The creek at Yarrawonga dries up in summer, but
the old men say it runs underground to a place
where time folds. A girl with a scar across her
cheek and a rifle slung over her shoulder walks
the same path every morning, eyes fixed on the
red dust. She’s not looking for water.
A man in a khaki coat appears at the edge of the
town square, his boots caked with soil from the
outback. He speaks to the mayor in hushed tones,
hands folded behind his back. The mayor nods,
then watches the girl as she passes.
The girl’s best mate, a mechanic with a laugh
like a train whistle, is found dead in the shed.
His throat is slit, but no blood on the floor.
The townsfolk say it’s a kangaroo, but the girl
knows better. She finds a symbol carved into the
wall—old, too old for the town’s history.
She digs beneath the old church, using a shovel
borrowed from the mechanic’s father. The earth
shifts, and a tunnel opens. A glow flickers deep
inside. She steps through, and the air changes.
It smells like burnt sugar and iron.
In the cavern, a council of figures in tattered
uniforms sits around a fire. They speak in a
language that hums in her bones. One of them
turns, revealing a face she recognizes—her
grandfather, who died in the war. He says the
town is built on a rift between worlds. The
colonists sealed it, but the spirits are waking.
The girl’s friend’s body reappears in the shed,
but he’s not dead. His eyes are black, and he
speaks in a voice that isn’t his. He says the
man in the khaki coat is part of a secret order
that wants to reopen the rift for profit. The
girl’s task is to stop him, but she can’t trust
anyone.
She returns to the town, now aware of the rules:
the rift can only be closed by someone born
under the same moon as the first settler. She
checks her birth records. The date matches.
At midnight, she confronts the man in the coat.
He’s standing at the edge of the tunnel, holding
a lantern. He says the world is changing, and
the old ways must die. She fires, but the bullet
passes through him. He smiles.
The girl closes her eyes. She thinks of her
friend’s laugh, of the outback, of the way the
wind moves through the eucalyptus trees. When
she opens them, the man is gone. The tunnel
collapses behind her.
The next morning, the town wakes to find the
creek flowing again. The mayor is missing. The
girl stands at the edge of the forest, her rifle
slung over her shoulder. She doesn’t look back.
