Ruby nodded, a smile spreading across her face.

Hazel thought of her own childhood—how little tenderness she’d been given. She and Mathinna both had had to take whatever scraps they could get. “Come with us,” she said impulsively. “We live just a few streets away, in the home of a doctor. There’s a room, a small room, but it would be your own. Ye could get back on your feet.”

Mathinna laughed, a laugh that started deep in her gut and rose into her throat. “I am on my feet, Hazel.”

“But drinking, and—and staying up all night . . . You’re too young, Mathinna. You’re not meant for this kind of life.”

“Ah—I don’t know. What kind of life am I meant for?”

For a moment both of them were silent. It was hard to know what to say. Hazel listened to the cawing of seagulls, the raised voices of vendors hawking their wares in the market across the street.

“If I’d stayed on Flinders, I’d probably be dead,” Mathinna said finally. “If the Franklins had taken me to London, I’d still be trying to be somebody I will never be. Here I am. Living the only life I was given.” Abruptly, she stood, swaying slightly. “Don’t worry about me, Hazel. I’m a wanderer. I’ll be all right.” Spreading her open hand across her chest, she said, “Tu es en moi. Un anneau dans un arbre. You are in me, like a ring inside a tree. I won’t forget it.”

Sitting on the bench with Ruby, watching Mathinna make her way down the street, Hazel felt a strange and unquenchable sadness. They were, both of them, exiles, torn from their homes and families. But Hazel had stolen a spoon to earn that status; Mathinna had done nothing to deserve her fate. Hazel was marked with the convict stain and would be for many years, but it erased itself as time went on. She could already feel it lessening. She could stroll through the market with a basket over her arm, and Ruby’s hand in hers, and no one would guess. Mathinna had no such luxury. She would never be able to melt into the crowd, to go about her business without judgment and suspicion.

“Where’s she going, Mama?” Ruby asked.

“I don’t know.”

“She’s nice.”

“Yes.”

Ruby fingered the shells around her neck.

“Do ye like your necklace?” When Ruby nodded, Hazel said, more sharply than she intended, “It’s special. Ye must take good care of it.”

“I know. I will. Can we get cherries, Mama?”

“Yes.” Hazel sighed, rising from the bench. “We can get cherries.”

Hobart Town, 1843

The first meeting of the Association of Licensed Physicians in Melbourne was scheduled for mid-February, and Dunne had decided to attend. It was several days’ journey by ship; he planned to remain on the mainland for a week to learn about some surgical innovations. Maeve would stay in a small spare room at the back of the house while he was away, and she and Hazel would mind the practice. If emergencies arose that they couldn’t handle, they’d send patients to Hobart Hospital for treatment.

It was a temperate afternoon. Clouds drifted across a powder-blue sky. Gulls swooped overhead, yawping their plaintive lament. The ship to Melbourne was scheduled to depart from Hobart Town at three o’clock, and Hazel decided to accompany Dunne to the wharf, a ten-minute stroll. As they walked, they discussed a patient’s ongoing treatment, a Dickens novel Hazel was reading that featured a character sentenced to transportation, a lesson plan for Ruby.

“Eleven days,” Dunne said at the gangplank. “You’ll be fine without me?”

“Of course we’ll be fine.”

“I know you will.” He squeezed her hand. “Tell Ruby goodbye for me.”

“I will.” Ruby had been building fairy houses with Maeve in the back garden when they’d left.

Sitting on a bench at the Elizabeth Street Pier after Dunne had boarded, Hazel watched the crew of the large wooden ship scurry to raise its gangplank. The air smelled of burning wood, wildfires from just beyond the perimeter of town. She gazed out at the spinachy seaweed on the pebbled shore and the boats nodding in the harbor. Sunlight glittered on the waves, an inverse of stars.

She thought, as she often did when looking out at the water, about Evangeline, out there in the deep. She remembered a line from The Tempest: Full fathom five thy father lies. / Of his bones are coral made. Ariel tells Ferdinand that his father, who drowned, underwent a sea change: his bones transformed into coral, his eyes pearls.

A sea change. Perhaps that was true for all of them.

After Dunne’s ship was released from its moorings, Hazel meandered up Campbell Street, making a mental list of all the things she needed to do. It was a Sunday; the practice was closed. When she got back to the house, she would read a chapter in a medical book Dunne had suggested and prepare some remedies with the herbs she’d hung to dry. Perhaps she and Maeve would take Ruby to Mount Wellington for a picnic supper: cured ham, boiled eggs, cheese, apples. They’d bring the currant cake Maeve had baked that morning and left on the table to cool.

As she approached the house, Hazel saw Maeve kneeling in the herb garden. It was a perfectly ordinary scene, Maeve gathering mint. But something seemed amiss.

Hazel felt a finger of fear run down her back. Why wasn’t Ruby with her?

“Maeve,” she called, trying to keep her voice steady.

Maeve turned with a smile. “There you are!”

“Where’s Ruby?”

Maeve sat back on her heels and dusted off her hands. “In the back, with a friend of Dr. Dunne’s. I told him the doctor was away, but he wanted to meet her—said he was on the ship when she was born. I told him I’d make tea. He asked for mint.” Maeve held up a sprig.

Hazel’s skin felt clammy. She couldn’t quite catch her breath. “What is his name?”

“Tuck. I think.”

“Buck,” Hazel breathed. “No. No.”

“Oh dear,” Maeve said, seeing Hazel’s stricken expression, “did—”

Hazel ran up the steps and flung open the front door. “Ruby?” she called. “Ruby!”

No one was in the parlor or the examining room or the kitchen. She threw open the door to Ruby’s room. Empty. She looked in Dunne’s bedroom, then in the small room Maeve was staying in. She could hear her own jagged breathing. Her thudding footsteps.

Maeve, behind her now, said, “I’m sorry, Hazel, I didn’t—”

“Shh.” Hazel held up a finger and stood very still, her head cocked like a hound’s. She went to the back door and looked through the pane.

There he was, about fifty feet back in the long garden, standing beside Ruby as she bent over the fairy houses. Too close. His sandy hair was slicked back from his forehead, his beard roughly trimmed. His shirt and trousers looked clean. Respectable, even. But there was a strangeness to his look, something off-kilter. He was painfully thin. Gaunt. As if he hadn’t eaten in weeks.

Hazel saw the glint of a knife in his hand. “Stay here,” she told Maeve. Stepping outside, she called, “Hello!” Fighting to keep her voice calm.

Ruby flapped her hand. “Come see my new fairy house!”

Buck gave Hazel a long look across the grass.

Her heart tick-ticking in her chest, Hazel walked toward them. She felt like a deer in a clearing, aware of the hunter, every fiber of her alert. She saw the scene in front of her with heightened clarity: a cluster of insects above the lavender, two orange-breasted kingfishers swooping among the trees, the tiny green shells looped around Ruby’s neck. Buck’s grimy fingernails. The dirt that rimmed his collar.

“Your hair’s still short,” he sneered. “And them breeches. Ye look like a boy.”

Steady, Hazel thought; don’t react. “It’s been a while.”

“It has. I been biding my time.”

“I heard ye escaped. Are they after ye?”

He made an odd stuttering sound, a kind of snigger. “Maybe so. But I know how to disappear.”

“It’s rough out there in the bush.”

“Ye got no idea.” He vibrated with a kind of maniacal energy. “Ever eat kangaroo?”

She shook her head. She’d heard stories about the ex-cons and fugitives who lived like savages among the snakes and wild dogs and wallabies in the bush. Bushrangers, they were called. Pirates who roamed the land instead of the sea. They raided farms and small businesses, stealing horses and rum and weapons.

“Ye smoke ’em over the fire. Bind ’em to sticks.” He held his arms wide, demonstrating. “After they’re dead, usually.” When he laughed, she saw his small gray teeth. “Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we get ahold of a lamb.”

Buck ran the tip of his knife down the side of Ruby’s small head. She didn’t notice, didn’t even see the blade as she crouched over her stick houses. He sliced off a curl and held it out toward Hazel. “See how easy that was? Ye can always use a sharp knife. As ye know yourself.”

He dropped the curl in the grass.