The Untold by Courtney Collins

given over to thehorizon. But when you are standing close to her, and her eyes are on you, you feel that she can see what’s inside you and she’s smiling so you know she likes what she sees.
    How could he say,
I have known no better feeling
.
    Jack Brown rolled onto his back and the world of the fire opened up as he looked above him. Patterns of stars seemed to orbit one another, dust orbiting dust. He closed his eyes against them and he saw the stars falling behind his eyes. He followed the stars into dark, shimmering pools and he found that the shimmering pools had no end.

    W HEN J ACK B ROWN WOKE, Barlow was sitting near the fire making tea. He had the look of just being washed. His hair was combed flat to his head and his face was smooth and freshly shaven, which made the hollows under his eyes look darker.
    Sleep tight, Sergeant?
asked Jack Brown.
    Not a wink
, said Barlow.
    Ground not good enough for you?
said Jack Brown as he stood up and shook his swag.
    It’s the cold, Jack Brown. Gets right into my back.
    You got a bad back, Sarge?
    I took a fall when I was a kid.
    Well, let’s get you back on the horse before you jam right up and I have to carry you out of here.
    As they rode into the forest the mass of the trees glistened with dew above them. They looked to Jack Brown like giant pools in the air and he did not know how they held together and how it did not all rain upon him.

T he first time Jack Brown ever touched Jessie they were on the way to a drove. There was nothing of circumstance that night to bring them together. The weather was warm. They were suffering no storm and there had been nothing exceptional about the day. They had ridden along quietly beside each other for days. And days before on other rides.
    That evening he made a campfire and prepared their dinner. She went down to the river to wash herself and when she came back her skin glowed in the light of the fire and her eyes were bright. It was the first time he had looked at her that day, always she was riding out ahead of him. But suddenly there was a feeling in him and it felt dangerous. He knew that when a man has enough space and silence and time he begins to think anything is possible or nothing is possible at all. This day, all the space and silence had set him to daydreaming of her, although she was right there, if not right there beside him.
    That night, when they settled down to sleep, he imagined what it would be like to be next to her, to press his chest against her back, to feel her skin. But there was no reason for it. No way of closing up that distance between them.
    Until he did.
    She was lying awake on her swag next to the fire. He moved in beside her. She took his hand and rolled to her side and held his hand against her chest.
Sleep now
, she said. But neither of them slept. He lay awake for some time, breathing into her hair.Eventually, he forced himself to close his eyes, only with the hope of dreaming of her, of finding something that would flow from dreaming into life.
    And then it did.
    In the morning she would not meet his eyes.
    We cannot ever speak of this
, she said.
    My lips are sealed.
    I mean it, Jack Brown. This can never happen again.
    As you wish.
    Do you know what Fitz would do to you? And you can guess what he would do to me. Our feelings cannot be worth both of our lives, Jack Brown. We will bury them. Right here.
    He knew her words were true. There was only danger between them.

N orth and west the inland climate gave rise to black and white cypress and tumbledown gums of ironbark. Jessie looked down from the high ridge. Around her were deep cliff-lined gorges, giant ramparts and then more canyons, more rock. There was wilderness as far as she could see. It did not end.
    She had been riding for a week.
    She had stepped Houdini up and over the ridges and escarpments, felt the weather change, the air dampening her skin. Ledge to ledge were animals she had seen before only as fleeting