Two Wolves by Tristan Bancks Page A

There’s sixteen.’
    â€˜I believe you.’
    â€˜What can we build?’
    Ben stopped and looked at their haul.
    A fort?
    Another cabin?
    A teepee?
    A raft.
    The logs were almost laid out like a raft already.
    â€˜A raft,’ he said.
    â€˜Yes!’ Olive said. ‘You’re so smart. And we can take off and go discovering! We’ll be bushrangers! I’ll be Olive Kelly, Ned Kelly’s pretend sister, and you can be Captain Thunderbolt and . . .’ Olive went on to list all the good things about having your own raft, including plundering treasure and sailing the seven seas and saying ‘Arrrrrrr, me pretties’ a lot. Ben tried to point out that bushrangers did not say ‘Arrrrrrr, me pretties’, but she ignored him and said, ‘Olive Kelly has a rosella sitting on her shoulder like a parrot and she’s the driver of the ship. Captain Thunderbolt can be the first mate if he wants to be. Or a servant. When I grow up I’m not going to have a husband. Just a servant and a gardener.’
    Ben wondered what they could use to hold the raft together. He set off along the creek bank, Olive prattling happily next to him about a shipwreck and needing to fix the hull.
    For the first time since they had arrived Ben started to relax. With just the two of them down by the creek it actually seemed a bit like a holiday. Ben wanted to go barefoot like Olive but he was too scared of snakes.
    He scanned the ground for long, thin vines that might work as rope to weave between the logs. Across the creek there were vines snaking down the rock wall but he would have to get to the other side of the creek first. And, for that, he would need a raft. He could swim across but the water was cold and running fast. He didn’t know how deep it was and he was not a good swimmer anyway.
    They wandered for half an hour, the sound of water flowing by gently washing the past few days out of Ben’s head.
    â€˜Imagine we’re lost,’ Olive said, ‘and we’ve got to survive and we need to finish our raft so we can get food. And if we don’t find food we’ve got to eat each other.’
    Ben smiled.
    â€˜I wouldn’t really eat you,’ Olive said.
    â€˜Thanks.’
    â€˜You’d be disgusting.’
    Ben pinched her arm.
    â€˜Ow. What about that?’ Olive said.
    She was pointing at a clump of tall, tough-looking grass. Ben climbed onto a rock and jumped to the next, then pulled on a couple of the long strands. They did not budge. He pulled again and his finger slipped along the sharp edge and opened up, bleeding. He sucked on the finger, swallowing the river of blood. He bent down low where the stem was round and white and juicy. He snapped it off, then gathered fifteen stems, passing them to Olive.
    They ran along the bank, in and out of shadows, back to the branches, where Ben began winding the reeds through the logs. Up and over, down and under, up and over.
    â€˜Can you tell me now?’ Olive asked.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Why you got in trouble ,’she said.
    â€˜Doesn’t matter,’ Ben said.
    â€˜Does to me.’
    Ben thought about the money, about Dad’s reaction. And his mother’s lie. He knew it was a lie. They had not sold the wreckers.
    Police. Uncle Chris. The money.
    â€˜Do you think Dad killed somebody and he was hiding the body up in the roof?’
    â€˜No!’ Ben said. ‘Why would you say that?’
    â€˜Just joking,’ Olive said, smiling and doing a spin like a ballerina. ‘You’re too serious sometimes, Benjamin.’
    â€˜Don’t call me Benjamin. And where do you hear stuff like that?’ Ben asked. He tied another reed to the end of the first piece of grass and continued weaving it through the logs.
    â€˜At school,’ she said. ‘We play dead dog where you have to shoot a dog with a barrenarrow –’
    â€˜Bow and arrow,’ Ben