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her. She turned her head away, pretending indifference. Everything must be easy and natural, only then would they be true friends.
    A movement at the base of the rock drew her attention. She had dropped fishbones between her feet as she ate and ants living under the rock were pulling scraps of flesh from them. Small red ants, busy ants, hundreds of them. Suddenly a door opened in the packed earth at the base of the rock and a dozen larger insects erupted into sight. These were scaly creatures, half the length of Hana’s finger. She drew up her feet. They had claws like pond lobsters and tails with stings that curved over their backs. She watched, fascinated, as they attacked the ants, snipping them in half with their claws, scattering them with sweeps of their tails. They seemed to be infested with mites that ran across their backs as they worked and fitted into cracks in their armour and seemed to suck. Hana shivered. Everything seemed to feed on something else. The red ants were defeated, but some message had gone back into the nest, for suddenly warrior ants streamed out. They were larger, although not a tenth the size of the attackers. They moved so fast Hana could barely follow them, and could not work out what they were doing, how they were driving the attackers away. Then she saw. They were not biting the large creatures but picking off the mites infesting them, crushing them in their jaws, dropping their bodies on the ground. Once the mites were dead the creatures they rode became helpless. They did not know where to turn or where to find the trapdoor of their nest. The warrior ants butchered them. Only one, ridden by a mite between its eyes, made it to the hole. It dived inside and pulled the door shut with a flick of its tail.
    Hana shivered again. How savage and bloody everything was. How dangerous. There were many things about Country, and probably Sea, she would never know. But then she reflected that her world, the burrows, was dangerous too, and just as cruel. It suddenly seemed to her that she belonged nowhere.
    Hawk broke into her thoughts with an impatient cry. His eyes were still fixed on her. ‘Sorry, Hawk,’ she whispered. ‘We all kill other things, don’t we?’
    He spoke to her in their way of speaking; and as though looking into a pond she saw her face, anxious and fearful, looking back at her.
    ‘Is that what I’m like, Hawk? Not very friendly.’ She blinked to get rid of the image. ‘This is you.’ Looking at him, into his eyes, she sent him his own picture, so clear it seemed to startle him, for he shuffled his feet on the rock and made his half cry.
    ‘There, Hawk. We know each other now. Can I touch you?’ She reached out and put her finger on the back of his neck and ran it down the silky feathers to the place where his folded wings met. He allowed the touch, although it made him shuffle again. After a moment she took her hand away. It was enough. It made their friendship secure. She would never need to touch him again.
    In a moment he leapt into the air and flapped away. She made a place to sleep, well away from the rock where the insects had fought their battle.
    Three more days they travelled south, keeping by the coast then moving inland. Hawk sat with Hana each evening before flying away. There was nothing she could give him in exchange for the fish or rabbit or plump bird he brought, but she always chose a rock well warmed by the afternoon sun.
    The snowy mountains reared over them. They angled back towards the coast. Danatok lived south of the hills where the mountains fell away. Hana realised that this was where she was going. The further south they travelled the stronger the memory of the Limping Man became.
    Hawk flew over the sea, so far away she lost sight of him. She climbed down stony hills deep into a valley packed with bush. A stream ran on a bed of pebbles. Her easiest way to the coast was to follow it. She doubted Hawk would come to her. He did not like places