As they drive, the dusty metal road becomes sticky tarseal. The houses squash together like grumpy cows in a loading yard. They have eyes. April takes fast breaths as her Mum parks the car in a short driveway. Her brothers sleep, all drooling mouths and floppy bodies, but baby Stella screams. 

They are visiting Sandra and her son Nicholas, and April’s to stay a few days in the city. A vacation from school. Her faded bag and Mum’s sack of garden compost squash her feet. They’d walked out from home, when the farm’s valleys were still grey in early light. In the barn, April’s cow Milly hangs in the tractor sling, upright but not eating, her head flopped sideways next to a pile of hay. She didn’t want to leave her. The cow had fallen in the creek during a night storm. Mum says, quietly, ‘Sometimes they don’t make it, April, you must remember that.’ 

Perhaps if they had electricity Milly could be warmed up. They used to have it in the house before this one. April shivers, as she climbs from the car. There’s electricity here.  There’s everything here. It’s the city.

Sandra’s smile is wide, her teeth shiny, and her voice smooths the air. She hustles them into the lounge. Nicholas, wearing spotless white, swings his legs on a high stool in the kitchen, mouth oozing with red jam. April and her brothers form a knot in the middle of the white carpet; Mum’s floral skirt spreads over the pale couch and she hoicks up her shirt to feed Stella. Mud flakes from Seth’s toes, grinding into the wool. 

‘You’ll need a cuppa, Emma.’ Sandra’s eyes rest on the carpet. ‘Perhaps the little boys can play outside, and Nicholas can show April his room.’ 

The windows are closed tight. The room smells of disinfectant. Nicholas coughs as if something’s caught in his throat. 

‘We’re so excited to have April to stay,’ Sandra says, her smile stretching so wide it seems in danger of swallowing everything. ‘I’ll just get the vacuum for the mud bits.’

*

He’s taller than April, slight and very pale, and six months older, nearly ten. He grabs at her hand, and the spongy warmth makes her recoil. He tugs her across the white carpet as if it’s not even there and they arrive in his bedroom. It has blinds, not curtains; a blue bedcover, not blankets. In the corner a wooden farm squats, outbuildings and barn, two-storey house and enclosed paddocks with wooden rails. 

The room has one high, closed window. A kowhai hangs down, scratching the glass. 

‘Here’s your camping mattress.’

‘I’m not staying.’ It spills from her mouth even though it’s not true. 

‘Your bag is here.’ It rests against the wardrobe door. 

Nicholas flings off the bed, landing before the farm and plucking a pointy-eared rabbit from the paddock. He shoves it into April’s cupped hands; she strokes the short fur. It’s a hard, little dead thing. 

‘See, there are lots of them. I like to make them fight to the death.’ He grabs another and thrusts it against the one in her hands, fighting. She drops it back into the farm so it doesn’t get hit. 

His lips turn downward. ‘What do you want to do, then?’

She lifts her toes off the white carpet. Even the sun shafts are free of floating dust. 

‘Can we go outside?’

Nicholas flops across his duvet. The room smells of nothing, and it’s tight, like shoes. 

‘She won’t let us go out. Sometimes I can go into the garden. It makes me cough, so I stay inside.’ 

April moves toward the door, as if she’s not listening. Where are her brothers? Nicholas slides off the bed, grips the door and pulls it closed. His fingernails are curved almost to a point. 

‘Let’s find the cat. Do you like animals?’ 

She nods. Milly. Her toes cross over one another. Let her be still alive. 

‘I bet you kill animals.’ His sea-glass eyes gleam, and his voice rises. ‘That’s what happens on farms, animals get killed and eaten. Or they die because they aren’t looked after. Animals die.’ 

Uneasily, April remembers the slimy eel she caught two days ago. She smashed its head with a rock. Mum climbed up on the roof and smoked it in the chimney, for dinner.

‘Yes, animals sometimes die.’

*

Sandra’s hand holds April still. Caught between her and Nicholas, she watches as Mum packs her brothers into their Holden. Mum props the sack of manure against Sandra’s wall, and tucks a bag of hand-me-downs into April’s place in the car. 

Sandra’s grin is wolfish. ‘I’ll have the best plants in the neighbourhood with that.’

‘Least I can do,’ Mum replies. 

She crouches in front of April, sliding her arms about April’s waist. The softness feels wrong, with Sandra’s hand heavy on her shoulder, and Nicholas at her side, sniffling like he has a cold. ‘I want to come home too.’ 

‘Oh, April. You’ll be fine. Sandra will look after you. Be a good girl.’

She says a quick goodbye to Sandra. Stella howls from the back seat. Hauling into the driver’s seat, Mum flips the key. The car roars to life, charges onto the road and is gone. The engine’s roar merges into the city’s hum. April wraps her arms around herself. 

Sandra turns her toward the door. 

‘There,’ she says, satisfied. ‘Emma needs a break, and you’ll be good company for Nicholas. Let’s get you two into the bath. We need to clean April’s filthy feet, because we can’t have dust inside.’

*

The cat, called Midnight, perches on the bathroom cabinet, smoky tail hanging down. Nicholas stretches past April and tugs it. Midnight shudders, then rounds on him and growls, lips yanked back, teeth bared. 

‘Pick her up, she wants to be in the water!’ He tries to squeeze past.  

She strokes Midnight’s chin. ‘She’s scared.’

‘No she isn’t.’ His face is mulish. ‘She loves me.’ 

A plant pot perches on the high windowsill, tendrils trailing down toward the bath. Halfway down they turn brown, scorched by something. April presses her cheek to the glass. Sandra made her get her swimsuit on for the bath. She wanted to yell that she can bathe alone.

Sandra has a towel over one arm, and carries a heavy scrubbing brush. ‘You’ll fall, April. Sit down.’

Nicholas giggles. ‘That’s the brush for outside!’

Midnight hesitates on the sill. Sandra steps forward and he screeches out the bathroom door, vanishes. Sandra’s fingers close over April’s ankle: she clamps down on a scream. What is Sandra doing? No comfortable spaces exist in this house, nowhere to hide.

‘Soaked for ten minutes in here and you’re still filthy.’ She inspects the sole of April’s foot. 

‘We are always clean,’ Nicholas sings. ‘Always! Dust and dirt are our enemies.’

The scrubber bites into her skin. April tugs at her foot, trying to escape. The bristles are punishing and it takes forever. When Sandra finally lets go, the water clouds with dirt. 

‘How good would that water be for the garden. Like the fertiliser Emma brought. Maybe I’ll drain it for my tomatoes. We can’t have the dirt inside, it will make Nicholas cough.’

April squirms into the corner as Sandra reaches for her other foot. 

*

The garden descends to a giant fence. Everything is held in by stakes or wires. Despite that, it’s easier to breathe out here. April’s wearing shoes, so she can’t feel the ground. She dips a hand into the grass, feeling each soft strand. 

All morning she’s played toy soldiers with Nicholas. Line them up, make them fight, kill them all. Her army fell into puddles of death, because she wasn’t a winner, or so he said. There’s something fragile about him, his glowing eyes, or she’d have shoved him for that. 

Now he slides back a fence board, with one eye on the house. ‘Through here.’ 

She sneaks a glance over her shoulder. No Sandra. 

A shimmering lake spreads out beyond the fence. Shallow, with raupō around the edges. She tastes the earthy water-scent, and her shoulders lift. 

‘There are eels.’

A black shape sidles through the reeds, nosing the sand near their feet. 

Nicholas hurls a stone into the ruffle-free water; ripples flood out around it. A cloud of mud rises and the eel vanishes, tail flicking. He sniggers. ‘They always run. So gross. Like snakes.’ 

‘We eat them at home.’ Eels are strong and graceful, not gross. 

He’s halfway along the shore. ‘Do you want some blackberries?’

April pauses. ‘Are you allowed them?

Nicholas grins. A spider crawls onto his spotless shirt. ‘I’m not allowed out here, ever.’ 

Someone has cut a path into the tangled bushes. April pushes into the unconfined growth, stretching for fat sweet berries. Midnight curls into the long grass a few feet away. 

‘I’ve got a blackberry for you. Open your mouth.’ 

He holds a huge berry, and he’s smiling. Is he trustworthy? She mustn’t make a fuss, so she reluctantly opens her mouth and he plops the fruit in. A burning, acrid taste grows on her tongue. The berry mass bursts out of her and lands splat on the ground. She spits and spits to get rid of the taste. 

He’s laughing. ‘You ate a stinkbug!’

Who does that to somebody? Rage boils inside her, and she looks at his smug face and decides she doesn’t care, he deserves it. So she launches at him as if he were Seth, pounding with her fists. His head thwaps into the blackberry tangle and he starts to cry. She pushes away, leaves him to get up, knowing now there’ll be trouble. 

The cat has skedaddled, running faster when the howls began. 

*

‘How did you get that scratch, Nicholas?’

They’re in the bathroom, and this time Sandra has a bucket, no scrubbing brush. April strokes the bathroom plant down to where the leaves are dead. A moment of nothing hangs in the damp room. Is he going to tell, like a baby?

‘April pushed me in the blackberry and I got dirty.’ 

Sandra’s lips tighten. ‘Maybe you’d both better stay inside tomorrow. April, be careful with that plant.’ In her other hand, she has a razor. 

April scrambles back against the tiled wall. Nicholas laughs. 

‘Mother, she thinks you’ll hurt her! We don’t hurt people, April.’

Midnight stalks past the door, tail cocked proudly. 

Sandra sighs. ‘April, sweets, do you really think I’d hurt you? I’m not going to punish you for pushing Nicholas, or for taking him outside. But the razor will remove the dead and dirty skin from your feet better than the scrubbing brush.’ 

How could she have made the floor dirty? ‘I wore my shoes all day. I’m not dirty, I don’t need cleaning.’ On the plant leaves, a spider crawls. Inwardly, she urges him to run.

‘Your skin should be peachy pink. We need to get rid of the farm dirt. We can’t have it inside because it upsets Nicholas’s cough.’ 

‘I won’t.’

Nicholas laughs, as if she’s ridiculous, and splashes water at her. ‘Yes, you will.’ 

Sandra’s fingers tap, tap against the plastic bucket. ‘Emma said you were obedient.’ 

Her body twangs deep inside. Must not disappoint Mum. The leathery brown leaf breaks in her grip. Reluctantly she extends a foot to Sandra, who smiles her crocodile grin again. The razor rasps across her ridged skin. 

Nicholas takes the leaf from her shaking hands. ‘I made this brown by putting it in hot water.’  

‘Why would you do that?’

Small amounts of wet sludge clog the razor, falling into the bucket. Sandra swishes water in with it, making low pleased sounds. 

*

The bottoms of her feet tingle when she steps on the carpet now. She’s open to every carpet fibre. To go outside, she slides on her shoes. The sun is gentle, and a tui sings a song she recognises. Nicholas has to stay inside, but Sandra follows her out.

Sandra sets out bird food near a leafy garden bed. 

‘This will fix the birds. Stop them attacking the plants. Nicholas is allergic to them, did you know?’ 

A cloud ducks over the sun. April doesn’t want to know the answer, but asks anyway. ‘Is it poison?’

Sandra only smiles. A petite sparrow touches down nearby. April flaps a hand: go away, it’s not safe. 

‘You’re a great help, April.’ She picks up the bucket with the clouded water, pouring it around the spinach plants. ‘Nicholas likes having you here.’ 

When Sandra turns back to the garden, April sidles down the fence and away. Through the fence, she sinks to the sand, stomach jerking like she’s run too far. 

The city is a place to learn. Like the calves learning to drink from a bucket, sucking on Mum’s hand until their nostrils touch the cool milk and they jerk away. Over and over until they drink. She shakes her head. If she comes here again and again, she might learn how to be in this place, to do it right. 

Midnight’s in her nest behind the pōhutukawa. She has a sheepskin-lined bed inside, but it’s better out here. April kicks off her shoes. Once she’d caught two wild kittens and brought them home but Mum had made her take them back. 

‘You can’t keep wild things, April, they won’t be happy,’ she’d said. 

She’d wept cross tears, but she’d returned them.  

The board creaks and Nicholas climbs through. He’s been making war with his army inside. Killing the enemy.

‘Do you want a blackberry?’ He takes a handful of stones and scatters them across the still lake. Two pukekos rush out of sight; the eels vanish. 

How long would it take for her to fly home?

Nicholas waves a raupō frond, brushing her cheek. ‘You mustn’t hurt me again, it isn’t kind. Shall we throw stones?’

‘We could make a hut.’ That takes his attention. April collects raupō stalks. ‘Lay them against the fence, like this.’ She searches for branches for a brace, dead pōhutukawa, but there aren’t any. 

‘This is a better place.’ He points to the cat’s vacated nest. Midnight twirls between April’s legs. She scratches under her chin and the cat purrs.

‘That’s my cat,’ he says, his sullen look back. ‘Not yours. Look, I can do what I like with her.’ He snatches Midnight up. She hisses. ‘Did you know she can climb trees?’

 ‘I bet she doesn’t.’ Midnight writhes. She shouldn’t egg him on. 

He jerks his head at the pōhutukawa’s mottled branches. ‘She’s been up there before. Cats can fall from anywhere.’ 

‘No they can’t.’ 

‘Watch me.’ The pōhutukawa trunk is wide; Nicholas walks up it without hands, holding a thrashing Midnight before him. Above a huge epiphyte, he swings the cat like a pendulum. 

‘Don’t! You’ll hurt her!’

Midnight flies through the air, black and twisting. She smacks into a branch and somersaults sideways, claws scrabbling for grip. April screams as the cat scrapes the branch and falls further. Her eyes squish almost closed. 

Midnight’s head hits a rock with a wet thunk. She doesn’t move. 

She should grab her up and cuddle her alive, but can’t. Nicholas too is frozen. After a dark silent moment, cloud shifting over the sun, she shuffles forward and strokes the cat’s back. A shudder runs through the body under her hand. A small heartbeat, another. Blood and bone seep from the cat’s crushed skull. April swallows. 

‘It wasn’t my fault.’ 

‘Of course not,’ she says, louder and angrier than she expected. She smooths silky fur, desperate to undo the last few minutes, start again. 

Nicholas hovers. ‘We need a vet.’ 

‘It’s too late for the vet.’ 

‘It isn’t, it isn’t! You’re so stupid! I’m going to get Mum.’ He doesn’t even glance at Midnight before he bolts through the fence. The world narrows until she can see only Midnight, feel the sand under her toes, the rocks to the side. She weighs one in her hand, presses the sharp edge to her thumb. It has to be done. 

‘The only thing now must be that she doesn’t suffer.’ Mum’s words, speaking of Milly.  Doesn’t suffer. 

The small heart under her fingers slows. She lifts the rock, and smashes it down onto Midnight’s head, to finish it. Everything goes still, birds, water, even the motorway seems to silence. 

*

Sandra parks at the road’s end and they put on clean boots to walk up. April runs, needing her bedroom and wild garden, the house that doesn’t tighten around her like cold-day icicles. She bursts in panting, careful not to wake Stella. Everything is the same. 

In the kitchen, Sandra’s voice bounces off the wood floor and walls. 

‘I couldn’t believe it, Emma, what child does that? So cruel, to kill a beloved animal.’ 

April’s skin burns. 

She slides over the varnished boards to the kitchen and moves up to Mum’s side, out of sight. Mum’s comforting arm circles April’s shoulders. Her face is blank like a mask.

‘I thought April would be good for Nicholas, but all she wanted was to lead him outside and get him dirty. It’s so bad for him.’ Sandra whispers the word, smiles with half her face, takes a bite of homemade biscuit. ‘This is amazing, did you cook it on the wood stove? You must give me the recipe.’ 

Nicholas is clean, despite the muddy walk. He smirks from Sandra’s side, still coughing and sniffling. 

Mum dislodges April carefully. ‘April, Milly is in the barn paddock, can you take her some meal? Take Nicholas with you. Your brothers are in the vege patch.’ 

She freezes. ‘She’s not dead?’

Her mum’s hair bobs. ‘No, it took a few days, but we got her back on her feet with some mothering. Go and see, love.’ 

Her legs don’t want to move. What if she makes Milly ill again, just by being there? Midnight would be safe if she’d not been there with the rock. Nicholas told everyone it was her fault. Midnight had been alive when he left. 

‘Go,’ Mum says. ‘Later you can sweep up your dirt, madam.’ 

She peers down at her feet. Muddy dust trails them, and the toes have the hazy, flaky look of shedding skin. Still open to everything. Sandra’s eyes follow, and Nicholas begins to sniffle again.