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agape.
    â€˜Oh,’ says Karma, and puts the lid back on quickly. ‘Dead animals.’
    â€˜For dinner,’ says Flinch. Feeling as if he’s confessing. They stand on the footpath. A shy sun slips behind a cloud.
    Karma sniffs and looks into the distance. ‘I don’t eat meat.’
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ Flinch says. ‘I didn’t know.’
    She sighs and shrugs her shoulders. ‘It’s alright. I don’t but some of the others do. They won’t go to waste.’ She opens the lid of the esky again. ‘Thank you for giving your lives, little fish. Your deaths will provide us with nutrients and will not be in vain.’
    Flinch covers a smile with his hand. He decides not to tell her that they didn’t exactly swim up to the shore and throw themselves on the beach at his feet.
    â€˜Right then,’ he says.

    Karma lives in an orange tepee.
    â€˜It’s the colour of energy, a celebration of all things living,’ she says. ‘Buddhist monks wear this colour, you know.’
    Flinch doesn’t know but nods. They sit down on some brightly coloured cushions on the floor. Karma lights a little gas cylinder and boils some tea, and hands Flinch a cup that is really an old jam jar with a tea towel around it. It’s unlike any tea that Flinch has ever tasted. A little like apple. A lot more like cut lawn. No milk or sugar either. They’ve emptied the esky of fish into a metallic icebox in a hay-bale house that is otherwise stacked with hessian bags marked Rice , Pasta , Barley . A crate full of apples. Some sort of communal food stash.
    â€˜There, now you’ve contributed to the good of the community,’ Karma had said. ‘A gift of sustenance from an anonymous good-doer.’
    Flinch had kept an eye on the magpies that were perched in the trees above, knew they’d probably steal whatever they could manage as soon as there was nobody around.
    He leans back on the pillows. A woven rug covers the ground. Bull ants have made a nest in one corner, under the rug’s tassels.
    â€˜Ants,’ says Flinch, pointing at the nest. ‘Nasty ones.’
    â€˜Oh, yeah, I know. But you know, they were here first. I’m intruding on their home really.’
    â€˜Don’t you get bitten?’
    â€˜Yeah, quite often. But what can you do? They deserve a place here as much as I do.’
    Flinch makes a mental note to buy some ant-rid powder next time he’s in town.
    â€˜You know, it’s good for healing, too,’ Karma says, leaning towards him. ‘Orange. And I sense you need healing, Flinch. That’s why I hoped you would come back.’
    Flinch takes a large gulp of his tea.
    Karma waits, looking at him, silent.
    â€˜There’s nothing that can be done,’ Flinch says finally. ‘When I was young I wore a shoe that was built up so that I walked evenly. Big braces up to my knee. Leather straps and everything. Looked a bit like a monster, I think.’
    He smiles to demonstrate to her that he is unconcerned and she smiles back.
    â€˜But I couldn’t wear that on the boats. So I just got used to it. I can get around. It’s not really a big problem.’
    â€˜I didn’t mean your leg,’ she says.
    â€˜But there’s nothing else,’ he replies. He hopes she hears the finality in his tone.

SIX
    â€˜It’s like a village,’Karma is telling him. They’re walking on a path that weaves through the commune, past soggy gardens sprouting stunted green lettuce leaves, picketed with empty stakes, everything planted struggling except a rampant cherry tomato vine. They pass a cluster of tents set up like small domes. To Flinch, they look like the alien pods from his childhood comic books. It is that hazy gloaming period, a mauve twilight that makes the fields and surrounding hills seem mystical, a landscape out of the pages of a children’s fairytale book. Flinch is surprised he