The Dead of Night by John Marsden

been pretty good. But there's something in me wants to go further, and I don't mean only physical, although there's definitely that." As I talked I began for the first time to get an inkling of what it might be. "I think it's to do with all
the things that have happened to us. The invasion and being here and going out and blowing things up and killing people. I'm sort of asking, is that all our life is going to become? Just sitting here, spinning our wheels? Every few weeks go out and kill a few more soldiers? If that's all life has to offer for the next fifty years, then forget it. I want to go forward, no matter what else is happening around us. We haven't gone forward one space since we got here. We haven't built anything, except a few crummy chook yards. We haven't learned anything. We haven't done anything positive."

    "We've learned a heap, I reckon."
    "Oh, about ourselves and stuff. But I don't mean that kind of learning. I mean stuff that's useless for its own sake and so it's beautiful, if you see what I mean. Like, the names of constellations and the shapes they form in the sky. Like the way Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, on his back with paint dripping in his eyes. Like, oh, Fibonacci sequences or the Japanese tea ceremony or the French word for railway. They're the kind of things I'm talking about. Can't you understand?"
    "I guess so. You mean, if we lose those things we'll be defeated, no matter what else happens, no matter what military victories we win."
    "Exactly. You do understand! We have to do things that say yes, not just things that say no. Planting all those seeds, that was a good thing to do. But we should have planted flowers too. The Hermit understood that. That's why he put in these roses, and when he made that bridge he didn't just shove a few logs across the creek. He made it beautifully, so it'll last hundreds of years. We have to create things, and think in the long
term. Leave stuff behind us for others. Life rules! Yeah!"

    And I leapt away and did a dance through the Hermit's dark little house, coming back with dozens of rose petals that I scattered generously on Lee's face. But that wasn't nearly enough. I'd suddenly built up so much energy' that I could have planted a thousand trees, kissed a thousand guys, built a thousand houses. Instead I ploughed my way back down the creek at high speed, ran in zigzags through the clearing, then jogged on up the track to watch the sunset from Satan's Steps.
    When it was dark and the flies had gone to bed for the night, Homer and I killed one of the lambs. I knelt on it while he cut its throat, then I jerked back its head to break the bone and let the blood run out, the life flow away. We skinned it between us, Homer using his big fist for the belly and brisket. I hadn't been looking forward to doing ali this. I'd thought that I mightn't be able to; that it might bring back the terrible memories from the ambush. But it didn't. I don't know if the conversation with Lee had cleared the sky of my menacing shadow, but as soon as I grabbed the lamb I automatically started doing what I'd done in the old days. We'd always kept our own killers. You never get blase about slaughtering an animal; for instance taking out the warm heart, which feels like the life is still held in it, is a powerful experience, no matter how many times you do it. It is for me, anyway. So you don't do it like you're a robot, or like you're peeling spuds. But to my relief I found it went pretty much as it always had done—and that really was a relief.
    We cut off its head and chucked it into the pit Fi
had dug for the leftovers. I'm not into brains, and that particular night I couldn't bring myself to skin its face or cut out the tongue. Then we strung the carcass up over a branch to gut it. We were under so much pressure from the others to provide a barbecue that we went ahead and butchered it straightaway, even though it's better to wait and let it cool. But we hacked