Dark Roots by Cate Kennedy

it’s like a piece of glass from an old bottle.
    Dad had had his shower by the time I got home. The rabbits were harder to skin because more time had passed. The skins ripped off with the sound of a bandaid like they put on your knees in the school sickroom. Get them off , my dad said when I came home one time with the bandaids on. He was watching me so I pulled both of them off fast and they bled again. Call that first aid? That’s bloody atrocious , said my dad. Get some air onto them . I looked at my knees. They felt like the hinges inside had got stiff and rusty, like the oil in them had leaked out.
    Every day for the next few weeks, people drove up the hill to fix things in the house. You could hear banging and machines and then a pointy bit of new roof pushed up over the trees. The lady’s friends, the ones who thought she was quite mad, came up a lot at first but then it got colder and they stopped. The lake froze over at the edges and the ducks had frost on their feathers. One day I crept up and saw the lady standing with her arms folded on the new verandah, which was covered in pink paint, just staring out at the trees. All around her garden were piles of rocks and I saw a duck standing still as anything under a tree. I went closer and she saw me.
    Well, Billy , she called, and I went over and saw the duck was a pretend one.
    Look at all these bloody trees , she said, sighing. I’m sick of the sight of them .
    She had on the overalls again but they didn’t look so new now. The digger had left big piles of dirt everywhere.
    What are those trees anyway, Billy? she said suddenly, and I said they were gum trees and she laughed and said she might have guessed that would be my answer, even though I hadn’t finished and was only sorting out what I was going to say next.
    I said it was going to be another cold snap that night and more hard weather. And she said how did I know and I started explaining but she wasn’t really listening, she was still looking down the gully towards the lake, turning her head like the ladies in the shop when they’re buying dresses and looking at themselves in the mirror, deciding.
    Three weeks after that time I was up in the trees, just listening to them and looking for good spots for snares, when I found the first sick one. When I touched its leaves I knew it was dying, like when I touched my grandpop’s hand. It was a big old tree and used to have a big voice but now it was just breathing out. And it was bleeding. All around the trunk there was a circle somebody had cut and sap dripped out which is the tree’s blood, my dad says. It was a rough chopping job and the person had used a little saw then a hatchet and I could see how they didn’t know how to use the saw properly and had scratched all up and down around the cut. There was nothing I could do for that tree. I wanted to kill it properly so it wouldn’t just stand there looking at me trying its hardest to stay alive.
    The week after that one I found another tree that was the same and then it just kept on happening, seven of the biggest trees got cut. When I looked real hard I flew up again and saw them from the top and the dying ones made a kind of line down to the lake all the way from the lady’s house on the hill to the shore. Then I came back down onto the ground, and I saw how it was.
    You’ve done it again, Billy , said Mr Bailey when I came past. I don’t know what I’d do without you, two big fat ones today.
    I got my money and walked up the hill towards the lady’s house and I saw her through the trees planting something in the garden. Dad said she kept the whole nursery in business.
    Now I got quite close to her and the pretend duck before she saw me and she jumped backwards.
    Jesus, kid, just give it a break, will you? she said in an angry voice. I stood there holding the empty box from the rabbits.
    Just don’t creep around so much, Billy, okay? she said,