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    Dingo & Sister
    Dingo & Sister
    Dingo & Sister
    Ebook48 pages39 minutes

    Dingo & Sister

    By Nikky Lee

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Anika has nowhere left to run.

    She ran from the dried-up coast. Ran from her drunkard father. Ran to the desert and tried to cross the baking sands to Alice Springs, the last haven in this climate-ravaged dust bowl.

    She failed.

    Stuck at the edge of the desert, unable to return home, unable to push on, she and her dingo companion steal from travellers about to attempt their own crossing.

    Such journeys are fraught with danger: heatstroke, dehydration, snakebite. Many people die trying to reach Alice, Anika knows this first hand. But when she gets caught stealing, her hand is forced. With a group of enraged, gun-toting travellers on her trail, she must run one last time.

    She must face the desert and its ghosts again.

    This time, turning back is not an option.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNikky Lee
    Release dateJan 24, 2021
    ISBN9780463067383
    Dingo & Sister
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    Author

    Nikky Lee

    Nikky Lee is an award-winning author who grew up as a barefoot 90s kid in Perth, Western Australia on Whadjuk Noongar Country. She now lives in Aotearoa New Zealand with a husband, a dog and a couch potato cat. In her free time she writes speculative fiction, often burning the candle at both ends to explore fantastic worlds, mine asteroids and meet wizards. She's had over two dozen stories published in magazines, anthologies and on radio. Her debut novel, THE RARKYN'S FAMILIAR—an epic tale of a girl bonded to a monster—will be published by Parliament House Press in 2022.

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      Book preview

      Dingo & Sister - Nikky Lee

      Dingo & Sister

      DINGO & SISTER

      A NOVELETTE

      NIKKY LEE

      Copyright © 2023 by Nikky Lee

      Cover art by Maria Spada.

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      CONTENTS

      Dingo & Sister

      Acknowledgments

      Other Books By Nikky Lee

      About the Author

      DINGO & SISTER

      The red dust is so fine it seeps through my scarf, caking in my mouth. With each breath, it tickles the back of my throat. Belly down in the dirt, the afternoon sun stings the back of my legs as I watch the men below.

      Patience, sister. Dingo lies alert beside me, her fur almost the same colour as the earth, ears pricked as she listens. Our time will come.

      Thirst pools saliva under my tongue and I swallow, tasting earth, catching the cough in my throat before I scare our game away. It’s a small camp, tents pitched among the saltbush in the shade of one lone mulga tree.

      Smoke from the camp wafts up to us, bringing scents of wild mutton and sandalwood: thick, creamy and rich. Dingo rests her head on her paws, patient as always, but her nose twitches, scenting.

      Sheena once said sandalwood was the most expensive wood in the old-world—back when this land was whole, before the seas swallowed the coast and birthed a sea from Melbourne to Adelaide. But now, here in the outback, if it burns it goes on the fire. I breathe in the cloud, savouring it, hoping it might fool my empty stomach. It doesn’t.

      The sun sinks lower. Still we don’t move. Just as the last dregs of red seep below the horizon, Dingo shifts, raises her head, yawns. Dusk is our time. The witching hour folks of the old-world called it. Dingo calls it the hunting hour.

      I rise, shedding dust, muscles quivering from lying still so long.

      Time to eat.

      The men don’t hear us come.

      Together, Dingo and I steal into their camp. Dingo runs low, belly skimming the ground, ears alert, eyes crescent slivers of firelight beside me. I skip across the still-warm earth, rock to weed to rock again—anywhere that won’t leave prints. My shoes, soft leather worn in from all our walking, make no sound.

      We take their water first. I slip the plastic water bottles from their packs, tucking them under one arm. Dingo sniffs out their supplies: tinned fruit, wrapped crackers. A meagre fare. But I take them anyway.

      A shout from the fire freezes us.

      You fucking pig; you drank it all? The voice is male, angry, directed over the flames. Something thuds to the ground: an empty flask, tethered lid off and clacking against the metal.

      My heart hits the roof of my mouth, but I stay the urge to flee.

      Humans are hunters. They see movement better than all else. Dingo’s lessons sound in my head. I sink to the ground instead, gaze never leaving the group by the fire. A bearded man stands with his knuckles bunched over a cowering boy. Two others,

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