Read Butterfly Hunter 01 for Free Online Page B

settled over them again.
     

 

Three
     
    They were into the acacia
scrub the next day, as they headed west for Charleville. The gum
trees grew sparser, and the acacia shrubs took over with tussocks
of dry grass dotted about, and plenty of bare red –brown dirt between. The land was quickly flattening out. A
lot of people hated this semi–arid countryside, and Dave would
agree that none of the individual elements were particularly
attractive. There was a spartan kind of elemental beauty about the
overall effect, though. And he knew that it harboured all kinds of
life, some secretive and some not. It was in a landscape such as
this, he thought, that Nicholas would find his
butterflies.
    Nicholas was sitting in
the passenger seat looking around with that strangely childlike
eagerness of his. It was really quite endearing, but Dave couldn’t
help teasing. “Don’t soak it all in at once. Take your time.
We’ll be seeing a lot of this.”
    “ Yes?”
    “ We
might see nothing but acacia scrub, depending on how far afield we go.
It’ll thin out more as we head west, and it’ll be mostly low–level.
You’re gonna get bored with it pretty quickly.”
    “ Not yet,
though,” Nicholas said with a grin. “Um … Can we stop?”
    “ Sure.” Dave
glanced in the rear–view mirror, just in case, but there was
nothing between them and the horizon in either direction. He pulled
the Cruiser over, taking it safely off the road. Kept his gaze
tactfully averted. “Loo roll in the glove box, if you need
it.”
    “ Oh! No. Thank
you, but no.”
    “ Well, then.
Let’s go see how many grubs you can find.”
    Nicholas grinned, put on
his Akubra, grabbed his satchel, and clambered out of the Cruiser.
“It’s all useful,” he explained with endearing earnestness as Dave
trailed around after him. “It’s like I said: there’s so few people
working on this. Any reliable observation is welcome.”
    “ That’s
great.” Dave obligingly held items as necessary, kept an eye out
for anything Nicholas might find interesting just in case he didn’t
notice it himself, and made engaged or impressed noises
occasionally as Nicholas nattered away.
    At some point after Dave’s
attention had wandered, Nicholas abruptly sat down in the dirt, and
Dave stepped towards him anxiously thinking, God, what a klutz this guy is! and, How the hell am I
gonna keep him safe?
    But of course Nicholas was
fine. He sat there offering a dazed smile to Dave, and said, “I
just looked up.”
    “ Oh yes. The
sky.”
    “ It’s rather
larger than the one we have at home.”
    Dave put his head back and
looked up. There wasn’t a cloud to interrupt the enormous arc of
pure blue, which if you didn’t – scarily – let into your soul,
would indeed make anyone feel insignificant. Dave huffed a breath.
“You matter to me. If not to the sky.”
    “ It’s not that
so much. I got dizzy there. Just for a moment.”
    “ Like you’d
fall up into it?”
    “ Yes. And
float away.”
    “ I’ll keep you
grounded. It’s all right.”
    Nicholas looked down at
his hands for a moment, as the long pale fingers meshed together.
“Is that another reason for the hats? To keep the sky
out?”
    “ No! No,
you’ll get used to it.” Dave chuckled. “Wait until you see it at
night.” Out here, with few lights around, the stars were beyond
awesome. Dave had never yet gotten tired of it.
    “ Spectacular?”
    “ You got it.
Not tonight while we’re in Charleville. Wait till we’re camping
out.”
    Nicholas grinned, and
lifted a hand, which Dave grasped. “I will,” Nicholas murmured as
he unfolded from the ground, some of his weight a not unwanted test
of Dave’s strength, and the rest borne up by those long thighs.
Nicholas didn’t move away once he was standing again. Not
immediately. He stayed there for a moment, right up into Dave’s
space, and whispered in Dave’s ear, “I’ll wait for you to show
me.”
    Dave tilted his head in
closer, as if about to