Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox Read Free Book Online Page B

this before he staggered, gagging, through the border, into the heat and colour and noise of the world.
    The noise was that of running horses, and iron-rimmed wheels rolling on sun-baked earth.
    The ranger turned towards the sound, and threw up his arms to ward off what instantly overwhelmed him — the Sisters Beach stagecoach, which had come, at full tilt, around a bend in the road above the village of Tricksie Bend.

Eight
    The day after their camp-out, at around four in the afternoon, Laura and Rose were on the infants’ beach. For the last few weeks of that summer the cousins had made a daily visit to this sheltered spot. There was a lifeguard they liked to look at. The girls tried not to be conspicuous in their admiration, so would park themselves at the edge of the ranks of for-hire sunbeds. The beds were usually empty at that hour — the infants and their minders having packed up and gone home. The sun was well past its zenith and the sun umbrellas cast their streaks of shade along the sand behind each slatted bed.
    That day the handsome lifeguard wasn’t at his station, but was prowling up and down before the shallows in the shelter of the breakwater. Rose and Laura ambled as near to him as they dared, finally settling down partly concealed behind a sunbed.
    The bed they chose was occupied, but Rose and Laura were looking elsewhere, and scarcely noticed its occupant. He was quiet, reading. But, as the sun settled towards the horizon, and the shade of his umbrella thinned and swooped eastward, the girls moved to stay in its shadow.
     
    EVENTUALLY, THEY were lounging on the sand to one side of the bed.
    Rose craned and squinted. She shuffled a little closer to the sunbed. Then she said, ‘We have that book in school.’ She turned to Laura. ‘Well, next year we do. It’s Dr King’s A History of Southland .’
    Laura peered at the book. People usually read magazines on the beach, or didn’t read, but draped their faces with them.
    Rose said, ‘He’s up to chapter sixteen, “Tziga’s Fall”.’
    The occupant of the sunbed grunted. He sat up, swung his feet down on to the sand and looked at Rose. He looked to be a few years older than the cousins. He was already sporting a small, experimental moustache, a thin strip of brassy whiskers, a shade darker than his hair. He was fair skinned and freckled — and very pink.
    Laura said to him, ‘You’re getting a sunburn.’
    ‘I’d say, judging by your colour, that you are a little more practised at beach holidays than I am. This is my first , and I’m making the most of it. I hired this sunbed for the afternoon, and I’ll not leave it till the afternoon is over.’
    ‘I can never read on the beach,’ Laura said.
    ‘I’m not at leisure to choose when I do my reading,’ said the boy.
    ‘Won’t you at least take my towel?’ Laura said. She rolled off it and held it out to him.
    ‘That’s hardly necessary,’ he said.
    Rose said, ‘You could get off your sunbed and drag it into your shade. Your shade is oozing away from you — it doesn’t seem to understand that it’s been hired for the whole afternoon.’ She asked him where he was staying.
    ‘My uncle has an apartment in Bayview.’
    ‘Oh!’ Rose said. ‘Someone was killed there last year! A pot plant fell from the terrace on the sixth floor and killed a man on a first-floor balcony. It was dreadful!’ Rose mused for a bit. ‘But they did manage to re-pot the geranium,’ she said.
    The boy stared at Rose, baffled and sceptical at once. ‘What are you girls doing on the infants’ beach?’
    Rose tossed her head. ‘I am the mother of one of those infants, naturally,’ she said.
    ‘Only one ?’
    Laura asked, ‘What are you doing on the infants’ beach? Can’t you swim?’
    ‘I thought I’d get some peace and quiet — get away from youths stuffing sand down one another’s fronts. All those splashing, dunking, shrieking, sidling , flirting nuisances.’
    ‘Laura and I are only