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“Oscar?”

Hanna. Something in her voice has me upright before I’ve computed the mother of my child is calling me in the middle of the night.

Beyond her, Aras is crying.

“What is it?”

She takes a breath. “There’s a fire in the fields.”

“What?”

“A wildfire. We can see it from the front garden and the wind is blowing it this way. An alert went off on my phone and Paul’s away⁠—”

I bolt out of bed. “Get your things. I am coming.”

“They’re closing the road.”

“They will let me through.”

“Oscar, that’s not why Aras woke me up.”

I drag yesterday’s jeans up my legs and stuff my insulin pouch into my pocket. “What do you mean?”

“The barn roof across the road has fallen down. Caved in on itself. Aras thinks your friend is inside.”

My pulse stutters.

I cannot breathe.

Aras cries harder and his wailed terror reaches me. “Teti! Po’s going to burn!”

The bottle slips from my fingers. Apple juice splashes on the carpet and over my feet.

I don’t even notice.

I am already running.

20 POET

The old timber is heavier than it looks. I wedge my shoulder beneath it and shove until it gives just enough for me to drag it clear.

I hurl it at the growing pile behind me. The effort tears at my back and shoulders, my forearms already a bloodied mess. But as the smoke in the air grows thicker by the second, I barely notice.

Burning gorse tastes bitter on my tongue. Ash falls from the sky like poison snow. I shout. “Dav!”

If he answers, I’ll never hear him. But I keep shouting, and I keep digging, through the wreckage of the collapsed barn, heaving fallen rafters and splintered wood, ancient dust exploding into the air until I can’t tell where the destroyed barn ends and the fire bearing down on us begins.

This has to be a dream.

A nightmare.

Half an hour ago, I was checking gates, tracking the first dirty smear of smoke as it stained the horizon, cursing the wind carrying it south-west. It was only by chance I glanced behind me in time to see the barn fold in on itself. To feel the impact as the centuries-old wood came crashing down.

I free another beam and launch it.

It lands on the grass by Dav’s bag and cap. I yell again and my throat rips itself in two. Blood fills my mouth.

I spit, lungs heaving. “Dav!”