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I open my eyes and pull back from him. “I love you, Oscar, but I have to go. I know this land better than anyone and if I move fast enough, it might make a difference. Animals. Trees. Even people, eh?”

Oscar doesn’t smile.

He shakes his head and I read his intention to overpower me before it happens. I see my escape in movement bearing down on us.

Three figures.

They’re running towards us and I move faster than even I know I’m capable of.

I twist, ducking beneath Oscar’s arm, and shove him with every ounce of strength I have, sending him reeling straight into Mal Gallagher, who catches him before he can fall.

Oscar’s shout rattles the earth, I’m sure of it.

But I don’t look back.

I throw myself into the cab, slam the door, and turn the key.

Edna rumbles to life, vibration humming through the seat and into my spine like a second heartbeat.

By the time Sol Bosanko reaches the rear wheel, I’m already moving, and I miss what he shouts. I’m gone, and the smoke swallows him. Swallows Mal and Sol and whoever came with them.

Swallows Oscar.

I floor it to the edge of the first field. The cultivator bites into the earth as I lower it, shearing off the dry crust, exposing fresh dark soil. One pass. Two. As wide as I can make it before I have to move on.

Lights flare behind me.

Another vehicle.

Another tractor, trailing me through the field. For a wild second, I think it’s Oscar. He can drive a tractor—he told me when we were in bed together. But he can’t follow me into this. Aras needs him.

Fuck.

I brake hard, jolting Edna to a stop.

Jumping from the cab, I run through the smoke until the second tractor—the John Deere—looms out of the smog.

It stops too and the door swings open, and a figure too slender to be even half of Oscar leaps to the ground.

Folk.

I swear to god, I almost pass out. My brother’s face is clean, but his eyes are tough as he takes in the flames bearing down on us, the blood smearing my skin, and the cultivator behind my tractor in a single sweep.

He shakes his head at me. “Jekka’s going to kill you herself for this.”

“We have to do it.”

“I know.” He presses a single fist to my shoulder. “Show me the way, I’ll follow you.”

21 POET

Heat has weight.

I drive at the fire and it smothers the cab in heavy waves, searing my skin, even through the glass as Edna surges forward beneath me, tyres biting into the brittle soil. Ash skittering across the windscreen, driven sideways by the pace of the dry gale.

Dragging steel through sunbaked ground, my girl shudders. The scent of parched dirt giving way to soil that hasn’t seen daylight in months reaches me.

I smell it.