Gaen didn't come back. He didn't come back, and now it was pitch black and scary in the blackhouse, off-kilter scratching noises coming from the byre. It's just chickens, Judit told herself, but she didn't feel any better.

It was no use, she couldn't stay here. Judit stood up, struggling momentarily when she stood on the back of her long dress in the darkness, and moved towards the door. She could barely see, though she could hear the chickens skulking threateningly in the corners as she passed through the internal door.

She breathed a sigh of relief as she got outside and closed the exterior door behind her, leaning against it. There was no one around. She peered cautiously towards the teachers' blackhouse, but there was no sign of movement. The last thing she needed was Goodmin getting involved. She imagined the old witch locking her and Gaen in the blackhouse, not letting them out till they'd rubbed.

Night had fallen, but the moon was big and there was still plenty of light. Judit pulled her cloak around her and ran across the meadow to the trees, almost crouched double, giving the cows a wide berth. She tucked into the undergrowth and looked back to the village. It was still preternaturally quiet, ghostly in the silver light. She thought of all the kids, all the emotions, hidden in those squat black buildings.

Jaddy was there, outside his blackhouse, Judit suddenly noticed. He was sitting silent and still, his back to the stone wall, head between his knees. He hadn't seen her. She felt a breaker of pity crash over her heart, then turned into the trees.

She ducked under the branch shaped like an arch. She knew exactly where she was going. She sweated and huffed up the uneven path, even harder in her cumbersome gown and the fading light. Now her ears were trained to it, she could hear the roar of the river alongside her.

She searched. Where had it gone? She was sure it was here. It was gone. Had it gone? Was she going mad? Judit stopped to stare at a familiar forked branch, encircled by her own back-tracking footprints. No, it was here. She remembered looking at this very branch, not too long ago, sodden t-shirt clinging to her flesh, mulch litter on the back of her thighs, laughter on her lips, love by her side.

She took four steps backwards, eyes fixed on the branch, and spun around. No wall. No rhododendron. It must be a mistake. She circled again, only to return to the same spot. She was sure. She dropped to her knees, searching the ground for clues, though she didn't know exactly what.

She was sure this should be the place, that most magical place, but it was all wrong. There was no wall, no billowing, clustered flowers. No plum tree. Not even any grass, or moss. The earth was brown and crumbling beneath her hands, preternaturally bare. This couldn't be it.

Then she found it, and knew it was the place she was looking for, though not like this, never like this. A tree stump. Low, flat as the ground, covered in a thin layer of soil. As she brushed it away, the earth stuck to the pale wood's fatal wound, still sticky with arboreal blood. It was the plum tree.

She scrabbled in the bare soil faster now, knowing exactly where the rhododendron should be. She found a square foundation stone, buried, a remain of the wall. More scrabbling, her hands pale against the dark earth, her fingernails rimmed in deep black. Finally, something. A head of once-pink flowers, brown now, crushed and dead.

She clutched her measly prize tight as she stared into the blackening trees.

***

It was getting far too dark to stay out, but Judit couldn't bear to go back. She felt defeated and raw, and didn't want to have to look at Gaen, be alone with him, pinned under his hateful, self-satisfied expression, probably still gloating over the unlit fire.

She made her way down the wooded hill, seeing as much with her outstretched hands as her eyes, exhaling with relief as she finally reached the moonlit meadow. She'd been scratched on the face by brambles, and her feet were bruised, her soft leather shoes forming little barrier from the stones and roots in the uneven ground.

A low, resonant birdcall sounded somewhere behind her. She could hear the sea, too, the waves crashing on the rocks. She wasn't sure if it was louder in the night, or if she'd just never noticed it before, all the colours and action of the day competing for the attention of her senses.

She took one last glance at the village below. It was just dark shapes now. On impulse, she turned left, towards the cliffs, over the short grass. The village soon disappeared from view below the line of the land. It might as well not have existed. All she could see were the standing stones, a skeleton army skulking in a conspiratorial circle on the hilltop beyond the valley.

She reached the cliff top and stood, looking over the angry, unresponsive sea. Everything was monochrome in the bright moonlight. She'd never felt more insignificant, more alone. She walked right up to the edge, looked down. The water was white and foamy against the dark rocks below her, the wind in her skirts imitating the movement of the waves. She thought of Rama. You can't think. You've just got to do it. Do it Judit. Do it.

A tear ran down her face, dripped off her chin. She didn't know where it went: her dress, the grass, down, down to the rushing water. Was that it? Glowing in the sea? Bright as a diamond, sharp as a knife?

No. Judit stepped back. That was a torch. There's someone down there, on the water. Heart beating violently, she threw herself to the ground, inching forward to peer over the cliff, only her head and eyes visible.

There was a light, unmistakably. A boat. Who was it? What were they doing here, in the middle of nowhere? She stared down again. It looked like a man, alone, in a small wooden craft, his shadows long on the water in his lonely torchlight. He was struggling to turn his rocking vessel, fighting with the waves.

Then an engine started up, only just audible over the crashing of the sea, and the vessel, still pitching and rolling, moved away from the rocks. As soon as it had gained some distance from the cliff where Judit clung, watching him like a hunted lavy, the boatman's light clicked off, and the boat and its mysterious occupant disappeared into the darkness of the waves.

Judit scooted backwards from the cliff-edge and sat up, her mind turbulent. Who was that? What was he doing? It's nothing, she told herself. Probably just a fisherman, but she didn't believe it. Did fishermen even exist nowadays? He was–

Her thoughts stopped, sharp. Someone was coming. She could hear someone coming to the left of her, breathing heavily as they ascended what must be a steep path from the sea below.

Judit looked around, panicked, but there was nowhere to go. The grass cropped low all around. Short of throwing herself off the cliff, she had nowhere to hide. She froze. Hard hands were wringing her heart like a dish-cloth. The breathing got closer. It sounded strangely familiar. There was a swishing noise too, like long skirts.

"Lintie!" Judit exclaimed in surprise.

The other girl screamed sharply, jumped back, her hand to her chest.

"Skit, Judit!" Lintie was breathless. She looked around, horror and panic on her face. "What the skit are you doing here? Is it... Have they..."

"It's okay," Judit reassured her, standing up, walking towards her friend. "It's just me. I was just... I couldn't sleep. I just needed some air."

Lintie nodded, her brow furrowed. She didn't look happy to see Judit at all. "I was just..." She tailed off pathetically, then stood silent, looking down at the ground, her cloak hugged around her. "How much did you see?"

"Nothing," Judit replied. "Nothing at all, I swear. I mean... Just some guy on a boat. Do you... Do you wanna talk or something?"

Lintie looked at her sideways, momentarily distrusting. "You won't tell Rama?"

"Of course I won't," Judit said, injured. "Dag off. I'm not a hiss."

Lintie nodded, relieved. "Let's sit down," she said. "God, I'm shaking. You really skitting scared me then. I thought I was going to have a heart attack."

The girls sat together on the short grass, looking out to sea. Judit didn't say anything. Lintie was chewing on the inside of her cheek, watching the waves intently.

"It's Brock," she said finally. "I didn't want to... We broke up, on the reservation, before all this. But I couldn't..." She lifted the heel of her hand to rub her eyes. "They just wouldn't let him come," she went on, her voice breaking. "I don't know why they didn't just let him come. He'd have been so good at this. If we could have... We could have been so happy."

She started to cry, burying her face in her sleeve.

"You have a boyfriend?" Judit said, trying to piece Lintie's disjointed speech together in her head.

Lintie nodded, sniffing, wiping her nose on her skirt.

"And he's, like, not Native or something? So couldn't come here?"

"He is Native," Lintie said angrily, as if Judit had just thrown out the worst insult ever. "He is. He's like Gaen, he's made for all this stuff. Loves being outdoors, loves the wild... the two of them were always into it, y'know? People used to tease 'em for it."

She kicked the floor with her heel. "But he didn't have that crank stupid gene. MC-whatever it was. So they said he couldn't come."

Lintie started to cry again, silently, only the liquid in her voice and the sniff-sniff-sniff giving her away.

"I still had to do it, to come here, it was so important to mum and dad. I couldn't... But I love him." She looked out to sea again, wiped her face. "They should have just let him come. He wanted this. We wanted it. Together. And now I'm stuck with dagging Tod. For the rest of my life."

She broke down in uncontrollable sobs. Judit sidled towards her, cradling her shoulders and dipped head in a hug. The phrase for the rest of my life was bouncing uncomfortably around her consciousness.

"It's okay," she said lamely. It really wasn't.

"It's okay," Lintie echoed, breaking away, sounding about as convinced as Judit was. "I'm okay, honestly. Thanks. I just need to..." She fell silent. Judit was pretty sure Lintie had no idea what she needed to do.

"Shall we go back?" Lintie said finally, her voice hollow. "We don't want them to miss us."

Judit nodded glumly and stood up. What a skitting, dagging wreckage of a mess.

"I hope you don't mind me asking," Judit ventured awkwardly as the girls walked back towards the sleeping village, into their own long shadows. "But Hegri... I thought you... You said you wanted to be together, so I thought..."

Lintie stopped, staring at Judit head on.

"Hegri's gay, Judit." She looked at Judit like it was obvious, then turned away, shrugged.

"No one knows, not really. Only me. Just like he's the only one that knows I'm still seeing Brock. If we'd got each other, it would just have been so much easier."

She began to walk again. Judit followed her, ruminating on this new information.

"All the girls are so in love with him," Lintie carried on, her eyes on the woods. "Whoever he got, there'd be so much pressure to..." She grimaced. "And now he's with Peasie. She's one of the worst. Skitting tang-eyes all over it. She'll be throwing herself at him."

"Why didn't he just tell them?" Judit said, mystified. Being gay was a normal part of life, it wasn't a shameful secret to be hidden.

"Because... It's not... You don't know what Native men can be like." Lintie screwed up her nose, disdain distorting her pretty face. "Especially the old ones. Hegri's dad was one of the worst. It's all oh, I'm so macho, the elemental male. Bunch of skitting sexist dagcrank."

"Like Gaen," Judit spat. He was totally like that.

"No." Lintie's voice had changed, was clear and firm now. She stopped again, turning to face Judit. They were getting close to the village, so it was becoming dangerous to talk. "Not like Gaen. I know him and Merle can be skitting hard work, but he's not... They're not..." she breathed in deeply. "It's... Back at the reservation..."

She stopped herself and sighed. "Look, it's not my place to tell, alright? But I'm just saying, despite everything, Merle and Gaen aren't so bad, once you get to know them. The both of them. Just give them a chance, that's all."

Lintie smiled at Judit now, that familiar warmth breaking through for the first time. "Thanks," she said. "I mean it. For... that. All of it. It's good to talk to someone."

She leaned forward and clasped Judit in a tight hug, then walked away, towards the sea-end of the blackhouses, turning to smile at Judit as she left. Judit headed her own way, her steps silent on the soft dark grass.

The chickens scraped and clucked as she entered the byre, groping in the pitch darkness for the internal door. Judit shivered and hoped that Gaen had lit the fire, and then gone to bed, so she wouldn't have to speak to him.

The door opened onto cold blackness. She could tell immediately that the blackhouse was empty. She stumbled blindly to the other end, felt for the box bed and heaved herself inside, wrapping herself up fully clothed in the blankets, not even taking off her shoes.

She stayed like that until morning. Gaen didn't come back.