‘You really won’t stay for a quick cuppa? Looks like there’s a lot to catch up on.’ Boryana raised an eyebrow. Alice looked pleadingly up at Candy.
‘All right, all right. A quick one,’ she surrendered.
Candy and Boryana walked arm in arm into the house, their heads bent together, gossiping. Oggi and Alice stood awkwardly.
‘I’ll show you around.’ Oggi gestured to the river. Alice nodded. She clicked her fingers behind her. Harry licked her wrist as he followed.
Behind the house was a small, well-kept rose garden and a coop holding three fat chickens. Alice sat under a paperbark tree as Oggi opened the coop to let the chickens roam. Harry sniffed after them but then curled up, uninterested.
‘This one’s Pet, she’s my favourite,’ Oggi pointed out a fluffy black chicken, wincing when he stretched his bruised arm too far. Alice squeezed her eyes shut but could still see her mother’s naked body, covered in bruises, coming out of the sea.
‘Are you okay, Alice?’
She shrugged. Oggi went to his mother’s rose garden and gathered a collection of fallen petals and leaves. When his hands were full he carried them back to Alice and placed them on the dirt around her. Back and forth he went, between the rose garden and Alice, until his circle was complete. He jumped inside it and sat down.
‘After my dad died I did this to make myself feel better.’ Oggi wrapped his arms around his knees. ‘I told myself, anything inside the circle is safe from sadness. I’d make the circle as big or as little as I’d like. Once when Mum wouldn’t stop crying I made a circle around the whole house. Except I had to use all of the petals on her roses to do that, and she didn’t react the way I thought she would.’